Holy Carb Drop

Talking about shocking your system. 

While my trainer has been gradually reducing my carb intake over the past 10 weeks, he went all out with this week's diet. 

We continue with a modified carb drop (MCD) as we have for the past two weeks, but instead of two high carb days followed by five low carb days, he has me doing one "high" (still nothing compared to the amount of carbs and calories I ate during my off-season) and four low, and by low I mean Mariana Trench low. 

The total caloric intake on my low days is roughly 2,900 calories total, with 1,800 coming from protein, 855 from fat and barely over 200 from carbs. To be precise, for four days, my carbohydrates will come from 1 oz. of almonds, along with some egg whites as my pre-workout, 16 oz. of Gatorade as part of my post-workout meal and two full cups of broccoli, which all together equates to 55 grams of carbs or 220 calories. 

Low Carb Day Meals without 16 oz. Gatorade and protein shakes

Needless to say, my energy levels are equally low and my mood not the best. I feel lightheaded and am easy to irritate. 

In addition to a level of crankiness that could easily take it on with any pregnant woman's mood, I am also battling a slight cold that adds to my overall exhaustion. Long story short, I am not a whole lot of fun to be around these days and should probably wear a shirt like this to work, to the gym or any form or social function that requires human interaction.

I cannot wait for my next high carb day to regain some of my energy. Instant grits, white and brown rice, as well as sweet potatoes never sounded more delicious. As typical for a high carb day, protein intake is dropped, while carb consumption and overall calories are increased. In my specific case, the total caloric intake goes up to roughly 4,000, with more than half of it coming from carbs. Just the thought of it makes my mouth water, figuratively. 

High Carb Day Meals without pre- and post-workout protein shakes

Despite all of this, I am trying to stay positive and keep on pushing myself. I am now a little less than three weeks out and can see a light at the end of the tunnel. It might be a little blurry due to my lightheadedness but it's there. 

My workouts are still relatively strong, even though I had to decrease the weights for some exercises to maintain proper form and technique. My daily cardio remains unchanged at 30 minutes of HIIT on the elliptical, complimented by ten 50 yards sprints twice a week.  

In terms of supplements, Fred upped my BCAA intake to 40gr per day, which should help to temper my hunger, and added Calcium-Magnesium and ZMA, as well as 3,000mg of fish oil pills. 

Being that close to my competition, he also told me to stop using my pre-workout booster, Gaspari SuperPump.  

If you cant handle me "cutting", then you don't deserve me when I'm shredded.

Cooking for Bodybuilders 101

As you probably figured out by now, I have a slight obsession with food. Not only do I like cooking, eating and trying out new recipes, but I even watch the Food Network, occasionally.

Strangely enough however, only when I am doing 45 minutes of cardio at 3am in the morning. Guess I must have some form of masochism hidden deep inside of me, cause I am actually enjoying watching Guy Fieri biting into a greasy burger while climbing up the treadmill at a 10% incline. Maybe it's some kind of fetish. Maybe a food fetish???

With this being said, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that this post will focus again on, duh, FOOD.

I often get the question what I am doing to get bigger or to get leaner, and the answer is quite simple. I eat.

Obviously not everything, but the foods that I eat, I eat a lot of spread throughout the day as you can read in one of my previous posts about my diet. 

Oftentimes I get the response that following my, or any kind of, diet would be impossible for various reasons. I call BULLS***. 

Yes, it requires discipline, planning and some work but it is easier than some people think. Well planning and preparation is. Regarding the discipline part, you either have it or not, but if you're lacking it, you should probably consider a different sport, hobby, lifestyle.

For me the easiest and most efficient way to ensure that I stick to my diet is to prepare my meals in advance and in bulk. 

All you need is a grill (Gas, Charcoal or George Foreman), a rice cooker/steamer, and a whole lot of plastic storage containers.

Once the "hardware" is in place, you figure out your daily food intake requirements based on the diet you will be following and use this to calculate the total amount of food for the week.

I go grocery shopping once a week and prepare my meals right afterwards.

Since I am purchasing in bulk, my shopping trips lead mostly to Costco, the local farmer's market or, since I periodically check out the weekly grocery store circulars and compare prices maybe a local supermarket.

While I used to buy the frozen Perdue chicken breasts at Costco for the longest time, lately I am "hooked" on fresh chicken which I buy on sale at my local supermarket. Lucky me I found the pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast this week at $1.99. That deal was too good to pass up, so I ended up buying 30 lbs. of it, which should last me around 10-14 days. 

The brown rice is purchased in 20lbs. bags at the local farmer's market for dirt cheap and the vegetables come "freshly frozen" in 5lbs bags, along with the lean steak from Costco. 

Considering the amount of meat I consume per week I think I made it officially on PETA's most wanted list. 

The preparation part, including cooking time, etc. takes about an hour and is usually done on the weekend. 

I simply put the rice in the rice cooker and while it cooks by itself I clean up the chicken, cut off excess fat and crappy parts, weight it, cut it to weight, season it and throw it on the grill. 

I was never really into seasoning or adding spices to my food, but ever since I tried sodium-free seasoning from Mrs. Dash, I realized how much of a difference it makes taste wise and use it every day.

Amazing what effect a little bit of garlic, paprika and pepper can have. 

While the rice and chicken are getting ready put the vegetables into a pot and let the steam for a couple of minutes. 

Once everything is done I take out all my plastic containers, measure out the rice and veggies, add the chicken or steak to it, seal it and put it in the fridge. 

This preparation allows me to simply open up the fridge in the morning, take out the required number of containers for the day, put them in a cooler and take them to work. 

Another benefit, besides the convenience, is the ability to be more spontaneous when it comes to business or pleasure travels. All you need is to grab your cooler and off you go.

Little note on the side. To avoid any food poisoning, make sure that the food is cleaned, cooked thoroughly, stored in the refrigerator and eaten within a couple of days. 

And before I get any comments, yes this method will also work if you prefer fish or turkey over chicken and /or sweet potatoes over brown rice.

Putting the Kelvinator to good use

Now three weeks out, my coach Jack told me to add some extra Vitamin B6 and Vitamin C to my diet. And by extra, I mean a bulk load. To be exact a total of 1,500mg of B6 and 4,500mg of C per day. 

In terms of established daily values, my vitamin B6 intake per day until the day of the competition is 75,000%, in words Seventy-five THOUSAND percent, of the recommended daily intake value and 7,497% of the daily requirements for vitamin C. 

Both supplements are intended to enhance metabolic functions and  to further help achieving water depletion to look vascular and hard on stage. 

"Le chef" himself boating on Memorial Day

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

I have to admit, I have a very sweet tooth. And by "very sweet tooth", I mean "Augustus Gloop, the little fat boy from Charly and the Chocolate Factory who falls into the chocolate river, sweet tooth".

If I wasn't so determined to get the most of my body and to compete in bodybuilding, I definitely wouldn't have any problem to look like him in a matter of days. I LOVE sweets and their sheer endless varieties. Chocolate, pastries, marzipan, nuts, pudding, cakes, pies, candy, gum, lollipops, ice cream, fudges, candy bars, jelly candies, gummies, kettle corn, caramel, you name it, I love it.

I don't go crazy when I eat them, but I enjoy them occasionally, and especially for dessert after a meal.

Part of this little "taste-of-sweet-after-a-meal" craving might be the result of my upbringing. My grandmother used to cook for us almost every day lunch and if she didn't cook a "sweet dish", like pancakes with fruit jams, cinnamon oatmeal, sweet grits, or Marillenknödel (Austrian apricot dumplings), she would ensure that every meal had at least some sort of dessert with it.
Sometimes it was canned peaches or other fruits, other times homemade vanilla pudding or a pie. Long story short, I am somewhat "conditioned" to finish off a meal by satisfying my sweet taste buds.

This kind of created a big problem, at least for me, because since I am preparing for a bodybuilding competition, I obviously can't eat sweets anymore.

At the beginning I would eat my meal, get full, but still had the feeling that my hunger wasn't a 100% satisfied. I quickly realized that this was due to the lack of "closure", usually initiated by a dessert or sweet dish. 

When I started working out again more seriously last year, I would cheat and give in to those cravings by eating a chocolate bar, some candy, a piece of chocolate, a sugarfree pudding, fruits or cottage cheese with cinnamon and stevia. 

However once I started preparing for my first bodybuilding show and got on a very serious and strict diet 11 weeks ago, even these little "treats" became history and this feeling of "incompleteness" after the meals came back.
It was by sheer accident that I found my "diet saver" when I was searching for calorie free snacks and meals online.

The Walden Farms product line.

Walden Farms produces calorie-free condiments, such as Barbecue Sauces , different salad dressings, Ketchup , mayonnaise, dips and "praise the lord, hallelujah, ave maria" also sweet condiments such as Caramel Dip , Chocolate Dip , Whipped Peanut Spread and various Fruit Spreads and fruit jams.

I am not sure how they make it and what they put in there, to be honest I don't even want to know, but their stuff is pretty darn good and tremendously helped me to stick to my diet for the past 77 days. All their products are absolute sugar, fat, carb and calorie free. While the taste of most of their products is relatively good, they are obviously not the "real deal" and can't compete taste wise. However, being in the middle of a 16 week diet without any sweets, sugars, fruits or dairy products, a teaspoon full of chilled Walden Farms chocolate dip tastes like heaven and I have to admit, I am a Walden Farms addict.

The only downside I have discovered yet is that all of their products are relatively high in sodium, so with my show now only 5 weeks out, I will have to cut them out completely soon.
Another discovery I have made is that chilling the dips will alter their consistency and, in my humble opinion, increases their taste. I eat them by themselves, as a spread on top of low-calorie rice cakes (a little 40 calorie treat) or use them as ingredients/flavor enhancements in diet-approved recipes.
One of my very favorite meals is my breakfast, consisting of oats and either an egg white omelette or 50 gr of whey isolate. I mix 1.5 cups of dry oats with water, microwave it for two minutes and stir some stevia, ground cinnamon and a teaspoon of Walden Farms Caramel Dip in it. To add some flavor to the egg white omelette I simply add a tablespoon of Walden Farms Ketchup and I have a great tasting 650 calories breakfast with 65 gr of protein, 81 gr of carbs and 9gr of fats to get my energy levels up and my day started. 

While I found some substitutes to satisfy my "sweet tooth" during my diet, I cannot wait for my diet to be over so I can finally treat myself and my taste buds with real, delicious, calorie rich chocolate.
With this day in mind, I bought a ginormous bar of delicious Milka chocolate in Germany and brought it back from my trip in April.
The giant 300gr, 1,668 calories alpine milk and cookie chocolate bar has been sitting in my fridge ever since my return and is eagerly waiting for June 23rd. And so am I.

Last week was very challenging. Again I had to leave town for work and even though I did not stay overnight, commuting back and forth for four hours each day for 4 days in a row, working a second job and getting solid workouts in, was quite a task. I would get up in the morning at 6:30, get ready, take the train to Washington D.C. at 8am, work for seven hours, ride the train back for two hours, prepare food, eat, leave for my second job at 8:30pm, work until 2am, hit the gym on "my way back home", get home at 4:40 am, hit the hay, get up again at 6:30am and do this for 4 days straight. Needless to say I was slightly sleep-deprived and pretty exhausted all week and when Sunday finally came around I completely crashed and basically slept all day.
Not sure if it was the extra caffeine but surprisingly I had some of my best workouts last week. Maybe I should switch my workout schedule to 2am indefinitely? Well, considering how sh***y I felt Sunday, maybe not.
Yesterday I was exactly 5 weeks out from the "big day" and with this work trip behind me, I have only one more business trip to deal with before the show and hope to master this one as well as my previous ones. Hopefully the Excalibur has a nice gym and I will get my chicken, rice and oats through airport security without any problems again. 

"I'd give up chocolate, but I'm no quitter!" 

                                                              Author Unknown