Like Warm Apple Pie

So this was it. 15 weeks of strict dieting and hard training have lead to this week. The final week before my competition. PEAK WEEK!!!

This week was mainly about recovery, being fresh, and focusing on making sure that my muscles were full and hard, as a result of proper carb loading, sodium manipulation and water depletion. 

Peak week was not about loosing a couple more pounds of fat or making extreme changes to manipulate my body in order to look good on contest day, it was about fine-tuning my protein, carb, fat, water and sodium intake and coordinating it with a series of carb depleting workout.
All the hard work was done and all I had to do was putting the finishing "touches" on and "polish" it.
To do so I had to change up completely my training routine, workout plans, and length of each training session that week. 


Sunday, six days from the show,  I did my usual ab routine and a shortened 30 minute version of my cardio routine in the morning. Instead of changing the incline of the treadmill every 15 minutes, I changed it every 10 minutes and cut the entire cardio workout by a total of 15 minutes.

On Monday I did my first of a total of three carb depletion workouts. The focus on Monday's workout was on chest, shoulders, triceps and abdominals. I did three exercises per muscle part with three sets of 15-20 reps per exercise and kept my rest in between sets at a minimum of around 30 seconds. Before working on my posing, I finished off my workout with another 30 minutes of cardio.

Tuesday I followed the same concept and worked on my back, biceps, calves and abs before cardio and posing. 

Wednesday's training session was a full upper body workout and the last "real" gym time before Saturday's competition. I hit my chest, back, shoulders, arms, calves and abdominals with two exercises of three sets each per muscle group and performed my reps until failure. I superset arms starting with a biceps exercise and finished the morning with the last 30 minute cardio session before the big day.

Thursday and Friday I only went to the gym to work on my mandatory poses and posing routine, as well as evaluate my body's progress with my trainer and adjust my diet accordingly.

Along with changing up my workout routine, I also started last Sunday with my peak week diet and changed the variables of it each day in a subtle way so I would be able to predict and control my peaking as good as possible.
As I stated many times before, proper planning and preparation are essential. This holds true especially for this week. Since the ingredients of the meal plan were changing on a daily basis I bought all of them on Saturday and ended up with 20lbs. of chicken, 5 lbs. of lean ground turkey, 5 lbs. of turkey breast, 4 lbs. of lean beef steak, salad, sweet potatoes, 4 cans of apple pie filling, two jars of strawberry jam, dried pineapple rings, Quaker Oats Granola and 15!!! gallons of spring water after my trip to the grocery store. 

Purchasing spring water in plastic gallons instead of using regular tap water has two advantages. 
First, it helps you making sure that you will drink exactly the amount of water outlined in your meal plan and second, you know exactly what amount of nutrients you are consuming, compared to unfiltered tap water.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I was told to drink three gallons of water per day, then drop it to two gallons on Thursday and one gallon on Friday.

While I was able to drink the water over the course of the day on all the other days, the gallon on Friday had to be consumed by noon and I was not allowed to have any water  until the end of the show Saturday evening.  

Following my plan, I slowly reduced my carb intake from previously 350gr per day to only one cup of oatmeal on Sunday and Monday and did not eat any on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, while increasing my protein consumption. I also slightly salted all meals until Wednesday and then cut out all additional sodium for the rest of the week. 

My daily food intake for Sunday and Monday was a meat lover's dream come true.

70 oz. of meats (chicken breast, turkey breast, lean beef & lean ground turkey), 4 cups of vegetables (broccoli & spinach), 1 cup of dry oats and 3 gallons of water

Tuesday I completely cut out all carbs, besides the carbohydrates found in vegetables, and upped my protein intake to an all-time high of 606 grams (72 oz. of meat).

I continued with the carb depletion process the next morning and then began carb loading Wednesday afternoon by adding 6 oz. of sweet potato to each my last two meals of the day.

Thursday was finally the day I was waiting for so long. Time to load up my muscles with carbs and experiencing glycogen supercompensation at its best. 

Besides sweet potatoes and dry oats my third main source of carbohydrates was apple pie filling. Being without any sweets or fruits for the past 15 weeks, the taste of half a can of sweet apple pie filling mixed with half a cup of dry oats was simply amazing once it hit my lips. I literally indulged this simple, yet incredible tasty meal and was more than thrilled when I realized that I would have another one for my meal 3 that day and a full cup of oats with an entire can of pie filling twice on Friday. I guess it's right what they say about the simple things in life.     

Apple Pie Filling + Dry Oats = Almost Orgasmic Taste

Friday I continued the carb loading with a total of 540 grams of carbohydrates and was up for a big surprise in the evening. For the first time in almost five months, I was allowed to have a real hamburger, with a real bun, with real french fries and real ketchup. My inner fat kid was doing back flips. Well at least a fat kid version of them.  

My "victim" Friday night.

Even though I felt somewhat guilty cause I haven't eaten anything "unhealthy" in such a long time, this meal tasted amazing and I had the biggest, most satisfied smile on my face when I ate it. The only thing that would have made it almost heavenly would have been some sort of dessert, but that will have to wait til I am done with my "season".

Saturday I woke up and had one more apple pie/dry oat mix in the morning and a 6 oz. steak with a medium sweet potato right before I left for the show venue.
At the show I continuously snacked on a bag of Quaker Oats Natural Granola mixed with 2 cups of dry oats trying to further pull water out from underneath my skin and ate strawberry jam and dried pineapple rings to provide me with the necessary energy to make it through the exhausting day. 
The entire day of the competition was quite an experience and definitely worth its own post, so more about the show, my impressions of it, and of course about how I did, next week.

Getting ready to peak

Viva Las Vegas

So two weeks before the big day, I had to deal with another major interruption in my pre-contest preparation routine. A work-related trip to Las Vegas, NV. 

I know what you all are thinking. Vegas, Sin City, gambling, drinking, tons of fun. Well if you are dieting and preparing yourself for a bodybuilding competition, then a trip to Vegas means only one thing. STRESS!

Besides finding a suitable training facility, making sure that you can follow your diet can be quiet a task. Thankfully, after two successfully completed trips in the middle of my pre-contest period, I was much more relaxed this time and knew exactly how to prepare for this one.
First I went online and searched for gyms nearby. Lucky me, it turned out that the hotel I would be staying at, the Excalibur, had a well-equipped gym, which was free for hotel guests. With only minor changes to my workout, I would be able to complete three solid training sessions
Once I figured out the gym situation I packed my "travel workout gear", consisting of a pair of sneakers, which I could potentially also wear casually, a pair of training shorts, three shirts, cheap lifting straps, a blender bottle, a copy of my workout plan and last but not least my IPod.
Next I had to get my meal situation worked out. Since it was a business trip, I figured that the dinners would be covered and I could simply get plain chicken breasts or steak along with veggies, as described in last week's post. So with three meals out of the way, I was left with planning for only 21 more.
I took my meal plan and calculated the exact amount of foods and supplements I would need from Sunday night to Wednesday night and came up with the following:
- 4.5 cups of oatmeal
- 540gr of Whey Protein
- 180gr of Carbomax
- 90 oz. of chicken breast
- 3 cups of brown rice
- 180gr of Casein
- and my stack of vitamins, minerals and aminos.

Now that I knew how much food I needed for the trip, I had to figure out how to get it all to Vegas.
Since I would be staying in a regular hotel room, I would not have any access to a kitchen and would be far away from any kind of supermarket or grocery store.
So the only option was to prepare all my meals in advance, put them in plastic containers and pack them in my carry-on bag.
Somehow I managed to pack everything, including regular work and casual clothes, in my bag and was ready to head West.

Traveling 6'8" Style

With a suitcase full of food, supplements and three bags of white powders (protein, casein and carbs) I miraculously made it through airport security without any problems and safely to Las Vegas. 

Once I arrived at the hotel I was faced with another slight problem. No fridge in the room. I was hoping for at least a mini bar fridge or something comparable to store my food but nothing. Having cooked chicken in plastic containers sitting in a hotel room in the middle of the desert for three days did not sound like a great idea to me, so I had to get inventive. I had a small cooler bag with me that I simply filled with ice so half of my chicken was taken care of. For the other half I had to construct my own "fridge". I took a large metal trash can from the room put the food containers in it and filled it up with ice. I don't want to know what the cleaning ladies were thinking when they saw my little "kitchen" set-up in the bathroom. 

"Setting up shop" in the hotel bathroom

My work schedule allowed me to stick to my meal times and I survived this trip without food poisoning.

A few quick words about the gym at the Excalibur. The fitness center is located in the spa right next to the big outdoor pool area and offers some state-of-the-art equipment. 

Besides a number of treadmills and stationary bikes, it features several Life Fitness machines, a smith machine and several dumbbells. 

Surprisingly for a hotel "fitness room" the dumbbells even went up to 100 lbs. and allowed, along with the smith machine, for solid chest, back and shoulder workouts. 

The "pool view" and TV's provided sufficient distraction during my three 45 minute cardio sessions at the end of my lifting sessions and made the time pass quick.

Excalibur Las Vegas Fitness Room/Gym

Lovely view from the free weight area

So here I am back on the East Coast and made it through another trip without losing my focus or discipline, staying right on track for June 23rd.
I met up with my trainer Jack after my return and we discussed the game plan for the upcoming week. The last week before D-Day. The so-called Peak Week.
He increased my daily consumption of glutamine from 20gr to 30gr per day, fine tuned my diet and exactly laid out the daily protein, carb, fat, water and sodium intake for the next 6 days.
Starting today I will have to drink 3!!! gallons of water per day until Thursday and then gradually decrease it to zero for the last 24 hours before the show, but more about this next week when I actually completed the program.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Including the few calories I burnt off at the hotel gym.

Eating Good In The Neighborhood

So after talking about cooking in bulk last week, let's stick with my favorite topic, FOOD, and talk about combining dining out and dieting. Eating at a restaurant and loosing weight usually do not go too well with each other, so when I prepare for a contest, I try to stick to my meal plan 24/7 and avoid eating out as much as possible.

However sometimes you have to bite the bullet and eat at a restaurant, be it for a business lunch or dinner, a social event, a date night with your significant other or while being on the road traveling without any prepared meals. 

So when you do, follow a few simple rules and you will still be able to almost stick to your diet or meal plan 100%. 

The first secret is to find a healthy dish or trying to get healthy/semi-healthy versions of the featured meals without giving in to the multiple temptations from the menu. Looking at the menu beforehand or selecting a restaurant with healthier food options will definitely help.

While this sounds like a no-brainer it is not that easy as it seems. 

The problem with most restaurant meals is that they are oftentimes prepackaged, high in sodium, smothered with butter or fat to increase their taste and most of the times pretty huge. Especially appetizers are usually loaded with carbs, saturated fats and cholesterol. So stay away from them as much as possible. 

A salad might be a healthy alternative, but keep in mind that dressings and toppings, such as cheese, croutons and meats can secretly add hundreds of calories, making a "loaded" salad as "bad" as any other choice on the menu. 

When choosing your food, try to follow the macros of your meal plan as outlined for this specific meal of the day as good as possible. 

If you are having breakfast or lunch at a restaurant, you might even be able to select some starch with your meal to provide you with your required carbohydrates. Since most "pre-contest" bodybuilding diets avoid carbs after a certain time, it will probably highly unlikely that you have to find a good source of carbs at a dinner. 

Good sources of carbs, that most restaurants offer, are sweet potatoes, obviously without any butter or toppings, brown rice, baked potatoes, also without any toppings, or whole grain pasta. 

Bad choices are french fries, mashed potatoes, breads, fried rice, regular pasta, chips, nachos, tortillas, and potato skins. 

 As with the entire meal, portion control is key, especially when it comes down to carbs, so just at the amount that you are supposed to. 

When selecting your source of protein, stick to lean options, such as grilled or steamed chicken breast or white fish and avoid anything breaded or fried. 

 If you decide to eat beef, choose from the extra-lean cuts off the menu that are labeled as "USDA Choice" or "USDA Select", such as eye round roast and steak, sirloin tip side steak, top round roast and steak, bottom round roast and steak or top sirloin steak and avoid "Prime" cuts. 

Vegetables are great fillers and usually available on every restaurant's menu as part of a meal or as a side dish. Broccoli, spinach, green beans and side salads are great choices but should only be steamed and not sautéed, as well as without any seasoning, oils or dressings. 

Gravies, sauces and condiments might add flavor to your meal, but they are also adding calories, so stay away from them or use "healthy" condiments, such as yellow or spicy mustard, hot sauce, vinegar and natural herbs and spices. 

 Another helpful technique which can help you keep your nutrition on track when you have to dine out is the concept of "Pre-Eating"."Pre-Eating" basically means that you have a protein shake mixed in water before the meal to satisfy your protein requirements and/or some fruits and vegetables if you expect the restaurant having lots of unhealthy meal choices. Now you can select an item off the menu that is low in calories and high in fiber, such a big salad without any dressing or toppings, or other vegetable dishes. 

To finish off this post, I want to stress one more time the importance of portion control. As I mentioned before, meals at restaurants have the tendency to be quite sizable and larger in quantity than what you would usually consume. So try to stick to your macros as good as possible, even if it means that you have to leave some food on the plate or get a leftover box. 

Another "food for thought" (just could't resist this one). Not to sound cheap, but not eating out constantly does not only make it much, much easier to stick to your diet, but can also save you some serious money.

Buca di Beppo: $33.00 Chicken Breast with Broccoli

Chili's Grill & Bar: $15.00 Chicken Breast with Broccoli and Rice

6'8" Kitchen: $1.53 Chicken Breast with Broccoli 

Time flies and I am now only two weeks away from my first competition. As the date approaches quickly I am getting more and more excited and work harder and with more focus.

I finally picked the music for my posing routine and had my friend DJ H Mazz remix and shorten the piece to fit the required length of 90 seconds. He did a great job editing it and I am very happy how the track sounds. 

Now with the music in place, I am beginning to put the actual routine together by selecting poses that will show my strong points and arranging them in such a way that the movements form pose to pose are fluent and that they align well with the chosen music. 

Passing the two week mark also meant another slight change in my diet. I added 20gr of Glutamine to my daily list of supplements. I split up the 20gr into three portions and take one before my workout, one after immediately afterwards, and one before bedtime. Glutamine is supposed to support my muscle recovery and stimulate muscle growth. We shall see if it will work as intended and bring a noticeable effect on my physique.

Now it's time to pack and head to the airport. Fabulous Las Vegas is calling. This should be the last major distraction before the show and required a little bit more planning and preparation than the previous trips, but more about that when I get back from "Sin City". Until then,

...stay hungry my friends.

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