Transcription
In this video, I'll explain how and why I lost 11% of my body weight in 8 weeks of dieting while retaining my muscle and strength. I'll flip in a before and after picture along with the dates. You'll notice that going by the dates alone, this is a 10-week and not an 8-week difference between the before and after photos, but I say 8 weeks and not 10 because two of those 10 weeks weren't actually spent dieting. And as for why I spent two out of the 10 weeks not dieting, that's something I'll get to.
Here's how I'll structure this video: First, I'll describe how I went about this cut from a training and nutrition standpoint. Second, I'll describe what motivated me to do this cut. And last, I'll conclude by briefly venting some personal frustrations about the health and fitness industry when it comes to the spurious and erroneous argument against aggressive dieting. Though tackling this in full depth is more of a future project of mine. And as always, I've included time stamps in the description so that you can skip to whatever part of my video that interests you the most.
In this chapter of my video, I'm going to outline what I did from a training and nutrition standpoint to get ripped, starting with training. Bodybuilders are almost pathological in their desire to do more training when they're dieting. It's common for bodybuilders to increase how often they train or how many sets they do per body part per week, and they do this because they're concerned about muscle loss from dieting and they think that the more training they do, the better a chance they have of holding on to their muscle. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that Dr. Mike Israetel, the pharmaceutically enhanced, albeit bodybuilder, who tells natural lifters and the general population that they should, and I quote, "train more than the pros told you to." And yes, he has this terrible video where he argues that the right approach to training on an aggressive diet is to go in five to six times a week and kill yourself with super high training volumes and light weights. Well, I guess if you're on enough juice to kill an ox, then sure, go ahead. It probably will work just fine for you. But for naturals, especially more advanced ones, good luck.
My approach, and what I'd advise if you came to me as a client seeking rapid fat loss, is the opposite. That is, when I diet, I do fewer sets and I train less frequently than normal. For example, whereas while in a caloric surplus, I might do up to, say, eight hard sets twice a week for a given body part, I cut that all the way down to, say, just two to three hard sets once a week when I'm dieting. My approach makes more sense for naturals than what Mike Israetel and other juice heads advise and practice. That's because when you're dieting, your recovery from training goes down, not up. You have fewer calories coming in, and then therefore fewer resources to devote to recovery from training. So if anything, it's training too hard that leads to muscle loss on an aggressive diet, since that's what leads to burnout, injuries, or hormonal issues. Of course, if your recovery comes out of a needle, then this doesn't apply to you, and you should listen to someone else. My thoughts apply only to naturals, such as yours truly, and hopefully also you.
I think doing only as much as you need to do to preserve your muscle and strength, and no more, is the right approach. Fortunately, it doesn't take much training to preserve your muscle mass, contrary to what many neurotic bodybuilders think, with research suggesting that you can preserve your muscle with 1/10th the volume it took to grow it in the first place. So my training was this: I hit most body parts with two to three hard, heavy sets per week, spread across one to two sessions per body part. I followed an upper/lower split where I took three days of rest per week.
How did that approach go for me, you might wonder? It went well. Not only did I preserve my muscle mass this way, I actually managed to increase my strength a tiny bit, hitting an all-time PR on the weighted chin-up. I got eight textbook chest-to-bar reps from a dead hang with 37.5 kilos attached and at a body weight of 73 kilos, which is classified as an elite level of strength by Martin Berkhan. It turns out that when you don't run yourself into the ground doing the pump and fluff training of a pharmaceutically enhanced celebrity bodybuilder, you can actually train quite productively as a natural, even on an aggressive deficit.
In terms of cardio, I took an average of 12,000 steps per day during my diet. That's all. I just walked. And that's because I think if you're hitting the weight room hard, then it's a bad idea to do high-intensity cardio on an aggressive diet anyway.
Having outlined my approach to training, I'm now going to outline my approach to nutrition. I think at this point, pretty much everyone knows that a caloric deficit, which is brought about when you eat fewer calories than you burn, is the main driver of fat loss. It's what all successful fat loss dieters have in common, whether they did keto, carnivore, vegan, low-fat, low-carb, carb cycling, clean eating, or juice fasts, you name it. They all entered a sustained caloric deficit. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that that's also what I did. Since unfortunately, I'm a mere mortal who's not exempt from the first law of thermodynamics.
My caloric deficit over the eight weeks that I dieted was large. For the first four weeks, I dieted on something a bit shy of 1,700 calories per day. Then I took two weeks off dieting and ate at my new maintenance calorie intake, with the thought being that doing this would stabilize my hormones and my metabolic rate. Then I dieted for an additional four weeks at a bit over 1,400 calories per day to get to where I am now. And given the amount of weight I lost, I was eating something like a 1,200 calorie daily deficit, which is enough to lose a bit over a kilo a week, and that's exactly what what happened.
My macros were these: I had 2.2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight, sometimes a bit over, sometimes a bit under. In terms of fats, I generally had 0.4 grams per kilo of body weight, sometimes a bit higher, but never lower. Uh, this is a very low fat intake, uh, but I didn't do it for all that long, and I also paid special attention to getting in enough essential fatty acids. I made sure to get in at least a combined 1.8 grams of EPA and DHA every day. This was to offset some of the physiological issues that come with a very low fat intake. And in terms of carbs, I generally had just enough to reach my calorie goal, but I was usually having about 100 grams of carbs a day or thereabouts.
I realize that this kind of language may be a bit technical for much of my audience and may not be very helpful in a practical sense, so I'll share a few things I did that made consuming so few calories over this time much easier for me. First, I reduced my meal frequency. I found that from personal experience, if I just don't eat and I occupy myself with tasks, then I don't get hungry. However, when I do eat, I want to eat a lot, like so much that I could probably do quite well in competitive eating. So I figured, why would I work against my natural tendencies and conform to some arbitrary eating schedule when everything goes much more smoothly if I just eat one to two big meals per day? Well, you might say, because it's suboptimal for muscle protein synthesis. But recent research has challenged the notion that there's this low cap to how much protein you can synthesize in one feeding. And even if it's slightly better to spread out your protein feedings, I think sometimes the practical benefits of one approach can outweigh the potential physiological benefits of another. For me, this was one such case. I think it's a grave mistake to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
So I'd wake up, I'd have a black coffee to blunt my appetite and fire me up, and then I'd just fast until dinner, where I'd have a big meal that prioritized lean protein. Afterwards, I'd also have a dessert. I'm someone who struggles to sleep while hungry, so I found that having all my calories at night really helped me get to sleep. And if it's a choice between spreading out my protein throughout the day for some speculative benefits and getting a good night's rest, which has very well-documented benefits, including better retention of lean body mass in a caloric deficit, then I pick the latter option every time.
Still, 1,400 calories per day, which is what I was on for the last four weeks, aren't very many. I can basically inhale 1,400 calories worth of pasta, pizza, or cheesecake without blinking. So I prioritized high-volume, low-calorie-density foods like green vegetables, and boy, was that a good idea. Green vegetables are amazing. They have negligible calories, they're full of micronutrients, and they're very low in calorie density. I would also make this concoction called protein fluff with my electric mixer, which I'd have as a dessert. This would turn 200 calories worth of ingredients, such as raspberries, casein protein powder, and xanthan gum, into a positively nauseating quantity of food, but it actually wasn't even that bad. And that's not just something that my diet brain convinced me of. I had a friend over, a non-lifter, mind you, and I let him try some, and to my surprise, he went, "Mmm, that's delicious." Make of that what you will. I remember one evening, it took me three whole hours to eat a bowl of my protein fluff concoction, just because I made so much. I think I should make a recipe video one day.
Well, anyway, I think the crucial thing is that I found an approach that worked for me. It can be very hard to stick to an aggressive diet, and the approach should be individualized. What I did clearly worked well for me, but copying me might not be the best choice for you because although there are some strategies that many successful dieters have in common, there's no one best template for all people. If you need help setting up an aggressive diet, if you need some recipe ideas, or you just want to find out whether it's an approach that might work for you, then you can consider getting an online consultation with me. Just shoot me an email at the address I've got on screen or check out the link in the description for further details. As some of you know, I launched my consulting business quite recently, and I'm happy to report that I have two very satisfied clients. And who knows, you could be the next. Okay.
Having outlined my approach to training and nutrition on this aggressive diet, I'll explain why I decided to do it in the first place, because I think motivation is an incredibly important and all too often overlooked aspect of the whole thing. The decision to lose 11% of my body weight in such a short period of time was a fairly radical one, and I don't want you to get the impression that this is just something that most people can easily do at a whim. I cared a lot about my goal, and it may help you if I outline the reasons for why I went through with my diet. But first, the last thing I want to convey is that I dieted because I thought there was something wrong with the "Solomon" in the before picture. Because that's not a "Solomon" that I'm ashamed of. That was a "Solomon" who was focused on writing his thesis. He was still healthy and happy, and he was hitting the weight room hard. It's just how natural lifters look when they're not striking a pose in the best lighting. With that said, here's why I did it:
First, I have a photo shoot coming up soon, and I want to look good for it. Second, I think aggressive dieting is good practice for anyone who might have competitive bodybuilding aspirations. At a certain point, usually toward the end of a bodybuilding show prep, most competitors find that they have to go really low in calories, and I think it's good to know in advance how to handle such a deprived state, both mentally and physically. And there's no teacher quite like experience. Third, I like getting better at things. I see dieting as a skill, no different to playing a musical instrument or a video game, in that it's something you can get better at with practice. This was practice for me. And the last reason behind my aggressive diet is that I have a bodybuilder friend whom I wanted to prove wrong. He and I have had some theoretical disagreement about aggressive dieting and some of the strategies that I ended up implementing in my cut, and I wanted to show him that my approach didn't have to be purely theoretical, that I can actually put the theory into practice and see superior results. I'm not saying that this was the noblest motivation on my part, but we shouldn't be ashamed of drawing upon our demons.
If I think about it, my reasons for dieting weren't actually that strong. It's not as if I had health complications from obesity or anything that would seriously warrant fat loss. Life is funny like that. It's often the folks who should care the least who care the most, and the folks who should care the most who care the least.
Moving on to the conclusion. I lost a lot of fat in a mere matter of weeks while preserving my muscle and strength. As an advanced natural lifter, I cut against the grain with my approach in a variety of ways, but I ended up being better off for it. That's because when it comes to my training and nutrition, I use my brain and I don't listen to juiced-up conmen. If you're interested in getting results like mine, I'm available for consultations. There's a lot of BS in the health and fitness industry against aggressive dieting. Originally, my plan for this video was something of a mammoth task in which I would not only show my results but also demonstrate that the purported physiological and psychological harms of aggressive dieting neither apply practically nor theoretically for a large number of people. But it turned out that making this video about my own results separately was a more manageable task. Anyway, I hope this was valuable. If you made it this far, then why not leave the video a like and subscribe to my channel? I'll catch you in the next one.