I have been getting asked this questin a lot lately, a lot of it is due to the fact I’ve dropped about 20 lbs this past month, going from 212 lbs to 192 lbs as of this morning (9/22/11) in about 4 weeks.
Let me preface this by saying:
1) I am not a registered dietician and am not suggesting any of you follow what I am outlining in my blog – this was what I came up with after doing my own research, and making my own decision, it’s information only and
2) I’m not a “foodie”, I’ve never written a blog about food or diet, nor will I again, I don’t care what you eat or how you eat – this is just what I’ve been doing cause’ a lot of people have been asking.
For the past 6 or 7 years my weight has fluctuated a lot. I started training for powerlifting in 2004 and went from 190 up to a bloated 230/235. I trimmed down a bit and stayed in the 220′s bouncing between 210-218 for most of my powerlifting competitions. After deciding to quit powerlifting and cleaning my diet up a bit (I went mostly vegetarian about 5 months ago) my weight was staying in the 208-212 range.
About 5 weeks ago I stumbled upon some awesome videos on YouTube about some raw food, vegan bodybuilders featured in one of Markus Rothkranz’s videos. I was researching vegetarian bodybuilders (after being inspired by the amazing Bill Pearl) and was curious what was out there. I purchased Markus’ e-book as a result of these YouTube videos, read it, then decided to go mostly raw in my nutrition – I say mostly because I still have 1 cooked vegetarian meal a day most days, I still eat a little fish – 1 or 2 times a week, and still have some beers every now and then, or a couple cookies here and there. However, it is safe to say that raw, fresh vegan food makes up approximately 75-85% of my daily nutriton and what a difference it has made. In addition to dropping 20 pounds in the past 4 weeks, my energy is great and my strength and conditioning is awesome. I am pretty confident that I will continue to gravitate toward a 100% raw food nutrition plan as time goes on. One thing I plan to do more of is fasting, I did a 2 week fast a year ago and it was great, my goal is to do 2 fairly substantial fasts per year.
These are some of the YouTube videos that inspired me to look into raw food nutrition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbEUHCU_GtM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx_aAjxEHLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RWHfeNMlJA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRFl4ERBOrs&feature=related
Training…
Training has been going pretty well lately. With transitioning into my training business full-time this past July and in addition to starting two additional business ventures and taking part in numerous other business opportunities my training went by the wayside. No I am training about 4-5 days per week. I try to do chi kung and meditate daily (I love Holosync too) as well as an Indian Club series and joint mobility daily. Strength and conditioning work is usually 4 days per week. My immediate goals are the following: WKC rank 1 in the long cycle and a 500+ deadlift in competition. I have stopped competing in full meet powerlifting for the meantime and only want to focus on kettlebell sport competition and deadlift specialist competition, my training has been restructured to reflect these goals.
Here is the sample training and nutrition plan I am currently following:
Monday – DL focus (heavy)
Warm-up: mobility, foam rolling, Indian club series
Deadlift: wk1-3×3 then a couple heavy singles, wk2-3×5, wk3-3×5,3,1 then a couple heavy singles, wk4-deload 3×5 (based off of Wendler’s 5/3/1)
Deadlift assist (any deadlift or good morning variation): 3-5×3-5
Long cycle (light weight/higher rpms): 16-20kg x 7-10 rpms x 5-7 minutes
ghrs: 3-4×6-10
Lat work: 3-4×6-15
Reverse hypers: 3-4×10-15
Ab work: 3-4×10-15
Tuesday-long cycle and conditioning focus
Warm-ups: same
Long cycle: 28kgx2-3:00, 24kgx2-3:00, 20kgx2-3:00, 16kgx2-3:00 or 24kg x 3:00-5:00, 16kg x 3:00-5:00
Running x 20:00
Wednesday-active recovery
Lots of mobility, foam rolling, stretching, Indian club series, light cardio
Thursday-deadlift focus (speed)
Warm-up: same
Deadlift w/ bands or chains: 5×2 @50-60%
long cycle – same as Monday
Jumping squat – 2-3×15-25
Rest of accessory work is same as Monday
Friday-long cycle and conditioning focus
Same as Tuesday
Sat and Sun – off, or recovery work
Now, if I wasn’t competing in kb sport / deadlift I’d follow a simple template like this:
Mon - Squat-5/3/1, squat assistance, abs, kb jerk, conditioning
Tue - Bench press-5/3/1, bench assistance, lats/upper back, kb snatch conditioning
Thu - Deadlift-5/3/1, deadlift assistance, abs, kb jerk, conditioning
Fri - Military press-5/3/1, close grip bench, lats / upper back, kb snatch, conditioning
I’d do a solid warm up and Indian club work every session too.
You can see my Indian club warm-up and some training vids at my YouTube http://YouTube.com/extremefts and my training log is here: http://gymga.com/sshetler
Nutrition (to my carnivore friends, please save the hate-mail!)
Typical daily nutrition:
1st thing in a.m. – 1-2tbsp raw apple cider vinegar in deionized water and 2g of blue green algae
Iced Coffee w/sugar in the raw and almond milk or organic half and half
Breakfast-mixed fruit (like strawberry & banana slices w/ cinnamon & honey)
Lunch-green drink and/or a vegetarian cooked meal such as organic black beans, organic cheese, organic salsa on a sprouted grain wrap — sometimes Lisa and I go out for sushi or mexican food
Dinner-usually a greens drink and some fruit or a cooked vegetarian meal if I didn’t have one at lunch
Throughout the day I snack on raw nuts, goji berries, an occasional raw food bar, cliff bar or raw homemade chocolate.
Pre-training drink is usually 1 tbsp of chia seeds in clean water w/ a little organic lime or lemon juice and raw organic honey
Post training is usually a blended drink of: juice and meat of a young Thai coconut, chocolate almond milk OR plain almond milk and raw cacao beans, 1 tbsp raw honey, 2 tbsp raw organic nut butter, and a bit of cinnamon and pinch of sea salt.
My greens drink is typically:
-2 handfuls of dark leafy greens (I.e. Kale, collards, romaine,etc)
-a bit of bitter greens like wheat grass or dandelion greens
-1 tbsp of a green superfood powder (it has all kinds of good stuff in it including a lot of sea greens)
-1 or 2 apples or strawberries or banana
-clean water or coconut water & meat of a young Thai coconut for the base
This is all blended in my Vitamix blender, I try to have 1-2 of these a day – they don’t taste awesome, but putting the fruit in helps out and they actually have grown on me a bit. The Vitamix blender is essential as most of us don’t chew our food enough to allow for proper digestion, I was one of those 2 or 3 bites then swallow the food whole types!
I also plan to do an organic juice fast twice a year.
Supplements in addition to blue green algae and apple cider vinegar is 1 – 2 tbsp flax oil, 3 or more grams of vitamin c, 250 mg magnesium, 2-3 caps of bee pollen/bee propolis complex, digestive enzymes and after juice fasting I load up on probiotics.
Cheat foods are occasional and usually cheesecake, pizza, beer, chocolate/cookies, but not a ton of this anymore.
So there you have it – that’s what I’ve been up to with my nutrition and training and I’m very happy with the results so far!
Stay healthy and strong!
Scott
