dieseldru’s BodyBlog

Some of you may know Dean Lewis, a friend of mine from NY. He’s an up and coming (and coming fast) bodybuilder who’s been a great help to me and my bodybuilding aspirations. Check him out at http://www.avadeanlewis.com. Not only is he a great and motivating person, but he is also a nice guy who’s more than willing to help out with training and nutrition advice. His site gives good info, and he keeps up with it (something not a lot of sites do anymore). So check him out.

Ok. So I get a comment from someone on here saying something about me on some gay website. I figure whatever, and go ahead and get in contact with the site to have my pictures removed. So today I’m looking around on here, and I realize that someone on here has some agenda against me or something and is posting my pics on gay websites and tryin to tell people that I am gay. I’ve heard of this happening to people before, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. So needless to say I’m a bit pissed right now. But whatever. Just be careful with your pics on here basically, and I guess I shouldn’t have simply ignored this person who sent me that comment. And for the person who’s stealin my pics and tryin to make up sh*t about me, all I have to say is karma is a motherf*ckin bitch.

I know I haven’t posted in a while. Not much has been going on. Until yesterday. I was finally able to put up 315 on the incline bench for a good 3 reps. It really never even sank in yesterday because I was mad the whole time that my wrist was ****ed up, but that’s actually a pretty decent amount of weight I’ve been told. So now I’m kinda happy.

Great experience, and met some cool people. got really good feedback, and did really well. The competition itself turned out ok save for some technical difficulties with a great crowd and a good lineup of guests, including Kai Greene and Victor Martinez who guest posed, and guest appearances by many people including legendary Bill Pearl. So I had a whole lot of fun, and learned a lot.
As for me, I guess I didn’t do too bad. Won the overall, which was cool. Now it’s rest and recoup time while I figure out my next move. In the meantime, I guess I’ll enjoy finally getting up on that stage and putting my best out there.
Of course, I gotta thank all those who helped me out along the way, especially JLarcher, blacksuperman, Baby_ herc, jaruebaT, Nate711, and habibi, amongst others. Check these pages out though; if you’re looking for sound advice, these are the ones to holla at.
Also thanks to everyone on here for the comments and good wishes. It was that support that helped the most on those days when I could barely move because of no carbs.

Weight: 169lbs, BF%: Not recorded. At this point, especially since my weight has stayed about the same or dropped a little bit, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost as much bodyfat as I can in this time frame.

Well, this is it. Peak week, or hell week if you want to look at it that way (that’s the outlook I have for it). Either way, this is the final week before my competition. In fact, in exactly one week from right now, the competition should be getting underway.

Scared shitless wouldn’t fully explain how I feel about my chances right now. I’ve lost a whole lot of weight prepping for this competition; the last time I was this light was when I sprained my ankle. Only difference is I kept more muscle this time around. Overall, I’m pretty happy with my overall progress. I leaned out really nicely, and my abs did come in just as predicted by others. I’ve always been lean, so it’s been pretty hard to gauge how much I’ve leaned out.

As for my plan for the next 7 days, I took both yesterday and today off. All heavy training is over. I did my superset workouts last week (that was awful btw. There is nothing worse-feeling than doing superset workouts while restricting calories and cutting out my fast twitch.) with moderately heavy weights. This week, it will all be about getting the muscles pumped and hard, so I will take it easy this week. My plan is to do total upper body workouts on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. On Monday and Wednesday, I will do 15 mins of cardio via stairmaster. Abs will be done everyday Sunday thru Thursday (nothing strenuous, just 3 sets of two exercises, one for abs one for obliques). Friday will be no training. My point for this is to give my body some time to recouperate and repair, while stimulating the muscles just enough to keep them pumped and prevent atrophy from a full week of rest. However, I want my legs fresh for showtime, which is why I’ve stopped training them completely; at this point, the cardio should sufficiently work them.

We all know that dieting is the most important part of all this, and people constantly say that this part is a real crapshoot; just trial and error and hope it comes out right. Lol and that’s exactly how I’m approaching it. My plan is this. I normally do moderately low carbs (125-150g) Mon thru Friday, and load Saturday and Sunday. This week I have moved up my load days to Friday and Saturday. Starting Sunday, I will begin to deplete. My plan is to drop from 175g from the weekend (my current "load" level) gradually until I get to no carbs on Wednesday. Then I will jump to 200g of carbs on Thursday, and take 175-200g on Friday, depending on how I look that morning. Water I will begin to drop on Wednesday, dropping to 1/2 gallon on Wednesday, then 32oz on Thursday and no water on Friday. Hopefully this will allow me to fill my muscles with as much glycogen and as little water as possible, hopefully thinning out my skin and giving my lean look an even more ripped appearance.

All I can do now is wait, and hope.

This will be my last blog before the show, so I just want to take the time to say thanks to everyone who has supported me, and all the advice that everyone gave me during my contest prep. I have worked really hard for this first competition, and my respect and admiration for all those who have braved the dieting and training for week after week has greatly increased.

Weight: 170lbs, BF%: 2.78
FINALLY POSTED SOME NEW PICS!!!!!!

I’m not sure if that bodyfat number is correct, but I did it the standard way, and I also did it at night instead of in the morning, pretty well hydrated. So I assume that it is about right. As mentioned earlier, I took some new pics today, but wasn’t overly impressed. Everything is ripping up well; my arms and chest have gotten really vascular, as have my legs, where I’ve started seeing vascularity in them as well. The only problem I seem to have is around my midsection, where there remains this last piece of skin that I cannot seem to get rid of. I am hoping that once I drop water I will fill out that area. With 14 days (2 weeks) to go, I will be doing a final diet quickstart. After this final refeed I will be dieting straight through until the Thursday before the show, at which point I will begin to carb load again. I will be dropping my carbs back to 125g per day, and will once again be bumping up the protein. The fat shall remain low. As for my training, I’m still lifting heavy in the gym, but my energy is really low these days.
I have also already decided that once this competition is over, I will be taking a full 3 weeks to a month off to recover and recooperate. Once I get back in the gym I will start to train for mas again, and should reach my 200 lb goal by the end of March, 2008.
But I guess first thing’s first. Gotta finish this competition.

Weight: 171lbs, BF%=3.43

Officially three weeks out from competition date. I successfully bumped up my carbs slightly (added 25g carbs approximately to one meal) which allowed me to more or less maintain my weight. However, I think I made a mistake by lowering my protein slightly to maintain my caloric deficit. There is a chance that I may have lost a little muscle as a result. However, I can’t be sure at this point. In any case, I will continue this plan for the next two weeks, and only carb deplete the first part of the following week, right before I carb load again for the show. Feedback at this point is that I’m holding nothin but water at this point, which is good in a way because I’m more or less peaking. However it’s also very bad because I now have to hold here without losing any more weight or worse, gaining unwanted weight. Holding at one weight is actually harder than dieting because it leaves virtually NO room for error.
As far as training goes, I’ve been really hard in the gym, but it’s been really hard working out and even working period because I’m always tired, probably from the lack of carbs and food as a whole. I keep telling myself that it’s only three more weeks and then I’ll be cool. Lol fortunately, I already submitted my competition application to lock myself in so I wouldn’t back out at the last minute.
As for pics, I know I keep promising them. I had a big computer problem though that had prevented me from loading any. The problem has been solved and pics should be coming up soon.

Weight: 170lbs; BF%: 3.43

Well I seemed to have had no problem losing what I feared I gained over the holiday break and then some. I’m afraid I’m not happy at all with my findings this week, as I seemed to have lost some muscle. I’m going to have to re-evaluate my diet ONCE AGAIN to see what I need to tweek. I remember that I said that I was going to start doing cardio and increase the diet days. I’m still going to start doing cardio one time a week for 15 minutes, but I’m going to bump up on the carbs. I don’t seem to be very carb sensitive as I don’t seem to put a lot of carb-related weight on. So I think I’m going to increase carbs to 150g per day, which should add an extra 100 calories to my diet, bringing me to 2200 calories a day. According to my weight and bodyfat I only have 5lbs of fat left on my body, and in all likelihood I will probably only be able to drop 2-3lbs more of that, so I have to be really careful that I do not lose any more muscle mass. My original goal of 175lbs for competition is more or less out the door. Lol it’s actually funny because I read in a post somewhere that when setting a weight goal for a competition, once you set it you should subtract 10lbs. Doubted it back then, but now it seems to make a lot of sense. Going thru it certainly helps. LOL.

So the new gameplan is to maintain this weight. I will continue to eat clean (no sugar low fat). Currently, I take in carbs with 2 meals each day, along with a pre and postworkout carb @ 15g each. I will most likely add carbs to another meal during the day, most likely my midmorning snack to reduce the chance of the carbs getting stored, and see where to go from there. It is very important that I do not dip below 170, as I risk coming in too small to the competition. That unfortunately may mean risking some definition to maintain my size, but I think that I may have to change my goal from pure conditioning to a nice balance of size and conditioning. I also have to account for the water I will lose in the last few days.

4 weeks left. Those chips ahoy are looking real good right now…

Pics later today.

Weight: 173lbs. BF%: ??? (Didn’t have time to measure)

Well a month of dieting is officially in the books. I wasn’t able to take pics this past weekend, but I will try to this upcoming one. It seems like I was able to work off the carbs I loaded up on over the weekend, which is good, and am back to where I was before. However, the holiday killed me. Had bbq food all weekend more or less. I didn’t eat as many meals, but the ones I did eat were really big. So I’m pretty sure that I gained a bit of weight over the long weekend. However, one thing this dieting has taught me is that the weight fluxuates a lot over the course of a few days. So I will not really be able to tell what effects the holiday had on me until the weekend.

With 5 weeks left, I have one more week to play around with before crunch time. My workouts have been more or less on point, and I’m still trying to push as much weight as possible for all my lifts. I changed up my workout a little bit to work out with a friend of mine, so I’m now doing legs on saturdays, chest and back together on Sundays, and shoulders and arms during the week. I will be doing 15 mins of light cardio right before legs, and I will be implementing cardio on 2 of my off days during the week. Ab work will need to pick up, as I haven’t done them in a week or so.

As for diet, I will continue to carb deplete during the week and load during the weekend. After this upcoming weekend, I will cut out one of my carb load days, so I’m depleting 6 of the 7 days and loading on only one. Additionally, on days that I carb deplete, I will have to increase my fat intake slightly. Currently, I am taking in less than 50g fat and only 125g carbs during the course of the day. This leaves a ton of protein, and my body may be feeding off protein to produce energy, which I do not want. Hopefully by increasing the fat intake slightly and lowering the protein intake slightly, I will trick my body into using more fat for energy, which is the goal. It’s been rough dealing with the diet thing because you read all this stuff telling you all these different things, and it’s hard to put it together cohesively.

Then again, I could just be getting nervous…

Holla at yall next week.

Weight: 173lbs. Bf%:3.43

 Ok. Officially 6 weeks out. Bodyfat is way low, which is a great thing. Problem is the weight also dropped dramatically, much more than I anticipated or wanted. So I’m going to have to tweek some things at this point.

First thing I did was carb load all weekend. More or less overfed I think, because I’ve been feeling pretty full lately. Hopefully, this will result in my metabolism speeding up slightly, but hopefully I will spend this week burning what I have stored from the weekend to slow down my weight loss, which is my chief intention. Sometimes this can backfire, but I have dropped a lot of weight thusfar in a very short period of time, and still have plenty of weeks until the competition.

Second, I’m going to start training abs more. I currently do them only one time a week on Wednesdays. I will start doing the abs 3 days a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and probably saturdays as well.

Third, I may have to bump up my chest training on Fridays. Currently I only do one exercise on Friday following my usual monday chest workout. However, most people already know that chest is one of my weak points. So I will attempt to throw another exercise in on my Friday chest touch up day to hopefully address that.

Diet during the week will remain exactly the same. No need to change what appears to be working I guess. I will see how this week works out, and if it’s ok, I will begin to carb cycle, either moderate carb on Wednesday and Sunday, or do a high carb on Saturday and moderate on Sunday. Finding the energy to make it through workouts has been extremely hard since I am doing the low carb for so long, so hopefully this will help.

I will see how this works, and see what I may have to tweek next week.

Pics next week as well.