Unlike my previous entry regarding weight loss, Complete Weight Loss: Overweight Edition, this entry will actually look into types of diets as well as giving a sample diet based off of what I have done in the past myself.

Over the years I have tried various diets and trends in the fitness industry while I was moving towards my goal of dropping half my body weight. I tried a balanced diet (40C/40P/20F), VLCD (Very Low Calorie Diet), liquid diet (V-Diet) and a high fat diet. All of the experimentation I went through was in quest to see what my body responded to as nobodies physiology is exactly the same so one diet may work a whole lot better than another one. In the next section I will go over the diets in more detail so you have a better understanding of what they actually are and how they work.

When you decide that you want to go on a diet it shouldn’t be because you have a holiday coming up or someone said that you looked like you were putting on some weight. It should be done because you want to improve your health and fitness with lifestyle changes that in the long run will make you look better and feel better about yourself. Choosing exactly which diet suits you can be a little bit of guesswork because there are so many different types out there but you can look at your current habits for a few indicators. For example, if you always feel sleepy or bloated after eating carbs, even in small portions, then you would likely benefit from a low carb diet which are usually restricted to breakfast and post workout.

What I am getting at here is that do your research first before you make the jump into running any sort of diet protocol, also if you have any health issues then it would be a good idea to consult your doctor and see if the diet you are planning will have any ill effects.

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Types of Diets

Since there are a lot of different types of diets around I will briefly go over the ones that  I have tried and my results when using that particular diet. This list is in no way extensive, it purely covers what I myself have tried so far.

Balanced Diet: 40% Protein, 40% Carbs, 20% Fat

The balanced diet is, as in the name, a balance of carbs, proteins and fats that allow you to get all the nutrients you require though various sources. This diet takes a little number crunching to get the desired ratios of carbs, proteins and fats based on your specific calorie requirements. Lets take me, 200 lbs, and work it out from there for an example.

Since I am 200 pounds and I exercise actively I require 2000-2500 calories a day to maintain my current weight, so if I wanted to lose weight I would be looking in the region of 1500-2000 calories a day. Since we know that 1 gram of protein and carbs equates to 4 calories while 1 gram of fat is equal to 9 calories we can then break it down further to see how much of each individual macro-nutrient we are allowed to eat. It would look something like this:

• Protein – 2000 * 0.4 / 4 = 200 grams of protein a day (800 calories)
• Carbs – 2000 * 0.4 / 4 = 200 grams of carbs a day (800 calories)
• Fat – 2000 * 0.2 / 9 = 44 grams of fat a day ( 400 calories)

So from the above numbers we can then start to work out what we will eat on any given day. To give you an example of what 200 grams of protein is that would be roughly 900 grams of chicken if that was were you would be getting your protein from. That is a whole load of chicken to be eating. Balanced diets work well for people who like to eat carbs and like a little freedom in what they are eating. Since carbs make up a majority of the diet you can factor in whatever you like as long as you stick within your given number for the day.

When I ran the balanced diet weight loss was steady and it gave me freedom in my eating habits. If I fancied a piece of chocolate I could quite easily find a place for it within the constraints of my diet as I had carbs to play with. After a while you won’t feel like you are on a diet because you are able to eat what you like, within moderation of course.

VLCD: Very Low Calorie Diet

As you would expect from the name this diet consists mainly of dropping calories ridiculously low and running from there. Rather than take the normal 250-500 calories off your maintenance number with the VLCD you would take anywhere from 1000+ calories off your maintenance and building a diet around that. As with most people who go on a diet they get the

mentality that “less is better” so end up starting off on a VLCD without even knowing it. The problem that this creates is that it will bring you to a standstill faster than most other diets and you will likely fall off the wagon, unless you are a sadist and like punishment and torture!

I only ran this diet for a little while, around 2-3 weeks, because I felt absolutely horrible while I was on it. I like my food and when I am on a diet I like to be able to at least eat something. With the VLCD you are barely able to fit anything into the diet and have to look for extremely satisfying yet relatively low in calorie foods to fill you up which usually consists of eating A LOT of vegetables. I do enjoy vegetables but after a week of eating mountains of vegetables to try to stay full I got very bored and started to loathe them with a passion.

In my honest opinion I would stay well away from a VLCD as the success to failure rate is far to skewed to the failure side for it to be worth while.

Liquid Diet: Velocity Diet (V-Diet)

The idea of the V-Diet is that you replace your daily foods with meal replacement shakes instead. Once a week you are allowed one solid meal in which the only restriction is that you choose healthy foods. The reason I looked into this diet was that I was fed up cooking each night and was getting tired of eating the same things over and over again as I’m not very creative in the kitchen department.

The setup is simple, on non-workout days you take fewer calories than your workout days. This diet is a sort of mash-up of 2 or 3 different diets, it has elements of low carb diets and also VLCD diets rolled into it. So based on my stats, male of 200 lbs, it was recommended that I “eat” 1600 calories on non-workout days and 2000 on workout days. The majority of the calories came from protein with a slight bump in carbs on workout days.

To get the required nutrients that you are missing out on from fruits and vegetables you add in a supplement called SuperFood which is basically just ground up greens. Along with the SuperFoods you take a thermogenic supplement (BioTest Hot-Rox Extreme), a recovery drink (BioTest Surge Recover), a fish oil supplement (BioTest Flameout) and a food additive (BioTest L-Leucine). Now as you can see you are getting all the required nutrients and minerals you required but all from synthetic sources which isn’t the best idea in the long run, thankfully the diet is only a month-long if you can handle it.

Another thing you may notice is that the V-Diet was produced and developed by Chris Shugart who is a featured author and editor on T-Nation. The diet has been through a few overhauls and is currently on version 3.0. Once you input your stats into the site you are given a planned out diet of what to take and when. You will then be shown how much of each supplement you require and whether you would like to buy, it came out at around $550 for me without shipping and handling. The reason for the high prices is that it is stated in the protocol that you will only succeed at this diet using BioTest supplements and no other.

BioTest are a very reputable supplement company who product some absolutely top quality products but I cannot justify the price they are quoting for 1 month of dieting. I found supplements closer to home which had the same nutritional values as the BioTest supplements and ran with them for a fraction of the cost.

The diet is rather miserable since your meals last the length of time it takes to down a protein shake and some pills. Sure you can try to nurse it but at the end of the day if you are anything like me a shake is gone in the blink of an eye. After you have finished the shake you are left wondering when you will begin to feel full, if ever. When I was purchasing my supplements I bought chocolate whey protein, I can safely say that after running the V-Diet I went off chocolate for quite a while. The superfood addition to the shakes gave them a sort of grassy taste which didn’t help matters either and the L-Leucine added a gritty texture to them. Overall it wasn’t very pleasing to the palate.

When it came time for my one solid meal a week it is extremely hard to control yourself since you miss the sensation of chewing. Once you have drunk only liquid for a week you realise that half the fun in eating is the chewing and the flavours being released bit by bit into your mouth.

I managed to run this for the month and the weight loss was significant with little to no muscle loss as far as I could tell. It was a miserable experience but I persevered since I had spent all that money on supplements already.

I would recommend this to you if you have strong will power and are fed up of cooking meals with a lot of cleaning up afterwards.

Low-Carb Diet

A low carb diet is relatively simple to set up and usually yields the best results all round. Typically the dieter will restrict their carb intake to 50 grams or less but this diet can work with <100 grams if the 50 gram limit is to restrictive to being with.

By limiting your carbs you will be filling in the gaps with protein and fat, usually protein is kept at 1 gram per pound of bodyweight which leaves the rest for fat. So for a 200 lb male we would have 200 grams of protein, 50 grams carbs and 111 grams of fat which would work out to around 800 calories from protein, 200 calories from carbs and 1000 calories from fat.

During low-carb dieting it has found that there are significant benefits including but not limited to weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and less muscle mass lost due to increased protein.

The carbs you ingest are entirely up to you but you should focus them around breakfast and post workout. If you feel that you are sluggish during a workout then have your carbs pre and post workout rather than at breakfast.

This is the type of diet that I favour now since it is very easy to follow and being a bit of a carb fiend I can keep a hold of my carb cravings. Later in this article I will set out a sample diet that centers around the low-carb mentality so you can see for yourself what sort of foods I would consume. I will only post one day since my days tend to be very similar to each other with only slight changes made to meals.

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As you can see there are plenty of diets available out there but like I said before do in-depth research on each before you jump in and start making plans. Most diets fail in less than a month because people tend to jump in with both feet and end up burning out so to speak. In a previous article I touched on the aspect of making small and gradual changes in your lifestyle rather than a complete overhaul. By making these small changes and ensuring they are given sufficient time to embed themselves in your lifestyle before making the next change you give yourself a far greater chance at succeeding in your quest.

I’m going to provide a sample diet but just remember that it is just that, a sample. What my diet looks like could vary wildly to what your own diet looks like. I like to keep things simple and tend to eat the same things daily for breakfast, post workout shake and pre-bed nutrition. The only meals I really change-up are my lunch and post workout meal (solid meal rather than shake).

Sample Diet:-

• Upon Waking – 1 scoop Smart-Tec whey in water
• Breakfast – 5 eggs, 2 slices of WW toast
• Snack – 1 apple
• Lunch – 3 pork chops (lean), 1 cup broccoli
• Snack – 1 banana
• Post Workout – 2 scoops Smart-Tec whey
• Dinner – 250 grams of chicken, sliced cucumber, 1 cup broccoli
• Before Bed – 1 scoop Smart-Tec whey in water, 1 teaspoon of peanut butter

For the above sample diet the nutritional statistics are as follows:-

• Protein – 281 grams
• Carbs – 98.7 grams
• Fats – 89.1 grams
• Total Calories – 2301.4

As you can see I am well above my protein requirements and a little under my fat requirements but overall target of 2200-2500 calories a day. The reason I am taking in 2200-2500 calories a day is I partake in physical exercise 6 days a week with 1 day where I do very little, the extra calories are to replace some of what will be used during exercise as I don’t want to put myself into too much of a deficit.

Obviously these numbers are based off of my needs and can be re-calculated to suit your own personal needs and requirements. From the above sample diet you can see that I keep my carbs for breakfast as I have never had any detrimental effects of working out without carbs in my system. This is what works for me and as I said before can be adjusted to suit your needs.

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What you should take away from this article is that the only way to truly know which diet is “for you” is to get to know your body and start small. Dieting isn’t about restricting yourself for 6, 8 or even 12 weeks it is about making lifestyle changes that you can continue with through out your life rather than for limited periods of time. Bouncing between diets is a sure-fire way to end up becoming a yo-yo dieter.

-Andrew

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