The Late, Great, PGF Diet Update
**DOUCHEBAG WARNING: This post contains a picture of me flexing in a mirror. I am so, so sorry. It was for science.**
HOKAY. The time has finally come to talk about diet, weight loss/gain, and my thoughts on how that impacts performance, and what I’ve done to affect those changes, particularly over the past five months. I’m going to keep this short and sweet, but thorough. And in order to do that, I have to do a little history lesson with regards to PGF. We must go all the way back to the beginning, to the dark days pre-PGF.
THE STORY
For most of my non-athletic adult life, I weighed somewhere in the 170s.
But by 2013, this had crept up a bit to 181lbs, and I wasn’t in any particular shape at all. Lo and behold, THE DAWN OF PGF.
Now. As I began my journey into beastliness, I steadily became larger. With no particular diet plan in place (except for early forays into Paleo which I eventually turned away from,) I gained muscle, and I gained things other than muscle.
By 2015, I was steadily in the 190s. And I was totally into it. As they say in weightlifting, “mass moves mass,” and a little meat on my bones translated into heavier lifts and strength under the bar. I was full-on bear mode.
But 2016 wasn’t a great year for training. Without a lot of training, that mass was a little less useful. Also, I felt like it was impacting OTHER aspects of my performance negatively: I felt sluggish with cardio, and even if it didn’t make a ton of sense, I felt like it was impacting my mobility (you try touching your toes when you feel chubby.) And yeah, I didn’t always love how I looked in the mirror.
Around of 2016, I was around 200lbs, a weight I had been hovering around for the past few months.
Time to lean out a bit.
WHY
I want to make a couple things clear. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to diet for cosmetic reasons, but PGF is a performance-based project and that was the primary motivation for me. Weight is often a terrible metric by which to gauge body composition anyway, and more often than not decreases in weight correlate to reduced performance, especially in things like Crossfit. But for me, in particular, I felt like my strength-to-weight ratio was off, and that my “efficiency” wasn’t right for my size. I would HAPPILY be 200lbs again, but I’d want to build up to that so that I am the right 200. A lean 200 that’s really working, not an accidental 200 that doesn’t feel great in the gym.
PICTURE TIME:
This is what I look like in the high 190s, to give you a visual.
Notice that my parents’ dog and I have roughly the same physique. Also, just to prove that “before” pictures are total BS. Here’s a picture of me and Quinta five minutes later.
Note that I look about 20lbs leaner. That’s how diet pictures sell you on their efficacy. Watch “Bigger Faster Stronger” to see how you can take Before and After pictures five minutes apart and put them on the side of a bottle of diet pills. Anyway.
ENTER THE DIET
I’ve tinkered with a few diets in the past--counting macros, paleo--but the one I decided to go with on January 1st of this year was the Slow Carb Diet from Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Body.
I’ve posted the “rules” before, but here’s a summary, basically:
- No grains
- No dairy
- No fruit
- Couple glasses of red wine only
- Go nuts once a week
It’s barely more complicated than that. Eat vegetables, meats and beans and take one day off.
Why did I choose this diet? I shall tell thee. Because it fulfills the only two requirements that a diet need fulfill:
a.) It works for my body
b.) It’s reasonable
Here’s what those mean.
a.) It works for my body. The reason there isn’t a lot of consensus about diet science doesn’t seem to be because we can’t get good data, it’s because one of the only universal truths is that there is so much variance from human to human that it’s incredibly hard to come up with unilateral rules for diet and weight loss. The unfortunate reality is that there are a million variables that make me different from you, and affect why I might respond well to a diet that has a lot of fatty meats and you might not feel great.
b.) It’s reasonable. The best diet is the one that you do. I’m not going to sell you on the Slow Carb Diet, other than to say this: I do believe that it is one of the most reasonable diets out there. It doesn’t ask you to cut out any of the three major macronutrients (carbs, fats or proteins.) It doesn’t make you count or measure. You get to eat as much as you want and you don’t go hungry. Once a week you get to go nuts. Which is good physiologically and psychologically. The adherence factor is really high.
HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN:
STARTING WEIGHT: 200lbs (approximately)
I began the diet and didn’t look back. Honestly, every diet I’ve ever done has been a nightmare and a struggle. This was a total breeze. I really felt like it was the easiest thing in the world. I basically just, y’know, didn’t eat a huge sandwich during the week (saved it for cheat day), and instead ate other stuff I like--chili, thai food, tons of stuff. It was, legit, no big deal.
I lost ten pounds in the first month.
By April, I was in the 170s for the first time since high school.
CURRENT WEIGHT: 176-178lbs, depending on the day.
TOTAL WEIGHT LOST: 22-24lbs.
Shabang.
HOW DO I FEEL:
This is by far the most important piece. How has this whole thing affected me in the gym? And the answer is: hugely. I was actually surprised that a lot of my “oh, this would be easier if I was leaner” things were...totally true. Running, mobility, gymnastics, muscle-ups, pretty much everything but powerlifting got wayyyy better. Cardio absolutely skyrocketed. And on a clean diet that left me feeling great all the time, I felt awesome in general. Plus, I started seeing all kinds of other benefits: my migraines drastically improved, I felt less “up and down” on such a steady blood-sugar diet, cheat day honestly left me feeling sick and headachy. It’s been the best.
So, that’s all folks. If you have any questions, hit me.
As far as the diet itself, I recommend it for nothing else than it’s common sense-ness. It’s not low carb, nor low fat. It’s not low cal. It just keeps you away from quick blood sugar spikes and a lot of things that tend to make people feel a little gross. And it does seem to help most people lean out if they need to.
Here’s where I ended up for the moment:
I warned you.
