Sunday August 13th:
After going out and buying all the required foods/supplements the week before I started the diet today. Sunday is an off training day so this was a chance for me to get used to the diet and see exactly what it entailed.

Knowing that I was starting the diet today and will be sticking to it for the next 15 weeks, I decided to let loose the week before and enjoyed going to the bars and having some high carb meals I normally avoid (BBQ, pizza, etc). I purposely did this to get it out of my system, but it definately shows as my weight is 3-5 lbs heavier than what I have been weighing in at normally.

Weight: 217 lbs
Height: 5'11
Age: 23
Body Type: Endomorph


I also borrowed a friends camera and took some before pictures but will be holding off posting these until the end of the program. These will serve as personal motivation and to track my progress. If I can successfully complete this program I will be posting the before/after pictures at the end of this journal so everyone can see the results.

Since last september I was following a WSB program and then completed a 3 month session of DFT 5x5. Since I wasn't following a set diet I definately "bulked" up a little bit but that is fine as I was really doing these programs for the strength gains. It will be interesting to see how my body changes when switching to the new training routine.

The Meals:
* Based off my weight, body type, and estimated bodyfat the book recommends I start at their 2500 calorie level.

I woke up and was totally underprepared for breakfast today. This meal didn't seem that big to me on paper, but it definately was when I had to start consuming it:

6 egg whites
1 whole egg
1 cup steamed spunach
1 oz grilled chicken
4 tsp peanut butter
8 oz grapefruit

I also discovered that 8 oz of grapefruit is generally 1 to 1 1/2 grapefruits, which means that I had to go out and buy alot more. Since these have to be peeled I decided to spend alot of time peeling them all today so I wouldn't have to do this every morning.

Excluding the two shakes, the other meals of the day consisted of a lean protein source, veggies, and fats such as almonds or natural peanut butter. These meals were not bad size wise and I had to consume them every 2-3 hours. An example of a common meal I will be making:

5 oz chicken
1 cup steamed Broccoli
18 almonds

Besides that common meal layout there is a meal near the end of that is a little bit bigger which includes:

6 oz chicken
1 cup steamed Broccoli
2 oz avocado
8 oz grapefruit

All the veggies had to be steamed which seemed like a pain at first but it really only takes a few minutes and is much better than microwaving. I was also unprepared for the actual amount of veggies I would be consuming daily on this program. Today I consumed 7 cups of veggies coming mainly from broccolli and green beans.

Even though I started the day off on a big meal and was eating every 2-3 hours I can honestly say that I was not extremely full or uncomfortable at any time. But the main benefit of the diet today was that at no time was I actually hungry either, I can see this being a big benefit and key to sticking to the diet as long as I eat my meals every 2-3 hours.

From this point on I will be bulk cooking my chicken/protein so I can simply assemble my meals and just eat them without the hassle of cooking each time. This will also be key to following this diet at my corporate job which has been the cause of many of my other diet failures.

Monday will be my first full day of training and dieting and seeing how it fits into the corporate world...