bacon anyone?

Q: what diet will allow you to eat burgers, bacon, eggs and butter all week long and then sit down to a big plate of pancakes on the weekend with a clear conscience?

A: welcome to the anabolic diet.

today is day 7 and i'm really psyched that i finally decided to give this a try. the basic premise of the anabolic diet is that you eat lots of protein and fats during the week and keep carbs to a minimum (under 30g/day) to deplete your muscles' glycogen stores and then you eat whatever you want on the weekends focusing on eating higher carb foods. glycogen stores are sufficiently depleted by the weekend that the body sends the glycogen straight into the muscles to replenish glycogen stores instead of storing the carbs as body fat. the diet allows your body to switch from burning carbs for energy to burning fat since there are essentially no carbs available.

the anabolic diet is a great fit for me right now for so many reasons. like eat stop eat, no foods are off limits and you can pretty much eat as much as you want (as long as you are eating the right foods at the right times). in fact, on the anabolic diet, you are supposed to eat a lot. the recommendation runs somewhere around 15 to 18 calories per pound of bodyweight. for me that's somewhere around 1950 to 2340 daily calories. which is (for me) a lot of food. let's keep in mind that during my first month and a half of my last transformation, i was eating 6 small meals a day at a caloric deficit which was about 1600 calories a day. also fat and protein don't spike your insulin levels the way that carbs do and i've found in the past that higher fat tends to work well for my body. the other thing that i love is that the diet allows me to be social without having to put so much thought into what i'm eating. if i'm going out with friends, there's always something i can eat...during the week meat with green veggies (it's never hard to find a steak or burger) and on the weekends pasta, rice dishes, sushi, beans...as well some junk food if i so please.

i guess the other thing to mention is the results. i haven't taken measurements in a long time and my scale is still in storage, but i can absolutely see visible results after only a week on the diet. i have lost weight (some of it is water, i'm sure) and i'm already starting to see muscle definition in places that had become just a little too soft. i'm pretty excited to see where i am at this time next week. for now, i'll be enjoying the rest of my carb-fest.