How are ye doing, guys!
Today I'm going to be talking about my experience with dieting.
Traditional gym dogma dictates that one should bulk up and gain weight with a caloric surplus
to build muscle and strength, and then diet down to get rid of all the excess fat accumulated
during the bulk.
I have been through this cycle whilst eating both a standard Western diet and a whole foods,
plant-based diet on seperate occasions.
Let me start off by saying that I am not predisposed towards building strength and muscle with
ease at all.
On both bulks I ended up overdoing the weight gain in an effort to keep progress in the
gym going and to try to continue to hit PRs.
I'm not going to debate the merits of traditional bulking and cutting in this video, but suffice
it to say I believe it has diminishing value the further one departs from the absolute
beginner stage.
There's also a lot of gym bro terminology like this coming your way in the rest of this
video, so be warned!
The biggest difference I noticed between the two bulks was the rate of fat gain in the
abdominal region.
The notches on my powerlifting belt went up much more slowly relative to overall body
weight when bulking with mostly whole, plant foods.
This is likely related to the ability of a standard Western diet rich in animal products
and refined sugar to cause visceral fat deposition - that deadly fat around the abdominal organs
which is associated with much higher rates of chronic disease and death than the same
weight of fat stored elsewhere in the body.
These two pictures were taken at peak-bulk.
I'm actually 1.5 kg lighter in the first, but it is quite clear that there is a much
greater accumulation of fat in the abdominal region after the standard Western diet bulk.
I found it was also much more difficult to overdo the rate of weight gain bulking on
a WFPB diet, which is no surprise given the difference in food quality and caloric density.
Towards the end of this bulk I found myself being forced to include more and more processed
foods to continue to gain weight.
The main comparison I want to focus on in this video though is the difference between
the two dieting down phases, the cuts.
I have been able to draw some useful comparisons because many of the parameters outside of
diet were similar - roughly the same starting weight, target weight and time scale, in addition
to skipping breakfast and employing other intermittent fasting priniciples and having
no formal cardio on either occasion.
This latter practice I do not recommend regardless of diet!
But in my defence, in both cases I was doing an average of 12000 steps per day and felt
any additional cardio would have been dipping too much into my ability to recover in the
context of a caloric deficit, in addition to the fact that I was quite stressed at both
times.
I also did not take any diet breaks with either cut, which I have learned since was a mistake.
I reached the target weight in both cases.
I acknowledge that the lighting and conditions are not the same in each picture, but regrettably
I failed to take after pictures the first time!
The biggest difference between the two dieting down phases was calorie-counting.
Losing fat on an omnivorous diet neccessitated dilligent tracking of calories, protein and
body weight.
I followed the principles of "If It Fits Your Macros" - all foods were weighed exactly and
I would only very rarely go over my allowed calories for the day.
Calorie allowance was continuously adjusted down as the cut progressed in order to keep
the scales moving, allowing for metabolic adaptation and changes in body composition.
Unfortunately however, the body responds to long-term caloric deprivation like this by
down-regulating hormones involved in maintaining our energy levels, especially leptin, testosterone
and thyroid hormones.
I offset this adaptive thermogenesis somewhat by employing carb-cycling - initially one,
and eventually two days per week on which I consumed a slight caloric surplus consisting
of mostly carbs and protein, with fat intake kept as close as possible to zero.
The other days of the week were adjusted to keep the weekly caloric intake at a deficit.
A very unnatural way to eat!
But it did enable me to continue losing weight for a time and would give a rebound in energy
levels the day of a refeed, but the experience overall was miserable.
I just felt deprived and was constantly hungry.
Towards the end my energy level plummeted and took around a month to return to normal
when the diet was over.
The plant-based cut went much more smoothly.
I did not have to count calories at all - all I had to do to transition from bulking to
cutting was to eliminate the small amount of processed foods I was taking in, the likes
of orange juice and mock meats, and also start skipping breakfast again.
Indeed, the weight started coming off at such a rate that I had to continue to eat above
what I would naturally have done for a few months to keep my weight from dropping too
quickly and risk losing strength.
Eventually I got to the point where I could just eat to satiety, and the weight came off
at the appropriate rate of roughly 2 kg per month.
And this for me is where the magic of a plant-based diet really shines for weight loss - if you
eat proper food your body can micro-manage it's weight itself the way nature intended,
and takes care of all that calorie-counting orthorexia business for you!
This grand situation persisted until quite late in the cut - as I approached the 70 kg
mark I did have to start focusing on reducing my intake a little bit to keep the scales
moving.
But even at this stage I still didn't need to count calories or introduce unnatural eating
practices like carb cycling - I simply increased my fasting window and focused more on low-energy
density foods and kept the likes of nuts and whole grains to a minimum, while still
not eliminating these health-promoting foods completely.
This took me right down to 67.5 kg again, with comparatively much less discomfort than
before.
Having said that, towards the end I did feel the drop in energy level again and it was
just as severe as it was when dieting on a standard Western diet.
The difference here came when it was time to reverse out of the caloric deficit - my
energy level came back literally within 1 day this time as opposed to taking around
a month, or more.
Additionally, I found it was much easier to retain strength in the gym on the plant-based
cut.
Life often gets in the way of having a fully optimal health and fitness regimen, and every
variable has to be absolutely dialled-in when trying to preserve strength on a cut.
When recovery was not optimal, usually down to stress or not having enough sleep or allowing
weight loss to progress too rapidly, I noticed this having much less of an impact on my lifts
when dieting down with a plant-based diet.
However, I do acknowledge that this could be due to better training as I was a little
more experienced with strength training at this stage and I don't have good training
data from the time of the omnivorous cut to say for sure.
Lastly, I re-introduced cardio in the form of steady-state running after each cut as
I felt my recovery capacity improve.
The difference here was night-and-day - I would be struggling to run a mile when eating
a standard Western diet, whereas I would have to prescribe distances and times on the plant-based
diet to stop myself from overdoing it - I could literally just keep going with fitness
not being an issue!
This is no wonder, considering the performance-enhancing benefits that have been observed from the
consumption of nitrate-rich vegetables and other elements of a healthy plant-based diet.
On a different note, coinciding with the completion of this last cut I came across an interesting
new randomised controlled trial in which participants either dieted continuously over 16 weeks similarly
to what I had just done, or alternated 2-week periods of caloric deficit with 2-week diet
breaks at maintenance calories for 30 weeks total, also giving a total time spent in a
caloric deficit of 16 weeks.
The researchers found that the group taking the regular diet breaks ended up losing more
weight.
I was sceptical of intermittent energy restriction up until this point because I had not seen
any research demonstrating it's superiority to constant dieting.
This well-designed trial appeared to turn that notion on it's head though, and in the
never-ending quest to optimise diet and training with the help of science, I gave it a go.
I had found that carb cycling had worked for me in the past, but I don't think it's worth
dropping healthy foods like fruit and whole grains for a large portion of each week, so
I needed a new strategy to help counteract the undesirable effects of losing weight.
As I mentioned earlier in the video, after my first day breaking from dieting I almost
instantly regained my energy when eating plant-based.
I continued this 2-weekly calorie cycling regimen for a few weeks after the cut and
my energy levels remained normal over this time.
I also made some modest but steady strength gains for those few weeks which resulted in
further improvement in body composition while not gaining any weight.
With this in mind, I propose the strategy of inter-weekly calorie cycling, as opposed
to intra-weekly carb cycling to combat low energy, break plateaus and keep the hormonal
millieu in check for those attempting to lose weight on a whole foods, plant-based diet, since carb cycling is
very restrictive and neccessitates the exclusion of many healthy foods.
Even more excitingly, there is a randomised controlled trial currently underway testing
a similar calorie-cycling diet break protocol for fat loss in athletes!
Looking forward to that one!
In summary, losing fat is definitely possible on a standard Western diet with a lot of hassle
and willpower.
But it's just so much easier on a whole foods, plant-based diet!
You're constantly fighting an uphill battle trying to diet down whilst eating unhealthy
foods.
Better to eat as much healthy food as you want, forget about calories and macros and
let the weight loss take care of itself!
Thanks for watching, if you have any questions or comments leave them in the comment section
below and I'll get back to you.
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Sláinte!