Skim milk is fine on a diet. I use semi-skimmed for all of my brotein shakes.

You'll probably drop 3-4 lbs in the first week alone. Water weight, standard. That's why it's easy to "drop" the first 5 lbs. Either way it's definitely easier the first few weeks. There are physiological as well as psychological reasons for why Lyle recommends diet breaks too - look it up if you care.

Oh I'm definitely going to need a diet break in 8 weeks, that's for sure. 8 weeks from now is the beginning of February, I think I can handle that.

According to Jimmy John's, my normal triple meat hoagie has 542 calories and 3.67 fat, 71 g carbs, and 50 g protein. Not ideal, but workable until I get started packing my lunches for the week imo.

Why high volume? BBB? I'm not the biggest fan of cutting on 5/3/1, but I'm especially not sure how much I like BBB as the assistance if you do do 5/3/1.

If you're a food lover like me then I'd recommend eating meat instead of those whey shakes

Gonna try that out myself next year...

What would you suggest as an alternative?

I do love food, but I love the convenience of the shakes more.

Can you handle starting a diet now though, right before x-mas? Sounds like a bad idea imo. Depending on you actually celebrating x-mas of course.


Well, that one's a bit contentious. I dunno. You see people like loco and the Jim Steele dude doing well on high volume/metabolic programs when dieting. Then you got guys like Berkhan recommending low volume/high intensity and focusing more or less exclusively on diet for reducing cals. I noticed MC was already on 5/3/1. 5/3/1 seemed to work fine for me while dieting, but ofc I'm weak as **** which helps.

I think the main thing is finding something that works for you to ensure compliance, then don't be a bitch and follow through. I.e. the opposite of me

Definitely agree with this. Sometimes when dieting I just have a (huge) shake for lunch, especially if I'm busy/had a big dinner the previous day.

Yeah, I can handle it, I'll just load up on meat and veggies at the holiday dinners; the only real carby side I'm a fan of is stuffing, but we have prime rib roast on Christmas so it shouldn't be an issue. The real challenge will be to cut down on the wine.

I'll give 5/3/1 a try and see how it goes; I'm not super concerned with my lifts going up -- it would be nice, but ultimately I'd like to get down to 200-205 and just maintain from there. I'm not going to be heartbroken if my squat 1RM is 40 lbs less than what it "could" be so I'll give this a go.

On the low volume side I think something like RPT or just any 3x/week full body, intense, slow progression routine. I'm TMing myself just because I feel like it - a wiser saw would probs go back to my old RPT routine.

BUT..... see below.

Yea. Great post overall. Lyle's mantra of dropping volume / keeping the weight on the bar to maintain strength has just always vibed well with me. Additionally, when I reduce calories the endurance side of things seems to take a much greater hit for me than the maximal strength side. Just to throw another name out I think AA would also fall into the heavy weight low volume camp.

These are actually EXTREMELY good points though. 5/3/1 seems to have a lot of inertia - tough to get going, probably works well to keep going with it once you've started. This might be an important factor for explaining my past failure with it. I'm still meh on it, but it might be a fine approach for someone like MC in this case.

Yeah, I don't think switching to 5/3/1 while dieting is the best idea. The increased volume was pretty hard while eating at maintenance at first. After a cycle it was fine, and then it was fine on a deficit as well.

I assume you set up 5/3/1 well, I think it's definitely possible to **** up pretty royally if you only do leg curls and extensions. Snitch et al have done a good job of finding a solid scheme imo. Mine is obviously superior though

And on that note it's time to go do some squats and stuff.

sounds like you need a lot of EPOC and fasted walking bro.

I'll see how things go on 5/3/1 for the next few weeks. Nothing has been particularly hard so far, and I'm slowly dialing up the weight on the assistance work to a challenging level so we'll see how that goes. If it fails, it fails, no big deal.

So do you think my 5/3/1 assistance stuff is fine or not?

Clearly

Not sure why anyone listens to Lyle tbh.

because science

seems fine to me. people listen to soulman and loco afterall

I mean wrt to lifting. Cuz he doesn't even lift.

I really don't think dropping my calories is going to affect me that much; a bunch of my calories come from dessert after dinner, so if I can just cut back on that and tighten up my lunches a bit I should be in pretty good shape.

Is there a post where it's laid out? Browsed back a bit but didn't find it.

it's the standard BBB challenge template

5x10 chins/3x10 curls, tri pressdown, and facepulls for upper body assistance

ab wheel or hanging leg raises for lower body assistance

5/3/1 bench with BBB press and vice versa

5/3/1 DL with BBB squat and vice versa

12/11 DL

5/3/1 DL (1RM 325)
5x135, 5x185 (warmup, beltless)
3x225, 3x260 (work set, with belt)
7x295 (est 1RM 354)

BBB Squat (1RM 280)
5x10x150

Upped the weight by 10 pounds over last time and it was pretty challenging; took a little longer (just under 15 minutes) to finish all 5 sets, but got through them all.

Ab Wheel
5x10xbw

Should I try to get to 5x20 or start adding weight?

IMO 10 reps is plenty. I'm doing 3x6-10 myself.

AFAIK Wendler suggests getting up to sets of 20 assuming you're doing em from your knees and not from standing. I bet it's pretty marginal but I think adding weight is tougher than it seems, so assuming progressing your ab work isn't a major goal, I'd probably just slowly add reps. "Keep your assistance assistance" as it is I guess.

Also how are you feeling about HLRs? I'm doing em because they're in that template but they kinda suck imo.

Sounds like a plan. Anyone have a good video for the best way to do them? I'm trying to keep my butt tucked and my abs tight and I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

When I concentrate on keeping my hips and butt back on the pad I get a bit out of them; when I forget it's pretty much a nothing exercise imo

Dunno what you mean by "butt tucked" but I think the most important thing is trying to keep your back as rounded as possible, because back arching (extension? bracing?) is the type of movement you're trying to resist. Other than that just full extension, controlled speed, I don't think you can mess up.

ETA: I assume the beast guys know what they're talking about wrt to this stuff, this is the link I used: http://www.beastskills.com/ab-wheel-rollout/

I'm mostly talking about keeping my hips down, I guess (he gets into it towards the end of the video).

I think I may be keeping my back in extension, so I'm going to concentrate on flattening it out or rounding it a little next time and see how that feels.

Looks good to me. You might need to be more strict about taking the deload weeks while dieting, if you hadn't plan to take them after every cycle. Do whatever feels right in that department imo.