[CryingEmo]

The first thing I hear when I explain to someone how the Velocity Diet or Radical Diet works (which seem to be more restrictive forms of lower calorie ketogenic diets in general) is "starvation diet!" Of course starvation diet ellicits the 'no-no' response to those savvy enough to know anything about nutrition. The slowdown in metabolism from the starvation response defeats the purpose of lowering calories because you burn LBM and not fat, the exact opposite of what you want. However, these diets employ alot of meassures to prevent this metabolic slow down, namely, supplements to stimulate thyroid (stims!), nutrition that leaves you as sated as possible with the least calories (micellar casien, fiber, fish oil), high protein (1 gram per LB of LBM), short diet period (3-4 weeks), workouts tailored to work with your lowered calorie state (less volume, heavier loads), and not against it, and finally dosing BCAA's between meals (3 grams+), and before and after workouts, or strictly leucine.


With that being said, I have not tried the V-diet or Radical Diet, but I know they are hard.


I would like to dedicate this thread to the discussion of the effectiveness of these diets and their ability to reduce as much adipose tissue as possible in the least amount of time while reducing catabolism.


For anyone familar with t-nation, you may have noticed their new physique clinic section and their clients progress. This one guy is on the last day of his V-diet today as a matter of fact. He's lost around 20 LB's, and appears to have lost virtually zero LBM:

TESTOSTERONE NATION


It should be noted that these diet are not a "magical fix." They will kick your ass, and if you don't do them right you're going to fall off of the diet, or go into starvation mode (*gasp!*)



Discuss.

[Neil5585]

Hey what's up Emo. I've made different runs with the Velocity Diet, and also something similar to the Radical Diet.

I have to say for me, personally, the Velocity Diet is easier and more enjoyable.

With the V-Diet there is no cooking. Almost zero prep. It takes 1 minute to eat your meal. The rules are extremely simple and leaves less room for "fudging" (well, THAT would be okay on the diet...).

I've lost a lot of fat with the V-Diet and lost little LBM. However I can't go much more than 2 weeks before I develop a sensitivity to the protein. Many this doesn't seem to be an issue.

I like forskolin, Biotest's to be specific. I like 40-50g BCAAs taken between shakes and "fasted" walking cardio with BCAAs before in the morning. I also do 40g cod liver oil instead of using flax so much.

Progress seems to slow after a couple weeks, most likely due to lowering metabolism. For this when progress slows, taking a half day to a day to "cheat" on foods like burgers and pizza and then hitting back into the cardio and diet the next day can do wonders for jump starting the diet again. I might do this for the second carb meal, i.e. after 2 weeks on the diet.

Creatine and beta alanine would be a good friend on this diet. You could do waxy maize/hydrolysate PWO if you are lean enough, or you could do whey and glutamine/glycine to help restore glycogen without carbs.

I'd avoid this extreme method if you're quite lean. You should be eating more carbs than this. I'm not sure of anyone off hand that was quite lean and tried this diet to get very ripped. It's quite effective for people in the 15+% range.

[Neil5585]

Couple additions here.

One of the main goals here is to basically displace dietary fat with body fat for energy.

You have to do this by mobilizing and burning off the fat with efficiency.

Cardio and weights are key to this, as is high dose fish oil. The "lower" fat allows the body fat to make up the difference in energy.

Supplements like DCP would be great for this. Mobilizing the body fat and then burning it off, and preventing it from being restored (definitely an issue if you're using stims). I've never used a DCP style supplement on this diet but I imagine it would be a very very good addition.

This would be my supplement list:
-High dose DCP
-Carbolin-19
-Green tea extract
-transdermal 7-oxo DHEA
-Transdermal formestane
-Thermogenic of choice
-Sesathin
-BCAAs for fasted cardio, during workout, and between shakes
-40g fish or cod liver oil
-Double up on the multi
-Something like P-Slin, Anabolic Pump, Yellow Gold if it works for you for PWO carbs and carb meals.


Just some ideas. I would likely tweak this if I had more time to think about it, but it seems pretty solid.

[Nitrox]

Why bother?

If you can achieve similar results with a more moderate calorie and more moderate training volume routine, without being forced to resort to supps and stims as stopgaps and without feeling comatose all day then why make it so tough?

Seems like another one of those 'make it hard for the sake of being hard' diets as well as a marketting tool to push supp sales.

[Neil5585]

Well it's about producing faster results in less time.

I didn't feel comatose all day on the Velocity Diet. I functioned quite well, actually.

That supplement list can be shorted, too, if desired or needed.

[CryingEmo]

Originally Posted by Nitrox

Why bother?

If you can achieve similar results with a more moderate calorie and more moderate training volume routine, without being forced to resort to supps and stims as stopgaps and without feeling comatose all day then why make it so tough?

Seems like another one of those 'make it hard for the sake of being hard' diets as well as a marketting tool to push supp sales.

It's about losing as fast as possible. You lose 20 LB's in a month instead of a year. And the potential for catabolism is greatly reduced. Much more room for mistakes during a year...

[CryingEmo]

By the way, thanks for the awsome feedback Neil.



I'm going to start a journal when I start the v-diet.

[Rodja]

The main thing that bothers me about it is the name. It is basically the Paleo Diet, but with supplementation.

[CryingEmo]

Originally Posted by Rodja

The main thing that bothers me about it is the name. It is basically the Paleo Diet, but with supplementation.

I'm not familar with the Paleo Diet. Is it a shake based / micellar casein protein / fiber / fish oil based cutting diet?

[Steveoph]

Emo I think he was referring to the Paleolithic age of caveman so meat and eggs, and then adding modern day suppls like creatine/whey etc.

[Rodja]

Originally Posted by CryingEmo

I'm not familar with the Paleo Diet. Is it a shake based / micellar casein protein / fiber / fish oil based cutting diet?

No, it is a flesh/produce based diet. Grains/legumes are eliminated due to allergens and acidity, but all animal protein is used along with tons of produce.

[EasyEJL]

I may give this a shot. Now I just need to figure out exactly how to run the macros for it