Can my wife do the AD (anabolic diet) with me?

[hadrion]

I'm looking to start the anabolic diet and my wife is interested in doing it with me.

We're both active and go to the gym 5-6 times a week and do strength and cardio training and have both recently lost 40 pounds.

I just want to make sure it's okay for women.

Any thoughts or tips will be appreciated.

 

[ThomasRivera]

I've never heard about anything negative with woman using the AD diet. Of course, as with any diet you want to get blood work done regularly. Just make sure that you and your wife understand how to do the diet the right way and everything should be ok.

 

[hadrion]

Thanks for the reply Thomas.

We bought the book and I think we understand it, although there is so much conflicting info out there in regards to how long to carb up and the importance of the 12 day induction.

Any advice would be appreciated.

We'd both be using the diet to cut further. We've both lost 40 pounds since May and we want to keep losing fat without losing any of the muscle we've both put on in that time period.

My wife wants to drop another 20lbs or so of fat and I still need to drop another 30-40lbs of fat.

I'm a little worried if my workouts will work well with the diet since I hit the weights M-W-F and T-Th-Sat-Sun I do spinning for 2 of the days and HIIT for the other 2 days.

I don't want to lose the energy levels I currently have, but I also want to really turn my body into a fat burning machine is possible.

 

[ThomasRivera]

This is the deal with the low carb time, five days is alright, 12 days are better. Simply because its more direct time in ketosis and getting adapted into the diet. Going on a five day induction is really getting 2-2.5 days worth of ketosis, initially it takes about 2-3 days to get into ketosis. After that it will establish quicker.

Carb load has two different ideologies, 24-48, or until you see your muscles fill up to the point where they are pronounced. Obviously at a higher body fat its hard to tell, so going off of 24-48 hours would be easier, if you give me your body weight, estimated body fat I can work it out, i'll post table from a different book.

Your workout schedule might have to change slightly. A standard 7 day keto diet in terms of training and cardio looks like this, i'll post two seperate examples, lower and upper body workouts are interchangable.


Monday: Low carb Lower body
Tuesday: Low carb cardio or break
Wednesday: Low Carb Upper
Thursday: Low carb cardio or break
Friday:Low carb, full body depletion workout, immediatly afterworkout carb load is started
Saturday: Carb load, rest, no exercise
Sunday: Finish carb load, no exercise during carbing but cardio can be resumed during the low carb portion.

Monday: Low carb Lower body
Tuesday: Low Carb Upper
Wednesday: Low carb cardio or break
Thursday: Low carb cardio or break
Friday:Low carb, full body depletion workout, immediatly afterworkout carb load is started
Saturday: Carb load, rest, no exercise
Sunday: Finish carb load, no exercise during carbing but cardio can be resumed during the low carb portion.

Some fatigue will develop at first, this will go away I assure you. Worst case scenario cut out one spinning class OR hiit in the morning, spinning later on a day. Trust me, not doing cardio the end of friday, the whole of saturday, and half sunday (if you are doing 48 hours) will not effect you negatively. You will have glycogen levels that are above normal if you carb load correctly.

 

[pinchharmonic]

I'm looking to start the anabolic diet and my wife is interested in doing it with me.

We're both active and go to the gym 5-6 times a week and do strength and cardio training and have both recently lost 40 pounds.

I just want to make sure it's okay for women.

Any thoughts or tips will be appreciated.

i'm sure statistically you both are more likely to succeed when going on this diet together.

i can't imagine figuring out "what's for dinner" when one person is doing the anabolic diet and the other is doing a standard diet.

 

[hadrion]

This is the deal with the low carb time, five days is alright, 12 days are better. Simply because its more direct time in ketosis and getting adapted into the diet. Going on a five day induction is really getting 2-2.5 days worth of ketosis, initially it takes about 2-3 days to get into ketosis. After that it will establish quicker.

Carb load has two different ideologies, 24-48, or until you see your muscles fill up to the point where they are pronounced. Obviously at a higher body fat its hard to tell, so going off of 24-48 hours would be easier, if you give me your body weight, estimated body fat I can work it out, i'll post table from a different book.

Your workout schedule might have to change slightly. A standard 7 day keto diet in terms of training and cardio looks like this, i'll post two seperate examples, lower and upper body workouts are interchangable.


Monday: Low carb Lower body
Tuesday: Low carb cardio or break
Wednesday: Low Carb Upper
Thursday: Low carb cardio or break
Friday:Low carb, full body depletion workout, immediatly afterworkout carb load is started
Saturday: Carb load, rest, no exercise
Sunday: Finish carb load, no exercise during carbing but cardio can be resumed during the low carb portion.

Monday: Low carb Lower body
Tuesday: Low Carb Upper
Wednesday: Low carb cardio or break
Thursday: Low carb cardio or break
Friday:Low carb, full body depletion workout, immediatly afterworkout carb load is started
Saturday: Carb load, rest, no exercise
Sunday: Finish carb load, no exercise during carbing but cardio can be resumed during the low carb portion.

Some fatigue will develop at first, this will go away I assure you. Worst case scenario cut out one spinning class OR hiit in the morning, spinning later on a day. Trust me, not doing cardio the end of friday, the whole of saturday, and half sunday (if you are doing 48 hours) will not effect you negatively. You will have glycogen levels that are above normal if you carb load correctly.

Thomas -- Thanks so much for your responses.

Is there any reason why I couldn't/shouldn't do a full body resistance workout on M-W-F?

What's worked for me thus far on my lifting days is I pair up an upper body and lower body exercise, for instance I'll do incline bench for a set and then do a set of dead lifts and do 3-4 sets of that combo before moving onto another body part. I hit every upper body part in concert with a lower body exercise in my workout.

It keeps my heart rate up and it was helpful for me in burning off fat/calories during my resistance.

I can definitely drop one of the cardio (spinning or HIIT) days in the week. That's not a problem.

I'm still doughy -- I dropped 8.5 inches off my waist since May, but I'm still soft around the middle. Cuts show in my arms, legs, back and my chest is big and solid and not flabby.

I don't know what my BF% is right now. I need to get those numbers. Right now I weigh 252lbs. I'm 5'11'' and I have a lot of muscle mass. I put on muscle easily in my legs and chest/arms/back. I'm built like a lineman.

My other question is veggie carbs? Do you or don't you subtract grams of carbs when you add in the grams of fiber?

We're big spinach, lettuce, broccoli eaters and I just want to make sure we portion those correctly when we begin to keep us at the 30g mark.

 

[hadrion]

i'm sure statistically you both are more likely to succeed when going on this diet together.

i can't imagine figuring out "what's for dinner" when one person is doing the anabolic diet and the other is doing a standard diet.

I know. When I first began researching it and telling my wife about it I was concerned, but she told me she wanted to do it since she's training as hard as I am and we both are trying to reach our fat loss/weight loss goals.

We thought this regimen would work for us since we both avoid too many carbs mostly during the week, but tend to splurge on them on the weekend.

Putting some science behind it and doing it right would probably only help us.

I'd say the biggest difference is we eat VERY low fat cuts of meat only now. Most of the fat we eat comes from fish. We want to see what would happen by increasing the fat to the ratios the AD suggests.

That might be the key to flip the switch for us right now in addition to restricting the carbs until the carb up period.

 

[crader]

I know that as far as from a gender perspective there is no reason she can't do it.

 

[ThomasRivera]

Thomas -- Thanks so much for your responses.

Is there any reason why I couldn't/shouldn't do a full body resistance workout on M-W-F?

What's worked for me thus far on my lifting days is I pair up an upper body and lower body exercise, for instance I'll do incline bench for a set and then do a set of dead lifts and do 3-4 sets of that combo before moving onto another body part. I hit every upper body part in concert with a lower body exercise in my workout.

It keeps my heart rate up and it was helpful for me in burning off fat/calories during my resistance.

I can definitely drop one of the cardio (spinning or HIIT) days in the week. That's not a problem.

I'm still doughy -- I dropped 8.5 inches off my waist since May, but I'm still soft around the middle. Cuts show in my arms, legs, back and my chest is big and solid and not flabby.

I don't know what my BF% is right now. I need to get those numbers. Right now I weigh 252lbs. I'm 5'11'' and I have a lot of muscle mass. I put on muscle easily in my legs and chest/arms/back. I'm built like a lineman.

My other question is veggie carbs? Do you or don't you subtract grams of carbs when you add in the grams of fiber?

We're big spinach, lettuce, broccoli eaters and I just want to make sure we portion those correctly when we begin to keep us at the 30g mark.

First 24 hours: Per pound of lean body mass
Protein intake:.9 grams per a pound
Fat intake:~.4 grams per a pound
Carb intake:4.5 grams per pound

Second 24 hours
Protein intake:.9 grams per a pound
Fat intake:~.2 grams per a pound
Carb intake:2.25 grams per pound

You could do a M-W-F full body if thats what works for you. I would however keep M-W workouts in the 8-12 range, friday you will need to do a full body depletion workout, which is reps around 15, constantly going from one exercise to another. This is to deplete glycogen levels and to prepare your body for the carb load.

You always subtract fiber from your total count. If your broccoli has 5 carbs and 4 grams of fiber you count it as 1 carb. You can check information like that on nutritiondata.com


When you were doing low fat dieting, did you ever have refeeds? Days where you upped the carb and calorie intake? Or was it all just alot of low calorie days strung together?

 

[hadrion]

Thomas --

It was mostly a lot of low cal days strung together. I dropped bread and potatoes and was getting carbs through veggies, fruit, brown rice and the whole wheat pasta but keeping portions and calories low.

Then I'd allow myself a treat/cheat meal once in awhile. Maybe once every 7-10 days or so. But it was only one meal.

I didn't even know about a carb up (or the principles behind it) until reading about the AD.

It seems to make a lot of sense to me as to the way I like to eat as I can be strict during the week and allow myself indulgences on the weekend. My wife is the same way.

I just want to make sure we can continue to lose fat and retain this muscle we've worked our asses off for since May.

We're getting to that point that if we keep eating the way we currently are, we're going to have to keep restricting calories lower and lower to an uncomfortable level for us both.

 

[hadrion]

I know that as far as from a gender perspective there is no reason she can't do it.

Thanks for the response Crader.

 

[ThomasRivera]

Part of the problem with what you two are doing is the basis of your diet is very basic, it's more of the things you see perpetrated in the media and in magazines. You need refeeds. Refeeds not only restore glyocgen levels in the muscles, which makes for better workouts. But it shifts your metabolic balance back to normal, when you go low calorie for too long your body will slow metabolism to prevent wasting away.

Going on AD not only delegates fat as the main source of energy, but with the carb loads you get that refeed and shift in metabolism/hormones.

 

[Rugger]

Theoretically the AD increases test, so make sure she's alright with that

 

[ThomasRivera]

Theoretically the AD increases test, so make sure she's alright with that

Haha, one of the guys I know from around where I live was reading that thread and brought that up to me before.

 

[SilentBob187]

Ya'll just be careful. Two people pissed off going low carb for a few months can make for an unhappy house. Just my two cents.