Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

I've decided to start a training log, so here it is.

Most of this has been covered in my preogress thread, but for the sake of having it all in one place, here's a quick recap.

I started the year at 190.5 lbs and cut down to 157 lbs as of May 1st.
I'm sitting at around 10% body fat right now. YMCA & US Navy formulas put me at 7.1% and 9.9%, respectively. 7.1% is definitely too low, but 9.9% sounds about right.

The goal is to hit a walk around weight of 185 lbs at 10% body fat, which would put me in a good position to be able to make weight at the 170 lb cut-off for the welterweigth division. So, I need to put on a lot of lean mass.

The plan is to continue cutting to 6% body fat which will put me at about 153 lbs and leave me with enough of a buffer that I can put on the fat that will inevitably come while bulking.
Going from roughly 153 lbs at 6% up to 185 lbs at 10% gives me room for about 10 lbs of fat gain and will keep me from having to do bulk/cut cycles.

As an added bonus, it looks like I'm going to have abs this summer for the first time in about a decade!

This was taken today, so this is the starting point for this journal.
Obviously I need to add mass everywhere, but as you can see in the pic, my chest is severely lagging.

I came off of my keto diet yesterday, so today was my first carb fuelled workout in about 2 weeks... what a difference! Strength is definitely not where it was before cutting out carbs, but I was feeling stronger and more energetic that I have been over the past couple of weeks.

It's also much needed cheat day for me today (first one in a month), so I'm not even counting calories. I'm just making sure to get enough protein, otherwise pretty much everything is fair game. Tofutti Key Lime Pie Cuties are incredible, by the way...

Chest and Shoulders
Didn't have my training partner with me today, so opted out of bench press or anything else that might crush me...

• Warm up - 5 minutes on the treadmill (2 min walk at 4mph, 2 min run at 10mph, 1 min walk at 3.5mph)
• Incline dumbbell press - 50lbs x 8, 60lbs x 7, 55lbs x 8
• Bodyweight dips - 3 sets to failure (10, 8, 7)
• Chest press machine - 150lbs x 10, 150lbs x 10, 150lbs x 8
• Pushups - 1 set to failure immediately following chest press (16 reps)
• Dumbbell Lateral Raise - 22.5lbs x 12, 25lbs x 10, 20lbs x 10
• Seated dumbbell shoulder press - 40lbs x 7, 35lbs x 8, 35lbs x 8
• One arm cable lateral raise - 25lbs x 12, 30lbs x 12, 30lbs x 10 (haven't done these in ages and started out way too light)
• Tight arm circles - 5lbs for 1 minute (alternating direction every 10 seconds), empty handed for 3 minutes (alternating direction every 10 seconds)
• Pushups - 1 set to failure immediately following arm circles (10 reps... shoulders are pretty fried by this point)

Did three 5 minute rounds of shadow boxing in the sauna afterwards, cooled off in the pool, then spent some time in the hot tub.

All in all a decent workout. Was a little off because I was training at the gym where I normally only do my morning cardio, and I felt a bit schizophrenic with the weights because of the sudden strength change. But, on the positive side, all the carbs and my pre-workout drink gave me an incredible pump.

Wow how do u do true keto while vegan?!? Excited to keep reading this journal

It sucked. Seriously. I don't really know how else to describe it. I don't think I'll do it again. I was cranky and my breath was terrible...

To be fair, I dropped 5 lbs in 10 days. I gained back 3lbs the day after I ate carbs again, so most of the weight loss was glycogen and water. I expected that, so it wasn't a shock, but I probably did drop about 2 lbs of actual fat.

It was 10 days of pretty much just natural peanut butter, Vega performance protein, soy protein powder, tofu, raw almonds, and a Gardein "Chick'n" breast every so often... I was only eating 1600 calories and taking in fewer than 20g net carbs. Just feels like such an unhealthy way to eat, I really have no idea how people stay on those diets indefinitely (granted, it would be a LOT easier as an omnivore...).

Diets & their gimmicks are my biggest pet peeve :/

Didn't list dumbbell shrugs in yesterday's workout: 80 lbs x 12, 80 lbs x 10, 100 lbs x 6
Would have forgotten about them completely, but woke up this morning really feeling it in my traps

Saw this on reddit and thought it was an appropriate way to sum up my weekend

So, my weekend re-feed may have been a little bit too enthusiastic. Ok, that's an understatement. I'm pretty much disgusted with myself. What started off on Friday morning as a beautifully engineered carb load; high GI morning, heavy leg workout, low GI afternoon (all carbs from sweet potato and oats), with less that 10% of daily calories coming from fat, turned into beer and pizza that evening. Then Saturday morning, figuring "well, I'm already started... why not just make this a cheat weekend, after all, I haven't eaten ANYTHING enjoyable in about a month", I made my way over to the local organic market which stocks the best variety of vegan treats and I stocked up... 4 pack of chocolate soy pudding, a box of Tofutti Cutties, chips, etc... and then I capped off the night with more beer and pizza while watching the Diaz vs Miller fight. Sunday wasn't much better. It was a disaster and I'm not proud of myself.

On Friday morning, coming off of keto, I was 157 lbs. I woke up today at 170 lbs! Now, I know a good chunk of that is glycogen and water; my muscles were starving for carbs and I had two very heavy workout on Friday and Saturday, so I'm sure they sucked up everything that they could handle, but still... I know I did some damage. Bloating aside, my abs are definitely blurry. So much so that I was too self concious to go in the pool and sauna after my morning cardio session. My weight after cardio had dropped to 167.5 lbs, so I was able to sweat out some of the water retention, but still...

Anyways, enough about that, time to move on... this week will be great. The diet plan is nailed down, I'm going to destroy myself in the gym, and I'll fix the damage, and improve from where I was before getting on that flight to Vegas. I want to look good for Sunday Rehab at the Hard Rock pool!

AM Cardio Session
Treadmill: 1 hour at a fast walking pace (fast as possible without breaking into a job)

• Avg. speed: 4.1 mph
• Avg. grade: 9.2%
• Distance: 4.04 miles
• Calories: 666

By this point, the sun had come out and it looked like a beautiful day, so I went outside to finish up my session.

Jogged another 1.75 miles at a fairly mellow pace (about 10 mph), burning 168 calories, according to MapMyRun.

So, about 850 calories knocked off before 7:00 am... now time to get ready for work. Tonight is back and biceps day, my favourite!

Meal number 2: Vega One vanilla chai mixed into oatmeal with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Tastes better than it looks...

Great training session tonight. Felt strong, had lots of energy, and the diet was bang on today.

Back and Biceps

• Warm up - Walk to the gym 1.8 km in roughly 15 minutes, good for about 100 calories
• Lat Pull-downs - 80 lbs x 6, 70 lbs x 10, 80 lbs x 6, Dropset 90 lbs x 3 to 70 x 6 (to failure)
• Barbell curls - 75 lbs x 8, 80 lbx x 7, 70 lbx x 8
• One arm dumbbell rows - 50 lbs x 10, 60 lbs x 10, 70 lbs x 8
• Reverse flys on pec-dec - 100 lbs x 8, 85 lbs x 10, 85 lbs x 10
• Dumbbell curls - 40 lbs x 10, 45 lbs x 6, 40 lbs x 6 superset with hammer curls at 30 lbs x 5
• Cardio - Treadmill for about 16:30 at 4mph and 10% grade, 175 calories burned

All in all a good workout, I felt I could have gone heavier for my first set on most movements.

Theirs nothing wrong in having a food blowout man.... Don't feel "disgusted", that's a pretty strong word to use. I rarely drink now but couple of wkends ago I had a few various spirits with mixers (jim beam & coke/ bourbon & cherry coke) I enjoyed the drinks a lot.

I actually swear by eating a pizza, once a week I work days/nights & it allows me to hit a load calories/carb/fat in one go. I eat pretty damn clean throughout the whole week, one pizzas not going to ruin that.

It's better to have a little cheat/bad, whatever you want to call it food than to really go off the rails in a big way.

AM Cardio Session
Treadmill: 50 minutes at a fast walking pace (fast as possible without breaking into a job)

• Avg. speed: 4.0 mph
• Avg. grade: 4.9%
• Distance: 3.28 miles
• Calories: 402

Weight is down to 165.5 lbs, so down 2 lbs since yesterday but still up 8.5 lbs since Friday morning.

No, you're right; I got pretty down on myself, but you need a day like that every now and then to stay sane... I just wish I had capped it at 1 day. More than anything, I was aggrevated with myself because of the timing; I have one more week until Vegas and I wanted to look my best. I was doing really well and this feels like it set me back a week... I know that's not the case (not like I ate 20,000 calories ), but it's going to take another day or so to get back to where I was, which cuts into time that I could have been using to make that last little bit of progress. Oh well, just more motivation to train harder


Today is a rest day, so just be cardio and no weights.
In addition to this morning's session I'll probably just take a good walk or something tonight, but I'll try to get in at least another hour. The weather has finally improved, so it shouldn't be too tough to get outside.

Tomorrow would normally be chest/delts/tris day, but my training partner can't make it tomorrow. So, I'll push it to Thursday so that I can go heavy and have a spotter. Instead, I'll just do some cardio and core work tomorrow.

My diet is slightly adjusted in preparation for Vegas, so right now I'm eating at a more substantial deficit than I normally would.
Days on which I lift are at -15% (1800 calories) and rest days (regardless of cardio) are -22.5% (1650 calories).
Once I get back (and after I fix the damage that I will inevitably do), I'll switch to 0% on training days (2150 calories) and -20% on rest days (1700 calories) which should give me a loss of 0.5 lbs per week. Slow and steady down to 6%.

upload pictures

|Was about to post this on my blog..kinda fitting

Haha, awesome... I haven't had a donut in AGES!
I know I can find vegan ones around here, but for whatever reason a) I never think about them when looking for a treat, or b) they just don't look that great when I'm trying to decide which one I want... There's a place in Seattle, which is about a 2.5 hour drive from me, called Mighty O donuts... oh man... amazing. Everything they have is vegan and these are the best donuts I've ever tried, vegan or not. Seattle is a nice little food getaway; there are a couple places I always make sure to go. Mighty O is one and Pizza Pi Vegan Pizzeria is the other... absolutely incredible. I can't get anything like it up here There are tons of vegetarian/vegan restaurants in the university district down there.

When I'm in Vegas I'll be sure to make a trip out to Whole Foods, they've got a great selection of stuff. I was so disappointed when I got back to Vancouver after my last time in Vegas and visited our Whole Foods only to discover that they don't offer the same selection of ready to eat stuff... probably one of my top five best public tantrums.