Derek's Shoot Prep, Phase 1 - Derek

At long last, the shoot is complete! Not only that, but it was a great success and a lot of fun too. Above is a sample of how the pictures came out. We are currently going through the shots and picking our favorites to be finalized, so before we have those to post I will begin the breakdown of our long preparation.

Our initial date set for the photo shoot gave us 12 weeks of preparation (it actually wound up being 15, but the extra time paid off) so I set us up with 3 four-week phases to address separate goals.

I wanted to come in a little more muscular and heavier than I was for my December shoot, so I designated my first phase a muscle gain phase. The strategies I used were:

• A high calorie diet (4000+ calories per day) consisting of extra large servings of our typical whole food meals plus two bean shakes with added peanut butter and an almond butter sandwich on Ezekiel bread per day. I also added peanut butter to my morning oatmeal.

• A heavy free-weight total body routine. For this I used the total body plan I designed and have previously posted on, which you can view here.
  

While I was successful in gaining both weight (I reached my heaviest weight yet as a vegan) and strength during this phase, I also observed my body-fat jump to its highest level since I became vegan. From this I realized on future muscle gain phases I need to be much more cautious of my fat intake to ensure that I am gaining as much muscle and as little fat as possible.