Marcella Shoot Prep, Phase 2 - Derek

Great News! The final edited shots are starting to come in (behold one above), so I will be able to post them in all their glory soon. In the meantime, I'd like to continue with our shoot prep work.

Marcella's first phase had caused a rapid loss in weight, including muscle, so for this routine I made several changes to help maintain muscle while losing fat. You can see her routine here.

• I greatly increased the volume of all her lifting by increasing sets, number of exercises, and scheduling 2 workouts per muscle group each week.

• Rest intervals were increased and reps were decreased on everything but leg exercises to ensure heavy weight could be used and muscle could be built/maintained. Legs were kept high rep and low rest because this is an area she wanted to lean up in the most.

• Nutritionally, I realized small portions of our regular diet might not be precise enough, so I began digging through my assorted muscle magazines searching for meal-plans to base a template on. After finding some reasonable pre-contest eating schedules used by successful bodybuilders and figure competitors I picked them apart on excel to find calories, protein, carbs, and fat per pound of body weight we should be shooting for. Naturally, Marcella took the idea and ran with it, and the Interactive Meal Planner was born!
• This tool took the guess work out of our meal schedule and greatly improved our success during this preparation.

As mentioned with my own phase two routine, I erred on the side of way too much work with this one. Since we usually work out together, Marcella also took part in some unscheduled rest days and skipped workouts due to my programming optimism, but all in all the vast majority was completed and she quickly was back on track to her goal physique.

Derek's Shoot Prep, Phase 2 - Derek

I would now like to continue my series on our March barbarian photo shoot preparation by going into the second phase of my own program. Below is another unedited shot (my favorite solo one). The final copies should be coming in next week so stay tuned!


As I mentioned in my last post on this topic, by this point I had gained the weight I wanted, but my body fat was higher than I anticipated. With these facts in mind I shifted my routine to a bodybuilding style split schedule, as described here in an older post, and made it very high volume (lots of sets and reps) to get the detail and definition I wanted. Check out the routine here. My strategies were:

• High volume to really 'kill' all my muscles and burn some extra bodyfat.

• Lots of exercise variety to hit everything from every angle and get a more complete workout.

• Still some heavy weight moves in there to maintain muscle size and keep my strength up.

• Nutritionally, I kept my calories high, but I cut the bean shakes out and replaced them with regular protein shakes, which instantly dropped my fat intake and aided in my bodyfat loss.
  

As there was with the first phase, a drawback quickly appeared as I began this one. I was so gung-ho as I wrote up my weekly routine that I ended up biting off more than I could chew. I listed so much work that I usually ended up missing at least one of the workouts per week, and I often had to add a second rest day and push everything back due to fatigue.

In spite of all that, even attempting to stick to such a routine forced me to work hard and push my endurance, and ultimately my physique improved for it.

Easy muscle-building meals - Marcella

Here's some of our versions of the bodybuilding-style meal that, in the meat-eating world of Flex and Muscle & Fitness and so on, is the ubiquitous chicken, brown rice, and token green vegetable.

Every day for lunch we eat one of the following combinations of boringly wholesome food, microwaved so it couldn't be easier on a work day:

• quinoa, tofu, and TVP (textured vegetable protein, available dried in the bulk natural foods section usually - the water in the tofu rehydrates it when microwaved)
• quinoa and black beans
• brown rice, lentils, and sauteed onions
• brown rice and kidney beans
• whole wheat couscous, tomato sauce, and tofu...

The ratio of legume to grain is usually 2:1 ish, and I usually just spice it with a bit of salt and pepper. Course we also have a protein shake and salad and grapefruit.

Some dinners:
That's just Yves Lemon Herb "Chicken" skewers over brown rice with onions and peppers with asparagus on the side - a natural diuretic. Just saute onion and pepper in the rice pot before adding the water and continuing as usual. To cook the asparagus use non-stick cooking spray, minimal salt, and pepper, saute on med-high for a while, then add a bit of water, cover and cook a few minutes. Don't let it get mushy.


Gardein "Beef-less tips" (you will not believe how authentic Gardein stuff is - it's kind of frightening - available in the frozen section), thinly sliced and sauteed with onion and shredded cabbage and served with brown rice.


Spaghetti squash and tomato sauce with Gardein "Chicken tenders" (forzen section) and salad, always salad even if it's not pictured in the above meals. Derek says all the fresh greens we eat combat metabolic acidosis that can be a probem on a high-protein diet. Anyway, spaghetti squash is easy - slice in half crosswise, place face down on a baking dish and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Then shred with a fork onto your plate and top with sauce.

A Plant-Based Ingredient to Aviod - Derek

Before continuing on our photo prep plan, I wanted to do a quick post on an interesting article Marcella recently pointed out to me. I have mentioned to many of you who see me regularly that plant-based doesn't always equal healthy. A great example of this is french fries. Another is high fructose corn syrup.
High fructose corn syrup is found in virtually all processed foods that are sweetened and has been for the past 30 years. It has often been blamed at least in part for America's obesity rates skyrocketing in the same time frame, but I had not seen any hard evidence supporting this fact until reading this article. You can see it for yourself here.
The take home message is avoid processed foods in general, and those containing high fructose corn syrup in particular. The processing destroys many of the nutrients found in the whole food, and the additives are... not good.


So until I get back to the shoot prep, avoid processed foods and if you have to indulge, go for real sugar. Oh, and beans & greens!

Marcella's Shoot Prep, Phase 1 - Derek

While I was busy eating to bulk up, Marcella's phases were geared quite differently. She has been making steady gains in strength and muscle size for the past year and she wanted to continue doing so, but her main objective for the 12 week process was to lose body-fat and gain muscle definition. The strategies of her first phase may look familiar to many of you who have sought my help in reaching similar goals. She used:

• Small portions of our normal diet with absolutely no 'cheat food'

• Lots of cardio, including cardio intervals during weight training

• Super sets, to burn more calories while weight training

• High repetitions on her exercises, for the same reason. You can see her phase one routine here .

As with my first phase, this was a learning experience. Marcella did lose weight and body-fat quickly, but we also noticed her hard-earned upper body muscles shrink just as fast. This caused me to alter her routine sooner than I had planned to get her back on track. Her programs from this point on did contain a lot of cardio, but also used strategies to maintain muscle mass.