The Shake Zag Diet

At the Beachbody Leadership conference this past weekend I got a lot of questions about the Shakeology cleanse as well as a lot of “how can I figure out how many calories I need?” Here is the answer to both: a version of the Shakeology Cleanse that you can do as often as you want and in almost any situation without risk of any performance loss.

Straight Dope followers have heard it’s my new preferred weight loss (or gain) plan. It’s not really new but just perfected (thanks to Shakeology) and is the easiest way to figure out how many calories you should be eating for performance. It’s a simple diet to follow and can be done in any situation, whether you’re sedentary or training like a White Buddhist Nun (sorry, inside joke—“your nuns into leather, Dante?”).

It’s essentially a combination of three things I’ve done in the past: the egg diet, the zig zag diet, and the Shakeology Cleanse, mainly focusing on the latter two. Here’s how it works.

It follows the principles of zig zagging: low calories two or three (sometimes four) days per week and normal calories on the others. Reverse this is you want to gain weight or suspect you’re not eating enough. The days can be consecutive or back and forth but I find that stringing them together works best.

For me, when trying to lose weight, dieting early in the week and eating what I want later and on the weekends works best, which is especially true because my weekends tend to be very active to the point where overeating is virtually impossible. This means that I get three days of zig (low cals), two days of zag (high cal), followed by two days of what works out to be zagging with a ton of exercise so that it’s still undereating.

When you zig zag your body tells you what it needs, what’s working and what isn’t, and fairly quickly you’ll know both the number of calories you should be eating for optimum performance and even how the macronutrients of those calories should be structured. By adding the Shakeology cleanse component you’ll pinpoint these things even quicker.

Zig days consist of eggs for breakfast, usually three for me with some added veggies. This is my only homage to the egg diet, which was an old school high protein diet where you eat an absurd amount of eggs. I find eggs in the AM is a good way to boost your metabolism, especially if they are not eaten with many carbs. The rest of the day consists of Shakeology. Sometimes plain and sometimes with fruit (berries, banana, whatever) and some chia seeds. An average day has one plain and one more robust shake. Dinner is a salad or veggie dish. Starches are off but I do allow legumes, quinoa (a veggie). Dinner is modest , but not small, so that the daily calorie totals are low. This varies but should be over 1000 for sure. I generally go 1200 – 1500.

I get a lot of caffeine questions and in this scenario it’s totally fine: coffee or tea. I drop caffeine when I’m cleansing because of its heightened effects when you aren’t eating much food. But this is a lifestyle and caffeine is good for exercise and coffee and tea and quite healthy if they don’t have junk added to them. I also allow wine and or beer with dinner, though I try and stick with wine because it fits the theme better. I drink plenty of water and don’t alter my supplement plan. Again, it’s a lifestyle and not a cleanse.

Zag days aren’t extravagant. I just eat normal, which generally means bread, cereal, rice etc will come back on. Portions might get bigger, but things are similar. I eat a lot of salad, veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. I don’t eat much meat of any kind. Most days I drink Shakeology and if it’s more convenient I’ll sometimes drink it twice. I eat for what I’m doing and this varies massively over the year. If it’s a easy day, which say includes an hour or so of training, I might only eat 2500 cals or so. If it’s a big day out I might eat 5 or 6 thousand calories. On average I’d say I’m in the 3000 ballpark on a work day that includes a couple hours of training and an easier hour or so dog hike.

I do this until I’m at the weight that I desire. While it can be done indefinitely you’ll probably grow bored of it in time. I do a version of it somewhat regularly just to get a check on where I’m at and how I’m functioning. There never seems to be a wrong time (except any holiday where culinary experience it vital) to follow this plan.

Of course when you do this it should be set up for you personally. Caloric calculators are always wrong. All they provide you with is a ballpark figure: a starting place. No matter what you will need take this figure and tweak it because almost any two people, even who are physiologically identical, will have different metabolisms. And even compared to yourself you need to consistently alter and tweak because your metabolism changes throughout your life, depending on many factors.

When zig zagging you’ll want to pay close attention to what you are eating. My casual attitude comes with years of experience. Your body will tell you, in time, what is working and what isn’t. Performance is your gauge. When you’re killing your workouts you’ll know you’ve got it dialed. Body composition change will then, by extension, be forced to follow.

pics: shakes and coffee, the cornerstone of any comeback.

Size Matters

I recall a conversation while watching an old training video of Ben Moon and Jerry Moffat that went something like this.

PERSON ONE

Makes me feel like training.

PERSON TWO

Makes me feel like not eating.

In gravity sports weight is key and there’s no way to beat around the bush about it. Sure, there’s an occasional mutant who climbs hard without a totally lithe frame (see most of the WFH pics as examples) but it’s far from the norm. Gravity ensures that no amount of muscle strength can offset the power and endurance increases that you make when you lose weight. We see a more telling example in linear sports such as cycling where technique is not as varied. When roads are flat heavier riders rule. But as they turn upward weight becomes more and more of an issue to the point where the fastest times up mountains are from men who often resemble elves. There’s a simple reason why no one wins the Tour weighing more than about 150 pounds and it’s the same as why no one could keep up with Legolas on a three day run: size matters.

In any training program for climbing weight should come into play at some point. Like cyclists, runners, boxers, and wrestlers, most of us don’t walk around at fighting weight. And it’s not just because we like to drink beer and eat ribs in the offseason. These sports require us, at our best, to weigh less than our bodies naturally would.

The strategy for how to lose this weight is tricky. When doing high volume training it’s easy to lose weight but, if you are trying to increase muscle mass at all, it’s impractical to under eat because you risk not recovering from exercise and, thus, wasting the time you’ve been training. Therefore, I always target weight loss while I’m power training.

Overview note: this is only if you are already at your natural weight. If you have excessive weight to lose it should be done during all phases of your program, as far away from your actual competition dates as possible. This type of weight loss should be slow, steady, and accomplished by eating clean and exercising. Today’s example is how to get down to fighting weight only.



Anyways, so why during the power phase? Because power training is lower volume and higher intensity than any other phase. This means that you aren’t as hungry as when your body is altering its amount of muscle mass. Thus carbohydrate consumption can drop without your brain going into full revolt (your brain functions primarily on glycogen). In short, the power phase is the best time to streamline your diet to recover from exercise and feel good.

I began the WFH at 173. After the hypertrophy phase I’d creeped up to 178. After three weeks of power I’m at 165. I accomplished this without a lot of suffering or going into nutrient bonk. My technique is a combination of the Shakeology Cleanse, zig zag dieting, and an old trick we used to call the egg diet.

The egg diet was a ridiculous Atkins-stage-one-type of thing where we’d eat a ton of eggs (for protein) and little else to boost our metabolisms. My current plan used only used one aspect: eggs for breakfast (3 eggs with some diced veggies). My next meals are Shakeology, sometimes with some added fruit. Shakeology shines here because it’s so nutrient dense, or high in nutrients while low in calories. Dinner, also a-la the Shakeology cleanse is a salad or something similar, like a veggie dish. I allow any healthy additives: nuts, seeds (always chia for me), legumes, more eggs, balsamic/olive oil (no meat). Overall calories for me on these days is low. I don’t count but they’re in the 1000-1500 range.



Finally, I enact zig zag principles, eating one to three days per above (three to four days per week total) and normal on the other days. This way I stay strong and energized and can continue this diet for as long as it takes to get to where I want to be. Each week I tweak it slightly, based on the prior week’s success, until I’m ready to rumble.

vids: another option for weight loss is to simply watch vision quest, exercise like a madman, and not eat. “why do you want to get smaller and wrestle a small guy?”

Zig Zag Dieting and Listening To Your Body

This is a reference post, which I’m creating because I couldn’t find this info for what I was planning on writing today. Given that we dish this advice all the time I thought we must have an FAQ about it on the Message Boards. Alas, we don’t. So instead of writing the information down over and over I’m creating a post to reference each time anyone at Beachbody refers to zig zag dieting. You hear the phase “listen to your body” all the time. Zig zag dieting actually teaches your body how to have a conversation with you.

Not to be confused with yo-yo dieting, zig zag is a technique that should be used any time you want to increase or decrease your daily caloric intake and can be used to find out what your caloric intake should be. Instead of moving straight to a new daily caloric number you move in smaller increments on a staggered schedule. Here’s an example of how it works:

Say, for example, you’re eating 1500 calories a day and have been for a period of time where you’ve lost weight. Now your weight loss has stagnated. This is one of our most common scenarios because the new, fitter you has a different body composition than the former you. You have more muscle and a higher basal metabolic rate (BMR). In order to continue your weight loss you need to eat more because 1500 calories isn’t enough—even though it once was—and now your body is reacting by slowing its metabolism and releasing cortisol in a protective response (often called starvation mode because this is how your body would respond to being starved).

At times this could be a lot more because huge caloric reductions can work in the initial stages of a program for deconditioned people. Let’s say that the individual in question runs a caloric calculation and figures they need 2,500 calories per day.

Weight times 10, plus 10-30% for daily activity depending on how active you are, plus the estimated caloric burn of your exercise, or just go here.

You don’t want to jump straight to 2500 calories. First, it would create some shock to your system and, second, it may be wrong as those calculators only give ballpark figures. The most effective thing to do is to zig zag your caloric intake. In this instance I would recommend eating 2000 calories per day for 3-4 days per week and 1500 calories the other days. Then you note how your body responds, which I would expect to be positively on the higher caloric days and by feeling famished on the low-cal days.

You want to be energized but not hungry, so after a week or two of this I would bump up to around 2200 cals for 4 or 5 days and 1500 cals on 2 days for, maybe one week. If I’m still starving on the low days try bumping them up to 2000 and see how you respond. Use this tactic until you regulate, which means that you’re energized but not hungry and also not full. You can tell when you’re eating too many calories because you’ll begin to feel full, you won’t digest your food between meals, and you’ll feel more lethargic at the beginning of workouts.

Zig zag dieting works whether you need to reduce or increase your caloric intake, and whether you need a subtle change or dramatic change. There is no numbers formula except to increase/decrease in small increments between 200 and 500 calories a day and to zig zag your caloric intake two to four times per week. Then you just listen and let your body tell you how much you should eat.