First, let me just fill you in on how I started this whole journey. I was a fat guy who wanted to lose body fat and stop feeling like a deadbeat. I wasn’t an expert on nutrition or fitness. I just set out to follow the advice of people who knew what they were talking about and learn from the best. I knew the fat shredder plan was for me, and I knew from my coach, Josh Spencer, that he had success running a calorie deficit. I did a lot of research on how much of a deficit I should run, and decided that if my body could handle a 1,000 calorie deficit without bonking on the workouts, that’s what I would shoot for.
It worked great. I would get tired by the end of the day, but I could bring it on those morning workouts without bonking. I started studying more and more about nutrition tracking and figuring out precise percentages and knew that would help me dial in even better. So I did that.
The entire first month I avoided all sugars like the plague. I also stayed away from recovery drinks like the Results / Recovery formula because of the carbs / sugar. I feared it would interfere with my fat loss goals. I got my 1900 fat shredder diet dialed in very well during that first month, and I recorded it for you (that’s what you see in the “nutrition zone” when you look at my 1900 calorie diet). I used Shakeology and actually made that my post-workout shake rather than a recovery drink. I even did a YouTube video showing that.
However, the more I studied, the more evidence I found that a recovery drink was NOT detrimental to fat loss, and in fact might help me reach my results by refueling my muscles for better, more complete recovery between workouts.
I decided in month 2 to add the Results/Recovery formula to my plan. I was nervous because things were already going well and I sure didn’t want to sidetrack myself. I was running such a huge deficit on calories already (1000 cals less than my “maintenance level”), so rather than further reduce my calories and carbs to factor in the R/R formula, I simply added it to my diet without changing anything else. I did that for the rest of the round 1.
So in reality, I spent the last 2 months of Round 1 taking in a total of more like 2100 calories on lift days and on PlyoX day. I didn’t take the R/R on the lighter days (yoga, kenpo, and stretch). That also means my carb % was higher than 30% on those 4 days per week since I wasn’t adjusting the other carbs down to make up for it. I felt like this was fine to do since I was already at such a large deficit whether with or without the R/R formula, but had I been closer to my maintenance level for my diet I wouldn’t have just added it without compensating for it in other areas.
And BTW, adding the R/R to my Round 1 diet was a great decision. The difference in my energy level, my recovery time, and my strength gains went through the roof in those last 2 months, so I was very glad I added that to my nutrition.
After Round 1, once I worked on developing a Round 2 maintenance diet (3,000 cals at 40/40/20), I decided that I must now factor the Results/Recovery formula into my daily percentages and totals to more accurately hit my target #’s. And that’s what I’ve done. I also included it in my bulking diet totals.
I know it would have probably just been easier if I went back in and added the R/R to the 1900 fat shredder diet in my nutrition zone just to avoid the questions from observant teamRIPPED members, but then I would have needed to adjust the other amounts of carbs to compensate and keep the percentages at 50/30/20, and that would be misleading since that’s not what I really did. I really want to be as clear as possible about what I did to get the results I got.
I hope that clears it up a bit about the R/R formula and how it factored into my round 1 diet.
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
