Velocity Diet 3.0 by T-Nation.com
At the conclusion of the 4th week of the Velocity Diet, we shift from the “Program” phase to the “Transition” one. This transition is from the all-shakes, all the time way of life back towards something more sustainable and less off-putting to the innocent bystanders who have watched you not chew your food for the best part of a month.
To say that this is something to look forward to would be something of an understatement. There are also some different moves in the workouts, too, so that will also get a bit of a shake-up (pardon the pun).
Here’s the official Transition Phase description:
WEEK 1: One Healthy Solid Meal (HSM) Per Day — Every day is now “healthy solid meal day,” with one HSM per day. The timing of this meal is up to you, but I suggest your last meal of the day should be a Low-Carb Metabolic Drive shake. This will help prevent nighttime overeating.
WEEK 2: Two HSMs Per Day — Have two HSMs and two or three shakes each day. One way to do this is to have a shake to begin your day, a shake as a midday snack, and a shake to end your day. Again, this solves the nighttime overeating problem, while allowing you to have a fast and healthy breakfast, something many busy people skip.
On my previous time through the program, this is, honestly, the easiest part to maintain. Even when I’m off it entirely, I’ll do the shake for breakfast and lunch out of pure convenience — the powder lives in my desk, we’ve been given 500ml shakers by the office, and there are drinking fountains and bottled water available. For someone who hasn’t eaten breakfast regularly since high school, this is one of the better long-term effects that doesn’t necessarily show up at the gym or beach.
Sticking to It
It would be accurate to say “better than Week 3, but not perfect.” When the “worst” thing you can say you ate was chips and salsa and some cheese sticks, it’s not a bad week.
Workouts went very well, even when they had to be broken up into split sessions due to equipment reasons. I also added some non-program workout days. Pushed some weights a bit more, and think there’s actual visual progress being made.
Progress
So, fueled in part by how disappointed I was in the time trial for the challenge event the week before, last week’s was attacked with a bit more intensity, and it paid off, with an ET of 19:32 (an improvement of 1:53 over last week, and 1:28 overall).
The scale dropped another couple of pounds, and body fat is still trending down towards the target coordinates. It’s not uncommon for folks to keep things going in the right direction through the Transition phase and beyond, and I’m hopeful that this will be the case for me as well, but we shall see.
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