After a few days of waiting by the mailbox, the pictures are finally here! With the immediate departure to Asheville after our return to Richmond the last two weeks have been pretty crazy! It’s good to be back now and have a chance to get back into our routine of eating/training and preparing for parenthood!!!
This contest was a blast and wouldn’t have been the same without all the support from our friends in the vegan community. Check out all the pictures here. A special thanks to Ed Bauer for helping me represent Vegan Bodybuilding, and to Josh Avery and Rebecca Bolte for taking some amazing photos! You guys rock!
Here are the videos of my posing routine and the awards from the show courtesy of Josh Avery:
Wow is all I can say…you looked amazing man! Congratulations.
I saw that you kept your carbs high with plenty of oatmeal, brown rice and yams…I would love to hear a more detailed overview of what your pre-contest diet looked like if you’re willing to share!
I’m just trying to figure out how you got so ripped with such a high amount of whole foods carbs.
Did you bring fat down to 10 percent or was it a little higher?
And when you say whole foods does that mean that you did not use any Nitrofusion or Sunwarrior protein powder?
I’m a vegan myself and don’t feel like I’ve made the gains I’ve wanted to despite training hard and eating plenty of beans, quinoa, nuts, etc…everytime I try to gain weight I end up with a higher fat percentage and when I cut back down I’m exactly where I was before. So I’m super interested in what you’re doing and what I can learn from that.
Thanks.
Once again, congratulations! You definitely represented!
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you! Yes, I did a bit of an experiment to see if I could still get lean by dropping total calories and reducing fat to 10-15% of calories rather than dropping carbs and it worked beautifully! I felt great during the entire dieting process and I had plenty of energy on stage (even with the most brutal posing calls you can imagine!). I got the vast majority of calories from whole foods yes, plus I was adding a Sunwarrior protein shake after workouts and often having another scoop in my whole food shakes as well. I will be posting my pre-contest food journal at some point soon, so you’ll be able to go over every morsel and hopefully get some good ideas for yourself! Another tips is to make sure you are progressing in strength as well as size. If you get stronger when you get bigger and keep training heavy as you slowly cut down you should hold onto that newly added muscle. And if you aren’t getting stronger, you may not be adding that much muscle to begin with. I hope this helps!
Derek
Thanks for replying man!
Your experiment definitely worked! I’ll just check in for the update on the journal then.
As far as your tip it’s a good one. However, most of the time the problem is that I do gain strength…and a bit of weight, but when I cut my calories down I don’t feel as strong.
Maybe it has something to with cutting down slowly as you said.
Looking forward to see exactly what you’ve been doing!
By the way, how much do you charge for your distance coaching services? I don’t think I could find the prices anywhere.
Congrats, Derek! You looked amazing! Fantastic competition. You’re THE man to represent Vegan bodybuilders everywhere! Great job man.
Wow, thank you so much Carlos! We work hard to spread the word, so thank you for your support!