The final week of contest prep is here! This Wednesday we will be flying to Seattle for my second bodybuilding show on Saturday and I can’t wait to see old and new friends and hit the stage! The final week of my contest preparations will look a lot like the final phase of my barbarian photoshoot preparations,  with a few tweaks. My workouts have changed from the heavy and more intense training I was focusing on to fast paced, higher volume training in the last few weeks to really burn a lot of calories and develope as much deffinition as possible. You can check out my ongoing exercise journal on veganbodybuilding.com here.

For most bodybuilders the final week of preparation marks the home stretch of their high protein,  low-carb diets used to eliminate all traces of bodyfat. Seeing as it is nearly impossible to achieve carbohydrate depletion on a whole-foods plant based diet, I decided to prepare for this show without manipulating my macro-nutrients (protein/carbs/fats) at all. To go from the roughly 8% bodyfat that I normally am to 3-5% for the contest I instead reduced my total calories and increased my cardio, especially before breakfast and dinner when my stomach was the emptiest. The result? I was 4.5% bodyfat yesterday morning when I tested it using pinchfold calipers! This was on a high carb diet with plenty of oatmeal, brown rice, yams, and even fruit! Needless to say I am very excited about not having to suffer through an unhealthy low carbohydrate diet and still getting awesome results, and with another week I hope to get even leaner! Check out the pictures on my journal and wish me luck this time next week!!