Rip, do you rotate carbs? How many grams for your low and high days?
Were you able to diet on a higher amount of calories on the High protein diet?
One thing I have never done with my contest prep is count calories.
However, I am pretty sure that I did eat more on the higher protein diet, and I DEFINITELY felt more full most of the time.
The lower protein diet I did in 2006 consisted of A LOT of veggies, some fruit, and it did involve carb cycling. I didn't count calories or macros because I was eating sooo many veggies that I didn't worry too much about it, but I would do three low carb days followed by one high carb day.
The low carb day included oats in the morning as my main complex carb for the day and a small serving of beans in the afternoon.
The high carb day included the oats along with an additional piece of fruit in the morning, 1/2 avocado, and a sweet potato in the afternoon.
This was a VERY un-conventional BB diet, as it included fruit all the way through and was based on food combining, so starches and proteins were not allowed to be consumed together. Five meals per day. I had fruit salad for breakfast many mornings.
I managed to get very lean on this diet, but I was VERY hungry alot of the time, and I definitely lost some lean muscle mass in the process, I am certain of that. I was competing in figure at the time, so maintaining all of my muscle mass while dieting was less of a concern - I usually had too much anyway and was always stressing about my legs being too "big" for figure.
The diet I followed this year for my BB contest prep was much more of an old-school BB diet, and I loved it!!
I definitely ate more, and more frequently.
It was based on counting carbs and protein, with very little fat included....a few nuts here and there or a little flax oil, and that was it for fats.
No carb cycling, as the diet was relatively low-carb all the way around and just got lower in carbs as I got leaner and closer to the show. It was probably around 1400 or 1500 calories, but I am not sure. Calories also got lower as I got closer to the show, but the increase in protein helped me from starving to death. Energy was a problem, of course.
I started with six meals that totalled 210 g protein and 210 g carbs (120 complex, 40 simple, 50 fibrous).
After a few weeks, I moved to 7 meals that totalled 220-240 g protein and 130 carbs (60 complex, 20 simple, 50 fibrous).
In the final weeks, it was 8 meals that totalled around 220-240 g protein and 80 g carbs (30 complex, 50 fibrous).
We did do some carb cycling in the last few weeks of my prep, but that was more to experiment with carb depleting and loading to make sure that I did it right the week of the show. I did two rounds of carb depleting/loading before the week of the show, to see how it worked for me and what carbs worked best. For carb depleting, I went three days - Day 1 50 grams carbs, Day 2 25 grams carbs, and Day 3 0 grams carbs. It was during this time that I discovered that I could NEVER survive on a zero carb diet. Even just that one serving of complex carbs in the morning made a HUGE difference in how I felt during the entire day.
I'll try to dig up a copy of Palumbo's diet for women...I have seen it around. His diet includes more fats though. When I carb depleted, I didn't have any fats either, and I think that makes a HUGE difference. Your body treats fats kind of like carbs when you don't have any carbs, and this makes it more tolerable.