90 days of dieting
Here we go, 90 days of dieting coming up, let's get ready for those high volume low calorie meals and lots of cardio! It takes a lot of mental preparation to get the physical things ready for a diet but also to prepare your mind for the daily changes to life.
I'd say that I actually really look forward to dieting just because things are so similar for so much of the year because I only diet for a small period, so I really look forward to changing my life routine up but also I really look forward to how the healthier, whole foods and less calories makes me feel.
I go for high volume, low calorie meals (which you can see tons of them here on my Dtube channel, just look for what I eat in a day or full day of eating videos) and I make sure I'm on top of my water even more than usual because you are really effected by dehydration when you also don't have a lot of calorie energy to keep you going.
I started three months ago and this time I didn't have a contest or a photoshoot that I was prepping for which made things a lot less stressful! In total I went from 211 lbs to 189 lbs for a loss of 20 lbs!
Insights into my diet
Cardio: 25 minutes a day 6x/week
I gradually moved up from 10 minutes a day to 25 minutes a day by increasing the duration every 2-3 days until I reached 25 minutes a day. Cardio is not necessary for fat loss, eating in a deficit is, BUT in my experience and with my body type it helps move things along a LOT faster and provides a lot of extra benefits.
Diet: 2400 calories
When I started my diet I was bulking so I was getting 4-5k calories a day, I slowly worked down to 3500 by the time I started the diet. Then I dropped calories by 100-250 every 3-6 days until I got down to 2600 calories, then I slowly dropped by integers of 50 calories until I was at 2400 and ate roughly around there each day. I made sure I was getting a minimum of 115 grams of protein but often averaged 125-140 g.
TIPS:
Make a plan and set some goals. 15 minutes of cardio is a goal you can set and then you can make steps towards that very simply by just forcing yourself not to give up at minute 7 today. Then tomorrow you do 8 minutes, then you push to 9 minutes, etc.
Don't try to sneak in bad food and "make it work" you'll destroy your calorie count for the day and have to fight heavy hunger later in the day. Instead, come to terms with eating healthier, whole foods while dieting and turn it into something you're excited to try and feel the difference from.
Research and set up 3-5 meals that are EASY and HEALTHY whole foods recipes. You want things that you can rely on when you get home and you're starving because you went an extra hour at work and now because you're so hungry you have to either make some easy or go get food out. You want to have those easy meals ready so you don't have to rely on crappy food!
Make it a habit, not a torture. What I mean is, get used to what you are doing and find the joy in it. Don't mope, don't proclaim how much it sucks, because your subconscious mind will believe whatever you tell it and you will really start to hate it. You won't perform as well because you'll be doing the minimum and will just go through the movements. When you start to enjoy that meal you get after cardio, you start to look forward to it and push harder on cardio cause you'll get to eat it soon! When you start to enjoy the way it feels when your arms squeeze really hard during a lift, whatever it is, find the joy in it!
And ultimately, don't wait for tomorrow. Start as soon as you can and don't fault yourself to mess ups (as long as they are mistakes and not accepted habits). I have a friend who just turned 49 years old and he doesn't look a day over 25 years old (I'm serious) and my girlfriend 
I love yall and I appreciate you coming in to watch my video for motivation and hopefully read a bit to learn more about how to approach your diet!
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