About the Decadent Tuna and Water Diet


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I’m beginning to get my stride after stumbling off the starting block nearly three weeks ago. The eruption that is the holidays is a neatly cataloged memory now and our attention has returned to the typical things of today and tomorrow. We’re back to the same ole', same ole': life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; work, bills and worldly woes; workouts, diet and getting lean. Thank God we’re optimists -- the days are welcome and the future bright. We have iron in our blood and our bodies are blast furnaces. We’re hot and we cook, we’re strong and we build.

As I write I try to recall the quality of my training and physical condition at this time last year. Try it. It’s a revelation. My routine, I’m sure, hasn’t changed much since a year ago. I mean, every day my training is slightly different: another breakthrough, another step back, a new innovation to accommodate an unexpected limitation; some unique exercise combination to maintain interest while challenging my muscular system with a pounding. I’ve stepped forward in my shoulder and chest training, indicating my wrists and elbows are healthier than ever. My knees took a beating last fall from some heavy squatting, so you’ll not hear me brag about setting lower body records anytime soon. You can call that a painful step back -- from which I shall step forward, I promise. Curling is up and I resurrected some old exercises for tris and delts offering them new life. Overall, a good year and the body feels super.

You caught me on a good day. Tomorrow I might be limping and growling like an old bear. Beware of the bear.

My diet is right on. Cheerios for breakfast, hotdogs for lunch and a frozen Hearty Man Dinner for -- you guessed it -- dinner. I like Coke, don’t you? We joke. Can you imagine? Most people eat that way, give or take sausage pizza and a few beers.

I am embarrassingly strict: steaks, poultry and fish, plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit, choice dairy products, enough grains and nuts, the wide range of supplements and no junk... unless Clif Bars and bran muffins are considered junk. Get this: no ice cream, no pizza, no cake, no pie or pastry or cookies, no booze and no dope for years. I also have no friends and no life. But, hey, at least I’m miserable.

Joking again. I have Mugsy and Laree!

Now, had I seriously indulged, as some of you might have over the days and months gone by, I would amend the harm done, great or small, by applying the famous Tuna and Water Diet. The delightful menu, devised by Stone Age bodybuilders who grew up in the Dungeon of Muscle Beach, works wonders. I’d then watch the fat melt away and my disciplined nature restore.

You no doubt know the creature about which I speak. It has a life of its own.

For those who intentionally forgot the plan, or have not frequented Hangar X often enough to know the Bomber Basics, let me take the time and opportunity to detail the scheme. You are not the first bomber looking for clarification and elaboration of the tuna and water diet.

The amount of tuna consumed during the tuna and water regimen does not have to meet our daily grams-per-pound protein requirement. The only rule: Ingest no less than 100 grams of protein, regardless of structure and gender. This is, after all, a limited-time diet matched with modified light-weight exercise, possibly including higher-rep and superset training. It offers the restraint and cleansing features of a fast, yet assures the body of clean, efficient protein to grow and go.

The tuna and water eating plan is a healthy and sure way to break the ice in our frigid attempts to lose weight, while retaining maximum muscle mass, muscle energy and strength.

I recommend you maintain your fundamental vitamin and mineral supplementation throughout your decadent and determined T&W experience. Add a slug or two of essential fatty acids to augment the system’s critical need for good fat, its useful energy calories and pizzazz.

The strict menu is up for any smart modifications one chooses to make once he or she has established the first critical steps the diet is designed to achieve. The steps are of a mental, physical and physiological nature, and often spiritual and emotional as well. They include:

1) The accomplishment of a challenging three-day goal

2) The reinforcement and affirmation from realizing a tough commitment

3) Overcoming procrastination by finally implementing a restricted eating plan

4) Creating healthy habits, breaking unhealthy habits

5) Initiating and developing the precious character qualities of discipline and perseverance

6) The reality of the plan’s physical results -- loss of unwanted weight and the establishment of positive chemistry changes, limited as they might be in the early stages of your journey

The classic application covers three full days consuming as much tuna as you can tolerate in four to six equal portions throughout the day, plus all the water you can drink. Some folks for their own reasons extend the diet for a week or 10 days; others apply the regimen regularly at the beginning of each month. The rigidness and purity of the diet is calculated and a central part of the routine’s meaningfulness -- provides order, discipline, challenge and strategy. Call it a test.

"Be strong," is my encouragement, or admonishment, depending on the attending ear. Anything less than strong is, of course, weak. I have a few friends who don’t see it that way, but they’re having dessert at the moment.

The serious dieter who dares to extend their 3-day T&W trip into an odyssey is wise to supplement the diet with a hefty full-spectrum amino acid formulation. This will further assure tissue building and energy supporting protein needs and supply those amino acids necessary for the completion of the body’s numerous foundational ingredients and functions.

Bomber Blend plus water is a smart fortifier to the aggressive musclebuilding and fat-loss plan. But, then, you knew that.

I shouldn’t offer you any margins of leeway in your initial days of dieting strictness, but we’ve been a crew for a long time. Sometime after the 20th can of tuna in a row, our mind and will can play games on us. The cans disappear, we lose the opener, our fingers become strangely disabled; there are the temper tantrums, we forget our name. Try this: Add salsa or lemon juice or balsamic vinegar to your canned tuna. Wow, thanks, Bomber. If you can’t look at another can of the nasty stuff, but are bound to continue, sauté a piece of fresh fish in olive oil. Get’s the less-valiant warriors through the day.

Once you cross the barren badlands, you can make broader modifications to the diet to suit your needs and desires: Add all the salad you want for the remainder of the week, or bring in some poultry in place of the tuna. After a week of smart eating and strong discipline, low-fat dairy products can be added sparingly to the menu -- cottage cheese, yogurt, milk, eggs. In two weeks some folks will be ready to visit the friendly butcher again for those steaks our muscles crave for growth.

Hi. 50 pounds of bright red meat, please.

The system-cleansing properties of the tuna and water diet are valuable. However, a wider purpose of the restricted menu is to cleanse the mind and spirit of the junk-food and overeating fixations. I’m free! I’m clean! I’m alive! Removing the source of trouble -- garbage and lots of it -- is wise; out-of-sight, out-of-mind works. The sound and tough routine establishes firm footing and sure direction for continued smart and right eating. The three-day investment is significant, its rewards are evident and hope is palpable -- enough to prompt (dare I say, inspire) you to forge ahead with courage and persistence.

How you ease into a more complete eating program, a lifelong plan, depends on a number of factors: how well you responded to the basic three-day diet (fat-loss, energy, well-being, fortitude); your discipline, commitment and vulnerabilities; the company you keep, your physical condition and healthiness; your weight loss needs and goals and so forth. You know what to do; you’ve come this far, you’re motivated by want, need and desire and you possess commonsense. You’re in motion. Keep going. Get there.

If that’s not enough and you want real knowledge and a fascinating education in how foods and eating schemes effect your hormones, fat storage and muscle growth, read Rob Faigin’s popular book, Natural Hormonal Enhancement. You’ll be amazed.

Be strong, be smart and forever grateful. Relieving your craft of extra baggage enables easier take-offs, safer landings and longer, more agile time in the sky.

Embrace the wind with wings spread wide.

God’s speed... Dave Draper

You've heard some rumors about mercury in fish, right?
Here's the full scoop.

As you begin to widen your tuna and water margins, Stella has a few tuna suggestions for you in this fishy new outtake from Stella's Kitchen.

For other great healthy cooking suggestions, here's the sampler pdf for Stella's cookbook

Another fine way to get excellent, quick food is to mix Udo's Wholesome Fast Food and Bombers Blend, in shakes, pancakes, low-carb cookies and other baked goods.

And, hey, this makes it perfect timing for a new training log!

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