Five Rules. That's the Diet.
No counting. No weighing. No app.
- No white carbs. Bread, rice, pasta, potato, cereal, tortillas, chips, oats, anything breaded or fried. If it's white — or could be white — it's out.
- Eat the same few meals over and over. The boredom is the feature. Decisions are what wear a plan down, so we remove the decisions.
- Don't drink calories. Water, black coffee, unsweetened tea, sparkling water. No juice, milk, soda, sports drinks, smoothies.
- No fruit, six days a week. Tomato and avocado get a pass.
- One cheat day — Saturday. Anything you want, no negotiation. Food, not drink. The alcohol rule doesn't take a day off.
The Plate
PROTEIN (palm and a half) + LEGUME (one cupped hand) + VEGETABLE (as much as you want)
Pick three proteins, two legumes, three vegetables. Buy those. Rotate them. That's the whole thing.
| Category | Choose from |
|---|---|
| Protein | Eggs · chicken breast or thigh · 90/10 ground beef · ground turkey · canned tuna · pork loin · any fish |
| Legume | Black beans · lentils · pinto beans · chickpeas. Canned is fine — rinse them. |
| Vegetable | Spinach · broccoli · green beans · asparagus · peppers · cauliflower · frozen mixed veg. Frozen beats not eating them. |
| Fat | Olive oil · butter · avocado (half a day) · almonds (20 max, only if actually hungry) |
| Flavor | Salsa · hot sauce · mustard · vinegar · garlic · every spice you own · lemon and lime juice |
| Drink | Water · black coffee (before noon) · unsweetened tea · sparkling water |
The Four Meals
| Meal | When | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30 min of waking | 30g protein. Three whole eggs + ½ cup black beans + a fistful of spinach. Four minutes. Or four scrambled eggs and salsa. |
| 2 | ~12:30pm | The plate. |
| 3 | ~4:30pm | The plate. Around training — before or after, whichever sits better. |
| 4 | ~7:30pm | The plate. Last food of the day. |
Meal 1 is the most important line in this document.
Not the workout. Not the cheat day. Thirty grams of protein inside thirty minutes of your feet hitting the floor. Don't skip it. Don't "not be hungry." Eat it anyway.
The Evening Rule
The kitchen closes at 8:00pm.
Hungry after eight? Sixteen ounces of water, wait fifteen minutes. Still hungry? Twenty almonds, or a scoop of protein in water. That's the entire menu after 8pm. There is nothing else on it.
Saturday
Eat what you want. Pizza, wings, ice cream, all of it. This isn't a loophole I'm tolerating — it's load-bearing. It refills your muscles and it keeps the other six days a wait instead of a war.
You'll be up three or four pounds Sunday morning. That's water. Gone by Tuesday. Don't touch the panic button.
Zero to One Continuous Mile
You can't run a mile right now. On August 17 you will.
Not "should be able to" — will. It's the one target here with a hard edge on it, and it's the one you'll still be thinking about in November.
Every run: five-minute brisk walk to warm up, the work, five-minute walk to cool down. Both ends, every time.
| Week | Tuesday | Thursday |
|---|---|---|
| Ramp Jul 16 | — | Baseline: run until you have to stop. Record it. |
| Week 1 Jul 20 | 8 × (1 min run / 90 sec walk) | 8 × (1 min run / 90 sec walk) |
| Week 2 Jul 27 | 6 × (90 sec run / 90 sec walk) | 6 × (2 min run / 2 min walk) |
| Week 3 Aug 3 | 5 × (3 min run / 90 sec walk) | 4 × (4 min run / 2 min walk) |
| Week 4 Aug 10 | 3 × (6 min run / 2 min walk) | 2 × (10 min run / 3 min walk) |
Mon Aug 17
The Mile. One mile, continuous, no walking. Then you pack for Harrisonburg.
Water
- Baseline: half your bodyweight in ounces. 190 lb → 95 oz. Fill a container in the morning, finish it by evening. Don't count glasses.
- Training day: add 20 oz for every hour you train.
- Coffee: black, before noon. It counts. Nothing caffeinated after 12:00pm.
Salt — Read This Before Day Three
In the first five to seven days, your body dumps stored carbohydrate, and water and sodium go out the door with it. You'll get a headache. Your legs will feel dead. Around day three you'll think the plan isn't working.
That's not the plan. That's salt.
Half a teaspoon of salt in a glass of water every morning for week one. Or an electrolyte packet — LMNT, Liquid IV, whatever's in the cabinet. It clears in a day.
Sleep
- Fixed wake time. Every day, Sunday included. The wake time is the anchor — bedtime follows it, not the other way around.
- Eight hours in the bed. Seven and a half asleep is the target.
- No caffeine after noon.
- The phone charges outside the bedroom. Buy a nine-dollar alarm clock. This is the rule people argue with me about, and it's the rule that works.
- Screens off 45 minutes before bed. Room cold, room dark.
- No nap over 25 minutes, none after 3pm.
You can't lose fat well without sleep. Under-slept, your body burns muscle first, your hunger signals go sideways, and you'll eat at 11pm without knowing why. Sleep isn't what you do after the plan. It's part of the plan.
Adderall and Food Read twice
Adderall will erase your appetite. That is not a shortcut — it's the most likely way this whole month quietly comes apart.
Skip meals because you're not hungry and your body holds fat, burns muscle instead, then hands you a ravenous evening. Which is exactly the 9pm eating we're trying to end. You don't beat the evening by eating less during the day. You beat it by eating enough, on time.
Eat Meal 1 before you take it.
Protein first, pill second. Every day.
- Meals 2 and 3 run on a timer, not on hunger. Set an alarm. Eat on the clock, not on the feeling.
- Don't change your dose or timing to chase this plan. That's a conversation with your prescriber, not with me.
No Alcohol. No Cigarettes. No Weed.
Not less. None. Thirty-four days.
- Alcohol shuts fat burning off entirely while your body clears it. It doesn't slow this down — it stops it, for hours, every time.
- It takes the deep sleep you need to recover from five days a week. You'll feel it in Monday's session.
- It's the front door to the 1am eating. Every time. You already know this.
And the real reason, underneath the other three: you're proving something to yourself for thirty-four days. Everything else here is negotiable. That isn't.
Your Vice Yours is Zyn
Everybody has one.
Yours is Zyn. Somebody else's is beer. Or weed, or the vape, or the bowl of cereal at eleven, or the phone at one in the morning. I have never once built a plan for someone who didn't have a vice, and I am not going to insult you by pretending I can take yours away for thirty-four days and that you'd let me.
So here is the blunt version, and it is not the version you're used to hearing.
Nicotine is roughly a wash on the scale — mild appetite suppression, small metabolic bump, it more or less cancels out. What it actually is: a stimulant with a two-hour tail. A pouch at nine o'clock is still working at eleven, and it quietly chews through the deep sleep you're depending on to burn fat instead of muscle and to keep your head level.
Under-slept, your body burns muscle first. Your hunger signals go sideways. You eat at 11pm and don't know why. That's not a willpower problem — that's a sleep problem wearing a willpower costume.
So the deal isn't "quit."
The deal is: your vice doesn't get to touch your sleep.
Pouches are fine. None after 6:00pm. That's the whole rule.
You keep the thing you were going to keep anyway. I get the thing that actually makes this work. Nobody has to lie to anybody.
One honest caveat, and then I'll drop it: if you catch yourself reaching for a pouch instead of eating — that's not a vice anymore, that's a food problem wearing a chemistry costume. You'll know if it's happening. Tell me when it does.
What to Actually Expect
| Window | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | 4–8 lb on the scale. Most of it water. Days 2–4 you'll feel flat, maybe headachy. That's the salt. Fix it and it passes. |
| Weeks 2–4 | 1.5–2.5 lb of real fat per week. Slower on paper. Realer in the mirror. |
| By Aug 17 | 12–20 lb total, depending on where you start. |
| Sunday mornings | Up 3–4 lb after the cheat day. Water. Gone by Tuesday. Ignore it. |
- Weigh every morning. Same conditions. Track the seven-day average — a single day is noise, and noise is what talks people out of good plans.
- Tape and photos every Sunday. They tell the truth on the weeks the scale doesn't — and there will be such a week.
Around day nine, when you've been perfect and the scale hasn't moved in four days, you're going to want this to mean something about your character. You'll want it to mean you're the kind of person things don't work for.
It doesn't mean that. It means it's day nine.
When the weight is gone — who do you have to stop being?
Sunday Numbers
Fill this in every Sunday morning. It saves on this phone.
Strength — Am I Getting Stronger?
One number per week. If it climbs, this is working, whatever the scale says.
This Is Yours
This plan lives at one address. It's private — nobody has it but you and Pete, and it's hidden from Google.
Your plan
plans.scenefitrva.com/og-34d-x7k2
Make It an App Do this first
Two taps and this stops being a website.
- Open this page in Safari (not Chrome — Safari).
- Tap the Share button — the square with the arrow.
- Scroll and tap Add to Home Screen.
- Done. It's an icon now.
Every box you check and every number you log is saved on your phone. Don't clear your browser data or you'll lose it.
Reaching Pete
Text him. (804) 824-8538
Email. pete@peteshrock.com
Between sessions is fine. That's the point of it.
SceneFit RVA
scenefitrva.com
Know someone who needs this? Send them to plans.scenefitrva.com/start. Pete reads every one himself.