How tall are you? I don't doubt its possible to gain some size on RPD, I just don't know if its possible to, say, place in an all natural bodybuilding show, or something like that. Although I am probably wrong and there is probably someone out there that has done it! I am short, like 5'6-5'7 so 155lbs is where my body likes to stay at on my current diet of 2lbs of beef a day (all different cuts, sometimes organs), 4-6 cups of milk, and 3 servings of fruit, plus sometimes lots of honey, sometimes I overdo it a bit on the honey
. I do think it may be possible to gain more weight with the current diet if I continue adding weight on the bar, or shovel in more food though.
I have been on RPD for under a year, and part of that time has been little progress in the gym from injuries and regaining what I lost from being sick and what-not. So, I definitely can't say I know it all and how thing work on this diet, just my experience so far, which isn't much! Glad I can be a part of this topic, I just really hope we can stick the guys together that are interested in this kind of stuff to figure out what works and what doesn't a little quicker.
For myself, I would like to gain another 10lbs to be sitting at 165lbs to be at the top of my weight class in powerlifting.
As far as detox goes, I am kinda bummed to admit that I am not that great at reading the signs from my body and I pretty much feel the same as I did. Although going back from my diet of burgers and hot dogs a few weeks ago as an experiment, I feel MUCH better ditching that stuff.
For training I am usually 5-1 reps on the main lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, and all their variations), but recently I have been finding better progress in the 5-3 rep range. I have always felt recovery has been great, but I would assume its even better on RPD, unless your routine is totally over the top crazy I don't think you have to worry much. I get nice strength gains from just one or two sets of low reps, as long as I put enough intensity into a set sometimes that is all you need to progress. That billstarr setup I mentioned to you is 3 exercises per day, and 1 heavy set for each, the rest is warm ups. I gained awesome on that routine and never felt even the slightest signs of overtraining, but I can't say it will be the same for everyone. I recently have been doing low volume front squats pretty much every day with no noticeable overtraining.
About your low carb question it depends on who you ask, you can see my diet and I think I am pretty high carb, especially if I eat honey that day which is like 10 tbsps or the end of the bottle whichever comes first lol. But if you ask a guy on a typical bodybuilder diet they think I am running a keto diet or something haha. A lot of the big natty guys are on LOTS of carbs, and run carb cycling, "cheat days" paired up with an almost paleo type week. On the weekend they will gorge on like 15k calories of doughnuts and poptarts, then run low carb for the rest of the week.
Hopefully all that babble can be beneficial in some way, it got a little long without me noticing. I wish you the best of luck man, and I would REALLY like to follow along a full log of diet workout with weights used, maybe even some youtube lifting vids, of another RP dieter.
Oh, and I just wanted to say, in the beginning I was more of a size guy (back when I got up to 190's) but after a year or so I realized hitting weight PR's every week or few weeks was more fun for me than waiting 3 months to see if my shoulders got a little bigger in a side by side picture comparison haha. I am not sure how experienced you are so this may all be unimportant and you already know this, but you just gotta find what style you enjoy because its not easy, and its a long road, and if you don't enjoy it it'll be impossible to be consistent.
Keep us updated!