Thread: Please evaluate my diet

Originally Posted by NJ-Surfer

Attached is a 3 day snapshot of my current diet. I recently cut out some calories because the only visible mass gain I was getting was around my belly, also my weight was stuck at 192 lbs. On this current diet (followed 3 months now) I have lost ~10 lbs on the scale but visually I look the same and %BF is down ~1%.
I am 38 yr old male, 6'2", 182lbs, 19%BF(electric impedance scale)

Lift: 3days/week spliting lower & upper body (45-60 min routine)
Cardio: 1 day/week jog (20-30min), B-ball 1 day/week (1-1.5 hrs)
Rest: and cheat meals 1 day/week

My goal is to put on more lean muscle without growing the gut region (isn't this every males goal ). I guess my issue is when I up the calories my gut grows much faster than my muscles and when I cut calories back I seem to not change at all. Is there something in my training or diet that I have overlooked??

Thanks for your help

Your calories need to be 18-20 times the amount you weigh (You would know this if you would have read the stickies and not just posted up your diet). I would say 3 days a week lifting isn't helping either. I lift 5 times a week to get all muscle groups in without skipping and under-doing any group. To gain mass you have to move weight, so do it; go read training stickies. Cheat meals are cool b/c they fuck up your metabolism so you don't get used to eating the same thing and it just running through your system without taking in nutrients. But what you eat sucks. Protein intake is too low, I get that just from shakes a day (I am 5'11 185 lb. and I take 250 g protein from shakes in a day). Egg whites would also be a good bed-time meal or cottage cheese. My question: Where the fuck is the meat? After your workout you have a banana and a motherfucking salad? Obviously you aren't working out hard b/c after I workout I feel like eating a dead animal, some vegetables, and some fucking carbs. You may wonder why I am cursing: You didn't even bother to read the stickies therefore you wasted mine and your time.

StickCity your comments are hardly worth a reply. I have read the stickies and many books on bulking and cutting. What works for you at your obvious young age can not be applied universally. A large part of a diet is derived empirically as age and genetics have a big influence. Seeing that you joined this forum in May-2006 I dont imagine you have much experience in the area of nutrition or training (read about over-training). Hopefully I will get some valuable input from someone that doesn't have a chip on their shoulder.

Take out the OJ (too much sugar)
More veggies
Ditch the late breakfast... replace with chicken/brown rice or chicken/sweet potato... get rid of the banana and the salad dressing
Ditch the yogurt
Ditch the bredded flounder, replace with salmon
Add more healthy fats
Drink only water

P.S. where in NJ? I live in monmouth county

Originally Posted by fUnc17

Take out the OJ (too much sugar)
More veggies
Ditch the late breakfast... replace with chicken/brown rice or chicken/sweet potato... get rid of the banana and the salad dressing
Ditch the yogurt
Ditch the bredded flounder, replace with salmon
Add more healthy fats
Drink only water

P.S. where in NJ? I live in monmouth county

Im in Highlands, I surf at the Cove or L.A.
I do mostly eat salmon, I track food every day and have a massive Excel table but I just posted a 3 day example. Yogurt is plain with no sugar added so that stays as I hate cottage cheese. Salad dressing is low cal and low fat and I only use 1 tablespoon. I know a lot of people dont like bananas in the diet but they are higk in K and easy to eat. I like your idea about adding some chicken and complex card to late breakfast. I do add nuts to the salad and use them as snacks. What foods are you incorpoating to get more healthy fats?

Originally Posted by fUnc17

Take out the OJ (too much sugar)
More veggies
Ditch the late breakfast... replace with chicken/brown rice or chicken/sweet potato... get rid of the banana and the salad dressing
Ditch the yogurt
Ditch the bredded flounder, replace with salmon
Add more healthy fats
Drink only water

P.S. where in NJ? I live in monmouth county

Ditto on this.

Also, I'm sure you know that you have to eat above maintanance if you want to build muscle so there is no way around this.

I would add some fish oil for your omegas.

Yogurt is not a substitute for cottage cheese because it doesn't have enough protein to be considered a protein source the way CC is. (But I eat it occasionally too).

That said, what you need to focus on is maximizing the muscle gains and minimizing the fat gains while you're eating above your needs, right? As Stick said, your training program might not be the most appropriate for that.

If you're doing an upper/lower split, that's okay but you need to be doing that four days instead of three. Which workout are you only doing once per week?

You can also stick with a three day if you would prefer but that would be more like push/pull/legs like some of these guys do or 3 day full body.

Take it easy on cardio, and make sure you get a good PWO meal.

I haven't been able to read your diet cause the link didn't work right for me but:

PWO you need
Protein
Fast absorbing carbs (rice cakes are good. Fruit isn't the best, but can be some of the carbs PWO. Some people use malto or dextrose or sugary cereal)
Almost no fat-keep this meal as low in fat as possible
Ratio's should be 2gs carbs/1 gm protein.

Try centering most of your calories around your workout, and in the earlier hours of the day.

Let me know how it turns out

VanessaNicole

Originally Posted by VanessaNicole

Ditto on this.

Also, I'm sure you know that you have to eat above maintanance if you want to build muscle so there is no way around this.

I would add some fish oil for your omegas.

Yogurt is not a substitute for cottage cheese because it doesn't have enough protein to be considered a protein source the way CC is. (But I eat it occasionally too).

That said, what you need to focus on is maximizing the muscle gains and minimizing the fat gains while you're eating above your needs, right? As Stick said, your training program might not be the most appropriate for that.

If you're doing an upper/lower split, that's okay but you need to be doing that four days instead of three. Which workout are you only doing once per week?

You can also stick with a three day if you would prefer but that would be more like push/pull/legs like some of these guys do or 3 day full body.

Take it easy on cardio, and make sure you get a good PWO meal.

I haven't been able to read your diet cause the link didn't work right for me but:

PWO you need
Protein
Fast absorbing carbs (rice cakes are good. Fruit isn't the best, but can be some of the carbs PWO. Some people use malto or dextrose or sugary cereal)
Almost no fat-keep this meal as low in fat as possible
Ratio's should be 2gs carbs/1 gm protein.

Try centering most of your calories around your workout, and in the earlier hours of the day.

Let me know how it turns out

VanessaNicole

Cheers for your input. I like your idea of adding rice cake PWO for simple sugars I will give it a try. One of my problems with PWO meal is I workout at lunch or in the evening due to my work schedule. As a result, I am usually due to eat dinner or lunch after I lift. This means a full meal with fats, carbs and protein. I guess I could lift only at night and then postpone dinner till later in the evening therefore allowing for a better PWO meal. This would then put my last meal literally at bedtime. My last meal is casein protein drink with 2 tbs natural peanut butter (hope this doesn't turn into fat overnight). Speaking of fats, I try to keep 20/40/40 ration of F/C/P but I tend to fall short on the fats. I supplement w/ 3 caps/day of fish and flax oil but this only adds 3 g. I also have tuna and salmon in my diet as well as mixed nuts. Let me know what other fats would fit into my program better (give the PDF another try, it should open if you have Adobe). As far as workout I was doing a 3day/week full body but I changed recently to the split to keep challenging my muscles. The feedback my body gives me lifting 4 days/week at 38yrs old feels like overtraining. My cardio is a little heavy with the B-ball but the season is over in a few weeks so this will get cut back. Maybe I will add a leg day in its place. I plan to change up the diet this week and see what happens. I will post it up again after a few weeks any more feedback is greatly appreciated

Sounds good. Good job.

The thing about your PWO meal is that you don't have to wait for long before you eat your next meal.

The point is just to restore depleted glycogen levels to prevent your body from turning catabolic.

So all you need to do is consume a PWO meal as soon as humanly possible (I eat mine before I even leave the gym parking lot), and then just go ahead and eat your PPWO meal (with fats and everything) as soon as you can stomache it. Often I'll eat my nest meal s soon as I get home.

As far as macros goes, as long as you get 1-1.5gms protein/lb of bw and .3gms fat/lb of bodyweight, and enough carbs (usually about 1 gm/lb) to ensure adequate caloric intake, I wouldn't worry about the percentages.

I would triple the fish oil capsules if I were still falling short in fats.

Anyway your program sounds pretty dialed to me.

VanessaNicole

Originally Posted by VanessaNicole

Ditto on this.

Also, I'm sure you know that you have to eat above maintanance if you want to build muscle so there is no way around this.

I would add some fish oil for your omegas.

Yogurt is not a substitute for cottage cheese because it doesn't have enough protein to be considered a protein source the way CC is. (But I eat it occasionally too).

That said, what you need to focus on is maximizing the muscle gains and minimizing the fat gains while you're eating above your needs, right? As Stick said, your training program might not be the most appropriate for that.

If you're doing an upper/lower split, that's okay but you need to be doing that four days instead of three. Which workout are you only doing once per week?

You can also stick with a three day if you would prefer but that would be more like push/pull/legs like some of these guys do or 3 day full body.

Take it easy on cardio, and make sure you get a good PWO meal.

I haven't been able to read your diet cause the link didn't work right for me but:

PWO you need
Protein
Fast absorbing carbs (rice cakes are good. Fruit isn't the best, but can be some of the carbs PWO. Some people use malto or dextrose or sugary cereal)
Almost no fat-keep this meal as low in fat as possible
Ratio's should be 2gs carbs/1 gm protein.

Try centering most of your calories around your workout, and in the earlier hours of the day.

Let me know how it turns out

VanessaNicole

Here you go. Because a lot of us don't get enough FIBER, you can gring up some oats and add them to your PWO shake. Grinding them makes them a faster acting carb.