Are you eating enough?

[w8lifter]

Along w/ the calorie calculator that Prince has on the main site, I wanted to let people know about this article. It covers how to calculate your caloric needs manually. It's a good page to print out and save in case you for some reason don't have access to one of the online calculators. It also shows how to calculate the number of grams of p/c/f you need.

Remember that this information is a guideline. Many people think that they're eating enough, when in fact, their not even close to what they should be eating to reach their goals. The only real way to know for sure is to log your intake. This can be done manually, via a notebook journal or done online via a site like Fitday. If you combine these two tools, you will see your gains increase much faster than if you just wing it

Excellent Article on Caloric Needs

 

[I Are Baboon]

I dunno if I am eating enough. My counter says I need to eat 2369 calories a day (183 lbs, lean body, 5 hours of exercise per week). That equals 176g protein. I can tell you that I RARELY eat that much protein. I typically have a protein shake (50g), a protein bar (30g), and some sort of chicken every day (40g). Other than that, my diet varies from day to day.

How the heck do I eat 176g protein? That's a lot of food!

 

[Preacher]

Go running at 6am for 20 mins (getting dressed not included), after that: eat a horse (for those of you who don't do breakfast). Shake with 40gs of powder also fine (add 0.5l milk)

10am: 1st shake (40gs again) + 0.5 liter of milk

11.45 Eat well-balanced meal: double breast of chicken, full rice/paste + green veggies: 250grams of protein.

15.00 fill that blender again (40gs + 0.5l milk)

15.45 Eat some carbos

17.00 Train

18.15 Post-workout shake (40gs + ...)

19.00 Eat again (chicken / Red meat if you digest fast - 250gr. + carbo & veggies).

22.00 Go to sleep and let your lover do the cardio .. after all, you'll be doing cardio in 8 hours, right ?

With this plan, you can allow yourself to slack a bit on 1-2 shakes or even the evening meal (if you find it puts on fat to easily) ... Has worked for me, even if my girl keeps saying I'm a gassy Mofo.

Go for 300g/day if you can .. you'll be on the toilet for 4 hours the first three days, but stick with it. And drink! A lot!

 

[MtnBikerChk]

Originally posted by Preacher

Go for 300g/day if you can .. you'll be on the toilet for 4 hours the first three days, but stick with it. And drink! A lot!

300g of protein a day?? That will overwork your kidneys and cause problems in the future for sure!

 

[I Are Baboon]

Originally posted by Preacher

Go for 300g/day if you can .. you'll be on the toilet for 4 hours the first three days, but stick with it. And drink! A lot!

Can I drink beer? Does that count? (j/k)

If I eat all this food and two shakes, I would never have an appetite for my next meal. Plus, I'd probably either puke or crap it all out. What I need to do is count calories for a few weeks, then analyze my diet.

 

[w8lifter]

A lot of people ask how to eat so much protein. I really don't know why it's so hard for some people You must realize that you've got to cut out a lot of the junk you eat to fit it in, but it's not impossible. If you need 170 g protein, split it evenly into 6 meals, that's like 30 grams at each meal....not so hard.

Remember, these are guidelines as well. It depends on how much exercise you do, the type of exercise you do, etc. You can play around w/ the macro splits to get your ideal diet. If you're trying to gain lean mass and don't do much cardio, you could try a 40/40/20 p/c/f split.

If you tend to do a lot of cardio and want to gain mass, a 30/50/20 split might work better for you.

If you need to cut, 50/30/20 is a good split.

If you're just trying to maintain, 40/30/30 or 40/40/20 are good splits. The idea is to log what you eat to track your progress. If you're not making the proper gains in a few weeks, you can look back over your log and you can adjust things accordingly.

A good rule of thumb to making sure you get your proper macros for each meal, is to split your protein evenly between 6 meals. Eat 25% of your daily carbs at breakfast, 25% post workout and split the remaining 50% evenly between the other meals. (Got that from miss abs).