new member looking for some advice

[carli]

hows it going lads, iv being on the site a few weeks now just gettin my head around everything , I have been in the gym last 2 yrs and going good, i am planning on cutting down a good bit of BF after the christmas and this is the diet i have used before and it worked well , i just want your opinions on it.

AGE :21
WEIGHT: 190LBS( 81KG)
HEIGHT:6ft 1
BF: not too sure yet as iv put on weight since last time but i think a little over 20%

MEAL 1 : 3 scoops oats (scoop from protein tub)
1.5 scoops protein with water
2 pineapple rings

MEAL 2 : 200g chicken fillets
80g brown rice
200g mixed veg
1 1/2 dessert spoon of udos (oil blend)

MEAL 3: 200g chicken fillets
200g baked/boiled potatoes
200g mixed veg
1 1/2 dessert spoon udos

MEAL 4: 200g steak
200g baked/boiled potatoes
200g mixed veg
1 1/2 dessert spoon udos

MEAL 5: 200g chicken fillets
mixed salad

MEAL 6: 200g chicken fillets
mixed salad
protein shake



i also drink about 6 or 7 litres of water a day on this diet incorporating cardio too

critisisim accepted

 

[awhites1]

I dont know what the calorie count of all that is but just eye balling with my best estimation I would say you're are at best overdoing it and at worst probably way way over doing it.

I don't know what your calorie maintenance is but if you're over 20% bf then yeah you want to go ahead and just worry about getting that down. You're eating what sounds like 6 pretty full meals a day.

I would cut out at least one of those meals completly and change one of them to an only vegetable or salad with no dressing meal.

what cutting really comes down to is caloric intake versus expenditure. you need to find out what you need to maintain your weight and then eat less calories than that.

That just sounds like a lot of food. You're on the right track with the types of food you're eating but just cut back some

 

[dogsoldier]

You are eating 800 calories in chicken

The oats is about 300 cals (assuming 100 grams)

The pineapple is about 50 cals if packed in water with no sugar

The brown rice is 111 cals

the mixed veggies are around 450 cals, again depending on what they are and how packed

The Udo's is 240 cals

The potatoes are about 400 cals dry

The steak is 320 cals

The protein shake depends on how it is made and what brand. But we will say that you are looking at 120 cals if mixed with water.

I won't even try figuring out your salads.

So, it looks like you are taking in 2800 calories (rounded up) plus anything you are not telling us about.

For me, you are taking in too many carbs. Again that is just my opinion. The conventional wisdom is you need about 10 calories per pound for maintenance. This would be 1900 cals just to keep your heart ticking and breathing. You should really post your work out routines including cardio so we can see how this matches up with your calories. Calories really depend on activity level.

 

[carli]

ok so ill mess around with this an get it down to 1900 an go from there as long as its all the right food to be eating. i had a personal trainer who gave me this an i lost a good bit weight but kept some skin if you get me ? just want to shred it all down before the summer

@dogsoldier if i was to cut out carbs by looking at that what would you recommend? less rice or something?

 

[dogsoldier]

I'm carb sensitive (Damn it). Therefore, I tend to avoid them. However, I would cut back the rice and potatoes to once per day. Get your carbs from the oats, green fibrous sources like spinach, green beans and so on. Watch out for the mixed veggies. Corn and sweet peas and other veggies that contain lots of sugar, These could be problematic when trying to cut.

 

[stronger4ever]

Sweet potatoes are better

 

[dogsoldier]

Sweet potatoes are better

Agreed.

 

[Built]

So, it looks like you are taking in 2800 calories (rounded up) plus anything you are not telling us about.

For me, you are taking in too many carbs. Again that is just my opinion. The conventional wisdom is you need about 10 calories per pound for maintenance. This would be 1900 cals just to keep your heart ticking and breathing. You should really post your work out routines including cardio so we can see how this matches up with your calories. Calories really depend on activity level.

dogsoldier, I think you're confusing basal metabolic rate with maintenance calories. BMR is the energy required to wake up and just lie still for a day. Maintenance is the calories required given your activity level to neither gain nor lose.

190 lbs and 2800 calories isn't high. Most (reasonably fit, non-obese) folks maintain on about 15 times bodyweight, and this is pretty much spot-on 15 times his weight.

I'm about 140 lbs and my maintenance is about 2100 calories.

Sweet potatoes are better

Agreed.

Better... how? Better... for what reason? Please don't say they're lower GI. GI is an outdated concept that simply doesn't hold up. Any starch is a good carb. Fructose is generally speaking a bad carb. If you eat more calories than you require, you'll gain weight. For some, carbs tend to overstimulate appetite. I'm one of 'em. But the OP may not be.

 

[dogsoldier]

dogsoldier, I think you're confusing basal metabolic rate with maintenance calories. BMR is the energy required to wake up and just lie still for a day. Maintenance is the calories required given your activity level to neither gain nor lose.

190 lbs and 2800 calories isn't high. Most (reasonably fit, non-obese) folks maintain on about 15 times bodyweight, and this is pretty much spot-on 15 times his weight.

I'm about 140 lbs and my maintenance is about 2100 calories.

Hi Built,

No, I did say that the calories I was referring to was the BMR, allow me to quote myself...

This would be 1900 cals just to keep your heart ticking and breathing.

I don't recommend an actual calorie level for anyone online. The individual or someone who knows what they are doing are the only one who can assess their levels of activity/calories required. We can't do that from a distance with limited in formation. Yes, I could have been clearer on this.

 

[theCaptn']

Better... how? Better... for what reason? Please don't say they're lower GI. GI is an outdated concept that simply doesn't hold up. Any starch is a good carb. Fructose is generally speaking a bad carb. If you eat more calories than you require, you'll gain weight. For some, carbs tend to overstimulate appetite. I'm one of 'em. But the OP may not be.

If fructose was such a bad carb, then the paleo-diet wouldnt work . . counter-intuitive as it may seem .. comments?

 

[Built]

How much fructose is there in the Paleo diet, Captn'? Do you drink juice or eat dried tree fruits on this diet? Are there lots of bananas and pineapples? How about sucrose-sweetened anything, or soft drinks?

Have yourself a little google and find some pubmed reading on fructose with the following keywords: satiety, cholesterol, gout, insulin resistance, and non-alcoholic fatty liver.

 

[Built]

Hi Built,

No, I did say that the calories I was referring to was the BMR, allow me to quote myself...

The conventional wisdom is you need about 10 calories per pound for maintenance. This would be 1900 cals just to keep your heart ticking and breathing.

I don't recommend an actual calorie level for anyone online. The individual or someone who knows what they are doing are the only one who can assess their levels of activity/calories required. We can't do that from a distance with limited in formation. Yes, I could have been clearer on this.

Ah, thanks dogsoldier - you kinda said both, and I missed the second part.

Cheers

 

[theCaptn']

How much fructose is there in the Paleo diet, Captn'? Do you drink juice or eat dried tree fruits on this diet? Are there lots of bananas and pineapples? How about sucrose-sweetened anything, or soft drinks?

Have yourself a little google and find some pubmed reading on fructose with the following keywords: satiety, cholesterol, gout, insulin resistance, and non-alcoholic fatty liver.

um .. only juice would or dried fruit would be pWO . . I have raisins generally instead . . bananas (and other tropical fruit) yes, for breakfast and preWO meal .. . but it has no processed foods, esp. no sodas etc . . Generally, the Glycemic load (not GI) is low so you;re not smashing your pancreas outside of the 'anabolic window'

. . I get where you're going with this . . the diet is a little counter-intuitive, but it works!

 

[Built]

um .. only juice would or dried fruit would be pWO . . I have raisins generally instead . . bananas (and other tropical fruit) yes, for breakfast and preWO meal .. . but it has no processed foods, esp. no sodas etc . . Generally, the Glycemic load (not GI) is low so you;re not smashing your pancreas outside of the 'anabolic window'
. . I get where you're going with this . . the diet is a little counter-intuitive, but it works!

Let's make sure I'm on the same page. For the record, I'm not a fan of the outdated glycemic index.

Now. Where do you think I'm going with this?

Juice or dried fruit is lousy for post workout. It is similarly lousy for breakfast. Do you understand why I say this?

 

[theCaptn']

Let's make sure I'm on the same page. For the record, I'm not a fan of the outdated glycemic index.

Now. Where do you think I'm going with this?

Juice or dried fruit is lousy for post workout. It is similarly lousy for breakfast. Do you understand why I say this?

I know, thats why I quoted the Glycemic Load

I need sugar from somewhere and I refuse to smash empty cal'd shit like dextrose . . . raisins have a good percentage of sucrose, are alkaline and have a decent vit and min content. My bfast is fresh tropical fruit, with eggs or whey. Other fruit (mostly apples) during the day.

The paleo is still relatively low on carbs . . I do understand why you say this, but it did get me results when cutting. The theory behind it makes sense - always been interested to hear your views on this Built.

 

[awhites1]

For the record, I'm not a fan of the outdated glycemic index.

why?

in terms of if you're trying to lose weight, yes a carb is a carb. a calorie is a calorie. but I would think foods that are lower in GI give the body more time to burn them off. If you are drinking cokes, eating regular potatoes, or candy... high GI carbs then you're body would be more prone to spiking your insulin and storing them as fat vs if it takes it a good while to break it down and therefore less probability it will be rapidly stored as fat.

It seems to me there is still an advantage to adhearing to the GI index to an extent.

 

[Built]

I know, thats why I quoted the Glycemic Load

Right. I was agreeing with you. Like you, I'm not a fan of the glycemic index.

I need sugar from somewhere and I refuse to smash empty cal'd shit like dextrose . . .

Actually, you may be confused about your empty shit dextrose. Dextrose doesn't interfere with satiety. Fructose on the other hand, does. Because it attenuates the insulin response, it fails to adequately stimulate leptin. You don't know you've entered the fed state, and you will tend to overeat. People who switch over to low fructose diets lose weight and have improved lipid profiles. Please do a search as I indicated. Fructose is not something you want in your body in anything but very small quantities.

raisins have a good percentage of sucrose,

which is why they suck; sucrose is half fructose

are alkaline and have a decent vit and min content. My bfast is fresh tropical fruit, with eggs or whey. Other fruit (mostly apples) during the day.

The paleo is still relatively low on carbs . . I do understand why you say this, but it did get me results when cutting. The theory behind it makes sense - always been interested to hear your views on this Built.

Cutting happens when you eat fewer calories than you require and do something to convince muscle to stick around. You apparently were able to effect both.

why?

in terms of if you're trying to lose weight, yes a carb is a carb. a calorie is a calorie. but I would think foods that are lower in GI give the body more time to burn them off.

this does not matter at all.

If you are drinking cokes, eating regular potatoes, or candy... high GI carbs then you're body would be more prone to spiking your insulin and storing them as fat vs if it takes it a good while to break it down and therefore less probability it will be rapidly stored as fat.

It seems to me there is still an advantage to adhearing to the GI index to an extent.

You need to review what happens when you consume food. For one, GI is highly influenced by the effect of a mixed meal.

But what I'm really interested in here is insulin.

Insulin is a strong promoter of satiety. The reason why fructose-containing foods are so problematic is not because they stimulate an insulin response, but because they attenuate an insulin response. You'd think this was good, right? Well, as it turns out, it isn't.

I'll explain.

A healthy normal person eats a food containing glucose or glucose polymers (starch), and an insulin response ensues. (Actually, proteins will do this too, particularly whey protein which, owing its high BCAA content is highly insulinimic). This insulin response promotes leptin, leptin suppresses ghrelin, and you feel fed.

If that same person eats a meal with the same macronutrient mix and caloric load, but with some of the glucose or starch replaced by fructose, the insulin response is LOWER. The person does not feel as fed, and consequently may eat more.

This is how people think stuff like high fructose corn syrup (which has a virtually identical fructose-glucose profile as fruit juice, dried fruit, and sucrose by the way) is so fattening - it's not that the calories from fructose are higher, it's that the effect on appetite is so different. (There are other problems that come from eating a lot of fructose by the way, for instance insulin resistance, urate formation, and elevated blood lipids as the liver becomes overloaded, but that's fodder for another discussion).

Please pop into pubmed and poke around. You may be rather astonished.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/87/5/1194.full.pdf+html
- this study uses exxagerated quantities of fructose for the purpose of comparison, I fully realize this. However, the effect of sucrose, HFCS and straight fructose were to elevate postprandial blood lipids. Glucose, the highest GI food there is, the "white death" we've been told to avoid, did this the least. Fructose did it the most as an absolute change from baseline. Looking at 24 hour area under curve (AUC) results, we see that HFCS and sucrose actually increased triacylglycerol more than straight fructose. It appears that frutose actually prompts the liver to store all available blood sugar:

"In the 7 male subjects who participated in the comparison of all 4 sugars, the 24-h postprandial TG responses to HFCS and sucrose were not intermediate between those induced by fructose and glucose. Sucrose and HFCS resulted in postprandial TG responses that were comparable to pure fructose alone, and consumption of HFCS-sweetened beverages significantly increased 24-h TG AUCs compared with glucose. It is possible the mechanism by which sucrose and HFCS increase postprandial TG comparably to pure fructose may involve fructose-stimulated hepatic glucose uptake".

Holy crap! You're actually worse off eating fructose with glucose than just eating fructose!

Leptin was most strongly elevated from glucose, not from sucrose, HFCS or sucrose.

Note also that fructose consumption is more problematic for men than for women. (Look at triacylglycerol, also urate formation)

Now, to be fair, the small amount of fructose you'll be consuming from a few pieces of fruit daily is likely of no concern (and may even be of some small benefit, under certain circumstances). It may be a more nutritious choice, overall when compared with straight dextrose, but owing its sugar profile, is generally is not a superior carbohydrate choice when compared to glucose or glucose polymers (starches).

BTW, potatoes are among the highest-scoring foods on the satiety index. Relative to white bread, boiled white potatoes score 323.

Brown rice scores only 132. Interestingly, scoring 138, white rice is slightly more satiating than brown rice. http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_food_diet/satiety_index.php#axzz183IDBdLL

 

[awhites1]

UGH!!! stop trying to throw out big words...

thanks for the info about satiety, i didn't realize there was an index for that. I'll have to look more into this. learn something new everyday right...

as for my original message about the GI index... if my understanding is correct-
lets take the following scenario: you have a person such as myself that i would say is between a meso and endomorph. and i guess "carb sensitive" and by that I mean if I eat a lot of carbs I swell up like a baloon. I store fat pretty easily. One of the ways this is done is through eating excess carbs. the body gets carbs, triggers insulin. stores as fat.

-now if i eat a starburst or several the body starts to churn out a lot of insulin and this will make the body try to store as much as fat as fast as possible correct?

-so wouldn't eating something like whole wheat which has a lower GI rating trigger less insulin? thus allowing my body more time with my slow metabolism to burn up some of the calories rather than making me tired and slowing my metabolism down and storing fat?

Love your work by the way, big fan of what you do here so as always thanks for the feedback and assitance.

 

[Built]

Storing fat is critical - you must store fat, or you die. It doesn't matter that you store - it matters that you also retrieve. If you store more fat than you retrieve, you'll gain fat. If you retrieve more fat than you store, you'll lose fat.

GI is irrelevant. Your metabolism will neither slow down nor speed up because of it. It really is outdated.

 

[Phineas]

Built, you are my diet God.

I wasn't aware that BCAAs trigger leptin to rise. Interesting. No wonder I've been feeling so good on my cut. I'm almost 3.5 weeks in and estimated 4-5 lbs fat down -- exactly where I wanted to be. No muscle loss, and I'm making PRs every 1-2 workouts (especially on my bench and millies -- added 10 lbs to my 5RM in 3 weeks on a 500-700 calorie deficit!).

Low-carb, high-protein w/ moderate- to high-fat works wonders. The only fructose I consume is the small amount from avocado and I suppose tomato would have some as well. This time around I'm actually enjoying the cut. Last time it was torture. All I thought about was how hungry I was, and whether I was losing mass. This time it feels awesome, and I'm actually getting stronger!

Low-carb, lots of meat ang eggs, BCAAs, some whey, tons of fibrous greens, and a good dosage of fats and you can live surprisingly comfortable on a calorie deficit.

Thanks a lot for all your amazing diet wisdom!

P.S - refeeds kick ASS! After a week of strict dieting is it ever sweet to down 600g+ carbs in a single day. Never done that until this cut. I get the most amazing carb pumps. Ego boost!

 

[Built]

Phineas - wow! Thanks for the props.

I don't invent any of this shit, I just read too much - but I'm always delighted to read when someone profits from it. Tells me I'm reading the right stuff, yanno?

Leucine promotes insulin; insulin promotes leptin. Just so we're clear.

And yeah, protein-and-fat-dieting is the BOMB. Are you loading creatine during your carbups btw? I load in 25g monohydrate during refeeds. It *might* help you reglycogenate (I think it does in diabetics, not sure if it helps in normals but whatever) and it's an opportunity to load in creatine, regardless.

 

[gtbmed]

The point that people really need to realize (hopefully by now they have) is that storing and burning of fat are continuous processes and that timing of them is mostly irrelevant. If you store a lot of fat in one sitting but then retrieve it all throughout the day you're not going to gain fat just because of the timing.

This whole notion of proper meal timing has been so ingrained into our culture that it's somewhat disturbing. Whenever I hear a person say that they lost weight by not eating any meals after 7 P.M. I laugh - there are entire countries full of people who eat dinner at 10 P.M. and they don't seem to have an extreme obesity problem.

Calories in v. calories out is what matters. Timing means little.

 

[Phineas]

Phineas - wow! Thanks for the props.

I don't invent any of this shit, I just read too much - but I'm always delighted to read when someone profits from it. Tells me I'm reading the right stuff, yanno?

Leucine promotes insulin; insulin promotes leptin. Just so we're clear.

And yeah, protein-and-fat-dieting is the BOMB. Are you loading creatine during your carbups btw? I load in 25g monohydrate during refeeds. It *might* help you reglycogenate (I think it does in diabetics, not sure if it helps in normals but whatever) and it's an opportunity to load in creatine, regardless.

I'm using 10g on training days (3x/weel) and 5g on non-training days, but I'm not loading on refeeds. I'll give it a try.