Cutting Diet Critique

Diet and Nutrition
1

Hi all

New poster here - just want to start by saying hi. I have been lurking for a while and picking up great advice.

I am a 28yr old male, 6ft4, 191lbs, 14.9% body fat according to my scales. Now, I’m not a big guy but I have vastly improved my lifts over the last 9 months or so. Combined with cardio in that period I have come down from 210lbs and around 22% body fat.

My goal at present is to lean out as best I can. Clearly this is all vanity… but with an eye on setting a numerate goal (I really find this helps) I want to get under 10%. Once this is achieved, I am looking forward to a huge, long clean bulk.

I lift M/W/F with an all over body programme (variations on: chest press/bent over row/mil press/chins/dips/squats - can post more detail and poundage if people are interested), and run on Tues, Thurs and Sun. Whatever I’m doing, I workout at 7.30am. Unfortunate frequent long hours and late night working rules anything else out.

Now, if you’ve got this far… can you people give me some thoughts on my current diet? I’ve posted a typical day below:

Pre-workout brek (6.45am) - shake consisting of protein powder, skim milk, blueberries and banana.

Post-wo (around 9am) - protein shake with water.

Snack (10.30am) - Homemade protein bar (Peanut butter, chocolate protein powder, honey. Incredible.)

Lunch (1pm) - Typically large chunks of lean meat, and some veg

Snack (4pm) - another protein bar

Supper (8pm) - Fish/meat and veg. Maybe red meat 2x a week.

This typically works out at a protein/carb/fat calorie split of around 40:25:35, and I average 2,200 calories a day. I normally am at or around 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight. On some weights days I’ll run home from work (around 6 miles) in which case I throw in a 350cal ham sandwich at the end of work to fuel me home.

As I mentioned, I am trying to cut down whilst maintaining muscle. So far having done this for a week and a half my lifts have been stable on before (slightly improved in places), but my running has been difficult - frequently I find I have no energy for longer sessions.

All thoughts and advice would be hugely welcome.

Thanks in advance

Respectfully yours,

Ben

2

Hi City Ben,

This diet doesn’t look too bad. First thing that is noticeable is that 4 meals are made of shakes or bars, and only 2 are whole food. I would try to atleast make one of the snacks from whole foods. Especially if you’re trying to cut.

You have carbs in the pre-workout shake, but what about post-workout?

3

Thanks for the reply.

Hmm… I hadn’t thought of your point re whole food. Sometimes pre-wo breakfast will be a 3 egg ham omelette rather than that shake, but I take your point completely. I think I may look to change my mid-afternoon snack to nuts, say 50g of almonds or cashews. Good idea, do you think? Or throw eggs in my breakfast shake rather than protein powder? I think perhaps I am guilty on focussing too much on the macro splits etc rather than the quality of the food.

As an aside, I am a little concerned that I am developing an addiction to peanut butter!

Carbs I’m trying to keep low through this pretty strict cutting phase, so I am not having any post-wo. I think I know that this is wrong. You’re right that at present carbs are limited to the milk and banana in my shake (I know, I know - bananas make you fat…) What would people suggest as something to help me out here?

Good to have some positive feedback on this though - I think it’s a good basis for cutting, but as always I am trying to optimise.

4

Protein wise, and meal frequency wise, I’d say are okay… some thoughts though…

If you want to cut, and keep a lid on your carbs, Kll the Honey, eat the banana, OR the blueberries (not both), Make sure all veggies are green, and if you have to keep your ham sandwhich, use whole grain bread, possibly only one slice.

I also agree that one of your carb feedings should be PWO. This should be the only time you can get away with simple sugar carbs (put the banana or honey here instead?)

S

5

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
Protein wise, and meal frequency wise, I’d say are okay… some thoughts though…

If you want to cut, and keep a lid on your carbs, Kll the Honey, eat the banana, OR the blueberries (not both), Make sure all veggies are green, and if you have to keep your ham sandwhich, use whole grain bread, possibly only one slice.

I also agree that one of your carb feedings should be PWO. This should be the only time you can get away with simple sugar carbs (put the banana or honey here instead?)

S
[/quote]
you think the simple carbs aren’t okay first thing in the morning?

6

You’d be better off with something like oatmeal, or even whole wheat toast. Simple carbs spike your blood sugar… not really conducive to cutting.

S

7

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
You’d be better off with something like oatmeal, or even whole wheat toast. Simple carbs spike your blood sugar… not really conducive to cutting.

S
[/quote]

Arite cool, will probably ditch the banana in the morning and possibly put it in the PWO shake then. Figure banana and steel oats are not both necessary in the morning. thanks

8

Thanks Stu. Sound advice.

I’ve been trying to get a balance between cutting carbs and keeping decent nutrition, hence the inclusion of blueberries. I think I should look at this more as a short term blast though, so losing some nutritional benefit for a small amount of time isn’t the end of the world.

I know the honey is pure sugar, but there’s a small amount of it - works out under 10g per bar. So that’s perhaps 18g per day. Is this excessive?

As for the ham sandwich… I think you’re right. It’s gone. I’ll just have to accept that my running times will suffer a bit. I can put up with that.

thanks again.

9

Right, I’ve made some adjustments!

Morning shake is now:
200ml skim milk
30g peanut butter
30g chocolate protein powder
Ice

and it tastes GOOD.

Sandwich gone, bananas gone, blueberries gone. I’ve decided to follow the advice and keep the simple carbs right down. This is a short term blast.

So I’m now averaging around 1,800 cals on a 45/10/45 p/c/f split. I know this is very low energy, but i seem to be coping alright with it at the moment. I’m still getting at least 190g of protein a day too, and training very hard, so we’ll see what happens with muscle retention.

I’m a bit concerned I won’t be able to keep up the ferocity of my workouts after a while on this (been at this level for 3 days now) but time will tell. I almost chucked on military press/chins supersets this morning! Quite happy to up the morning carbs if needs be.

Does anyone think that I need to consider having a carb up day? I think I quite like the idea - kick start to the metabolism etc - but I’m nervous that it just piles on the lbs, and puts me back a few days.

As always, your thoughts greatly appreciated.

10

I wouldn’t cut the blueberries until you hit a plateau in the fat loss area, then cut the carbs even further. But I’d cut out the honey from the beginning.

11

Probably the best, simplest version I’ve seen of a carb cycling/cutting diet, is to essentially have low carbs 5 days out of the week, but bump them up a little for the other 2 (typically for your more difficult gym days - back, legs). So,… let’s say you try to keep your daily diet to 50g a day (which is essentially trying to avoid all carbs, and just getting the minute, ‘hidden’ ones in your non-carb foods).

On two other days (maybe Monday and Thursday, to space 'em out), you allow yourself a whopping 100-150g. This would probably be at specific times of the day, maybe… 50g complex carbs with breakfast, 50g PWO, and the other 50 coming from the incidentals you’d normally get anyway.

How’s that sounding to you? Pretty simply actually, and Let me tell you,… it works pretty well.

S

12

Sounds good Stu, and sounds intuitively more sensible than just loading up with carbs for the sake of it every other weekend. Piling in carbs when you need them.

I certainly think my body would respond well to big carbs around a heavy workout, and it’s dead easy to simply through some oats in to a shake - I’m all for keeping it simple too.

Thanks for all the help big man.

13

Thanks two scoops. The honey’s gotta go, hasn’t it… it tastes so good though and really binds these bars I make together. But 18g a day (in two bars) seems a lot, you’re right.

I think I’ll just use golden syrup instead.

(Joke.)

14

You should look into CT’s carb cycling codex. In terms of heavy days I get 250g of carbs, 200g of “moderate” days (which are my lactate induced workouts) and 150g on “low” or off days, which I usually go low carb to about 50g. Seems to be working.

15

Gosh, that sounds like a helluva lot of carbs. 250g? You’re cutting, right?

16

[quote]City Ben wrote:
Gosh, that sounds like a helluva lot of carbs. 250g? You’re cutting, right? [/quote]

Yah, i am. If you read the carb cycling codex there is a formula to find out how many carbs you need. It’s only 250g twice a week (when I work out heavy chest/back and quad/hams), and on the “low” days I probably get somewhere around 50-60g. To be honest, I’ve been low carb for so long that I doubt I get close to 250g on heavy days, but I try to get as much carbs PWO as I can without getting bloated which usually happens with carbs. The only time I can get it is if I eat pasta, I wouldn’t be able to consume that much rice, couscous or sweet potato to reach about the 125g PWO. Although it would probably be a lot easier to hit that mark if I was still using Surge, but i’m kinda waiting for Surge workout fuel instead.

17

In my opinion, Chad Waterbury’s 10/10 transformation would be great for you. With 10 pounds of fat less and 10 pounds ouf muscle more, you would keep your weight but go under 10% body fat. It is a complete program and lasts 12 weeks I think.

Whatever, you should take a look.

18

Just a thought, maybe try to do some BCAA megadosing in a periworkout drink. I felt that doing this has really helped me spare muscle during intense training and cutting.

19

This is all great stuff guys. I will read up on the carb cycling, and certainly the 10/10 - I’m a fan of Chad as it is, and if he thinks he can take 10lb of fat off and put 10lbs of muscle at the same time well who am I to argue?

20

Out of interest, since starting this thread the scales tell me I’ve come down to 187lbs and 13.8% fat. Feeling a bit woozy sometimes though - had to have a sandwich at lunch for fear of fainting…