OK, so here’s my plan: Right now I’m 6’3ish 205 (plus or minus a pound or two) lbs about 14% body fat. My goals over the next two months are: Get up to 215-220, as much of it as possible muscle (obviously). My diet plan is as follows:
Meal 1 7:30 AM
1 cup oats 52 carbs 10 protein 300 cals
3/4 cup berries 20 carbs 0 pro 80 cals
1 scoop Low Carb GROW!- 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cals
Meal 2 10:30 AM
1/2 cup oats 27 carbs 5 protein 150 cals
1 scoop Low Carb GROW!- 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cal
Meal 3 Pre Workout Approx 1:30-1:45 PM
2 scoops whey 10 carbs 40 pro 220 cals
Workout Approx 2:45-3:45
Surge 49 carbs 20 pro 350 cals
Meal 4 Post workout Approx 4:00 PM
4 oz chicken o carbs 24 pro 120 cals
1 scoop whey 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cals
2 bananas 50 carbs 6 pro 220 cals
Orange 15 carbs 0 pro 60 cals
Meal 5 Approx 7 pm
2 oz cheese 0 carbs 14 pro 200 cals
6 oz chicken 0 carbs 36 pro 180 cals
Random mix of veggies ???
I think I may be needing more carbs & cals to achieve my mass gains though. Right now I am using the westside for skinny bastards routine. Does anyone have a better mass gain routine? I’ve looked at the Growth Surge Project articles and am still kinda poking around on trying to find something that sounds good. I’m also pondering taking a prohormone during this, but am not sure it would be worth my money since I am only 20. Any and all comments welcome. Thanks
Johnny I will touch on your diet a bit as it is going to #1 to your goals. All in all it looks good and clean, but I am doubting that you are getting enough K/Cals to accheive your mass gains you want.
I, for example, am destined to have a snails metabolism and @ 6’1" 200 lbs currently am eating 3100 K/cals on a bulking diet and have hit a plateau and need to raise them again.
I think the carb levels are fine, just total k/cals need to come up.
Also I would watch your protein count. Counting the proteins from oats and bananas is really stretching it a bit. I would suggest keeping everything you have and adding a lean source of real food protein to the first two meals, and a healthy fat source to atleast that final bed time meal. This will get those K/cals up.
Also by adding the lean protein source early in the day will make those meals among the largest, where they can be used as fuel all day long.
Training, I will leave that up to you. The program you are currently on is great, as well as Growth Surge. Either if done properly with the correct diet should give great results.
Hi,
There are a few good things about your diet plan and a few bad things that I noticed almost immediately. First of all you seem to have the right idea with eating 6 meals a day and avoiding carbs in the evening and you have a reasonably high protein intake. The bad things are that you do not mention anything about your fat intake. Now I did some quick calculations and at the bottom of your post you say you are taking in 252g of protein and 298g of carbs and a total intake of 2510 Calories. So 252g of protein and 298g of carbs gives you 2200 Cals which means you are taking in a rather paltry 34g of fat per day giving you the remaining 310 Cals! I think this is a little low and as rough guide I would shoot for 0.4g of fat per pound of lean body mass as a minimum. In your case I think that would be at the very least 70g of fat per day (I repeat at the very least!) with about one third coming from saturates, one third from monounsaturates and one third from polyunsaturates. Use the search engine on this site and look up articles by Jon Berardi and Lonnie Lowery for more info on this. Once you are armed with the info from some of their articles then you will also be able to address your intake of essential fatty acids. This is pretty important.
I also notice that you are eating a big solid food meal about 15 mins post workout. I am not saying this is wrong but I do not think it is optimal post workout feeding. Drinking Surge during your workout is a great thing to do. Why not have another serving of Surge or a similar liquid P+C meal post workout as well and save the solid P+C meal for about 45 mins to 1 hour post workout? Overall I am just not sure you are consuming enough calories to grow.
Maybe try using this to workout your required calorie intake, http://www.johnberardi.com/updates/july262002/na_masscalculator.htm
As I already said you are doing alot of things correctly and I congratulat you on that but there are just a couple of areas that could do with some refinement.
As regards your choice of training program I think you have chosen a good one.
I hope some of this helps.
Thanks for the tips guys. Based on the suggestions, revisions have been made.
Meal 1 7:30 AM
1 cup oats 52 carbs 10 protein 300 cals
? cup berries 20 carbs 0 pro 80 cals
1 scoop low carb grow- 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cals
Meal 2 10:30 AM
4 oz chicken 0 carbs 24 pro 120 cals
? cup oats 27 carbs 5 protein 150 cals
1 scoop low carb grow- 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cal
Meal 3 Pre Workout Approx 1:30-1:45 PM
2 scoops whey 10 carbs 40 pro 220 cals
Workout Approx 2:45-3:45
Surge 49 carbs 20 pro 350 cals
Post workout 4:30ish(when I get home from gym)
Surge 49 carbs 20 pro 350 cals
Meal 4 Post post-workout Approx 5:15 PM
4 oz chicken o carbs 24 pro 120 cals
1 scoop whey 5 carbs 20 pro 110 cals
2 bananas 50 carbs 6 pro 220 cals
Orange 15 carbs 0 pro 60 cals
Meal 5 Approx 7:30pm
2 oz cheese 0 carbs 14 pro 200 cals
6 oz chicken 0 carbs 36 pro 180 cals
Random mix of veggies ???
Meal 6 pre-bed 9-10 PM
1.5 cups cottage cheese 15 carbs 42 pro 300 cals
2 oz almonds 10 carbs 12 pro 328 cals
Totals: 357 carbs 313 pro 3308 cals
I added some chicken to meal 2, added nuts to meal 6, (although I think that might be too big for a last meal?) and I will be substituting beef in place of chicken for meal 5 two or three times a week. I think with the beef and nuts, i would be getting enough fat. Of course, on non-training days, no Surge and the fruit in meal 4 would become more veggies. Which would bring the cal total down to around 2500. Should I just eat more meat on days off to compensate?
3308 cals is probably still a little low for what I hope to achieve. I went to that mass calculator and it said I needed 4500+ cals. That’s a whole mess o’ food.
those are some good additions. some other things you might want to try are
-adding a scoop or 2 of instant gatorade to your pre-workout shake. that’s some easy kcal right there, plus some high gi carbs for extra fuel.
add in some flaxseeds and/or olive oil. just put them on your chicken. these will add a few more calories and give you your good fats. you can pick up a bag of cold milled flaxseeds at gnc for about $8.
this will add a couple hundred kcal. the mass calculator says you need a lot of calories, and it may be right. but eating this much takes some getting used to. you sound like you’ve got a good plan. just try this for a few weeks and see how it goes. then re-evaluate, and make minor changes.
Johnny,
Glad that we could help you. Do you keep a food log? The reason I ask is because you say that by eating beef instead of chicken 2 or 3 times a week you THINK you will be getting enough fats. I am not sure how you are arriving at your numbers for fat intake (not that you have mentioned directly). Sorry if it seems like I am being petty but I just want you to achieve your goals. Truth be told I see you making alot of the mistakes that I used to make before I started reading all the nutrtion articles on this site.
Eat plenty of whole eggs too! Canned red salmons as well if you can tolerate it. If you limit saturated fat too much (and cholesterol), it’d suppress your testosterone production. I take in like 100g a day (175lbs bodyweight) and I still get leaner. I probably take in around 50% of saturated fat of total fat intake which isn’t such a bad thing. You might also want to take high quality fish oil and flaxseed oil for omega 3s. It doesn’t look like you’re getting that much. Eat tons of veggies too. I usually have 2 big bowls of salad (cucumber, onions, radish, lettuce, tomato, celery, bell peppers)with extra olive oil and vinegar every day with steak, eggs, chicken later in the days. I noticed a big difference from it.
Great revisions so far, and I do feel that caloric intake will be a good place to start. Many/most ppl cant simply jump to the calories laid out by massive eating without getting massively fat. JB seems to be one of those blessed few that when they were handing out metabolism’s he took 2. Even in his Massive Eating Revised he talks about slowly increasing the k/cals by 250 at a time as your progress stalls. This giving your body time to adjust and grow.
Like others have stated, you are still seemingly shorting yourself in a few areas, mainly the fats category. This isnt to say you are completely off base. I think this diet you have can be a great starting point, and you can slowly adapt and change it as you read more and become more educated on nutrition. Just remember fat is not bad, it plays vital roles in hormonal balances and other areas.
Last thing I would like to touch on is the last meal, and first whole meal PWO. I personally think that you are right in that last meal being to caloricly dense. I also feel that the first whole meal PWO is a bit shy on K/cal, this meal along with your first should be your largest. I would suggest moving 100-200 of that final meals k/cals to that meal. Keep a good fat source and protein source for the last meal though.
Good luck, you seem to be headed in the right direction,