Hi, there, srow. Welcome to T-Mag.
From the looks of things you’re making some good choices. Clean food; veggies, LC Grow, chicken breasts, eggs, etc. But I don’t see numbers/amounts and a macronutrient breakdown. Why is that important? Well, unfortunately, you can get bigger (and fatter) even on good, clean food. Many times the only difference between a bulking diet and a cutting diet is the AMOUNT or numbers.
Recommendation number one is that you keep a food log and get a nutritional desk reference. As mamann pointed out, you’re restricting carbs (which is what I do). But there’s a trick to carbs. Too much and people get fat and feel mentally lethargic. Too few carbs, and their energy levels start to suffer. You need to be hitting numbers. I’d recommend the following:
LBM is 160 pounds. You need to be taking in between 1g and 1.5g of protein per pound of LBM; i.e., 160 to 240g of protein per day, divided into 6 meals. If you’re physically active and workout, I’d definitely go with the 1.5 number.
Fat should be roughly .5g per pound of LBM; i.e., 80g. Four tablespoons of that (15g x 4 = 60g) should come from good fat, either flaxseed oil or high-dose fish oil (6-10g of EPA/DHA). There are INCREDIBLE performance and endurance and cognitive benefits to taking in 6g of EPA and DHA. If you’ve not familiar with high-dose fish oil, use the search engine and read up on it.
Carbs, once again, are highly individual. You won’t be able to optimize the number unless you have a number you’re trying to hit on a daily basis. Like mamann, I like T-Dawg 2.0 and think it’s a great starting point; i.e., 100g of carbs per workout day and 70g of carbs per non-workout day. Workout means lifting weights, not cardio.
I have a personal prejudice against dairy. Go ahead and start your diet with the cottage cheese and regular cheese, but be willing to give it up down the road if you hit a plateau or find you’re softer than you’d like to be. Milk has a type of sugar in it called galactose. Galactose can only be processed in the liver and can only refill liver glycogen stores. It cannot fill muscle glycogen stores, which is the goal and purpose of taking in carbs in the first place. What’s worse is that if liver glycogen is full, the incoming galactose cannot be processed in the liver and is immediately converted to triglyceride and stored as subcutaneous fat. NOT good! Body builders cut all dairy out of their diet when cutting for competition. You may not have to do that, but be aware of the potential problem. Myself, I only take in dairy on my cheat meal/day.
Natural peanut butter is better than the hydrogenated kind (with sugar) you get in the grocery store and it sure does taste good, but it’s calorically dense. Use it to meet fat requirements after you’ve taken in your 4 tablespoons of EFAs.
Have I taken everything you love away from you yet? (wink & grin)
Meal 5 (on workout days only) should be Surge or a Surge substititute. Surge is the single most important supplement or food you can put in your mouth. Once again, use the search engine and read up on it. John Berardi formulated it. Surge does such a good job of increasing/promoting protein synthesis and reducing cortisol that T-Dawg 2.0 even factored it into the diet.
In fact, as far as PWO nutrition goes, I’d love to see you eat P+F meals all day long, take in Surge after your workout and the remainder of your carb alotment as starchy carbs (brown rice, sweet potatoes or oatmeal) in Meal 6. That would be a highly anabolic approach to dieting, one that would preserve and promote LBM and reduce BF at the same time.
Try hitting the numbers I recommended. Don’t even worry about calories at this point, just grams of protein, fat and carbs. Get your body fat tested by someone that is experienced once a month, and make sure it’s the SAME person. There are times where I was dieting that scale weight was going up and BF was going down. If you look at the scale as your only measure of success or failure, you may start making changes based on emotion and not logic.
And if you hit a plateau, my personal preference is to pick up activity level; i.e., AM sessions of cardio, longer duration, moderate intensity (65-75% of MHR). I’ve been doing 7 days a week of AM cardio, but I have a pretty stubborn metabolism. It’s working.
Oh, yeah, one last thing. You need to factor in a cheat afternoon one day a week. Read up on that, too. My cheat meal is generally high in carbs, low in protein. My last carb-fest was Palak Paneer (an Indian dish made of creamed spinach and cottage cheese cubes over rice), a sweet potato casserole made with a crunchy brown sugar, pecan topping and chocolate cake with whipped topping. I ate until I had a smile on my face.
Is that enough food for thought? (grin)
Any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
