It’s been a somewhat annoying and stressful thing to do, but I’m dialing in my nutrition well for the first time.
Essentially I grew up on a calorie deficit. My family is largely uneducated and working class, so to this day they really don’t know shit about food.
As such I didn’t get a chance to lift seriously until college. At college, I abused my campus dining halls and pigged out on the buffet style foods. I just ate until I couldn’t anymore. I bulked quite dramatically and kept fat at bay via cardio as needed.
Now, having to cook my own foods was very challenging. I knew nothing about nutrition at all, and was starting from scratch. Completely.
So, through this period of trial and error I lost weight when I was undershooting blindly, and would pack on fat from overshooting blindly. What I eventually discovered was that my body needed about 250g of protein a day to feel good. I’m about 185lbs.
Then I realized that unless I ate 4 cups of rice or another carb I would lose weight despite hitting the protein goal.
So in all that put me around a 4,000 calories per day ball park figure.
Well, two things happened.
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I didn’t have a food scale, so I was ball-parking the weight of my chicken breasts without actually having any clue how much I was eating. I now weigh out 2lbs every day.
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I wasn’t getting enough fats, which led to horrible headaches and a thin looking face. I looked unwell.
So I needed to dial in fats. I tried different sources: eggs, avocado, bread, quinoa, salmon and cheese. I cut all the dairy real quick. I’m lactose intolerant. What wound up working for me was the Quinoa and Salmon combo.
So I eat those two for my fat sources everyday. They double as sources of complete proteins, and the Quinoa gives me starchy carbs too.
So here’s the current ‘plan’:
Breakfast by 11am, 1/2cup dry of Quinoa (6g of fat, 68g of carbs, 10g protein)
Brunch: 1 cup dry of sushi rice, 1lb of chicken breast, mixed greens (12g of fat,144g of carbs, 96g protein) 1 centrum multivitamin for micros
Workout
Post-workout meal: 1/2cup dry of Quinoa (6g fat, 68g carbs, 10g protein)
Lunch/Dinner: 1lb chicken breast, 2 cups (dry) sushi rice, 7oz Wild Salmon, Carrots (27g of fat, 288g of carbs, 132g of protein).
Total: 51g of fat, 568g of carbs, 248g of protein
And that’s it for now. I suspect I might need to add in 200-400 more calories but I’ll see how it goes.