How Can I Improve My Diet?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Beginners
1

Hi, apologies in advance if I’m breaking any rules, this is a revised ‘first’ post that I think I posted in the wrong forum.

I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to diet and nutrition, and have read many articles and posts on here but I’m a bit overawed by all the info and a little confused.

My focus is to improve my physique, gain weight and specifically improve muscle size and mass.

I’m 6ft, 198 pounds and my WO is a daily 75 minute early morning session. I have experienced reasonable increases in strength but my size and muscle gains haven’t been as impressive.

I’m fairly confident my program is ok, its just I’m concerned I’m not complimenting the work in the gym with eating the right stuff at the right time.

Briefly, my daily intake looks a little like this.

6.30am Bowl of oats and milk. Glass of water. Complex Carb shake.

8.15am PWO (50g) whey protein shake.

11am Wholegrain bagel and low fat cottage cheese. Pint of water.

1pm Soup and 2 or 3 wholegrain sandwich rolls (made up of either chicken/tuna/smoked salmon with lettuce). Pint of water

3pm Apple. pint of water.

7pm. Healthy meal. (fresh veg, lean meat)

10pm. 25g protein shake.

(through the day I’ll also have sporadic handfuls of unsalted mixed nuts and dried fruit)

So, my question is, how can I improve my diet to stimulate improved muscle growth and weight?

Many thanks for any help.

Dom

2

Unless you’re eating a caloric surplus, you won’t make much progress with muscle growth. Just looking really quickly at your diet, I’d guess that a. you are not eating enough by at least 500 cals, and b. you are not getting enough protein, which in your case would be at least 200 grams per day.

However, since you didn’t post serving sized and macronutrient content, I can’t really say for sure. Try and figure out the exact number of calories and grams of fat, carbs, and protein you’re eating each day, and then you can tweak your diet to support your goals.

3

[quote]dom74 wrote:
Hi, apologies in advance if I’m breaking any rules, this is a revised ‘first’ post that I think I posted in the wrong forum.

I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to diet and nutrition, and have read many articles and posts on here but I’m a bit overawed by all the info and a little confused.

My focus is to improve my physique, gain weight and specifically improve muscle size and mass.

I’m 6ft, 198 pounds and my WO is a daily 75 minute early morning session. I have experienced reasonable increases in strength but my size and muscle gains haven’t been as impressive.

I’m fairly confident my program is ok, its just I’m concerned I’m not complimenting the work in the gym with eating the right stuff at the right time.

Briefly, my daily intake looks a little like this.

6.30am Bowl of oats and milk. Glass of water. Complex Carb shake.

8.15am PWO (50g) whey protein shake.

11am Wholegrain bagel and low fat cottage cheese. Pint of water.

1pm Soup and 2 or 3 wholegrain sandwich rolls (made up of either chicken/tuna/smoked salmon with lettuce). Pint of water

3pm Apple. pint of water.

7pm. Healthy meal. (fresh veg, lean meat)

10pm. 25g protein shake.

(through the day I’ll also have sporadic handfuls of unsalted mixed nuts and dried fruit)

So, my question is, how can I improve my diet to stimulate improved muscle growth and weight?

Many thanks for any help.

Dom[/quote]

For your weight/height, you’re not consuming enough overall calories.

Breakfast is too small (unless your bowl is really huge), add some calories and some more protein (eggs, poultry, meat etc)

PWO meal/shake should contain carbs

fit a small meal (~500kcal) with ~25-30g Protein between 1pm and 6pm (you’re not getting anything worth talking about for 6 hours)

if thats still not enough (you should be getting about 4000-4500kcal per say), add some healthy fat (e.g. fish, nuts) to you last protein shake

4

Ok, cool. Sound advice taken on board, I’m gonna look into it a bit more.

I’m a bit overawed by the amount of articles and posts on here, is there any links or a starting point you could suggest where I can begin to read up on the basics of putting on good lean weight that you touch on in your posts? i.e. which gives a basic understanding of calories, good fats etc.

Thanks for any help, and thanks for your advice so far.

Dom

5

Petrichor’s advice was pretty spot on, only input I have is to add more CALS the few hours PWO. You take 50g whey and then only eat a bagel and some cottage cheese… 3 hours later.

The stickies at the top of the beginner thread has some of the greatest info on the planet when it comes to nutrition/lifting.

6

Read John Berardi’s Seven Habits article, that should give you a good idea of what a diet should look like. You could also look through his other articles, I think he’s up to about 150 covering pretty much everything in varying levels of detail.

7

Massive Eating
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=460327
7 habits
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459493

Dan John’s Athlete advice

[quote] Dan John wrote:
My universal short list for all dieting advice: 1. Eat protein at every meal. 2. Eat fiber at every meal. 3. Take fish oil capsules. 4. Drink a lot of water. 5. Never miss breakfast. Yep, beginner stuff. But which of the rules do you break every day? Take a few honest weeks of following the basics of diet and you might be amazed at your results.[/quote]