Hey, 1st post for a newbie! I was wondering if any of you guys could give me some help with my diet. I’ve been using Berardi’s nutrient timing article as the framework for my diet. I eat P+F meals before training, then have 2 workout beverages with 70g carbs and 30g protein in each. I then have a P+C meal with 100g carbs and 50g of protein and then start to keep my P+C meals to a 1:1 ratio afterwards and have a P+F before bed. This has lead to me consuming about 350-400g of protein per day. I’m only 180 pounds at 6"2 and this just seems like too much protein. I’m getting 400g of carbs and about 120g of fat. I realise that everybody is different but is that enough carbs to grow. I’m anxious about eating more carbs because my job doesn’t allow me to have a BF above 10% and i’m at 9% at the moment. Any help/suggestions/advice etc would be appreciated. Cheers Adam
Adam,
Welcome.
Yes, you’re numbers do look at bit high…
First off, 1.5g protein per pound of lean body mass seems to be a good starting place for calculating you’re protein intake (even for cutting let alone bulking). Therefore, at 180lbs and 9% your LBM is approx 164lbs. 164 x 1.5 = 246, so aim for 246g of per day.
Second, in Berardi’s Nutrient timing I think he says that you should go for about .8g carbs/kg and.4g protein/kg in your during and after workout meals. So, if we calculate this based on your LBM (which I reckon is a better place to start than your total BM) this works out as 59g carbs and 29g protein in each of these 2 meals. Then after that I think JB recommends REDUCING your carbs for the next 2 meals (i.e. reduce the 100g carbs you’re eating) and upping the protein. Therefore 2 meals (one after an hour and one after another three hours, for example) should contain, as a suggestion, 40g carbs and 40g protein so give that a try.
As for 400g carbs per day being ehough to gain muscle, I would say that it is although everyone responds differently.
Finally, your current diet adds up to about 4080 cal per day. If you’re not particularly big that may be too much but experiment and see. You generally only need a slight caloric surplus to gain muscle while minimising fat so bear that in mind.
will-of-iron
Welcome to the forumn,
I really cant say that it is to much. What really matters is what are your goals. Are you trying to bulk up, cut?
Is your current diet, macro breakdown, and k/cal intake helping you accheive your goal?
I would say the break down of pro, carb, fat looks pretty good to me.
If you answer these we could help a bit more.
Phill
I’m not sure what your job is…but there’s no way you’re going to put on mass if you can’t allow yourself to gain any fat. It just doesn’t work like that. You can certainly minimize fat gain as you pack on muscle, but you can’t eliminate it and that’s what you seem to be aiming for. Here’s my prior experience, hopefully it’ll help in some way…
I’m going to be starting a bulking cycle next week using JB’s massive eating reloaded/nutrient timing articles and from those I’d say you should really be looking for a PWO drink in the .8g/.4g ratio, aka 2:1, like surge, as opposed to the 70/30 you’re doing now. The first time I ever tried to put on weight I was taking in around 300-350g of protein/day and I was only 121 lbs. I"m looking back at my food log now and workout days I seem to have averaged 350g protein/350g carbs/100g fat and non workout days averaged around 300g protein/250 carbs/140g fat…now on this I went from 121 lbs, 9.5% bf to 146 lbs, approx 12.5% bf. I seem to have averaged around 3300 calories/non workout days and 3700+ calories on workout days. Obviously I was really really skinny at the time and could pretty much stuff anything in my face. I think all these numbers were too high though, and therefore I’ll be adjusting downward this next cycle to minimize my fat gain.
I’m going to be doing a glucose test for myself ala massive eating I, and from there structuring my diet accordingly…a bit better this time with healthier foods as that first time I ate everything and anything I could to get my caloric intake up. I’d suggest looking back to massive eating I and considering doing this yourself, since JB said it’s an objective way to measure how you tolerate carbs.
Hey, there, Adam!!! Welcome to the forum. Great advice you’re getting thus far! And it’s nice to see that you’ve been reading and doing your homework. It shows!!!
A few questions that will help us to help you:
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What are your goals? How much LBM do you want to put on?
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What do you do for a living? How physically active are you in the course of your job?
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How physically active are you when you are not working? In other words, when you’re not working do you play soccer, go biking, mountain climbing or any other physically demanding sports?
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What type of workout are you doing in the gym? How many days a week do you work out and how long is your workout?
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Do you do any cardio, in the course of your job or otherwise?
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How long have you been tracking your food intake? Do you keep a daily food log and weigh and measure your food?
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Tied into the question above, have you ever determined what your MAINTENANCE calories are?
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How many meals a day are you eating? And how often?
Thank you all for the advice so far. It seems that you want details…
I’m a student studying Biological Sciences at Oxford but i’m also on the books of a model agency. I’m not a model as such (yet) and my work so far has involved TV extra roles (mainly on Hollyoaks for any of you that live in the UK). Every month my agency calls me in to monitor my development. They measure my height, waist, BF% etc… They have a general rule that models should be 10% BF at the most so every month I try to make sure that I’m not over that mark. I do want to add more lean mass though. I’ve read that it can be just a possible to do this whilst maintaining the same BF%. My food choices are really clean. I very rarely eat anything that isn’t on the article called “Foods that make you look good nekin”. I’ve been weight training sporadically for a couple of years but I’ve been training regularly for the past 4 months. I’ve been using JBs Massive Eating and nutrient timing and keeping a food log and weighing everything for 3 weeks. I lift weights 4 times a week for about 75 minutes doing a chest/back day, a legs day, an arms and shoulders day, and a metabolic recovery style day where I do minor muscle groups too. I do abs 3 times a week and 1 HIIT sprint interval session for 30minutes and I also do 10 minutes of cardio after all my weights sessions. I’m fairly active in university as well. I always seem to have back to back lectures on different sides of the city… It’s pretty funny watching me dash there and back all day carrying dozens of lunchboxes! I normally get 8 meals a day if the workout drinks count (do they?). Any more suggestions would be welcome… thanks for your time reading all that
Hey Adam, welcome to the forum!
Cheers ZEB!
A point about what Will-of-Iron said…
your recommendations are exactly what JB recommends but this just adds to my problem. It reduces my carbs even more and slightly ups my protein!! still confused…
Adam, I’ll make some recommendations. Feel free to pick and choose.
To start with, yes, your protein shakes “count” as a meal.
Your LBM is 163 pounds. I generally calculate protein and fat requirements based on LBM. For maintenance and cutting, I’d recommend 1.5g x LBM, roughly 245g of protein per day. Divide that number by your 8 meals, and you get 30g per meal.
For fat, make sure you’re getting roughly equal amounts of monounsaturated fat, saturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat. Ask me for details if you need it. Fat requirements are generally .4 to .6g x LBM. I’d probably split the difference and go with 80g of fat per day.
With fat and protein out of the way, we only have carbohydrates to address, but that’s your largest area of opportunity.
My general recommendations would be to eat ONLY green veggie carbs, except for the two whole-food P+C meals PWO. If you don’t work out, don’t eat starchy type carbs; oatmeal, sweet potatoes, yams, brown rice.
Protein and fat requirements are just that. Requirements. Meet those requirements every day. You have some flexibility with carbs, though. If energy levels suffer, raise carbs slightly. If body fat goes up, drop carbs slightly. Raise and lower carb intake to manage scale weight. Take in more carbs on days you do resistance training and less on days you don’t. I know these are broad recommendations, but there concepts as well.
It sounds like you’ve optimized PWO nutrition, even though you’re not using Surge. Once again, if you’re not sure, ask. That’s a huge area of opportunity.
Re cardio, I’d like to see you reduce the time and increase the frequency. Go ahead and do HIIT on days you don’t lift. HIIT is very anabolic and highly complementary to your goals. Make sure you leave yourself one day of rest, though. Looks like you could be doing HIIT twice a week.
Instructions for HIIT. 5 minutes of warm-up, seven 30-second all-out sprints, followed by 90-seconds of lower-intensity recovery. You’re done in 20 minutes, except for an optional cool-down.
One experiment I’m going to recommend that you try from time to time. I have a personal prejudice against all dairy (unlike JB). Some people don’t do well with it. Other people find it makes it difficult to drop BF. Most competitive BBs drop dairy a few weeks before comp.
The last opportunity I see is that you could probably work out harder and take in more carbs the first two weeks of the month (post-weigh-in/check-in) and then tighten up the last two weeks of the month to make sure you hit that sub-10% number.
Anyway, those are my thoughts, Adam. If you have any other questions or need clarification, don’t hesitate to ask.