Hey! your supposed to be chained to the squat rack when you drink your milk! lol
Whats in the bowl? looks good too.
Damn it we need an official Recipe / cooking section on this site.
Its salad - tomatos, cucumbers, greens (parsely, etc.), some sea-salt, and sour cream
2000 calories is not enough. I am training a female right now who is 140lbs and 5’7" and eats 2000 calories a day and is LOSING weight. Granted she is very active currently but not much more than any weight trainer serious about gains should be.
I am 6’1" and 215 lbs and my maintenance calories are 4300 a day currently and my lifestyle is fairly inactive except for my 4 hours of weight training a week.
I am definitely biased towards higher calorie diets and think overestimating calories and cutting back is far superior than the opposite. I like a lot of John Berardi’s diet advice and he is another high calorie advocate with a lot of useful articles you can search for in the archives.
I know your goals are to neither bulk or cut but frankly that is a terrible goal. Changing body composition to having more muscle and less fat is what your overall goal should be. Getting proficient and stronger on major compound lifts is the main practical goal you should have in the weight room and eating enough to support this is crucial.
Start with a clean diet of 3500 to 4000 calories a day using your 40/30/30macro nutrient ratio is fine but swapping one of the carbs or fat to 40 would be fine too. Take measurements of your body and use that as your primary tool for tracking your progress along with strength increase on the squat, deadlift, bench, etc…
Don’t cut back on calories unless you get up to 215lbs and your body measurements have you convinced its all fat!
The key to making this work is working hard in the gym. Your current plan would have you progressing so slow in the gym that your results would be pathetic compared to if you were eating enough to actually recover quickly from intense, muscle building, fat burning, metabolism raising workouts!
That said you need to set some clear specific plans for progression in the gym. What exactly is your workout plan?
Thank you. I definitely understood that I need more cals and am cramming down on the extra calories as we speak. I got 2000cals/day because I was going by 10 cals per lb/bw, not sure where I got that from, but obviously it was way off
For program, doing this:
Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy Program
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459341
[quote]Spawn_X wrote:
Thank you. I definitely understood that I need more cals and am cramming down on the extra calories as we speak. I got 2000cals/day because I was going by 10 cals per lb/bw, not sure where I got that from, but obviously it was way off
For program, doing this:
Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy Program
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459341[/quote]
I’ll make you a promise right now. You follow this routine and you will be unable to eat enough quality food to get fat without a positive, designed, and valiant effort. You’re off to a good start.
That routine should be great for you. As a beginner the key is to add 5 or 10 pounds to the bar every time you squat and deadlift.
Adding to all your upper body lifts asap is important too but the gains are fast and furious as a beginner on the squat and deadlift.
Setting a goal of increasing your squat and/or deadlift by at least 5 to 10 pounds per week for 8 to 12 weeks may seem like a lot to you but is actually reasonable for an average newbie and someone with talent for lifting will make much faster newbie gains than that.
Once again the calories and quality of food has to be there to make this work.
You still need to establish your beginning weights on all the exercises you plan to use for your version of the program you linked and then pick some end goal increases you are aiming for.
Post it here if you want more help figuring out what you should be aiming for or just use a pad and pen but trust me clear concrete goals written down will help you stay focused.
example:
squated/deadlifted 10x3 with 135
bench pressed/rowed 10x3 with 95
goal 8 weeks from now:
squat/deadlift 10x3 with 205
bench press/rowed 10x3 with 135
[quote]Spawn_X wrote:
haha, never thought I’d get complimented for photography. I just started taking pictures of different meals for no real reason
skillets are king. get one. 3 for 10 bucks at my local Macy’s. Cast iron = KING when it comes to taste, can be used as a plate too
since my photography isn’t so bad, here’s another one. ok, ok, sorry for off-topic. back to eating![/quote]
That plate is pretty nice.