Last night I went off my diet. This was only one bad meal out of the 42 clean meals I will have during the week. However this meal skewed my macros for yesterday - high calories & high carbs. Since I am fairly new to training and fat I am following Shugart’s advise by first focusing on loosing fat (the correct way) before I try to increase my lean muscle mass. As such I am eating very clean, severely limiting carbs (less than 75g/day) and limiting my calories to 500 - 1000c/day less than maintenance (1-2lbs of fat loss per week).
My goal is to keep as much muscle as possible while losing body fat. I would like to get my bf% less than 20% before I focus on building muscle as I tend to gain fat easily.
Do I make up for the added calories by restricting the next few meals or do I just forget the digression and move on?
What would the experienced and knowledgeable T-Nation member do in this situation?
Don’t compensate with extra calorie restriction. Just get back to you plan asap. If you want to compensate somehow, get an extra workout in or do a HIIT session.
Move on. You cheated. Dn’t kill yourself doing a ton of cardio the next day to make up for last night. If you’ve been following 75 grams of carbs for longer than a week you were definitely depleted and most of the carbs you ate yesterday were just stored as muscle glycogen. Go have a kick ass day in the gym today.
If you had 41/42 meals according to your plan you are WAY more consistent than just about everyone else. Some coaches here suggest keeping at least 90% of your meals as planned, I think that’s pretty reasonable advice.
Stu, everyone here is right: just move on. The fact you are that disciplined is good enough. A lot of people say it doesn’t even matter if you have 1 cheat meal, so just continue on with your diet, and good luck.
It’s ok. I just went off my nutrition plan for 10 days where I lived off bagels and toast. I also did absolutely no physical activity except a few games of pork swords vs. wet kitties.
So don’t feel bad. It could have been worse right?
In reality though One meal in 43 is fine. Technically you are 98% effective in that little sample. That is good. Maintaining that consistency will get you places fast.
Just remember to really put some stank on that bar in your gym time.