Ah Beef!

I trained with FP last night, I am coming along fine and although I have cut lifting back to only three days a week (I usually lift 6 days a week) and am doing 20 minutes on the StairMaster the other three, I appear to have come down in weight a bit.

I weigh myself on Fridays, so I was not sure. I still look a little lean and need to fill out and hold that for the next three weeks, then the last week deal with anything that might need to go!

As I have mentioned previously, in "figure" the judges do not want you too lean, that look is reserved more for bodybuilding. Unfortunately, to look right in most other places, I do need to get really lean, in the 4-5% body fat range. Right now I am pushing it.

At 6:30 she said "you can have steak" and I asked her three times, "are you sure? steak?!"

Yes, it has slightly more calories, more fat and can help to keep me looking full and make me very happy, I have had beef only once since February.

Steak is naturally high in creatine, if you will be eating steak be sure to stick to the very leanest cuts, flank or top sirloin, filet is OK too. I like flank and ask the butcher to run it through the tenderizer once, it punches hundreds of little holes in it and makes it very tender, so when I cook it rare, it is not chewy.

If only eating steak a few nights a week, eat it the evenings prior to your heavy lifting, or prior to the days when you train the parts you are trying to add size to. The added creatine, calories and fat will help you out here. Be sure to control portion size, my diet allows 4 to 5 ounces, that's it. Unless you look like Jay Cutler, stay away from those 16 ounce porterhouses!

By the way, I did step on the scale and she was right, I have lost another pound.