My Diet

I have mentioned several times how I have changed my diet. I thought I would explain a bit of what I have done.

I weigh my food year round, at least the protein and the starches. I don't weigh vegetables as you can eat as many of those as you like, provided you don't mistake one of the starchy vegetables which for diet purposes are considered "starches" for a "vegetable" (that would be things such as peas, corn, winter squashes).

So, I am always adhering to some "diet" although I relax it quite a bit when I am not in the cutting phase. I believe that this makes me more successful when I do need to drop the body fat as I never let myself get overweight, and I don't pig out for months at a time.

I have been reading some books that have inspired me to make a few changes, very slight ones and that is all I need as my diet is fairly dialed in year round anyway. I don't pack on 20 extra pounds in the winter just to have to lose it in the spring, I don't believe in that, and not many people do any longer, research has proven it is not necessary to gain a great deal of excess fat just to gain lean mass. If you eat properly, you will gain properly.

Here is an example of my lunch (meal #3) on Sunday:  3 ounces black beans, 1 cup mushrooms, one cup oven roasted cauliflower (with paprika), 1/2 cup Brussels sprouts and 4 ounces thin chicken breast with Mrs. Dash and some lemon. Very satisfying and filling! I eat a lot!

So what I have done is simple, following my past successes I have reduced my starches on meal 3 and 4 each by one ounce, and on meal 5 all together. 

I have replaced the starches in meal 5 with kabocha squash, or one extra cup of vegetables. I like kabocha squash as it is satisfying like a yam or potato, but without the carbs!

1 cup has 30 calories and 7 grams carbs, whereas if you had butternut squash you would be eating 82 calories and 22 grams of carbs!

I have also increased my overall vegetable intake by about 1/2 to 1 cup more at each meal, which means I am eating 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 cups of vegetables at a time. So - decreased starchy carbs, increased fiberous carbs.

I am not so hungry, I am getting carbs through vegetables but not the starchy variety that tends to be stored as fat.

I have also stopped eating brown rice, replacing it with beans or lentils. I have eaten rice on occasion, but not everyday as in the past.

In addition, I am eating 3 to 5 raw nuts (almond, cashew or macadamia) or 2 tsp oil (olive, flax, Udo's, CLA) prior to or with each each meal containing starch.

I am eating the nuts/oil just prior to each meal to reduce the insulin response for the meal. Eating the nuts or oils will help control the rate of entry of glucose into the bloodstream. So slower entry, less insulin is produced.

The reason why you do not want a rapid rise of insulin is it will cause too much glucose to be taken up by the cells, which results in low blood sugar, which in turn stimulates the appetite for more food!

I have also continued having a post training carb and protein drink, although it isn't a huge one like I might have when not cutting fat. I think this has helped me to hold onto the muscle and still look full and round, while losing the overall bodyfat. I don't have much more to lose, maybe 3 or 4 pounds at the most. It's hard to tell until I see it, but I will stick to the diet, and I won't be doing an insane amount of cardio, as I don't need to, I don't have a lot of fat to try to lose.

My post training drink has 26 grams carbs in it, I will probably stop that about 4 weeks out, and right there I should start to lose and tighten up more.

Cooking

Me in my kitchen, I love to cook. This is my winter chef's jacket, it's thick and gets hot. My summer and spring jacket is black with short sleeves. I like them because I don't ruin my clothes with splatters.

I know, you are thinking, "she cooks? right, she's always on a diet!"

I understand why you think that, even a fellow at work the other day said to me "you don't eat cheesecake right? You don't even eat anything humans do"

I think he was trying to be funny, but I wasn't laughing, in fact, I found it a bit sad.

I enjoy what I eat, I feel better eating healthy and I shall probably live to have a better quality of life because if it. I also love to eat some "human" food too, I just don't do it all the time.

There are so many wonderful foods that can be eaten, and can be delicious yet not be full of sugar and fat and thousands of calories.

If you make healthy foods the main part of your diet, and allow yourself to eat some of the other foods, you won't feel so cheated.

So exactly what is a healthy diet? It's not rocket science and it's not difficult. Now to diet down to lose all excess bodyfat, that is a science, but we won't be talking about that today.

Eat several small meals a day: This can range from 4 to 6 depending on your activity level. The goal is to never get to a state of ravenous hunger, and to keep your body fueled and blood sugar level. A meal for someone who isn't very active can be an apple and 2 Tablespoons of peanut butter. And then someone like me, who is fairly active and who eats 6 meals of almost all the same size, eats two lunches consisting of 4 ounces protein, 4 ounces starch and a cup of vegetables in each lunch (one at 12:00 and one at 3:30)

Eat what "humans" do: Natural, unprocessed foods. Lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, whole grains. Stay away from packaged foods which will not do you ANY good.

Drink lots of water:Your body needs water to function. Water allows your body to maintain it's temperature; it flushes waste; it keeps skin moist; it cushions your joints, it protects your nervous system.

Eat slowly and enjoy the meal: If you rush through your meal you are likely to keep eating even after you are full. You will eat faster than your body can signal your brain that you are full, and then you will over eat.

Eat the right portions: Protein source should be the size of you open palm (not hand, the palm only!). Starches should be the size of your closed fist, no more! Vegetables should cover most of your plate.

Experiment and be open: I try different vegetables and combination all the time. You don't need to eat "breakfast" foods in the morning and "dinner" foods at night. Let your imagination run wild!

10 Commandments of Getting Cut Part 2 of 3

Part II from The 10 Commandments of Getting Cut

Losing Fat, Not Just Weight by Chris  McClinch

Eating the Right Foods

5. Thou shalt eat the right foods.
To burn fat, you've got to know what makes you fat. The first thing that makes you fat is eating more calories than your body can use. Rather than eliminating the excess calories, your body stores them as body fat. We've taken care of that problem with the caloric deficit, but it's also important to understand that certain types of food are more likely to make you fat.

Some of the foods that make you fat are obvious: candy, soda, beer, chips, pizza, and fast food have no place in a healthy diet, period. When you're not dieting, they're okay as occasional cheat foods, but even then, pay careful attention to the words "occasional" and "cheat." As in, you're not going to be eating these foods on any kind of a regular basis, and you're fully aware of the fact that they represent a step back from your physique goals. An occasional step back is healthy, but 90% of what you eat should be quality bodybuilding foods.
 
The next group of foods is less obvious, especially since so many foods in this group are traditionally considered "diet" foods. This group includes pasta, bread, pretzels, crackers, white rice, rice cakes, breakfast cereals, and fruit juices. What do these have in common? They're all highly processed carbohydrates--high on the glycemic index, low in fiber, low in nutrients, and not terribly filling. They massively spike insulin release in the body, don't provide much other than calories, and leave you feeling hungry again shortly after you eat them. You don't need to go aggressively low-carb to lose fat, but you do want to severely limit your intake of processed carbs. You're much better off with fruits, vegetables, brown rice, yams, and old-fashioned oatmeal (the stuff that comes in the canister, not the packets) as your primary sources of carbohydrates.

Healthy sources of protein are hugely important for getting cut. Remember, you're not just trying to lose fat; you're trying to preserve as much muscle as possible, and one gram of protein per pound of body weight should be your goal here. Good sources of protein include lean cuts of beef, 90% or leaner ground beef, ground chicken, ground turkey, chicken breast, turkey breast, pork tenderloin, fish, eggs and egg whites, cottage cheese, and egg-, whey-, and casein-based protein powders. I can't recommend soy to anyone other than vegetarians or vegans because of the high concentrations of phytoestrogens present in soy protein. Other protein sources to avoid? Bacon, pork chops, sausages, hot dogs, prime rib, fatty cuts of beef, and the other high-saturated fat usual suspects.


Finally, you need good fats in your diet. The big message moving forward should be that you need to eat the right fats if you want to burn fat. Let's start with what the wrong fats are: saturated fats and trans fatty acids. Saturated fats you're familiar with--they're the fats in butter, red meat, and hard cheeses. Any fat that's solid at room temperature is a saturated fat and to be eaten only in moderation. Try and keep them at less than half of your daily fat intake. Trans fatty acids are chemically manipulated vegetable fats such as you find in margarine or Crisco. Essentially, they're polyunsaturated fatty acids with hydrogen atoms added to them to turn them into pseudo-saturated fats. If the words "partially hydrogenated" appear anywhere on the label, it's best avoided entirely.

Good Fats The good fats are the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, particularly those high in Omega-3 fatty acids. These fats can help boost testosterone levels and lower blood cholesterol. They also blunt insulin release and aid in the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. The majority of your fats should come from sources such as flax oil, olive oil, fish oil, natural peanut butter (if it has ingredients other than peanuts and salt, it's not natural), macadamia nuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts, olives, and ground flax seeds.

Diets, Carbs and Cutting

The traditional high-carb, low-protein, low-fat eating plan is out.It's a nutritional and hormonal disaster, prompting massive insulin releases, obesity, adult-onset diabetes, and higher hunger levels. Uncontrolled insulin levels are the primary culprit here, so you want a plan that controls insulin while creating the caloric deficit you need to lose weight. There are several plans that have proven highly effective, but some are far more restrictive than others. Your ideal plan is the least restrictive one that gives you the results you want.
"Zone Diets"

The least restrictive of the plans I can recommend is the Zone--Barry Sears's diet. The basic premise is that every time you eat, 40% of the calories should come from carbohydrates, 30% should come from protein, and 30% should come from fats. Basically, the easiest way to plan a Zone meal is to get 1 1/3 grams of carbohydrate and half a gram of fat for every gram of protein. My only real caveat is that the calorie figures are too low for most athletes and that the advice on exercise (walk 30 minutes every day) is insufficient.

Not everyone does well on The Zone. Research has shown that while combining fat with carbohydrates blunts insulin release, the combination actually increases insulin resistance in some people. These people--the rare individuals who find themselves gaining body fat on a Zone diet--are better off with an eating plan that stresses separating fats from carbohydrates. This is John Berardi's Massive Eating protocol, which calls for eating your meals as either protein and fat or protein and carbs. Essentially, protein and carbs would be eaten immediately post-workout and for breakfast, with protein and fat constituting the rest of your meals. This one's a little more restrictive than the Zone, but if you find that your body doesn't handle the combination of fat and carbs well, this one's probably for you.

Low Carb Diets

Next on the list come the diets in which carbohydrates don't make up a significant portion of your daily calories at all. I wouldn't recommend these unless you're dieting for a competition or are obese and looking to lose the weight quickly, because they're not much fun. Most people feel drained, cranky, and dumb without carbohydrates, and there's a 1-2 week period of gastrointestinal adjustment that isn't pleasant. The least restrictive version of the low-carb diets is the cyclical ketogenic diet. There are two ways to do this. The most common way is to eat less than 70 grams of carbohydrates a day from Monday through Friday (under 30 on days that you don't lift), then eat whatever you want on the weekend. Obviously, the better your weekend choices, the better your results, but I can tell you from personal experience that it works even if your weekend choices run along the lines of pizza, Doritos, Coke, beer, candy, and Hot Pockets.

The less-common, more restrictive version of the cyclical ketogenic diet is to eat low-carb every day, with 2-3 carb-up meals a week. Typical carb-up foods here run along the lines of a sweet potato with butter, a banana, and two cups of brown rice or oatmeal. Not much fun, but it replenishes the muscle glycogen and temporarily boosts insulin enough to keep you training.


Next, there is the targeted ketogenic diet. On this plan, you eat just enough carbs to fuel your workouts, with no carbohydrates the rest of the day. This is the only one of the diet plans I've mentioned here that I've never followed, but I've had personal training clients do it with excellent results. The easiest way to do it is to carry a bottle of Powerade to the gym and sip from it between sets.


Finally, there is the strict ketogenic diet--the Atkins diet. All low-carb, all the time. Frankly, I don't recommend this one for people who work out because I don't think it provides an optimal hormonal environment for recovery or conservation of lean mass. Use this one only if none of the less restrictive diet plans work for you.

Chris McClinch is an Arlington, VA-based bodybuilder and personal trainer. He won the middleweight title at the 2001 International Natural Bodybuilding Federation's collegiate national championships. As a trainer, he specializes in physique transformation and sport-specific strength training preparation, and is an active member of the IronOnline bulletin board.

I gained weight over night!

This is me and Phil Heath, the night of my competition in October, shortly after he won second place in the 2010 Olympia, we make a pretty good looking couple huh?
We both have very full, round, healthy looking muscles don't you think? There is a reason, and it's what we ate.

I have heard so many times from friends "Oh I went out last night and I had pizza (or pasta, or fries, or cake, the list is endless) and I now weigh three pounds more than yesterday!!!!
 

They really think they gained weight!  Oh I fall for it too, it's that nasty scale! Stay away from it!

You cannot gain three pounds overnight, sorry, it ain't gonna happen, ever! You may weigh more, but it's a temporary situation, honestly.

You must ingest over 3,500 extra calories to gain one pound. So...thinking about what you ate in one day or night, do you think you ate enough to gain three pounds? Nope, didn't think so.....

There is this sneaky little thing called GLYCOGEN and it can make or break you!

Where does it come from? Carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates can be thought of as molecular necklaces with carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms strung together in chains. These necklaces are broken apart during digestion by digestive enzymes and converted into individual beads or molecules of blood glucose, also known as blood sugar. Assisted by the hormone insulin, blood glucose is ushered into cells to be used by various tissues in the body.

Several things happen to glucose. Once inside a cell, it can be quickly metabolized to supply energy, particularly for the brain and other parts of the nervous system that depend on glucose for fuel. Or it may be converted to either liver or muscle glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate.

When you exercise or use your muscles, the body mobilizes muscle glycogen for energy. Blood glucose can also turn to body fat and get packed away in fat tissue. This happens when you eat more carbohydrates than you need or than your body can store as liver or muscle glycogen.

You can generally store about 1600 calories of glycogen in your muscles and liver. On average, about 1,200 calories of glycogen are stored in your muscles, and 400 calories in your liver.

The amount of glycogen stored in your muscles is directly related to how much carbohydrate you eat and how well trained you are. Diets containing 60 to 65 percent or more of carbohydrate allow for the greatest storage of glycogen in the muscles on a daily basis.

The more glycogen you store in your muscles, the longer you can train or work out. So to maintain an active lifestyle, your diet should always be high in carbohydrates (the RIGHT ones though).

Back to why you weigh more though. For every gram of glycogen your body stores away in the muscles, it also packs away 2.6 grams of water!

Just sleeping for several hours can deplete your stored carbohydrates anywhere from 140 to 260 calories (depending on your size and fat free mass).
What exactly counts as a carbohydrate?

Fruit, Vegetables, Breads, Cereals, Milk, Soda, Fruit juice, Grains, Pasta, Legumes, sweets. Maye we should name what is NOT a carbohydrate!
So, look at what you ate the day or two before the "weight gain", was it high in carbohydrate?  You may just be packing a little extra energy and water. It will go away as you deplete the stores and/or reduce the carbohydrates in the next few days.

If you are a competitor and are carb cycling, don't go getting freaky on me! Your weight WILL fluctuate as you cycle through the carbs. 

 What's the best way to figure out what is going on with your body? Write down what you eat, everyday. Everything. Be honest, if you aren't, the only one you are cheating is yourself.