I am going to be the first to admit that I knew very little regarding nutrition before I started this program and really started doing research. I think the majority of Americans are equally befuddled when it comes to food and nutrition because there are so many varying viewpoints and theories and body types out there. Admittedly, diet is the area of which I am the least knowledgeable but I believe I have a pretty good grasp on the concept. So in this section of my blog, I will be recommending theories, recipes, and what I am doing to help you out. The problem with your diet is not that it is difficult to maintain, it is that it is so easy to break from it.
What I am suggesting is not a “diet.” To me, a diet is
something you go off of after a certain time and this often causes yo-yoing in
your weight. Now, I want to issue a full disclosure. I am not a doctor. I am
just simply stating what I am doing. So adapt this to your lifestyle at your
own risk.
And I want to stress that last statement very clearly. This
is not a diet. This is a lifestyle change and when you adopt a lifestyle, it
think you will see more positive results in the long run over some fad juice
diet that you will see on the cover of a magazine in a supermarket checkout
line.
The Basic
Bodybuilder Diet Theory
If your body is the vehicle, then the food is the fuel you put
in it. Yeah, you can buy the cheap octane gas and you will run but it is going
to be clunking and sputtering after a while. If you want maximum performance,
you need high octane and fuel additives in order to win the race. You can train
like a monster six days a week but if you are eating poorly, you are never
going to see the results that you want.
The goal now with your diet is all about lean protein in
order to build lean muscle. Protein is the number one building block so most of
your diet needs to focus around this. Roughly 50% of your caloric intake is
going to come from protein. Translation: Chicken needs to become
your best friend. The industry standard
is that you need to be taking in 1 to 2 grams of protein per pound of body
weight in order to build muscle. The problem is that when you are overweight,
this is just a massive amount of food and you will see this once you start
doing your calculations.
The first concept that you need to wrap your head around is
that fat is not something to be afraid of. If you read the labels on milk,
almonds, cashews, and things of this nature, most people scoff at the fat
content and assume they cannot eat it because they are “dieting.” Truth is
about 30% of your calories are going to come from fat.
If you are looking for weight loss (and who isn’t?) then there
are now two enemies to your diet that you now have to fend off on a regular
basis: Carbohydrates and sugar.
Part 1: Carbs Are The Enemy
Carbohydrates are not bad for
you by any means. Looking at a box of Raisin Bran, it would be hard to argue
that anything in there is bad for
you. However, if you are overweight, what they do for your body is counter to
what we are trying to achieve. Carbohydrates are transformed by the body into energy.
If you are training for the Olympics and exercising eight hours a day,
carbohydrates are freaking essential. Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt are
probably not caring too much about their carbohydrate intake. You know who
measures ever carbohydrate ingested? The Rock. And let me explain why.
The problem is that we live
too much of a sedentary lifestyle with all the Interwebs and YouTubes and
Netflixes. So if you take in carbohydrates but are not exerting enough energy
to burn off those carbs, your body is naturally going to store those carbs. And
what do those unused carbs get turned into? You guessed it. Fat.
So now, let’s say you are
working out vigorously. Your body is looking for you to feed it carbohydrates
in order to generate energy that you are expending from working out. It is
waiting and waiting. Your body starts to freak out, saying “HEY! We need some
carbs over here!” Finally, realizing it is not getting the carbs it needs, it
starts consuming your fat stores in place of the carbohydrates. So now you are
chewing through your fat stores in order to compensate for this lack of carbs.
Starting to understand now?
This does not mean that you
have to cut out carbohydrates entirely. But if you want to lose weight, you
want to limit your intake of things like breads, cereals, grains, etc. Before I
thought that Wheat Thins and Triscuits were a good healthy snack. And they are!
But if you want to cut weight, you have to limit the carbs and then get active.
By doing this, your body starts chewing into those fat reserves and, bam, you
get sustainable weight loss.
Part 2: The White Devil
I have a sweet tooth. I admit
it. My typical lunch at work used to be a bologna sandwich and a finger length
stack of Pringles, which I washed down with a Monster Energy Drink. And I was
working hard at my desk job. I was getting stuff done. Why should I not treat
myself to a dessert? And my dessert of choice was Little Debbie Fudge Rounds.
Man, I loved those things. But when you start doing the calorie count and the
nutrition stacks… Sweet Aunt Petunia, it was horrible.
Sugar is a killer because it
is empty carbs that your body doesn’t know what to do with so it just gets
stored. Stored means it transforms into fat. And this is the last thing we
want.
So I made the change. No more
Little Debbies. No more McGriddles. No more sausage biscuits from a drive
through. Now, I get up early to have two scrambled eggs and two strips of bacon
for breakfast that I cook myself. My lunch is a boneless skinless chicken
breast and green beans in a Tupperware container cooked the night before. I
still love the Monster Energy Drinks but I switched from Monster Energy to
Monster Rehab or Monster Total Zeroes (200 calories versus 20 and 0.). I know
the drinks are not healthy for you but they are a nice treat for to mark the
halfway point of the work day.
My dessert is a chewy protein
bar slathered in peanut butter. Coworkers have often commented that what I am
doing “cannot be healthy” for my dessert but I think that is because 1) people
don’t understand what I am doing and 2) they have no idea how hard it is to
consume over 200+ grams of protein in a day.
I remember one time a coworker
saw me eating a peanut butter-covered protein bar and commented, “I thought you
were trying to lose weight?” This goes back to that common misconception where
you have to avoid fat and quit eating to lose weight.
You have to invert that
nutrition pyramid we all remember from grade school. You now want meat to be
the main building block of your diet. If you stick by the basic principles, I
think you will see improvement. Now if you adopt this principle, know that it
is based on the fact that I am working out five days a week. I cannot comment
on how this idea will work if you are not working out.
SAMPLE MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY
MEALS
BREAKFAST (8:00):
Breakfast for me is pretty much the same every day. It is two eggs and two
strips of pre-cooked bacon. That’s 12 grams of clean protein. Learn to love
Lawry’s Seasoning Salt. That is the key. And it is nice to round out the pan
with a splash of milk and a little cheese.
WORK COMMUTE (8:45):
I do a Life Choice Double Chocolate Protein Bar. This is a nice 18 gram hit of
protein and helps cure my sweet tooth. Much better for you than a package of
chocolate donuts.
MORNING SNACK (11:00): Great Value Fat Free Greek Yogurt from
Walmart. 12 grams of clean protein with no fat. If I do two cups worth, that is
24 grams. If it works for Cam Newton…
LUNCH (1:00): Boneless, skinless chicken breast seasoned
with lemon pepper with green beans. I cook up a batch of this stuff every
Sunday night in the crock pot and take Tupperware containers to work. My sweet
reward after lunch is a Great Value Chewy Protein Bar slathered in peanut
butter. This gives me 10 grams of protein (yaa!), 6 grams of sugar (boo, but
compared to a candy bar? Ya!) $2.50 for 5 in the cereal aisle. Good taste. Not
gross.
And I switched from
Monster Energy (200 calories) to Monster Rehab (20 calories). I love those
Arnold Palmers.
AFTERNOON SNACK (3:00):
Another Life Choice protein bar (I like the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) or a
good handful of cashews, almonds, or some other nuts. This gives me another 20
grams of protein.
HOME (Approx. 7:00):
Body Fortress Whey Protein Shake with skim milk.
DINNER (7:30):
Something sensible. If you do hamburgers, that is fine. Just don’t have buns.
You can eat all the vegetables you want. Green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes.
No reason you cannot fill up as long as you are eating right. Rice is okay too.
Now, you are looking at this and
you might be scoffing. “Ryan, you are eating every two hours! I thought you
wanted to lose weight!” Another common mistake when people are dieting is that
they eat less food. You can cut calories to lose weight but if you are eating
the right things, you can still eat a boat load of food. You HAVE to feed the machine.
The average person gains person
gains one to two pounds a year but consuming just 100 fewer calories each day
is enough to avert that weight gain. If you want to lose weight, most doctors
recommend downsizing by 500 calories a day. But you don't just have to cut out
food. If you cut your calories by 250 and burn 250 extra calories in the gym,
you just met your 500 count quota. You
are not going see dramatic changes immediately but small tweaks will pay off
over time. Remember, losing one to two pounds a week is healthy. More than that
can actually be harmful. Weight that you shed slowly is weight that stays off.
You can eat 250 calories less and then burn 250 by walking for 30 to 45 minutes. Over a week, that will produce about a pound of weight loss." –Holly Wyatt, MD, Center for Human Nutrition in Denver.
PROTEIN
Protein is the number one building block when it comes to
building muscle. The general rule of thumb is that a bodybuilder is supposed to
have a protein intake of 1 gram per pound of body weight. Once you start doing
the math, you would be surprised at how difficult this is to accomplish,
especially if you are overweight.
Now, when I first started this journey, I was really nervous
about stepping on the scales for the first time. I was several weeks in before
I was brave enough to weigh, and then it was 275 pounds. According to my
program at Bodybuilding.com, my ideal weight is 215 pounds. I have been basing
my intakes based on what my ideal weight is as opposed to what my weight is now.
Seriously, 245 grams of protein is a lot. It is a darn lot of food. My goal is to lose weight which means a
reduction of total caloric intake. So my goal is typically around 200 grams of
protein. Even with making my diet primarily protein based, this is still
difficult to accomplish.
PROTEIN COUNT:
2 Eggs (scrambled) & 2 Bacon Strips: 12
Life Choice Protein Bar: 18
Greek Yogurt (x2): 24
Chicken Breast & Green Beans: 35
Protein Bar + Peanut Butter: 17
Afternoon Protein Bar: 18
Hamburger Patties & Green Beans: 34
Cashews (1/4 container): 10
Shake & Milk: 36
Total: 209
You can see by looking at the protein count, even eating
primarily protein based meals, I am still only hitting 173 grams of protein.
With the supplemental shakes, I can get over the 200 gram count but this is
eating every couple of hours.
Even with all that food, I am only looking at an average of 200
grams of protein and my target goal (as of right now, should be 245 grams). The
only way for me to add more protein to my diet is to add a fifth meal. Man,
that is a lot of food.
“Ryan, why don’t you just eat more?”When you are reading the labels on the protein powders, the packaging always recommends two scoops for optimal results. And if I doubled the amount of protein I am taking in just in the shakes, yes, I could add another 40 grams of protein into my diet.
However, it should be noted that a recent study from the University of
Texas (Boomer Sooner!) found that consuming 90 grams of protein at one meal
provides about the same benefit as eating 30 grams. Study author Douglas
Paddon-Jones, Ph.D. likened it to a gas tank: "There's only so much you
can put in to maximize performance; the rest is spillover."
This is why you need to eat often so that your protein is equally
distributed throughout the day. Seriously, if you look at The Rock’s diet plan
while filming HERCULES, he was eating 7 meals a day plus his protein shakes.
Now, he was probably also in the gym 4 to 6 hours a day and he has a
professional chef prepare all his meals. I am sure professional bodybuilders
who do this for a living use a similar formula but most of us have a 9-to-5 job
that we have to work at. So don’t beat yourself up if you don’t look like The
Rock after six months.
CHEAT DAYS?
I feel life is too short not
to enjoy yourself. And you don’t want to be that person who passes on dessert
when you are at a dinner party. For me, my weekends are when I am not so
regimented. I try to keep the basic theory but Friday night is pizza with the
kids.
I love having my bacon, egg
& cheese biscuits from Carl’s Jr. on Saturday before grocery shopping. And
yeah, throughout the week, I might splurge on a donut or a small handful of
cookies every now and again. I feel you have to have your cheat meals too. If
all you do is deny, deny, deny, eventually you are going to snap and
overindulge.
After doing this for over a
year, I am thoroughly convinced that if I can get to my ideal weight of 215
that I could maintain that weight for the rest of my life, but dropping 30
pounds is not something that is done overnight. But life is too short NOT to
enjoy caramel and sea salt cookies every now and again.
So all things in moderation.
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