ExRx.net

I've never been one to count how many calories of intake but I've always been trying to eat a variety of food and keep it as clean as I can. I always eat until I'm satisfied. My goals is to lean out so I can see them abs. If this means I have to count, then let it be.

Height: 5'8
Weight: 163lbs
Fat%: Unknown
Supplement: Designer Whey, Powerbar (if you recommand any other brand for protein powder or protein bar please let me know)

Breakfast: a bowl of skim milk with kellogg's raisin bran or 2 eggs with veggies and a plain whole wheat toast with either a cup of fresh squeezed OJ(400ml) or skim milk(400ml).

2-3 hours after breakfast: a shake(with only 1 scoop) or powerbar

Lunch: I try to eat lean meat, veggies and a little bit of rice.

pre-workout: a shake (2 scoops) or powerbar
post-workout: a shake (2 scoops) with 250ml of coconut juice, half a banana and one apple.

Dinner: lean meat, veggies and some rice

2-3 hours after dinner: 1 scoop of shake pretty much right before bed.


Recent adjustment:
- I used to mix the shake with skim milk right before bed, until recently I read from Ironman that it's not such a good idea to drink so much milk.

- Also I've added a shake pre-workout.

These days after I cut down on the rice, I seem to fatigue a lot faster at the gym. By the way, i've recently moved to China for work so not eating rice at all seems to be impossible.

Please let me know what I can do to improve.

Well, if you are going to eat cereal, I would make it Kashi. There are many to choose from and if you need it sweeter put splenda on it. They are all made of whole grain and have little to no sugar. Plain oatmeal with splenda or sugar free maple syrup mixed in are other good options if you want to have carbs at breakast. Always good to get some protein too though.

Next thing is make sure the rice is the whole brown rice.

Finally, eat the carbs earlier. Just have meat and veggies for dinner.

All this stuff is easier said then done though. I have never met anyone more disiplened then myself. I stick with 60 carbs a day and never cheat. I could loose faster if I cut the carbs lower. I could also loose faster if I didn't average 4500 calories a day. It is hard to do though. Same with working out. I do my 3 days of lifting and get another day of cardio. The other 3 days I TRY to do HIIT. More often then not I don't make it in. So I end up doing a little HIIT before my cardio on Saturday's.

So that's the thing, try as hard as you can, but make sure you can stick with it. So maybe you stick with 3000 calories no matter what. If you can get it down to 2500 then all the better. Do it when you can. Just don't be like "well I'm over 2500 so screw it", and then throw the whole thing out the window and have a pizza and ice cream binge.

At the same time, don't be like "oh just a couple cookies won't hurt." Then you will be doing your hamster impersonation for 30 minutes to make up for it.

So the fruit, milk and juice I would really try to keep to a minimum, but just do what you can.

Just protein before and after workouts. You don't want to restore your glycogen with new energy. Let your body do it with your fat stores. All the simple carbs are for lean people who are trying to bulk.

If you have questions feel free to ask.

count calories!!!!!!!!!!and the macro nutrients
otherwise you could be taking in too little----no good
that will screetch your metabolism to a screaming hault and you wont lose a gram

find out your bmr and add your daily caloric expendeture including your training
at 5"8 -163lbs you dont seem to be overweight
find out your body fat percentage so you can know what your goals are my first time dieting i weighed 188 @ 13% bhody fat
i went from 3500-4000 calories a day to 1900-2100 a day and kept the same training but added cardio
i lost 22 lbs in 27 days
it was all muscle
i looked sick
what you wrote that you are eating looks like a great clean diet, but figure it out calorically
you were not speciffic in your goals
figure them out before you start any6thing otherwise you may do alot of work only to realize that the results were not what you wanted

one more thing---what kind of shake are you using before bed?
whey is fast acting
other types of protien break down much slower so a night time shake should be casieum or milk or egg or something other than whey

Iron Man :----What is wrong with alot of milk is you are not lactose intolerant?

Lactose is a simple sugar. If you are lean and bulking, that is fine. If you are trying to cut, or do a clean bulk, it is going to cause problems. Things that are converted to useable fuel more slowly have a lot of processing overhead. So, it would take a lot more raw calories of fat to maintain your bodyweight then raw calories in sugars.

Like you said restricting calories kills your metabolism. That is why you adjust what you eat to loose weight. That way you don't have to drop your calories so much.

You can't just take a bulking diet, drop the calories and call it cutting. It's much more complex.

Faisal, I'd drop a lot of the starches you have in your diet with the goals you have in mind, and tend to agree with Ironan, but decide for yourself. Go to the nutrition section here on the site. Also, seriously read
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nut ... habits.htm
and
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nut ... ting_2.htm
Tim

iron man-- good point i forgott that

personally i dont count lactose as a simple carb, i do lower my intake of it wwhen i am cutting
so kudos to you for pointing that out

too many shakes i think most of your protein should come from real foods like fish, tuna, eggs, lean meat, cottage cheese and your carbs veggies, fruits ,whole wheat, throw out the juices and drink plenty of water. kashi cereal has lots of protein and fibre its ok cereal but i got sick of it as for dairy well i dont know to much about it i eat fat free yogurt ice cream and drink skim milk and i got low bf. as for training u could do some hitt, weight training and get plenty of rest good luck

It's not like whey is chemically engeniered. Still there's nothing wrong with more meat and such.

Brown rice over white rice.

Comment:
Lactose is a simple carb because its a disaccharide, 2 monosaccharides (glucose and galactose) joined together. I'm not convinced in any way shape or form about all this milk bashing. Avoiding sugar for sugars sake is just as fruitless as avoiding fat for fats sake. There are good and bad sugars and one person's bad sugar is not necesarrily everyone's bad sugar. How about keeping milk in the Post Workout period, use 2% or less milk in your post work out shake, add additional protein if you need too, but choc milk has a pretty good carb:prot ratio as it is. By taking it in the post workout window you minimize insulin response (read the GI factor isn't as acute), your consuming real food (mostly), and if you get the good kind of choc milk (made with real coacoa) your getting an antioxidant boost too.

Anyway as with any other form of carbs its about your tolerance. Some people are better at processing carbs than others. Some people stop producing the necessary tools for carb digestion (lactase production ceases and lactose intolerance begins). I have drank milk for 30 years and it doesn't bother me a bit (as far as being lactose intolerant goes). But when I want to cut, I will limit my milk intake to breakfast and post work out because these are the times your body handles these types of carbs best.

One other reason I balk at alot of people who say stay away from milk is that some of these same people recommend cottage cheese or yogurt (both of which are milk products). Lactose is present in both of these. The protein in your protein powder most likely comes from milk, so its aparently just the lactose issue, which is only really an issue if your intolerant or alergic. There are alot of benifits to consuming milk if your able, but these benefits are ignored by and large because lactose is somehow bad.

Question:
If your cutting you want to burn more energy than you consume, so wouldn't something that's harder to digest make your metabolism work harder and burn more energy during digestion? I mean this is one of the core beliefs behind high protein diets, protein is harder to digest than carbs or fat, thus eating high protein diets makes your metabolism work harder, resulting in a rise in metabolic rate. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, the "question" part of the post seems to contradict the "comment" part of the post. as for the question, yea that is pretty much right. I think fat is as hard to digest as protein though. Maybe harder, I forget.

Milk vs cottage cheese, or 11g vs 4g? I think that is obvious. Yogurt can be good, but 90% of it has a butt load of sugar dumped into it. Why avoid that stuff? Read the question part of Elemental's post. There is the answer. Then of course there is a big difference in different types of carbs. There is a big difference between a can of spinach and half a serving of milk despite the similier carb content.

On a final point the whey gets extracted from the milk and has no lactose in it.

Of course optimal and doable are usually 2 different things. Ease of compliance has an inverse relationship with effectiveness.

Please point this out to me, if I condradicted myself I'm unaware and would like to be aware.



If you have space in your caloric needs, even concidering cut vs bulk, what the harm? What about lactose specifically is bad for muscle development or fat loss? That's question I never see answered. Everyone says its because its sugar, but a good chunk of the other carbs and even some of the protein you eat, gets turned into sugar by YOUR OWN BODY, so what wrong with the sugar called Lactose as opposed to say Fructose or Anyothertose?



Agreed, I made this same point. Each group of nutrients (macro and micro) has good guys and bad guys. Even the bad guys aren't always bad, unless the exist purely as a result of the workings of man (ie. partially hydronated kill me quick stuff). If consumed at the right time you can be sure your physiologically primed to consume any given nutrient. Eat them in as close to their natural form is the rule of thumb for most foods, except it would appear for milk.



I realize this, its one of things that makes me think the only issue people have with milk on a health stand point is the lactose. Every part of milk seems to be used in other foodstuffs that are considered good, but the source is considered bad. It just seems counter intuitive to me. Fear the carbs, love the proteins. Those sugary carbs may help you digests those oh so perfect proteins more completely. And with out the aid of some lab or however they manage to extract them.

So can we agree that it's okay to mix milk with shake post workout?

Faisal, first off, did you read up on those links I sent you?
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nut ... habits.htm
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nut ... ting_2.htm
OK, that being said, is milk OK to mix with powders? Yes-IF you're into bodyweight maint or gaining some. You're stated goals are fat loss. Probably OK for that too, but it certainly will not be maximal. Regardless of all the discussions of milk sugars, etc, the facts are 1. The workout is going to set up natural gh release. This is a fatburning, maint/repair hormone. This is good in terms of cutting while maintaining, building a little muscle. 2. The milk additions will raise blood sugars, causing the body to release insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone, shutting down the gh release. Physiological fact. I would cut out the milk additions for a trial period, see how you do, and if you're not satisfied, then add it back in. My advice would be to take a little protein powder in water Post Workout, and when you get back from the gym, eat a low GI meal containing P, low to moderate GI (II-insulin index-see Berardi's articles) and some good fat. You;ll replace glycogen without sending out bells and whistles to release lots of insulin, thereby maximizing fat loss.
Tim