Ok, so here's some of the good shit I promised to share. I'm bragging about Tom Venudo's awesome diet plan but haven't said shit about it other than "it's so awesome". To keep myself out of trouble, I'm only going to explain what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. Since most of what is said can be found on any decent nutrition website, I'll be that generic. If I put it together the way he does, I could be copying his work, which I would like to avoid doing.
The basics: Eat less food at once, more often during the day. Intake the proper amount of macronutrients per meal, and never create a calorie deficit by diet alone.
What the hell does that mean?
It means you must eat enough calories in one day to prevent your body from going into what Tom calls the "starvation response". That is, your body isn't getting enough fuel, so it turns on its fuel management system, and slows down the rate at which the fuel is burned. In simple terms your metabolism slows down, and that in turn slows down the rate at which you burn excess body fat - ya know the shit we don't want to keep.
So to make sure this doesn't happen, I calculated my Basal metabolic rate using my lean mass weight (body weight * (1 - body fat %)) as an indicator of how many calories I need to intake. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is, in simple terms, how much energy you burn off sitting on your fat ass watching TV. Mine turned out to be approximately 1750 calories.
Since I'm working out 6 times per week, I added a multiplier of 1.55 to my BMR. Why? Because as much as I'd like to, I don't sit on my fat ass and watch TV all day. I go to work, and I work out. I need to give my body that fuel so I'm not losing lean mass. If I don't, then when I create a calorie deficit, I'm going to be hitting the "starvation" levels. So, with the multiplier, my caloric intake would be 2650 calories per day. That's how much I'd eat if I wanted to not lose any weight and start building muscle (Next phase). Now, we have to create a calorie deficit. I've taken into account the energy used in my workouts, and my BMR. So to create a deficit, I slash that number by 20%. That leaves me actually near the recommended daily intake of 2100 calories per day (2150 in my case). This is purely coincidental. I suppose I fall in the standard deviation of what they used to estimate the daily caloric intake for everyone on the planet.
This brings me to how often I eat. To make sure your metabolism is in full throttle, it always needs something to break down. No food, it slows down and when fasting, goes almost dormant. On average, it takes a normal person (by that I mean one without any serious medical conditions) 2.5 - 3 hours to digest a meal. So, to make sure my metabolism is always in high gear, I eat every three hours or so (work schedules sometimes get in the way, bastards!) On an average day, I get up by 6:00 am, and go to bed between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm. that's 16 or 17 hours in the day divided by 3, just over 5 meals per day. Since I'm eating 5 meals per day, and I only get 2150 calories per meal, I divide that by 5 and come up with about 430 calories per meal. In another blog, I'll write about making sure all 430 calories count, and balancing the macronutrients at each meal.
I take this to the next level though, cause I'm badass. Its nearly impossible to come up with meals that all have the same exact calorie amounts unless you eat the same thing every day for all 5 meals. Boring as shit. I employ a calorie tapering method in addition to this. I follow Tom's advice of "Breakfast like a King, Lunch like Prince, Dinner like a peasant". For both breakasts, I have between 500 - 530 calories. At lunch, I 'll have between the 430 and 480 calories, and for dinner I usually end up only having about 250 - 350 calories left for meals that day. So the calories taper down during the day (like the Triforce!) rather than what most american's do... the inverted triangle: late or no breakfast at all, big lunch, and HUGE dinner!!
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I make sure I have two!!
No comments:
Post a Comment