Diet

We now know what nutrients we want to incorporate into our diet, but what are the best foods to get them from, and how much of them do we need? First, remember that it doesn't matter if everything we are eating is perfect, if too much of it is consumed, we will get fat. And if our goal is to get lean, that isn't what we are going to want to do. Again, if our goal is to build muscle, we better make sure we are eating enough protein. So how do we go about putting together our game plan. There are a million different diets, just as there are a million different training routines. You've got everything from the high protein diet to the high fat diet and to this day experts in our field still argue as to which diet is the best. It's funny that these supposed Diet-gurus sit around and argue their theories, meanwhile it looks like the only diets they incorporate into their lifestyle are ones consisting of donuts and pizza.

Human nutrition may be a science, but by no means is it an exact science. What I mean by that, is every single person's metabolism is different. Each one of us was born with our own unique DNA that determines our genetic makeup. We all have different physical characteristics and process nutrients based on the blueprint that was given to us at birth. So don't think the diet your personal trainer wrote for you is going to work for you or anyone else for that matter, based on some magical formula he or she came up with. There are formulas out there to determine your basal metabolic rate, and from there you can deter- mine how many calories you may need. But more specifically, out of those calories how many should come from protein, how many from carbohydrates, and how many from fat? What I'm getting at, is that you need to establish what works best for your body based on trial and error. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have a starting point, which I'm going to show you in a minute. It also helps you to understand which nutrients do what (which is why I spent time going over them). But more importantly, we just have to start somewhere, get going, and then make adjustments. If you try to make it to exact, or spend too much time analyzing your diet, you're going to end up looking like those diet-gurus.



Getting Started

There is a few basic rules that everyone should follow when setting up their own diet plan:

1st: Remember to eat smaller more frequent meals throughout the day. This will help speed up you body' metabolism and help keep you from storing fat. It will also help you stay controllably hungry, which will make it easier not to binge or cheat.

2nd: Keep your protein high. This goes for you ladies as well. Remember, if you are incorporating a strength, training routine into your program, you need at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Even if you decide not to use weights, keep in mind that dietary protein taken every 3-4 hours will prevent you from loosing lean muscle tissue, even while doing aerobic training. The last thing you want to have happen , is your body to rob the amino acids from your own muscles!

3rd: Keep dietary fats to a minimum. While fat is important in our diet, it makes it very hard to get lean with too much dieatary fat being taken in.

4th: Watch your carbohydrate intake. Carbohydrates are considered protein sparing, but too much of them in our diet will prevent us from losing unwanted body fat. If you are burning the carbohydrates from your diet all day long, it will be virtually impossible for your body to burn stored body fat for energy.

5th: Make sure to eat protein right after your train. This is your "window-of-opportunity" when your muscles need that protein to help repair them after they have just been broken down in the gym.

6th: Plan your meals with carbohydrates and fat, earlier in the day, After 5pm, you don't want any more calories to come from starchy carbohydrates.

7th: Be sure to drink a lot of water. Protein has a dehydrating effect on the body and water will help moderate that as well as help transport the nutrients.

8th: Watch your sodium levels. Too much sodium will cause you to retain sub cutaneous water, which will blur muscle definition.



Determining Your Calorie Intake

The first thing I would do when I was getting ready for a bodybuilding contest, and what you are going to do for the MaxFormation Championship, would be to access my current diet. By that I mean I would write down exactly what I had been eating for the last week and then calculate out the totals and take an average. Now I could see how much protein, carbohydrates, fat and total calories I had been eating each day. This was my starting point. If I determined that I had been eating 5000 calories per day, and I may have also noted that I was carrying way too much body fat, then I would reduce my calories about 20% to start with. To figure this out I would calculate the calories I was presently consuming (5000) times (.2 or 20%) = 1000. Then subtract 1000 from 5000 to have a starting point of 4000 calories. If you feel you are eating too few calories you may need to increase your calories in order to gain weight. The first couple of weeks will determine whether your calculations were done correctly. More than likely you will need to make corrections since metabolic rates vary in all of us depending on age, activity level, and of course our unique genetic blueprint. Now, I had to decide what it was I wanted to accomplish. Obviously, since I was getting ready for a bodybuilding show, I wanted to keep as much muscle as possible, while getting as shredded (very lean) as possible. In order for me to do that, I would have to keep my protein as high as possible , while limiting my carbohydrates and dietary fat. For you, it might be to bulk up or tone down. The important thing is to figure it out before you get started. You have to have a clear vision of what it is you want to accomplish before you expend any energy toward your goal.



Body Fat Percentage

Next, you will want to measure your body fat, to give yourself an idea of where you are at presently. This will give you a percentage of body fat that will help you determine how much fat you need to lose. Remember as you build lean muscle, this will help you to burn body fat more quickly and efficiently. There are many different methods, probably the easiest and most convenient, is the skin fold test. It uses an instrument called a caliper and measures your body fat by taking skin folds at various sites around your body. The test is painless and can be done pretty quickly. A lot of gyms and health centers offer free body fat testing. To give you an example of how to incorporate your body fat result into your program lets take a look at what I did. I started with a body weight of 265 pounds at about 12% body fat. This meant I had about 32 pounds of fat on me. You can figure this out by multiplying 265lbs x. 12=31.8lbs of fat. I wanted to get down to about 4% body fat, which meant I had to lose about 21 pounds of fat. To arrive at this number, figure that 265 x 4% body fat is 10.6 pounds, subtract that from the 31.8 pounds of fat I was at currently, and I would have to lose 21.2 pounds of fat. Now remember this isn't exact. No testing procedure, not even hydrostatic weighing is completely accurate. So leave some room either way for error. You also have to remember that bone and water will also affect the end results. I ended up coming into my last show at 238 pounds and under 4% body fat, which meant I was pretty close to my target weight. Based on the calculations, I would have been around 243 pounds. The other 5 pounds was probably water that I eliminated during the last few days preceding the contest. This is to bring all of your muscle definition out for the day of the show, which I will explain how to do for your after pictures. This is part of the process towards the end called peaking.



A Formula for Lowering Body Fat Levels

You know where you are at presently, and where you want to be at the end of your program, so what next? We have to figure out what to eat to get us to achieve our end result. In my case, I had 14 weeks to diet and had to lose 21 pounds. That meant I needed to lose approximately 1.5 pounds of body fat per week to attain my target weight, which is right about at the limit of how much weight you want to lose each week. For the most part we are all going to have to lose some fat, unless you are a genetically gifted wonder. If you lose anymore than 2 pounds of body weight in a week, you are most likely sacrificing lean muscle with fat. And believe me you don't want to sacrifice any muscle! So lets use Mike as our example. He is 200 pounds at IO% body fat, and he wants to get down to 5 % body fat, how long does he need. First, remember we multiply 200 x .10 = 20 pounds of body fat. That's where he is at currently. Mike wants to get to 5% body fat, which would be 10 pounds of fat. Now subtract that from the 20 pounds of fat he is holding and that leaves him with 10 pounds of fat to lose to be at 5% body fat. That gives Mike a good ten weeks, which would allow him to lose I pound per week and still enable him to reach his target weight. See how easy that is. I simplified it for practical purposes, but just follow the formula, and you shouldn't have any problems. We know Mike needs to lose a pound a week for the next ten weeks. Mike is planning to do a 16 or maybe even 20 week MaxFormation -- this will give him plenty of time to make any adjustments so he will look awesome for his after photos.



Protein Requirements

We have our starting point of how many calories Mike has been eating to get to where he is presently. So the first thing we need to do is make some adjustments. Let's start with protein. We know that Mike will be incorporating a strength-training routine into his program, so he should be eating at the very least I gram of protein per pound of body weight. If he has only been eating 180 grams of protein, then we are going to have to do some rearranging. Since protein and carbohydrates are both 4 calories per gram, I would simply ply subtract the same number of carbohydrates from his diet, that I am adding with protein to keep the calorlc value the same. So what we just did, was add 2O grams of protein to his diet, and subtract 2O grams of carbohydrates. The caloric value remains the same because we just switched the protein and carbohydrates .



Lowering Dietary Fat

Next, I would take a look at his dietary fat and cut it by about 5%. So, if Mike's total calories were 2000 and 20% of his diet was from fat, than we know that he is eating about 45 grams of fat per day in his diet. To figure this out, we just multiple 2000 calories by .20 and get 400 calories. Now remember that 400 value is in calories, so we have to divide it by 9 (because there is 9 calories in one gram of fat), and that leaves us with approximately 45 grams of dietary fat. Since we are going to start by cutting his fat by 5%, we need to figure out 15% of his diet from fat which would be 300 calories or 33 grams (2000 x .15 = 300 divided by 9 calories = 33.3 grams of fat.) That leaves us with a difference of 12 grams of fat (by sub- subtracting 45 grams of fat - 33 grams of fat). Now all we have to do is look at Mike's diet and decide where we are going to cut the 12 grains of fat. The best place to cut the fat is in the meals that he is eating later in the day, since we don't want to store that fat overnight. We want to use it up during the day, so it would be best to eat the 33 crams of fat during the first half of the day, before Mike works out. This first week, Mike should lose some fat, based on the fact that his diet has been pretty consistent for the last few weeks and his body weight hasn't changed. Keep in mind that we will be adding aerobic training to Mike's program. We only reduced his caloric intake by 108 calories, which came from the 12 grams of fat we cut out.



Don't Be Afraid to Make Changes

The first time you change your diet, a lot of different things are bound to happen, because of the initial shock to the system. If you lose more than a couple pounds, it's ok, your body is just acclimating itself to the changes. But after the second week if you are still losing more than a couple pounds, then we would want to add back some calories. Chances are though, if you just make a subtle change like we did with Mike, you will probably only lose a pound or two. So lets assume everything is going great, you are lossing I pound a week and then after 5 weeks, all of a sudden you stop losing weight. It is time to go in and make another adjustment. This time, we may want to subtract another 5% from fat calories, or if we feel our dietary fat is getting too low, subtract some calories from carbohydrates. The only thing that should stay pretty constant throughout the whole diet is your protein value, however even this may need to be adjusted higher. There is a definite correlation to getting lean while eating a high protein diet. If you feel your not getting as ripped as you would like to, then try upping your protein level. Be prepared to lose a little energy, while a high protein diet is awesome for getting ripped it is not the best diet for enhancing energy levels. Don't be afraid to go in and change things around. No one, including yourself (unless you've done this before), is going to know exactly how your body is going to respond. Have fun with it and experiment Nothing is going to be exact so don't freak yourself out just be prepared to make a few adjustments as you move toward your ultimate goal, and believe me the MaxFormation will take place!



Best Foods

There are many different foods that are good for you. What we have to determine is what will be the best foods for us to incorporate into our diet plan to help us attain the best results and achieve our goal. Below is a list of foods that you can choose from when structuring your diet:

Protein

Ostrich fillet or ground patty
Lean turkey breast (unproscesed)
Lean ground beef or flank steak
Chicken breast
Egg whites
Tuna

Carbohydrates (starchy)

Pasta
Rice
Potatoes
Oatmeal
Cream of Rice
Whole wheat bread

Carbohydrates (fibrous)

Spinach
Green beans
Peas
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Salad

Fats
Flaxseed oil
Safflower oil
Primrose oil




One of the more common questions I get is "isn't there some protein in the carbohydrates sources and fat in the protein sources, etc.Ó? The answer is yes. You will always have a combination of the macronutrients in all foods, however most foods derive the majority of their calories from one macronutrient and that is why they are classified as such. The protein sources above are very good sources for you to get your protein, because they all have very little carbohydrates and fat. When choosing your protein sources at the grocery store, make sure to pick the leanest cuts of meat. Remember that there will be saturated fat in our protein sources, so we want to minimize that amount as much as possible. It is better to get our fat from the essential fatty acids in unsaturated fat. When we get into supplements, you will see how easy it is to incorporate them into your diet.



Why Do I Need Supplements

After seeing all the great foods there are to obtain nutrients from, you may be wondering why you need to take any type of supplement. The truth is, you really don't. Everything you need to build muscle and lose fat is right there in the perfect diet. The problem most people incounter is that they don't eat the perfect diet. They have the "NO" syndrome -- No Time, No Knowledge, No Money. Most of us don't have the time to prepare the meals needed to make up the prefect diet and on the rare occasion that we do, many of us fall short on knowledge or money. Enter supplements...

They are economical as well as convenient, and best of all they take the guesswork out of determining the nutrients within each serving. When you concider a piece of steak at the grocery store will cost you upwards of $3.00, you can get the same amount of protein in a scoop of MaxPro for around 60 cents. Not to mention that is going to take you a lot longer to prepare that piece of steak than it is to drink MaxPro, it really becomes a no-brainer. Because of the recent advances made in the manufacturing and extraction process of protein powders, many of the higher quality products like MaxPro, are actually more bioavailable and easier for your body to digest and assimilate than dietary protein.