The original and best work

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Before you start: remind me, what is the Paleo Diet again?

*Sighs* The Paleo Diet is based on the principle that less than 10,000 years ago (and for the 2.5m years before that), every single human(-oid) on the planet ate the same diet.  The diet is basically what we ate before the development of agriculture, which is what we could hunt or gather.

This meant that we ate mainly lean meat, fruits and vegetables.

And by inspecting their bony remains, scientists observed that these stone-age humans were almost entirely free from obesity, heart disease, tooth decay and many other ailments that best modern people.  They therefore concluded that the diet could be the secret to health and longevity.  Consequently, they hypothesised that we actually evolved to absorb these foods better and more efficiently than any other foods.  It makes for a compelling thesis.

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And why is this diet so radical if everyone used to eat it?

Well, notably absent from the list of foods eaten by ancient humans is the foundation of the modern food pyramid, all 6-11 servings of it:

The Food Pyramid: adopted by the US Department of Agriculture in 1992

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This means that the Paleo Diet flies in the face of modern nutritional wisdom.  If you’re interested in reading more about food groups according to the US Government, you can read about their selection of research papers on macronutrients here and you can read their recommendations here.

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OK, I’m with you now.  Hit me.

My pleasure.  The Paleo Diet is the fundamental work on the diet of our ancient ancestors and the diet that our bodies are designed to eat.  It’s set out in three main sections but it’s really not that strongly subdivided (which really bothers me as an anally-retentive, analytical type).  I guess in order to appeal to a wider, less boring audience, it’s been written as more of a chatty sort of book that covers the material in a loose structure.

At it’s most basic, the Paleo Diet has six rules, which are laid out in chapter two:

1. All the lean meats, fish and seafood you can eat
2. All the fruits and vegetables you can eat
3. No cereals
4. No legumes
5. No diary products
6. No processed foods

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Yeah, I’ve heard all that before.  What’s new?

Well, you’re right.  Not much is new.  In fact, it’s about 2.5m years old.  You can summarise the Paleo Diet down to a very simple formula.  I mean, how complicated can it be if a caveman can understand it?

And, yes, having read the book from cover to cover, I think that 90% of the book is explained just by those six rules.  So if you’re the laid-back type and you’re happy you’ve understood those rules then read no more.

However, Cordain makes a number of fundamental points that differentiate him from popular mainstream writers such as Mark’s Daily Apple (and I use Mark’s Daily Apple as an example simply because his site is great and it’s easy to navigate and find things).

Check out these examples:

• The Paleo Diet isn’t the same as a low-carb, high-fat diet.  Cheese, butter and bacon are not staples of the Paleo Diet (c.f. Mark’s Daily Apple on saturated fat)
• Saturated fat is bad for you and causes high cholesterol (c.f. Mark’s Daily Apple on cholesterol)
• Hunter-gatherer diets were rich in fruits and vegetables (but not starchy potatoes) and The Paleo Diet not therefore a low-carb diet (c.f. Mark’s Daily Apple on low-carb diets)
• Stone-age humans ate very little salt (c.f. Mark’s Daily Apple on salt, which is similar but less militant)
• The Paleo Diet is based on lean meat (55% of total calories), which increases the metabolism and reduces the risk of heart disease (c.f Mark’s Daily Apple, which assumes 1g of protein per lb bodyweight (maybe 25% of total calories)

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What else is interesting?

Well, if you enjoy getting under the skin of our ancient ancestral diets and the whys and the wherefores, Cordain goes into some of the scientific theories that have been constructed around the development of the human body in conjunction with its diet:

• Lean meat is the reason that humans developed larger brains
• Grains are what cause health problems: the fossil record shows that the early farmers were plagued with vitamin and mineral deficiences and they are the first to show tooth decay
• Farming cultures lack Vitamin C because cereals have zero Vitamin C
• Cereals are also poor sources of the B vitamins, despite what cereal packets will claim (I’ve always thought cereals had to be bad for you.  I mean, why would they have to add so many extra vitamins to it if it were naturally good for you?)
• Syndrome X diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity, myopia, acne and breast, prostate and colon cancers) are linked to elevated levels of insulin in the bloodstream

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Why should I read it again?

This is the fundamental work on the diet of our ancestors.  If you accept the theory that our bodies are designed to run on paleolithic foods, just like a petrol engine is designed to run on petrol and a diesel engine is designed to run on diesel, then you will want to read it.

There are enough differences between this book and the mainstream advice on healthy eating to make you sit up and think.

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These are the articles I found most useful

Bearing my goals in mind, here are my current top 10 dieting articles for getting that lean and mean look in time for summer:

1. Death match: you versus your body – Mike Roussell has written this article about exactly the scenario I have now found myself in: coming off a mass-gain cycle and going into a fat-loss cycle.  His advice also perfectly mirrors what I have found to work for me in the past.  Mike suggests that low-carb diets force your body to use stored fat as fuel, once you become fat-adapted.  He notes that there is research to support the idea that high protein diets result in better fat loss and better muscle retention.  And he believes that heavy lifting during a fat-loss phase is the best way of forcing your body to keep the muscle it has gained.  This is pretty much what I will be doing over the next few weeks.  I couldn’t have put it better myself.
2. The Dave Tate Project (part one and part two) – this is just an amazing set of articles (and they’re long, too).  Dave Tate transformed himself, with the assistance of John Berardi of Precision Nutrition, from a 300lb powerlifter into a lean and mean bodybuilder.  Along the way, he found ways to improve his health considerably and to improve his overall mobility and joint health.  I’m not so deluded as to think that what worked for someone with 250lbs of lean body mass will work for me but it’s an inspiring story none-the-less.
3. How to manipulate your diet and exercise to look great naked – in this article, John Berardi explains the history of dieting and exercise for weight-loss and comes up with some basic principles that work.
4. Nutritional leverage with Shelby Starnes (part one and part two) – I get the impression that Shelby has a real passion for excellence as a physique coach and isn’t interested in settling for second best.  But I also like the fact that he is flexible in his advice and doesn’t get too prescriptive.  This article series is set up as a Q&A and as such it’s a real mixed bag of points.  You may find a gem next to a couple of points that leave you cold.  I get bored reading about grass-fed beef and the latest supplements (because I can’t afford them) but I appreciate little tips like drinking diet coke to combat cravings in the evenings, what ratio of egg-whites to whole eggs to eat and how to schedule cheat meals properly.
5. Fat loss for dummies (part one and part two) – I particularly like this set of articles because it reminds me that, while diet is probably 90% of body transformation, I do still have to work hard at it.  And I also need to remember that working for a long time is not the same as working hard!  Long, slow cardio is out.  Short, hard intervals are in.  Now lead me to the sled, as I have some hard work to do!
6. Five reasons for failed body transformations – Christian Thibaudeau explains here what the five main reasons are for failed fat-loss projects.  For those of you who may not know, Christian actually did a significant fat-loss transformation himself, which took him from being quite a chunky ex-Olympic lifter to being the unofficial face (and body) of T-Muscle.  Christian talks specifics here, diving into the psychology of how the underfed body tries to trick you into breaking your diet.  But you can resist these temptations.  Forewarned is forearmed!
7. The Marc Bartley Undertaking – here, at Elite FTS, Shelby Starnes talks about the diet that he used to get Marc Bartley into better shape.  Again, a man who consumes six chicken breasts a day and still loses weight is probably from another planet to me but it is fascinating to see how Shelby starts to incorporate carb-cycling in a real-life scenario.  I find generic carb-cycling articles a bit dry and difficult to get to the end of so this is a nice primer that makes the subject easy to digest.
8. The get shredded diet – John Berardi talks here about what it takes to get to the next level of leanness.  I always check this article before I get into the detail on my own plans just to make sure I’m not way off the mark.
9. Interview with Justin Harris – I was trying to limit the number of T-Nation articles I linked to but this interview is just too good.  Justin is a business partner of Shelby Starnes and sometimes I think that the two of them must have dug up a secret store of knowledge together and then refused to share it with anyone else.
10. Dan John’s three principles of fat loss – Dan reminds us here that to achieve proper fat loss we need to remember that advanced training methods are for advanced trainees, that sometimes we need to think of hypertrophy to make good things happen and that ultimately fat loss is a war that we should wage for 28 days, commit totally to it and then go and do something else instead.

Have I missed your favourite fat-loss article?  Just let me know in the comments.

That doesn’t mean I think that it’s possible to breach the laws of physics and that you can lose fat while being in a calorific surplus.  But I do think that different people handle carbohydrates and fats in different ways when dieting.  I also know from experience that I handle cardio and other life stresses in a different way to Anna, for example.

That being said, this is what I think works for me:

Realistic expectations – I don’t like to go into a programme with huge expectations and then to fall short of that.  I prefer to set myself an achievable goal and then to hit it and push on for more.  In this case, I think that 5kg (10lbs) should put me back roughly at the same level of body fat that I was for most of last year.  If I feel like I’m on a roll, I’ll push on a bit and see if I can make the step from four visible abs to six.

A real deficit – I’m not the sort of person for whom a little tweak in the diet makes a lot of difference.  My body doesn’t naturally carry a great deal of fat except around the waist and boy is it stubborn fat!  Come to think of it, I need a big surplus of calories before I start to add muscle as well.  So I guess my body is just stubborn full stop.  I reckon on needing at least a 500kcal deficit from a maintenance level, which is around 1,800kcal per day to start with.  As my diet progresses, I dial it down slowly.

Cardio boredom – I have always found it very hard to do any type of exercise unless I have a specific goal that I’m aiming for.  I could never just go into the gym and do a workout.  I have to have a plan in place to get a lift up or to develop a new skill.  I absolutely hate doing cardio unless I’m going all out and trying to beat a time I set last time.

Cardio boredom: there’s nothing worse than staring at a clock

Cardio quota – for some reason, I get hit really hard after cardio when I’m dieting.  I know I don’t push it too hard but I still feel like I could sleep for a week after a (relatively) short bike ride or a long but brisk walk.  I can do Non-Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) forever but dial up the intensity even slightly and I’m toast for days afterwards.  So I find it very effective to do short, hard intervals session after each weights session (four times per week).

Non-Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) – I really like NEPA because it doesn’t tear me down in the same way that cardio does.  The only problem is that it is very time-consuming.  I start my programme with 30-minute daily walks before bedtime.  I did this last time and it was very effective at avoiding late-night cravings plus it was useful for getting me out of the house and into the fresh air, which tends to relax me a bit and make me less grouchy.  This year, I’m thinking of adding a bit of extra weight in the form of a rucksack with a few weights plates in it but we’ll see how that goes.

Weighted or traditional cardio – I used to think of cardio in terms of cycling and using the Concept 2 rowing machine.  In the last year or so there has been a lot written about weighted cardio or strength cardio.  The idea behind strength cardio is that you don’t lose muscle or convert your muscle from fast-twitch to slow-twitch in the process.  I like sledgehammer striking and sled pushing.

Progression – I need to keep piling on the pressure.  My body quickly adapts to a certain level of cardio and a certain level of calories and I need to keep adding extra work and taking away food until I can’t do any more.

Protein – I find that I feel fuller for longer if I eat mostly protein for my dieting meals.  I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth and I’m really not much of a foodie (you can get on my good side with nothing more than a big hunk of brisket).  I do like beer but I have got to the age where I can put that down for a few weeks to achieve a goal if I need to.

Sardines: mostly protein

Fat – I can take or leave fat and I tend to leave it if I can get away with it.  Anna keeps me in check and stops me essentially eating nothing but chicken.

Carbohydrate – I feel that I am at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to carbohydrates.  I pretty much gave them up a long time ago and now only use fruit or yoghurt around workouts or in the middle of a very long bike ride (like 100 miles).  I definitely notice that the fat goes on quite quickly when I eat them and it’s essentially more-or-less impossible for me to lose weight if I eat them.  So when dieting I take it a step further and cut out the fruit and limit myself to just green fibrous vegetables (and the odd onion and pepper to taste) in the main with some yoghurt before a weights session.

100 miles on a bicycle: quite literally a pain in the ass

Stress – there are some stresses that I find easy to bear and others I find harder to live with.  When I’m dieting, though, I get very grumpy and Anna tends to stay out of my way.  I also find that spending time with family and friends, which is normally a big de-stressing agent for me, is difficult when dieting as the English culture requires that alcohol be consumed at such meetings.  When you’re already crabby from hunger, dealing with drunken people while sober is not really a nice way to spend a relaxing evening.  This tends to drive me towards spending a lot more time working or writing when I’m dieting and I have to be careful to take quality time to relax properly or I burn out and end up miserable.   

Heavy lifting – I had the worst ever experience of my training life when I tried a volume-based approach to weight-loss a while ago.  I lost so much strength it took me months to get it back.  Now, I am religious about cutting the volume back really quite strictly (possibly too strictly) so that I can afford really high intensities.  I train four times a week and incorporate two upper body sessions, one lower body session and one strongman session.  I like 5 sets of 2 reps for big compound movements like squats and overhead presses and I’ll throw in some 3RM work as well for good measure. 

So that’s what works for me.  If it works for you too, please let me know.

I set myself the goal of reaching 180lbs bodyweight and once I got there I dropped down to a maintenance diet.  To put on muscle, I ate a high calorie diet and even supplemented with a monster shake, which had nearly 1,000kcals of avocado and coconut milk.  And it’s bright green, which is awesome for scaring people of a nervous disposition. 

Weight gain shake: big, bad and dangerous to know

But all good things must come to an end and I’ve been maintaining weight for a couple of weeks now.  I think it’s time to start thinking about cutting some of the fat back off.

What I’m (not) eating: take #1

I wrote my first what I’m (not) eating post when I did my last fat-loss cycle in September of last year.  That post set out what my normal diet is and mentioned that to cut calories, I just eliminated the self-made protein shakes that I drank at breakfast time and during the afternoon.  I also talked about what I would do to make my diet perfect, if I had lots of money.  Which was fun as far as fantasies go.

What I’m (not) eating: take #2

This, then, is my revised meal plan for the next four weeks as I try to lose 5kg of fat and bring my weight down from 82.5kg to 77.5kg (or slightly lower if possible) while maintaining as much strength and muscle as possible.

Breakfast

• 3 egg yolks and 5 egg whites (was previously 5 whole eggs)
• 50g broccoli
• 293 calories, 27g protein, 17g fat and 6g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• 4 fish oil soft gels (2,800mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Lunch

• 2 eggs
• 50g cottage cheese (was previously 50g hard cheese)
• 250g chicken (was previously 100g sliced meat)
• 1/5 cucumber (was previously 1/5 cucumber and 1 stalk celery)
• 738 calories, 103g protein, 31g fat and 6g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)

Afternoon snack

• 1 tin tuna (was previously ½ tin tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 1 tablespoon full-fat mayonnaise)
• 129 calories, 30g protein, 1g fat and trace carbohydrate

Pre-workout snacks (only on workout days)

• 250ml yoghurt
• 30g protein powder
• 280 calories, 36g protein, 6g fat, 21g carbs

Previous pre-workout snack

• 2 apples
• 1 orange
• 250g cottage cheese
• teaspoon of black treacle
• 420 calories, 34g protein, 7g fat and 50g carbohydrate

Post-workout snacks (only on workout days)

• 4 sardines
• 100 calories, 12g sardines, 6g fat, trace carbohydrate

Sardines: if I don’t eat them then Jake will

Previous post-workout snack

• 2 apples
• 1 orange
• 250g cottage cheese
• teaspoon of black treacle
• 420 calories, 34g protein, 7g fat and 50g carbohydrate

Dinner

• 155g chicken(curry) with onion and pepper and tinned tomatoes (was previously beef mince)
• 150g cottage cheese
• 453 calories, 65g protein, 14g fat and 14g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• +4 fish oil soft gels (2,800mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Totals

So on a non-workout day, that gives me 1,613 calories, being 225g protein, 63g fat and 25g carbohydrate (of which probably 5g or so is fibrous carbs).  On a workout day, I get 1,993 calories, being 273g protein, 74g fat and 46g carbohydrate.

Rationale for changes

The main changes have been to increase the overall protein content, while decreasing fat and carbohydrate levels.  Hopefully, this should result in me feeling fuller and therefore less likely to cheat.

Before I start, I would add that Anna is a great cook and she took on the responsibility of getting plenty of quality calories inside of me with great success.  After all, one of her more formidable ideas was the monster weight gain shake that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  She tends to do most of the real cooking in our house.  Most of the time, it’s fantastic.  However, there are occasions when her creativity runs away with her and we end up eating all manner of strange body parts. 

 Here is a sample of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Now excuse me while I run for cover…

Good: Meatloaf and cauliflower bake

This meatloaf looks a bit anemic but it tasted fantastic, with a more-ish flavour and plenty of herbs and spices.  The cauliflower bake (like a pasta bake but with cauliflower instead of pasta) is delicious as well.  I strongly recommend that you go and check out the recipe here.

Good: Steak and salad

My ideal lunch.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  I even got chopped up cold sausage in with the side salad.

Bad: Fish, green stuff and red tomato something-or-other

Fish and I aren’t the best of friends and it being coupled with a green vegetable that looked like seaweed and some lumpy tomato salsa was enough to put me off a bit.  Anna thought it was really nice, though, so it might just be me.

Ugly: Beef heart stir fry

Yes this really is pieces of a cow’s heart cut up in pieces and stir fried.  I have this unpleasant feeling that I might be living with Hannibal Lecter’s grand-daughter…

Ugly: Liver and onions

I have finally put my foot down on the subject of liver, having been forced to try both lamb and pig’s liver.  It’s not so much the grainy texture as much as the strange flavour that seems to build up in your mouth the more you eat it.   If you’re a masochist, you can find the recipe here.

Now I think I’ll be ordering take-away this evening…

Oh, and I gained 10kg (20lbs).  I started at 72.5kg (160lbs) and I now weigh just over 82.5kg (180lbs).

So what’s your point, pencil-neck?

My point is that while my achievement is not particularly impressive, what I am about to write is pure experience, from 6 months of gaining weight.  I haven’t read it in a book and it isn’t taken from someone else’s experience.  I tried last year and failed bitterly.  This year, I succeeded.

So if you’re struggling to gain weight and you’d like to put on 20lbs, then read on.  You might find this helpful. 

Point #1: you need to eat more than you think

When I started out, I was eating about 2,000kcals per day (excluding pre- and post- workout nutrition).  When I started my weight gain project, I increased my daily intake by 500kcals for a few weeks.  Very little happened.  I bumped them up to 2,750kcals and the scale started moving.  After a while, the scale stopped and I needed to bump them up again.  3,000kcals did the trick this time and progress continued.

I heard Jamie Reeves say in an interview once that he ate 12,000kcals per day when training for the World’s Strongest Man.  I cannot imagine how much he had to stuff down his throat to achieve that.

LESSON LEARNED: if you aren’t gaining weight, keep bumping the calories up

Point #2: you are probably overestimating how many calories you are eating

People often said to me “oh, 2,750kcals is nothing”.  But if you use Fitday, you’ll find that if you want to get most of your calories from meat, eggs, fish, fruit and vegetables, this is a big volume of food.  My stomach ached on a daily basis from stuffing it full six times a day.  And I was using shakes quite a lot, too.  So if you aren’t using Fitday, and you aren’t getting the progress you want, I would settle down for an evening in front of the computer and start entering in your diet.

Steak and salad: notice the chopped up bits of sausage in the salad for extra calories

LESSON LEARNED: you need to keep a record of what you are eating and measure the calories

Point #3: you need to treat it like a diet

I can honestly say that I made better progress this year because I treated the weight gain project like a diet.  I had a plan of food I was going to eat that amounted to a set number of calories each day.  I had a target weight that I wanted to gain and I measured my progress against the target.  My motivation came from seeing progress towards the goal.

LESSON LEARNED: you need to set a target and go for it

Point #4: you will feel sick from eating so much

I wrote to my friend Rob Newman recently that I had not felt hungry since September 2009.  I can honestly say that I have never hated food so much as in the last 6 months.  I felt like the main character in Brewster’s Millions, who is forced to fritter away $30m in order to inherit $300m.  Except with food, OK?

Someone I know who went through a similar process a while back said “if you are not feeling uncomfortably stuffed full all of the time, then you are not eating enough.”  I would have to agree.  If you want to see my diet mid-way through the project, I did an article about what I ate to put on muscle a little while ago.

LESSON LEARNED: don’t expect it to be easy and prepare for it to be hard.

Point #5: drink your calories

Bearing point #4 in mind, it helps to drink your calories as much as possible.  While milk doesn’t work for me, I have been using a monster shake that works brilliantly for packing a huge calorie punch as well as being extremely healthy.

LESSON LEARNED: err, drink your calories.

Point #6: what food you eat DOES matter

Last year, I drank milk and ate chocolate and most of it went directly from my mouth to my overhanging belly.  This year, I’ve concentrated on meat, fish, fruit and vegetables and my waist measurement is a lot lower than it was last year after a similar length weight gaining project.

LESSON LEARNED: don’t go mad on poor quality food.

Point # 7: time your meals

It’s really hard to make yourself eat the amount you need to eat.  I found that the only way I could guarantee getting to the end of the day and making sure that I had eaten everything was to eat by the clock.  If one of my meals slipped it was horrible trying to catch up again as I would find that no sooner had I finished it, then I would have to start the next one.

LESSON LEARNED: eat by the clock.

Point #8: increase your training volume

Don’t expect to gain weight if you’re still doing the same sets and reps of the same weight you do during the summer while you’re trying to hold onto your abs.  I found that 10 sets of 3-5 reps of heavy weights on the big compound lifts, four exercises per workout, four workouts per week were just about what I needed.  If I didn’t get that level of work in, I didn’t grow.  You may need more or less than that.

LESSON LEARNED: work harder.

Well, that’s it for my lessons learned this year.  I wonder if next year’s winter weight gain cycle will bring any more?

My custom protein shake

I make the protein shakes up myself as 30g of Natures Best chocolate whey protein, 30g Myprotein egg yolk powder and 10g Myprotein cold milled flax seed.  Together, each shake gives me 370 calories, with 35g of protein, 23g of fat and about 6g of carbohydrate (most of which is fibre).

My meal plan

So my meal plan looks something like this…

Pre-Breakfast shake

• My custom protein shake
• 370 calories, 35g protein, 23g fat and 6g carbohydrate

Breakfast

• 5 eggs
• 50g broccoli
• 413 calories, 33g protein, 28g fat and 6g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• +3 fish oil soft gels (2,100mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Lunch

• 2 eggs
• 50g hard cheese
• 100g sliced meat
• 130g corned beef
• 1 stalk celery (chopped)
• 1/5 cucumber (chopped)
• 715 calories, 62g protein, 49g fat and 7g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)

Afternoon snack

• 1 tin tuna
• 1 cup raw cabbage (about 1/8 of a white cabbage)
• 1 tablespoon full-fat mayonnaise
• 378 calories, 40g protein, 23g fat and 3g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)

Pre-workout snack (only on workout days)

• 1 banana
• 3 stewed apples
• 3 stewed plums
• 250g live yoghurt
• teaspoon of honey to taste
• 30g whey protein powder
• 646 calories, 35g protein, 11g fat and 109g carbohydrate

Dinner

• 125g beef mince (chilli, curry or Bolognese) with onion and pepper
• 50g broccoli
• 470 calories, 37g protein, 25g fat and 17g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• +3 fish oil soft gels (2,100mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Summary

So that works out as 3,296 calories on a workout day with 275g of protein, 165g of fat and 176g of carbohydrate (plus 72 calories for the fish oil).  On a non-workout day, it comes to about 2,749 calories with 242g of protein, 172g of fat and 52g of carbohydrate.  Note that the carbohydrate figures are gross of fibrous carbohydrates, so its probably closer to 40g of net carbohydrate on a non-workout day.

I’ll need to ramp those calories up over the next 2 months if I want to put on some more muscle over the winter.  3,300 calories probably isn’t going to be enough to put 5kg of muscle on by Easter.

However, I don’t want to get hugely fat in the process, so I’m going to increase calories gradually by a couple of hundred a week.  I’m already tipping 77.5kg on the scale and I was down at 72.5kg only 3 weeks ago!

In short, my diet could be better but it could also be a lot worse.  Brian St. Pierre did a great article a while back on his diet and he puts me to shame.  I suppose that’s what happens when you get a nutrition degree, though… Anyway, if money were no object, then I would probably eat a lot more different kinds of fruit and vegetables and improve the quality of my protein sources. 

This is my (adopted) cat, Jake.  Jake always gets good protein sources.  And then usually falls asleep in my box of cycling kit.

For example, if I had unlimited funds, I would almost certainly: 

• have a mixed vegetable omelette rather than plain eggs and broccoli for breakfast;
• load up on blueberries, blackberries and other fruits high in anti-oxidants for my pre-and-post workout snacks;
• cook up organic lamb chops instead of sliced meat at lunchtime;
• prepare smoked salmon and vegetables for my mid-afternoon snack; and
• take more supplements.

I make the protein shakes up myself as 30g of Natures Best chocolate whey protein, 30g Myprotein egg yolk powder and 10g Myprotein cold milled flax seed.  Together, each shake gives me 370 calories, with 35g of protein, 23g of fat and about 6g of carbohydrate (most of which is fibre).

Building them into my diet means that when I want to cut weight, I can just lose the two shakes and I don’t really change the amount of solid food I’m putting into my stomach.  Therefore, I don’t really feel any less full.  But the effect of removing them is 740 calories per day.

So my meal plan looks something like this…

Breakfast

• 5 eggs
• 50g broccoli
• 413 calories, 33g protein, 28g fat and 6g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• +4 fish oil soft gels (2,800mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Lunch

• 2 eggs
• 50g hard cheese
• 100g sliced meat
• 1 stalk celery (chopped)
• 1/5 cucumber (chopped)
• 563 calories, 45g protein, 39g fat and 7g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)

Afternoon snack

• ½ tin tuna
• 1 cup raw cabbage
• 1 tablespoon full-fat mayonnaise
• 312 calories, 44g protein, 12g fat and 3g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)

Pre-and-post workout snacks (only on workout days)

• 2 apples
• 1 orange
• 250g cottage cheese
• teaspoon of black treacle
• 420 calories, 34g protein, 7g fat and 50g carbohydrate

Dinner

• 125g beef mince (chilli, curry or Bolognese) with onion and pepper
• 50g broccoli
• 470 calories, 37g protein, 25g fat and 17g carbohydrate (most of which is fibre)
• +4 fish oil soft gels (2,800mg DHA/EPA), 500mg glucosamine

Summary

So that works out as 2,430 calories on a workout day with 234g of protein, 121g of fat and 82g of carbohydrate (including 72 calories for the fish oil).  On a non-workout day, it comes to about 1,830 calories with 158g of protein, 113g of fat and 33g of carbohydrate.

It could be better but it could also be a lot worse.  Brian St. Pierre has done a great article recently on his diet and he puts me to shame.  I suppose that’s what happens when you get a nutrition degree, though… Anyway, if money were no object, then I would probably eat a lot more different kinds of fruit and vegetables and improve the quality of my protein sources. 

For example, I would almost certainly: 

• have a mixed vegetable omelette rather than plain eggs and broccoli for breakfast;
• load up on blueberries, blackberries and other fruits high in anti-oxidants for my pre-and-post workout snacks;
• cook up organic lamb chops instead of sliced meat at lunchtime;
• prepare smoked salmon and vegetables for my mid-afternoon snack; and
• take more supplements.