Any idea what your body fat is? Give me an idea what you eat in a given day.
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Nutrition strategy for intermediate training
Hey Jordan,
Thanks for starting this q&a. I think you are a brave man.
Anyway, I am a 27yo male who has recently stopped progressing using the starting strength program. I have started doing texas method using the example from practical programming. I'm currently 200lbs at 5ft6in, over the last four months I have made great strength progress doing SS and gained around 30 pounds.
My goal is to develop a good baseline strength as Rip recently outline in his recent t-nation article... So a 2xbw dead lift, 1.75xbw Squat and a 0.75xbw OHP.
My lifts are currently:
Squat - 330
Dead lift - 345
OHP - 145
BP - 230
PC - 155
I'm not entirely sure what my calorie intake has been on SS but I have been doing GOMAD on top of my pre-SS diet and given the gains I have made I would estimate that it was around the 4000 calorie mark. Now that my gains have slowed and my training is is spread across the week with volume, recovery and intensity days. I'm not sure if I need to be eating quite so much or if I should be eating the same amount each day given that my training varies.
I see that this has been discussed on the forum over the years but I was wondering if would be able to make recommendations on a nutrition strategy or a weekly template for an intermediate level trainee.
Regards
Sam
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Any idea what your body fat is? Give me an idea what you eat in a given day.
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I'm not really sure. I would hazard a guess that I'm around 30% but really don't know for sure.
An average day would include:
Breakfast - 4 eggs with 2 pieces turkey bacon+ packet of oatmeal
Snack - half a cup of mixed nuts and a piece of fruit
Lunch - full meal of dinner leftovers
Snack - piece of fruit and can of tuna or beef jerky
Dinner - plate of meat (steak, chicken breast, pork) 300 gms, carb (pasta, rice, potato) 1-1.5 cups/servings and as much salad or cooked vegetables as I can handle.
Gallon of whole milk a day - spread throughout the day.
That would be a pretty clean day. Throughout the week I would likely have a couple of fast food meals - perhaps over the weekend.
✓ Member
I think you could get a lot of mileage (re: body fat loss while gaining strength) by doing three things:
1)Not adding silly bullshit to the TM template or similar, and thus adding unnecessary volume and compromising recovery.
2) Doing some high intensity conditioning work.
3) Cleaning up your diet.
In regards to number 2, I'd prowl or row for intervals starting on your intensity day. Then add another day 2-3 weeks down the line as long as recovery is good. In regards to number 3, the easiest thing(s) to do would be to cut the fast food or "bad meal" (can someone please tell me what a "clean" food is?) to 1x per week, preferably either after your intensity day or the night before your volume day. Additionally, I'd cut it back to 3/4 a gallon of milk a day and then keep tweaking from there every couple of weeks. Is this diet optimal? I don't know, it could be for you, but really there's no reason to get super complex like some of the other stuff I've posted here since this is you're current starting point.
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Thanks Jordan. This looks awesome.
Sorry - clean food is a little ambiguous. I think what I meant by it was unprocessed, lower in sugar and saturated fats. Kind of a silly expression but a bit of a hangover from days gone my goals were a little different to the strength training I'm doing now.
Again thanks for the advice.
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Just busting your balls man. Good luck!
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Jordan, I was curious as to why you put his potential "cheat meal" after Intensity Day as opposed to Volume Day. I figured after Volume Day you could eat a horse and get away with it more so than after Intensity Day. I apologize if my piggy-back questions are becoming annoying, but it's great to pick your mind!
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Ha! No worries. I've got a couple reasons, not all of them with any science behind them. First, most of the time intensity day tends to fall on either Friday or Saturday. Most people also generally like to go out and "treat themselves" on the weekend or have a social engagement that predisposes them to either eat poorly or choose an entree so ridiculously boring that their dinner partners contemplate revoking their friendship. Socially, this seems to work well for people. Piggy-backing off that, most people seem really committed to being "dialed-in" on their diet come Monday, when volume day usually is, so I don't want to disrupt that mojo and sacrifice compliance. Finally, it seems the added loading from ID tends to have a potential benefit from further increasing glut4 translocation to the cell membrane (when compared to lower intensity higher volume training). It definitely hasn't been proven, but that's just something I'm looking into. On the same lines, I always have found it harder to recover from a heavy ID than a heavy VD and the extra fuel certainly couldn't hurt, although it would likely work just as well after a VD if you really wanted a straight answer.Originally Posted by tzanghi
A somewhat relevant story....While down in Atlanta working a seminar with Rip, Stef, and Wolf we went to this badass breakfast place, the kind you and I dream about. They had huge omelets, stacks of pancakes, bacon everywhere, a waiter who could sing showtunes with the best of them, and decent coffee. I was 2 weeks out from a meet and while everyone else ordered something awesome from the menu I got egg whites, a chicken breast, and oatmeal for breakfast. o.0 Rip and Stef have been making fun of me ever since. Hopefully they don't invalidate my Starting Strength moniker.
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Interesting stuff, thanks again. I always wondered how heavy you had to go to activate glut4, but I figured at 5x5x85% of 5RM one is probably doing some damage. I generally go for bigger refeeds after VD because I figure I'm using a lot more glycogen there.
And I can't imagine what that breakfast was like lol. I heard on one of Robb Wolf's podcasts that Rip made someone at his seminar finish his meatloaf dinner. We've all been there before. I once was with my friends at one of their father's restaurant, and ordered nothing because I was cutting. My friends are both Greek, and his father came out and was almost insulted because I didn't order anything. They ended up bringing me like 10 french fries to snack on anyways lol.
✓ Member
Yea I'm not exactly sure what the critical threshold is volume or intensity-wise for maximum upregulation of the receptor. I'm not sure there will ever be a good study on that so until then, we can keep playing with it.
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