Meal Planning

Meal Planning for Building Muscle or Losing Body Fat

Here's a reply to an often-asked question:

I'm a big fan of baselining anything and everything. After all, how can you judge progress if you don't know where you started? In that light then, I'd suggest you record what you eat over a 7 day period. I won't tell you to go so far as to weigh and measure everything, but certainly make an attempt at being fairly accurate. The reason I use 7 days and not just one is because people's weight and calorie intake naturally vary day-by-day.

The idea in this 7-day period is to maintain your weight so that we can know your “maintenance caloric intake.” If you gain or lose a pound, don't worry much, but if your weight changes by 3 pounds or more, then we'll have to start over.

It's easiest to eat pre-packaged foods during this time period because those food sources already have the calories, protein, carbs, and fat grams already determined for you. There's a great book called Nutrition Almanac that has all sorts of data about thousands of different food sources. Check out your local bookstore or Amazon.

Keeping a log is fairly simple. I suggest Excel or some other garden-variety spreadsheet; however, writing it down on paper works, too.

The things I would track are portion size, calories, protein, carbs, and fat. At the very least, get the cals. Create a spreadsheet or a piece of paper with calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat, and portion size as columns, the things you eat per meal as rows.

Log everything each day. At the end of the day, add it all up. At the end of the week, take the average of each day. If you maintained a steady weight, you now know your maintenance caloric intake.

As for your wife and your different objectives, I'd take a roughly similar approach. To change your weight (in gaining weight you want to increase mass while maintaining or losing fat, ideally; in losing weight, you want to drop fat while maintaining or adding muscle), vary your daily maintenance caloric intake by an average of 500 calories.

For example, if your maintenance caloric intake is 2500, and you're goal is to gain muscle, then up your caloric intake to 3000 on average.

Here's the twist: Over the course of a 7 day span, your caloric intake ought to be 3000. BUT, vary this amount. Your caloric intake might look like this:

Every fourth day, go back to “normal.” The body is terribly resistant to change and if you just up your calories from 2500 to 3000, you probably won't gain an ounce! So, don't let it adapt by changing your levels every day.

Now, this isn't as hard as it sounds. Because I assume you eat different things every day, you'll never eat exactly the same amount of calories each day.

How do you add calories? There are a few ways:

• Increase portion sizes slightly
• Add a meal or snack
• Add a protein or weight gain drink pre- and post- workout

How do you drop calories?

• Mainly, decrease your portion size
• Cut out fatty food
• Eliminate juice and bread and “add-ons” like butter, dressing, and condiments

Your caloric intake for losing weight looks similar to gaining weight, only back off the calories by an average of 500 per day, but remember to vary that number so that it is an average.

Building muscle and/or cutting fat is mostly a math problem. You either need to create a caloric surplus (gain muscle) or deficit (lose fat).

Exercise plays a vitally important role here, too. If you want some help there, let me know. The short story is that your training can be mostly the same, whether you're attempting to build muscle or lose fat.

Remember intervals, circuit training, and high intensity. Long aerobic sessions are out (think jogging for miles on end).

If you want some really good meal plans that address specific body composition needs, let me know via the Contact Form. Be extremely specific about your objectives.

How Far Can I Go Without Damaging My Growth?

Hi, I'm 16 years old. I weigh 145 pounds and am 5'11. I've been training at a gym regularly since I was 14 and I'm pretty used to drinking protein shakes and having a high protein diet. I was just wondering, what other types of supplements can I take? I'm pretty matured compared to my peers, and I don't think I can grow any taller anymore. Should I be able to take creatine, NO supplements, BCAA, and other types of supplements frequently used for building muscle? Can I use N.O Xplode? I heard that some supplements are strictly forbidden for people under the age of 18 and other supplements don't even mention age. I'm practically avoiding Growth Hormone, Testosterone, and Anabolic formulas for now…

Thanks in advance.

My take:16 is a tough age to be! Here's where I'll tell you to do as I say, not as I did.

At a younger age than you, I began taking weight gain supplements and aminos. And you know what? Nothing happened? I was a classic hardgainer: Very lean and muscular, strong as a bull, but very skinny.

It wasn't until my mid-twenties when I began putting on appreciable weight. I think most guys experience something similar, especially us guys on the thin side.

Save your money and get as strong as you can totally naturally. Stick to compound movements like bench presses, squats, overhead presses, and deadlifts. You may hear some people say that you shouldn't weight train until you're 18 or older. I'm not sure about that: Everybody is different.

I know guys who had no negative experiences from lifting at a young age; I know guys who swear off lifting for anyone younger than 21!

Best bet: Talk to your doctor. Tell him or her what your goals are. Your doctor can review and/or modify any system you might choose.

On the topic of supplements: I don't see any harm in taking protein powders, amino acids, or creatine. Lots of studies have been done; none show any harmful effects for young men such as yourself. However, the jury is out on the efficacy of such supplements.

In short, you may be spending money yet getting no appreciable benefits from doing so.

As with nearly anything in life, set goals, monitor progress, and make adjustments.

Hope this helps!

GOMAD Works!

by Tony (Indiana)

I was tired of being a 140 pound twink. I started lifting as heavy as I could 3-4 days a week while eating 5000-6000 kcal/day, about half of which was milk.

In one year I've made huge strength gains and gained about 60 pounds without a large rise in body fat.

Drank a gallon of milk every day for 3 months

I hit a plateau in my lifting and my weight gain. I was stuck at 150 lbs for a little over a year. When I started drinking the milk, I gained 5 lbs in this first two weeks. My gains slowed, so I started adding protein powders and fruit into my milk a couple times a day, and I was able to add another 5 lbs. I eat 3 meals a day WITH the milk. My bench press and shoulder presses also increased significantly after I put on the weight. I'm now 160 lbs, I put on some fat, but mostly muscle in my chest, arms and shoulders. I have a very small frame and fast metabolism, so drinking milk is the only way I am able to get the most calories at the cheapest price. No more spending 800 dollars a month on food when a 3 dollar gallon of milk can give me the same benefit. Also remember to take pictures of yourself before you start the program, because you won't notice your gains by looking in the mirror every hour. The gains come slowly but surely.

Best Ways of Rowing

by Terry
(Ennice, NC)

Question: I have been sitting on the floor and rowing with my heavy bands. Would I benefit from doing the rowing on a bench that I could straddle sitting down?

I have the Terrell Owens exercise bands (excellent).

Answer: I think you can do both! I'd caution you to keep a little bend in the knees while doing your rows (I assume you're pulling from a door way with the bands roughly parallel to the floor); keeping the legs stiff is an invitation to lower back strains.

You can vary the angle quite a bit by using the same anchor point but by adjusting your stance:

Seated on the floor, you're getting the lats and middle back.

Sitting on a bench, you can pull to the chin and get a good delt, upper back, and trap workout.

Standing, you can almost exclusively target your traps and hit the side and rear delts a little, too.

Image credit: Licensed for re-use – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/US_Navy_070329-N-8923M-029_Lt._Shaun_Estep_of_Strike_Fighter_Squadron_(VFA)_37,_the_Raging_Bulls,_prepares_for_the_physical_readiness_test_(PRT)_on_a_rowing_machine.jpg