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I think, therefore I post
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Little Rock, AR
Posts: 14,876
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Once you've figured out your BMR (basal metabolic rate) and body fat estimates, you can use these figures to organize your eating habits. BMR will give you a total calorie figure, but you will have to experiment to find what works for you. It will vary with the types of food you select, your individual chemistry, etc. Remember that this is more an art than a science.
- Do you still feel hungry at times?
- Do you feel energetic during your workouts?
- Do you feel rested in the morning?
- Are you gaining bodyfat
Numerous (5 to 7) smaller meals throughout the day is the idea. The main question is what to eat at different times of the day.
Breakfast
Breakfast should be almost entirely complex and simple carbohydrates. Your body has been running on fat reserves throughout the night and a quick infusion of carbs is the best way to stop muscle catabolism. A minimum of protein and fat should be eaten. Breakfast should be by far the biggest meal of the day and should total between 30-35% of your total caloric intake of the day. (However a contrary view argues for a protein-based breakfast. See below.)
Breakfast staples include: bran cereal with skim milk, bagels with fat-free cream cheese and jam, coffee, protein shakes, fruit, toast, juice, cooked (!) eggs or egg whites, pancakes, French toast, breakfast burrito....
Daytime snacks
Try to eat the bulk of your calories in several more meals throughout the day. Your body is most active now, so it makes sense to be well fueled for this activity (even if you do have a desk job). You may count lunch separately, as a "meal", or you can simply have larger snacks throughout the day (say, mid morning, early afternoon, mid afternoon).
Snacks include: canned tuna in water, protein shakes, fruit, veggies, muffins (be careful of fat), bagels, energy bars....
Lunch
Lunch should contain the normal AMA recommendation for protein/fat/carbohydrate intake. It should be in the neighborhood of 50% complex carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 20% protein.
Lunch might be chicken breast, fish, salad, roast beef, pasta, and fruit.
Pre and Post Workout
Pre-Workout Drink/Meal: This should be ingested approximately one hour before working out. A few hundred (i.e. less than 400 calories, depending on your workout) should be sufficient. This meal should be almost entirely complex carbohydrates. For those that workout in the wee hours of the morning, the breakfast could account for this if you workout within the time frame of two or so hours after breakfast. For those that are mainly aerobicisers, a VERY light meal would be the best, preferably one that is less than 100 calories. This will try to eliminate any muscle catabolism while the fat-burning process is kicking in. A suggestion for those that do aerobics to get their pre-workout calories: carbohydrate gels... if you want to know more on them, search through the back issues. Another way to go is to eat 100 g of complex carbs in the 3 hrs before training - you could split this into several snacks, for example. Also, others recommend pre-workout protein, not carbs.
Post-Workout Drink/Meal: The important thing here is to get some simple carbohydrates (mainly glucose) and protein. A good drink after a strong workout should have about 50g of simple and complex carbohydrates and about 30g of protein. Ingest within 45-60 minutes of working out (preferably in the 30 min range). Exercise depletes muscle glycogen, and a high carb "recovery" drink of 200-400 calories will replenish it. If there is no protein in your drink, try to have a high protein meal within two hours. One other note: the presence of fructose in the drink may encourage a more rapid assimilation of the carbs into glycogen. But remember that fructose turns to fat more easily than glucose, so don't go overboard with it.
Dinner
Dinner should be in the neighborhood of 45% carbohydrates, 40% protein, and 15% fat. Unlearn the habit of the dinnertime feast. A LIGHT meal should be consumed, as studies have shown that those you eat heavy meals before bedtime are the most prone for heart attacks. Consequently, those that eat a big breakfast and a small dinner are almost twice as likely to not have a heart attack when compared to their peers who eat a small breakfast or none at all and eat the bulk of their calories at night.
Dinner might be lean beef, veal, venison, skinless chicken, or fish, with veggies.
Evening/Night Snack
Snacks should be small, because unused calories may be stored as fat during sleep. Protein is good because the body will begin tissue repair shortly after the sleep cycle begins. About 5-10g is all you need. Even a little fat is OK, because the body will run on fat reserves all night. Warm milk is another possibility - it has natural concentrations of L-tryptophan, which helps you go to sleep.
A night snack could be fat free yogurt or cottage cheese, chicken, a bagel, a muffin. Eating carbs at night is controversial. Some studies have shown that the digestion of carbohydrates secretes various hormones that have been associated with tiredness and sleepiness. Under this reasoning, your snack should be high in simple carbs (high GI) so you get good insulin response. Insulin will decrease the levels of amino acids in the blood by incorporating them into existing proteins, mainly skeletal muscle. But it seems that insulin does not act on tryptophan. With the levels of the other amino acids reduced, more tryptophan is available to sites in the brain, which convert it into serotonin. (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that facilitates sleep.) So eating a mainly carb meal is a good way to selectively raise the tryptophan levels in the blood, which helps you fall asleep.
Also by this logic, breakfast should be a high *protein* meal. With more amino acids released into the blood, tryptophan has more "competition" for the binding sites and less serotonin gets made; also tyrosine, another amino acid, gets converted into ephenepherine (the classic fight or flight hormone) by the same sites. So, if you have protein at night, you should make sure you have carbs to counteract that effect.
Other people think carbs will key you up since they are a basic energy fuel, hindering sleep. Another claim against carbs is that having a high blood sugar level will inhibit the release of growth hormone (hGH) when you go to sleep. hGH is a key factor in muscle development and growth, so this would be undesirable.
One undisputed fact is that you should not eat too much at night. Surplus calories are likely to go unused and be converted to fat. Hunger at night most likely indicates that you need to eat more *during the day*.
Last word: Each individual must evaluate these suggestions to his or her own needs. None of this will be perfectly applicable to everyone, and even some of the "facts" themselves are in dispute. We have put together these suggestions to make meal planning easier, but ya gotta try em on for size yourself. Don't force yourself into a plan that makes you miserable or doesn't work for your goals.
Food Sources
Here is a quick and probably incomplete summary of good sources for the major food categories of carbohydrates, fats, and protein.
Carbohydrate Sources
Simple carbs: basically any kind of sugar. Honey, molasses, sucrose, fructose, non-diet soft drinks, candy, most baked goods. Avoid these things most of the time. Fruit and recovery drinks contain high amounts of simple sugars and you should use them sparingly.
Complex carbs: Think starches. Pasta, bread, bagels, potatoes, yams, oats, bran, grains.
Fiber: Bran, grains, vegetables, and fiber supplements.
Fat Sources
The general rule of thumb is that the harder the fat is at room temperature, the higher the percentage of saturated fat it contains. For example, beef fat is more solid than chicken fat, and it has more saturated fat.
Meat and dairy products are well known as sources of fat. Choose lean cuts of meat and trim off as much fat as you can. Do not eat chicken skin. Get low fat or non-fat cheese, yogurt, and cottage cheese and skim milk. Choose butter over margarine, because margarine is highly processed (see below), but do not use either more than occasionally.
Plants may also have high amounts of fat, especially seeds and nuts, so do not assume that vegan eating is necessarily low fat.
Oils are simply liquid fat. They can be an exception to the rule of thumb because many are commercially processed. Hydrogenated oils are structurally unsaturated, but function in the body like saturated fats.
Processed and prepackaged foods usually are full of hydrogenated oils. So is fast food. Avoid these at all costs.
Unsaturated oils can be monounsaturated (olive, canola, and peanut oil) or polyunsaturated (corn, sunflower, safflower, or cottonseed oil). Whenever possible, use these instead of saturated fats like butter or margarine. With olive oil, always get "extra virgin".
Flaxseed oil is supposed to be the best source of lineoleic acid, the only essential fatty acid. It probably would be a good oil and vinegar salad dressing.
Protein Sources
Dairy products: nonfat yogurt, skim milk, cottage cheese, cheese...all good sources. Cheese has high fat content and cottage cheese is high in sodium. Some people may have problems with lactose intolerance.
Chicken: boneless skinless breasts are a basic bb staple. Cook thoroughly.
Eggs: another very good source. Cook them, because raw eggs carry a significant risk of food poisoning from salmonella. Hard boiled eggs are a good portable snack. If you eat eggs often, leave out the yolks, which are high in fat. If you eat them occasionally a yolk or two is OK.
Fish: great source of protein. Also provides omega-3 fatty acids. Be sure it is fresh - not fishy smelling - and cook it well. Watch out for bones.
Beef: lean cuts are best. Even lean cuts have a relatively high fat content.
Other meat: venison - deer meat - is usually very lean and healthy. Turkey is fairly close to chicken. Lamb is high in fat, and pork is about the worst.
Beans: cheap, but may require long cooking time. Plant proteins are incomplete so you need to combine them with a "complementary" plant protein. The best example is red beans and rice. Again, a possible gas problem.
Nuts: almonds, walnuts, peanuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, nut butters. High in protein, but also high in fat. This is a vegetable protein like beans, so it is also incomplete.
Protein powders and BCAAs: Convenient, but very expensive compared to the other sources. Also these products will not supply important vitamins and minerals found in real food. Supplemental protein comes from three sources: whey, egg, and soy. Whey is the recent favorite, with some evidence supporting a higher absorption than egg, but both are good sources. Soy protein has some question marks around it. The biggest concern is that consumption of soy protein has been linked to higher levels of estrogen, which is detrimental for muscle building. Regardless of what unresolved research may suggest, one difference is clear. Whey and egg proteins are animal proteins and are complete, while soy is an incomplete plant protein. Animal feed relies heavily on soy protein with supplemental methionine, so this might be one way to "improve" the quality of soy protein.
Eat healthy!!
Jean-Paul
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Jean-Paul Francoeur
www.jpfitness.com
http://forums.jpfitness.com
"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
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