Testosterone Advantage Plan

[EnTransit]

Howdy,

This weekend I bought some new books hoping to find more direction in my diet and workouts. So I picked up...

Body For Life
Sly Moves
ABSolution
Testosterone Advantage Plan
Modern Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding

I sat down to read TAP because its had such great reviews. As I read though, the dietary breakdown seems to get very complicated. I just wondered if anyone else had experience with this? Im fine with counting calories and all, but Ive always had trouble with macronutrients and planning my meals when trying to follow a strict division of macronutrients. Anyone else have experience with this diet?

Josh

[Lost Dog]

I've followed TAP for some time now. It's great.

After switching from unhealthy foods to healthy versions, you might just start with logging what you eat, then see how you stack up macro-wise. You might be close and just need to adjust the ratios up or down.

For me, I didn't ever eat any of the TAP recipes, I just modified my normal foods to follow TAP guidelines.

The hardest part was adding more protein and eating less bread. But, now, I like my sandwiches meatier, so all is good. By the way, I just ended up buying smaller bread, so I'd still have my sandwiches. They just have two slices totalling 100 calories instead of two 100 calorie slices...

Every meal should be CLOSE to the TAP ratios, but they don't need to be exact.

By the way, you can use fitday.com to track things for free.

[RacerBill]

I followed most of the eating plan in TAP for when I was doing the program with lots of mistakes and cheating the first several attempts, then I really followed it. I wasn't terribly strict: I often swapped one meal for another because I liked the salmon very much and I didn't care for the chicken stir-fry, plus the T-bone steak once a week was more than I could afford. I also diddled with just about every dinner recipe. Admittedly, after a while you get pretty sick of the same seven dinners.

I think the idea of the book was to give a model that someone can follow without having to figure out calories and macros. Once you get used to eating that way, you can venture out on your own; or, as LostDog did, you can get adventurous from day one and just follow the principles. I don't like to think that hard so I just followed the book. I have to say it helped to get me in the right mindset about meal planning.

Ditto on Lost Dog's Fitday recommendation. It's an easy and effective way to track calories and macros.

Good luck! I think TAP is a great program and I wish you well.

[Lost Dog]

Almost any South Beach compliant recipe can be made TAP friendly, as can the dishes in most low carb cookbooks.

Although, many low carb cookbooks go too far OR find ways to let you have carbs that you shouldn't have anyways (like low carb muffins).

Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Real Meals and Bobby Flay's Grilling For Life both have a lot of recipes that fit into a TAP lifestyle.