planning a good diet...

[roo]

Hello,

I need some help with planning a diet. I'm 5'11" and right aroud 200lbs. I'm not really interested with loosing weight since I like being right around 200lbs, but I would like to start dropping some body fat and replacing it with some more muscle. My problem comes with nutrition. I'm so confused right now with everything I've read that I don't know what to eat or how to plan 6 small meals throughout the day. I'm just curious of what others eat throughout the day. I'm really curious of what people eat when they aren't around a kitchen for a meal.

As for excercise I plan on doing cardio 5 days a week for 20 minutes in the morning and I usually workout 3 days on, 2 days off on my bowflex at night after work.

Any help with planning a good diet is appreciated, or suggestions on anything else I need to do. Hopefully I gave enough info...

thanks!!

[maddzz]

You cannot drop fat and add muscle at the same time. You need to do one or the other, bulk or cut. Decide which one you want to do and I will be glad to help.

[Grizzly]

Mad is pretty right on. It'd probably be best if you dropped your bf and, subsequently, your weight and then grew back up to 200.

Personally, I'd advise joining a real gym. Bowflex isn't the worst in the world, but I maintain that you'll get better results using a good, old fashioned bar and plates.

[slider]

So if your bulking up but want to also lose some bodyfat stomachwise, thats not possible? I have the same situation and would like to know what type of routine to do. Also, do you keep track of calorie intake vs. outtake?

[Grizzly]

No, by definition bulking entails gaining weight, some of which is fat.

You really can't quantify calorie expenditure. You can take an educated guess, but you'll never really know how much you burn each day. Basically, you just find a figure that will allow you to lose weight and then you keep track of your calories to make sure that they don't exceed said number.

[slider]

So say for instance, you've ate like shit for the last few months and gained some bad weight, and at the same time you weren't lifting. Now your eating healthy and lifting consistently again. Will eating healthy and doing some cardio while your lifting increase lean muscle and help decrease bodyfat? I know this seems repetitive, but it just seems like when you go from eating terribly as far as fast food and what not to eating well and then lifting again on top of that, you'd be able to shed some fat while you put on muscle.

[Grizzly]

If you lost some muscle by not working out, you can probably gain it back while dieting, allbeit a bit slowly.

[urbadside]

Originally Posted by Grizzly

If you lost some muscle by not working out, you can probably gain it back while dieting, allbeit a bit slowly.

Grizzly is right.....take of like 2-3 lbs per week.....you wont lose that much muscle......

[Lestat]

a little off topic but how much do you guys increase your caloric intake while on a lean mass cycle? On a bulking cycle I eat 1.5-2 g of protien /lb of body weight and eat anything else I can as long as its fairly clean. I'm not well informed on lean mass cycle diet. Any help?

[Grizzly]

Well, I usually start with about 4500 and end up closer to 6000 by the time I'm done being a fat pig.

Figure it like this. Let's say you just stopped dieting. You've been eating 2500 cals/day to lose 1lb/wk. That's a 500 cal/day deficit(3500cal=1lb). So, 3000 will be maintenance. To keep it really lean, add about 300/day. This will add up to 3/4lb/wk.

Of course, adding juice into the mix changes things a bit. If you're relatively new to the cycle game, you can expect to gain 10-15lbs on a cycle, so you'd need to eat enough to support 15lbs over the course of 12 weeks or however long your cycle is.