2014 Cut Plan

Alright, so here we go. So I've been happy with my cuts in previous years, and I've posted results from them showing they went well. But I always feel like I can improve on it, hence the massive amount of research I did this year.  Several factors influenced my choices and I covered them earlier.  The first and foremost of which was eating to match what I'm doing. Last year (and every year really) I usually alternated high-carb and low-fat days, without much thought as to which went where.  This makes no sense.  My usual days of low rep high weight type work isn't really depleting any glycogen, yet I would load up on carbs later in the evening, and barely any fat.  Again, not the end of the world, but wasn't really letting me progress.  Your body also needs fat for maintaining hormone levels, and while I don't recall anything specific to make me think I wasn't, there are a ton of health benefits from things like EVOO, Coconut Oil, and Red Palm Oil among others, and I was missing out on a lot of them several days per week.  Finally, your bodies' preference for using dietary fat to fuel metabolism played a factor as well, along with my hope was to avoid losing much, if any strength this cut (more on this in a moment).  

Having decided on that, I also didn't want a repeat of last year, when on my high-fat days I was probably close to 70g of polyunsaturated fats. Having read up and digested a great deal of information on the topic, which I summarized here for you.  I want to keep it closer to 15g-20g this time around (I didn't quite get there, but I'm in range; I'll get closer if I swap out soy milk which has a ton of polyunsats, with regular milk, if I ever find a good local source).  

Finally, as I noted, you don't need nearly as much protein as you think you do. I was somewhere between 225 and 250g per day last year, and a bunch of that was probably just getting converted to ammonia in my blood. No more of that.  I have it capped a little over 210 on my sprinting days which are brutal, and then around 185-190 on my other days.  Oh, and regarding fructose, I'm not that worried as my levels aren't that high this time around.  I was probably close to 60g last cut on my high-carb days, not repeating that. This time I'm in the mid 30s, which is fine considering most of it is post-workout, which negates a lot of the issues with it.  In the previous link I also talk about insulin sensitivity some, and note that between 100 and 200g carbs per day leads to the greatest amount of insulin sensitivity. 

OK, enough talk, here's what I'm going with this time around:

On my heavy days when I'm doing the low rep stuff I'll be getting about half my cals from fat, 25% from carbs, 25% protein, for the reasons stated above.  On sprinting days I knock the fat back a bit and up the carbs a good deal; by the end I'm depleting glycogen like crazy, especially on the 200s.  I also bump up the protein because of how much damage I'm inflicting on my posterior chain. On my 'light' day in the gym, which would be things between 5 and 8 rep sets, I'm going to be around 200g of carbs net, lower fat, and slightly higher protein since I'm inflicting a bit more muscle-trauma than on the heavy days.  Here's how things like PUFAs (and omega-3s & oemga-6s), and fructose shook out, as well as what my targets were for each day for macros:

I got pretty close to what I wanted, and will get closer on PUFAs when I switch off of soy milk.  Also, at the moment I'm at 1 oz. walnuts, no macadamia because I'm trying to find a cheaper source, they're expensive. 

One final note:  to speed up the cut I've cut the fat back from the levels here, I do either an avocado or the sweet potatoes on the heavy day, bringing me back to either 2200 or 2400 calories.  As I get closer to my goal weight/comp I'll bring both back in.  That's what I like about using so many oils here, if I need to cut back on calories later I can just reduce tablespoons of the stuff.  


The results so far? Good. Really good. I'm down from 230 to about 210-212 right now. I've barely lost any strength, maybe none even.  The shoulder tweaking prevented me from push pressing and snatching heavy for a while, but even there I haven't really lost a ton of strength.  Squat, deadlift, benching, rows, all of it feels good.  I look pretty good too, I'll post progress pictures soon.  Another few weeks I should be really close to where I want to be, and I'm going to start running Hot-Rox soon (more on that in another post). Alright, I've rambled enough. 

2014 Cut, Part II: How Much Protein do You REALLY Need?

This is part 2 in my series on factors that went into determining this cut, and that hopefully others can use in determining their own cutting (or bulking) or just general nutritional needs.

I’ve known for a while I probably end up eating more protein than I need. You don’t need nearly as much protein as you probably think you do.  Additional protein past your needs actually causes an increase in enzymes that aid the use of protein breakdown for energy, and can be counter-productive. Here's a great study on the topic. Basically what was found is that even heavily trained athletes achieved nitrogen balance around 0.7g per pound of bodyweight, so around 140g for a 200 lbs. person.  Furthermore, maximum additional synthesis occurs about 25% above balance, so about 170g for a 200 lbs. person.   Not only that, but beyond the point of reaching nitrogen balance ammonia started to build up at an increasing rate in the subjects’ systems. Past about 230g every single gram of protein was converted entirely into ammonia (this is for ‘natural’ athletes, gear use could enhance this probably), “At a protein intake of 230g/day the body’s ability to convert ammonia to urea is saturated”.  For reference nitrogen balance means you’re not wasting away basically; positive nitrogen balance indicates growth, negative implies wasting away in some manner.  Now there are  studies that found when giving people 170g of protein, and another group 250, the 250 group actually built slightly more muscle, but it wasn’t done on a gradient, so who knows where the difference was.  Also, additional protein may be sparing of already built muscle, so it may not get used to build new muscle, but may prevent it from being broken down.  Your body is basically a set of thermostats, and if you’ve been over consuming protein your body has raised levels of enzymes that cause it to break down protein for energy; even if you stop now it’s going to take a week or two for that ‘thermostat’ to come down, so you may experience a slight bit of catabolism.  You can probably offset this with leucine.  Studies also show the much higher synthesis effect of leucine, which greatly reduces the level needed for balance and anabolism. So for instance 170g of protein and maybe 20g of leucine would be better than 300 grams of random proteins, accruing ammonia and building up enzymes that destroy amino acids for use as energy

As for worrying about muscle loss, consider this:  3 net grams of protein (over base need) a day are needed to build a pound of muscle tissue per month.  Building muscle is more about how to stimulate synthesis of the amino acids and peptides in your system into muscle, as opposed to the amount of protein you consume.  Just from the raw amount of aminos in your body right now, you could build a couple pounds of muscle immediately, daily. If you’re curious about the numbers: 1 pound is 454 grams.  One pound of muscle tissue is 70% water, 20% contractile protein and 10% miscellaneous lipids, etc. Again, these are rough numbers, and vary source to source a bit.  So that’s about 90g of protein in one pound of muscle, average that need out over a month and you have about 3g per day, if you want to think of it like that.  In other words, you have plenty of amino acids in you right now. What you need is to drive that synthesis of muscle tissue.  Which brings me back to the amino acid leucine, which is really the trigger that tells your body to synthesize protein (in other words build muscle). The take home point here, on days when I really inflict a lot of damage on muscles via high rep sets, I’ll probably get close to 200g of protein.  But the lower rep higher weight workouts I do more often, during those I’m just not inflicting enough damage to justify getting that, and I’m going to be scaling back on the protein.

Supplements

Here's a quick look at what I'm currently taking for supplements, and why:

• Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard: 1 scoop every morning. This is more of a fail-safe to make sure I get enough complete protein each day.  It also contains glutamine and BCAAs.  The ON brand is far and away the most superior brand of protein on the market right now.
• 1000mg Fish Oil Softgels: 6 per day; 3 in the morning, 3 in the evening.  EVERYONE should be taking fishoil.  Here's a good article on why; you could look up 100 others as well.  Note: When people talk about taking fish-oil they often say 1000mg, or 500mg when referring to the pill size. This is NOT the actual EPA/DHA content.  In the case of those 1000mg fish oil softgels each one contains 180mg EPA & 120mg of DHA.  So my grand total for the day is 1800mg of EPA & DHA, which is the stuff that gives fish oil it's potent effects.
• 800mg Curcumin with Bioperine:  1 per day.  Seriously, why are you NOT taking curcumin? You can read the research for yourself, but fat metabolizing, anti-catabolic, cancer fighting, cholesterol lowering, Parkinson's fighting, inflammation reducing (THAT'S the big one), tumor-shrinking supplements don't grow on trees.  It's basically a natural, legal clenbuterol.
• 1000mg Vitamin D3: 2 per day.  This one should be mandatory for anyone in the northern hemisphere. Here's a great article on Vitamin D (may be NSFW banner on side).  This and fish oil are probably the two most important supplements someone can take. Almost every human being is deficient in Vitamin-D which is too bad because Vitamin D is great for preventing things like cancer, heart disease, etc.   The current USDA recommended dose for Vitamin D is woefully low, and it will be raised during the next round of updates to their recommendations. And since a lot of people won't follow the link I posted to the article, here's some info for you:
• "In one mind-blowing study (Melamed, et al.) using population data, researchers found that total mortality was 26% higher in those with the lowest 25(OH)D levels compared with the highest. And a meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials found that supplemental vitamin D significantly reduced total mortality. That means quite simply this: vitamin D supplementation prolongs life. 
• According to the Vitamin D Council, current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer. 
•  Vitamin D may protect against both Type I and Type II diabetes.
•  Low D may contribute to chronic fatigue, depression, and Seasonal Affective Disorder.
• Parkinson's and Alzheimer's sufferers have been found to have lower levels of D.
• Low levels of vitamin D may contribute to "Syndrome X" with associated hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
• Administration of dietary vitamin D has been shown to lower blood pressure and restore insulin sensitivity.

That about wraps it up.  Time to go to the gym!  Leg day!

July 24, 2011 How I'm Eating

Alright, so here's how I'm eating for the next couple of weeks.  My days where I just do conditioning is staying the same.  My training days I've added in 4 oz (raw) of brown rice as a pre-workout fuel source.  I've moved the fruit to post workout since it's quicker digesting.  By doing this 71% of my net carbs on workout days will be centered around my workouts, with another 22% of them coming at breakfast.  I'll also be doing incline walking fasted in the mornings of my upper-body days.  Here's a shot of my meals, with caloric breakdown for the day, it's the most detailed I think I've ever posted online.