Nutrient timing is one of the last steps in completing your diet, you know what you need to eat and how much of it but the hard question is when should you eat and does it even matter. It may not matter to the average joe but who wants to be average, if there is a better way to do something why not do it. It’s simple really as you are further away from the workout you drop the carbs and add the fat, protein should always be split pretty evenly throughout the day.
 
For me and all my clients we start the day with protein and fats, now there isn’t a lot of significant research out there to prove that this is beneficial but from my experience and the few studies that have been done by well respected researchers in the field there seems to be something to what they call nutrient programming meaning your first meal of the day will dictate a lot of the fuel source you’ll use throughout the day so if it consist of fats and proteins then thats what you’ll be burning throughout the day. Whether this is true or not, I know we get in the best shape by eliminating carbs first thing in the a.m.
 
Here is a video were I talk about some aspects of nutrient timing and peri-workout nutrition

 
Now as the day progress’s towards your workout you want to start adding your carbs in because they will give you the energy to complete the workouts and will also help in the repair of muscle protein breakdown. Right before the workout I prefer white meat and an easily digestible carb source such as white rice, that way your body isn’t wasting a lot of energy digesting food and can focus on the workout. During the workout you want to consume some fast digesting carbs such as gatorade or what I prefer Karbolyn. Post workout is when you want some simple sugars and fast digesting protein such as whey and the simple sugar carb can be anything from cereal to fat free pastries. The key here is to limit any and all fat intake as this will slow down the absorption rate of all the essential nutrients your body needs to repair quickly and effectively.
 
After this will be you last carb meal of the day consisting of a red meat source as it has a better amino acid profile than white meat and another carb source but this time the main focus is to have it be less in fiber so a sweet potato would work well. All meals leading up to these and after these will be protein and fats.
 
So it would look something like this for a 200lbs male.
Meal 1
40g of protein
40g of fat
 
Meal 2
40g of protein
40g of fat
 
Meal 3
40g of protein
30g of carbs
20g of fat
 
Meal 4 Pre Workout
40g of protein
40g of carbs
20g of fat
 
Intra Workout Drink
60g of Karbolyn or Gatorade
10g of BCAA’s
 
Meal 5 Post Workout
40g of protein powder
60g of carbs
 
Meal 6
40g of protein
50g of carbs
 
Pretty simple right now that you know how to set things up enjoy adding these great treats to your diet without feeling guilty and still achieve great results!!

           You just finished a meet or competition and you took 1st place!! Yay for you, you and 80 other lifters got 1st congrats!! I’m just kidding it’s a well deserved victory and you trained your ass of, but now it’s time evaluate what you need to work on, what worked last training cycle, and what are your future goals. This brings you into offseason mode yes you need an offseason, no you don’t want to compete every 8 weeks!
 
           The offseason is for you to make some much needed changes and to rest up and recover from the grind of an 8-12 week meet prep. So what to do and how to do it? You need to realize your goals first and foremost, if you want to add size and 100lbs to your total that may take some time so you’ll have to map out how long you want your offseason to last. A big thing I can’t stress enough is to set realistic goals, don’t think you’re going to add 300lbs to your total and drop a weight class that’s just not happening sorry. Once your goals are set than its time to make a plan.
 
           Now with myself and my athletes I take them into a hypertrophy phase because let’s face it you have lagging parts that need to be brought up and you need to let your body rest. Much like dieting offseason training is a time to have fun and be a little more liberal with exercise selection and variety but also just like dieting if you stray to far from the path than you will not be were you want to be when it comes time to meet prep. You want to identify your weak areas and specifically target them with higher reps 5-8 range and with a slight variation of the competition lift. For example if I’m constantly rounding over in my squat using a safety squat bar will help and so will a straight bar with some accommodated resistance. This compound movement will be your first exercise selection notice how I didn’t have you deviate to far from your competition lift that’s important for improvement and technical efficiency. For your second move sticking with lower body let’s say you have weak hips. You pick 2-3 exercises that target that specifically and rotate them each week so you have a different adaptation to get used to and it gives you some fun variety. 3rd and 4th exercise is more of an isolation movement for your quads, hamstrings or lower back heck its off season you can even throw in some calves as well. Just pick stuff that makes sense to you and a little vanity stuff as well yes that means curls!!
 
           So you have your exercise selection picked out for the most part targeting your weak areas and not straying to far from the main lifts. Let’s set up your rep scheme, even with off season programming you want to on a week by week basis accumulate more volume so if you did 3 sets of 8 week one for a total of 24 reps on a squat movement you need to increase that in week two and so on and so forth. Volume is the key here not intensity!! Volume helps your weak areas grow and become larger and stronger muscles, so when you go into meet prep you have bigger muscles and better leverages. All you accessory stuff should also have some type of progression to it as well but the main thing with these is that you aren’t overdoing it with intensity. Think more bodybuilder and less Chuck V full out intensity. This will ensure a continuos progression and a healthy body going forward.
 
           Let’s not neglect some other areas like nagging injuries or poor mobility. This is the time to get all that fixed don’t just put a band aid on it like you did in meet prep but actually take the time to address these issues and get healthy. I know a lot of people hate stretching, mobility, and rehab stuff so I just program it in and if its written down on paper it gets done. Thats our meathead mentality to everything. So either find a reputable friend who can fix you up or pay somebody to because a long healthy career will ensure you a big total and a fun training cycle meet to meet year to year.
 
So there are just a few things to consider when going into your off season plan. Biggest take aways are to set goals and be realistic, hit your weak areas with slight variations of the comp lifts, train accessories like a bodybuilder, get healthy and most importantly have fun doing it.

Dieting, it’s a word that brings a mix of emotions to people, it makes some uneasy, others determined, and even more so it leaves most confused. The truth is it’s not as hard as you think it is, but there are so many diets that pop up on the inter webs that people get so confused as to what to do. You have Paleo, IIFYM, Carb Cycling, Low Carb, High Carb, Atkins, Weight Watcher, etc... they all have merit to them and they can all be affective so why choose one if they all work? It’s as easy as finding what works best for you, it will take effort so if your not wanting to put forth some type of effort and you just want things to just happen well good luck with that email me and let me know how that works for you.
I’m just going to go over some basics to make this as easy as possible so that you can reach your goals. Here are some of the biggest things that will be covered briefly.

• Calories in vs. Calories out is huge
• Neglecting any macronutrient is a bad idea
• Timing your macronutrients throughout the day ?Calories in vs calories out is the biggest thing in weight lose or weight gain. Every person has a base of how many calories they need to consume in order to do one of those two things. When going for weight lose it’s a great idea to start with more calories than you think you need because if you start low you’re limiting were you can go once you hit a plateau and likewise for weight gain. A simple way to figure out where you should start is to use the
• Basal Metabolic Rate Formula
• Men?10 X (Weight in kg) + 6.25 X (Height in cm) – 5 X (Age in years) + 5
• Women?10 X (Weight in kg) + 6.25 X (Height in cm) – 5 X (Age in years) – 161

This is were some effort comes in but once you get it down it’s a breeze from there. Say you start on Monday because let’s face it everybody starts diets on Mondays, consume this many calories until Thursday and see what happens with your weight. If it goes down great keep eating that many calories until it quits going down than just drop about 2% of the calories and just keep weighing yourself every 4-5 days. Simple right these calories in theory can be made up of anything but we know by now that food is fuel so we can’t just eat like crap all the time as that will undoubtedly wreck your workouts. 

Neglecting a macronutrient is a common theme in a lot of diets, carbs are the devil, fat will kill you, and protein will ruin your kidneys. I’m sure we’ve all heard something like this throughout our days as fitness enthusiast. The truth is that if you think about all the greatest athletes in the world or the fittest people they eat all 3 macro’s because they know that fats, carbs and proteins all play a pivotal role in performance and body composition. So get rid of all the negative things you associate with certain macros and embrace them.
Carbs give you energy and replenishes your used glycogen stores which help transport a lot of your protein and other micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals to keep your body functioning at a high level. Fats are great at regulating hormones such as testosterone, thyroid, and others, they also help suppress hunger as you diet which is crucial to staying on track. Protein is the building block of muscle growth and repair so after a hard workout protein breaks down into amino acids and begin the repair process so you can make it back the next day and kill your next workout. So as you can see they all play an important role in your fitness journey and neglecting anyone completely is just a bad idea and isn’t necessary so why do it?

So you have your calories from above now you want to know how many of each macro’s you need. This is easy as well but does take a little bit of effort. Most athletes because let’s face it we should all consider ourselves athletes and active need bet .8-1.2g of protein per pound of bodyweight males may need the top end while most women will be fine with 1g. So our 200lbs subject needs right around 240g of protein per day. 1 gram of protein is 4 calories as well.
200lbs x1.2g= 240g x4 calories= 960 calories
Carbs consumption is roughly around the same a good start with carbs and protein is a 1:1 ratio so 1.2g per pound of bodyweight and is 4 calories per gram.
200lbs x1.2g= 240g x4 calories= 960 calories

Fats can just feel in the leftover calories. Each gram of Fat is 9 calories. 3000 calories - 1920 calories= 1080calories / 9Calories= 120g of Fat
This is a very basic set up and depending on your sport or activity level you can up or lower your calorie intake to meet your needs. The way I like to do this is in 10% increments of a single macro at a time per day. First macro I like to increase is protein, do that for a week than check weight if you’re still the same and want to grow than add 10% carbs per day, check weight at the end of the week, still plateauing go to fats next. You want to make sure you add them throughout the day spread even;y throughout your meals, don’t just add them to one meal. Now if you’re trying to lose weight you do the opposite and drop fats first, than carbs, than fats, carbs and finally protein. Don’t drop protein unless you absolutely need to.
So a day of meals for the 200lbs man would look like this:

Meal 1
40g of protein
40g of fat
 
Meal 2
40g of protein
40g of fat
 
Meal 3
40g of protein
30g of carbs
20g of fat
 
Meal 4 Pre Workout
40g of protein
40g of carbs
20g of fat
 
Meal 5 Post Workout
40g of protein powder
120g of carbs
 
Meal 6
40g of protein
50g of carbs
 
Like I said this is very basic but it will get you in the right direction to make the changes you need to hit your goals.
Off days I like to lower the calories through dropping mostly carbs and keeping protein the exact same and drop fats slightly if needed.

Meal 1
40g of protein
40g of fat
 
Meal 2
40g of protein
30g of fat
20g of carbs
 
Meal 3
40g of protein
20g of fat
20g of carbs
 
Meal 4
40g of protein
40g of carbs
 
 
Meal 5
40g of protein
40g of carbs
 
Meal 6
40g of protein
20g of fat
 
I hope this helps you get started in your journey and remember it is a journey with a lot of ups and downs so learn to enjoy the process and don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake its not the end of the word. It’s about consistency over time, that’s what builds success in this game.