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Going to start my cutting cycle in a bit... looking for some advice on food.

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purbeast0

purbeast0

No Lifer
So before I say anything, I just read over the fat loss sticky above, and will be talking somewhat about the recommendations I saw from that thread.

That said, my wife has started her diet today and this week I'm going to try and transition to my cutting phase for the spring time during this week. This year I want to try and do it as properly as possible with losing as minimal muscle size as I possibly can. The one thing I always seem to fail to do when I try to cut is I end up losing the weight, but I also lose more size and strength than I would like, and I usually don't get as cut as I would like.

Last week I got back to my goal strength wise on some of my lifts so now I want to try and get some more cuts showing, and I really want to try and keep my strength up as much as possible.

I'm currently 5'11 215lbs - 217lbs. In all honestly I am not sure what weight I really want to get down to. I like the total size I am at now I just want to lose a little on my belly area (as most people do heh) and just get more cuts to show up in other places. I'm thinking maybe around like 205 or 200, but only 200 if I don't lose much strength and muscle size. I just hate it when I start to lose weight and notice clothese feeling looser around my chest and arms areas heh.

That said, this is basically what my current eating habits look like during the week.

Breakfast: protein shake with around 50g protein.
10am - 20oz diet soda
11:30am - ham and cheese sandwich
1pm or so - small bag of chips and another 20oz diet soda
2pm or so - turkey and cheese sandwich
5:30pm - english muffin with peanut butter (JIF creamy low fat, pre workout)
6pm - 7:30pm - drink size-on while working out
7:30 - 8pm - protein shake 50g or so
8 - 9pm - dinner, and recently has varied from a ton of stuff, since i've been eating whatever i want while bulking - pasta, sirloin burgers, turkey burgers, pizza
11pm - sometimes a yogurt or bowl of cereal.
12am - 1am - protein shake 50g

So that is basically what my meals look like right now during the work week. On the weekend I can totally vary and i usually don't take as much protein shakes since my schedule just is not in as much order. I will also drink glasses of milk randomly when at home if I get thirsty. it's just skim milk.

I also will sometimes randomly eat some of my wifes lean cuisines or soups, which I know I am going to have to cut out of this since I'm really trying to eat clean this time around.

So now onto my cutting phase, the area I'm having some trouble figuring out what to eat is mainly for lunch time. I'm not sure what to eat for lunch that I can make and take to work every day, that is better for cutting than what I'm currently eating for lunch. I've heard that deli meat is not very good for when cutting. So I'm looking for some suggestions as well.

In general too I am a pretty big guy so I definitely need to eat stuff to maintain my size, I just want to be eating the right stuff when I get hungry.

In general I'm big on sandwiches for lunch and could eat them probably every meal heh. I was thining possibly tuna sandwich for lunch maybe, but I also know too much tuna is not good for you because of the mercury.

I also am really going to try and cut out diet-soda in general, and replace that with a 1liter of water. part of me getting the soda every day around that time is just getting out of the office and walking around, but i also am thirsty at those times. when I eat my chips at work, I'm thinking of just getting some peanuts or something from the store that sells the soda/water, and just eating the peanuts as a snack. are the salted peanuts bad for you to eat? or does anyone recommend any specific types of nuts to eat?

for dinner i plan on basically getting the meats that are listed in the fat loss sticky thread and trying to stick to soley those. i also plan on making some of the vegetables listed in the fat loss sticky thread as the sides. one thing i was uncertain about though, in that list of carbs to eat, it said that jasmine rice was okay. i thought white rice was bad to eat when cutting and just to eat brown rice?

another question I had, right now I have en english muffin + peanut butter before I go workout. it is usually because I am slightly hungry around that time, and I hate working out with no food in me, and it is some carbs too to give me some energy. does anybody have any suggestions for that type of snack to have before hand?

i plan on buying some cottage cheese this week and seeing if i like it. i'm a huge cheese person in general, but never had cottage cheese simply because it looks nasty heh. i was thinking of just trying that out to see if i like it, and if so, that can be my snack to replace some of the bowls of cereal or possibly the english muffin + peanut butter thing.

Well with all this said, if anybody has any suggestions for food ideas in the areas I'm struggling with, it would be great. Also at my job i DO have a microwave so it is always possible to bring in stuff that needs to be heated up.

On top of my normal lifting routine, I am going to be doing some interval training twice a week, for about 10 minutes, and I also play football on the weekends as another form of cardio. I do not want to do too much cardio because I don't want to lose too much quickly. i've already started the cardio stuff to get my wind back for football so I can just jump right into that.

Thanks and if you have any questions feel free to post them.
 
I've been looking at http://www.leangains.com/2010/03/maintaining-low-body-fat.html or possibly a keto diet to help with my cut or for after my cut if I want to get more defined. As far as your current diet is concerned, cut out the bag of chips and diet soda, they'll both make you retain water and look fatter. Also seems to be a lot of carbs, I would try to cut some of them out too. My typical carb intake is first thing in the morning then a salad or fruit with lunch and a slice of bread or veggie with dinner.

I know everyone is different but I would prefer to start the day out with some real food, maybe oatmeal or a healthy (not sugary) cereal of some sort. If you're able to get by with just a shake more power to you but I can't do it. And there is little need for 2 shake a day, try to get some protein from natural sources. I typically have my shake pre workout.

For Lunch I typically do chicken breast and rice(brown/long cut) with some salad w/ homemade Italian dressing or fruit. Does a good job holding me over till my first dinner, pre workout.
 
Pantlegz1 said:
I've been looking at http://www.leangains.com/2010/03/maintaining-low-body-fat.html or possibly a keto diet to help with my cut or for after my cut if I want to get more defined. As far as your current diet is concerned, cut out the bag of chips and diet soda, they'll both make you retain water and look fatter. Also seems to be a lot of carbs, I would try to cut some of them out too. My typical carb intake is first thing in the morning then a salad or fruit with lunch and a slice of bread or veggie with dinner.

I know everyone is different but I would prefer to start the day out with some real food, maybe oatmeal or a healthy (not sugary) cereal of some sort. If you're able to get by with just a shake more power to you but I can't do it. And there is little need for 2 shake a day, try to get some protein from natural sources. I typically have my shake pre workout.

For Lunch I typically do chicken breast and rice(brown/long cut) with some salad w/ homemade Italian dressing or fruit. Does a good job holding me over till my first dinner, pre workout.
Click to expand...




First dinner? you eat a slice of bread for dinner? heheh i eat big bowl cereal for breakfast, some fish for lunch and then carrots and fruit for dinner or some beans and rice with more fish.. I know i dont know shit about diets and am stuck about 210 pounds. but at night i just get crazy munchies so i buy big bags of carrots to try hold me over.
 
I've had 1 successful "cut," and I ate a lot of tuna, cottage cheese and greek yogurt. I cut my carbs to like 75 or something a day. If it was green I ate it, and I probably way overdid my protein(like 225g a day I think it was).

I ate with a 750 deficit and did LISS cardio instead of intervals just to burn more off 3x a week after lifting. My lifts were all 5-8 range heavy.

I'd cut the diet soda out too but I realize it's zero calories.

I'd drop the PB before working out and eat a banana instead. Just personal pref. Overall macros are more important than timing ime.
 
yea i am going to try and cut the diet soda pretty much out totally during the week. i know i'll have caffeine withdrawal for like a day or two w/headaches (have before) but after that it should be fine. i plan on still drinking sodas on the weekends if I do any drinking (alcohol) but other than that want to try and totally cut it out.

i think right now i probably get around 250g of protein a day, which isn't too much considering i'm 215lbs. i want to try and keep it up to that as well when cutting if I can, or even more possibly.

i did do an extremely low carb diet years back, when i weighed like 175lbs, where i was eating under 30g of carbs a day during the week, then cheated on the weekend. that leaned me up like shit over a month, but man i had no energy at the gym at all.
 
Yeah my most recent cut until injury was pretty low carb, and I did not enjoy it nearly as much.

After the initial water weight drop I was all primed and ready but it didn't do me any better than moderate carbs, only this with less energy and more difficulty at the store shopping.

Again ime.
 
killster1 said:
First dinner? you eat a slice of bread for dinner? heheh i eat big bowl cereal for breakfast, some fish for lunch and then carrots and fruit for dinner or some beans and rice with more fish.. I know i dont know shit about diets and am stuck about 210 pounds. but at night i just get crazy munchies so i buy big bags of carrots to try hold me over.
Click to expand...

Yea I eat 2 'dinners' I guess I could call them pre and post workout meals, whatever. I said I might eat a slice of bread with dinner, not eating 2 sandwhiches a day + several other sources of carbs. My diet has gotten me from 250 down to ~230 in a little over a month. I'll level off at roughly 220 and ~10%bf. If I end up fighting I'll be cutting down to 205 at ~5%bf for fights.
 
on a slighly unrelated note ...

what is the best way to actually measure body fat? i have no way of knowing my % and am slightly curious what it is at now. if i had to guess i'd say like ... 18% - 20% maybe?

i actually have no idea heh ... i don't "look" fat at all. most people assume that i have a six pack just because of my build but i don't. i can see some ripples THROUGH the fat but that's it.
 
Getting submerged is the only way to know for sure. If you know someone skilled with calipers they're close most of the time. Anything using impedance testing can be as much as 15% off in either way. Which is a huge amount of fat.
 
You could post that pic on Lyle McDonalds thread on it and get some decent guesses. I would guess somewhere near 20%. +/- 5% lol

Either way your frame is ready to be cut up imo.
 
anyone have any other suggestions? i'm going to be hitting hte grocery store tonight.

anyone have any opinion on hummus? i've always heard it is good for you, but is it good for you when cutting? i could definitely do a wheat pita(think i saw this as good to eat in the fat loss sticky) + hummus for a snack.
 
purbeast0 said:
So before I say anything, I just read over the fat loss sticky above, and will be talking somewhat about the recommendations I saw from that thread.

That said, my wife has started her diet today and this week I'm going to try and transition to my cutting phase for the spring time during this week. This year I want to try and do it as properly as possible with losing as minimal muscle size as I possibly can. The one thing I always seem to fail to do when I try to cut is I end up losing the weight, but I also lose more size and strength than I would like, and I usually don't get as cut as I would like.

Last week I got back to my goal strength wise on some of my lifts so now I want to try and get some more cuts showing, and I really want to try and keep my strength up as much as possible.

I'm currently 5'11 215lbs - 217lbs. In all honestly I am not sure what weight I really want to get down to. I like the total size I am at now I just want to lose a little on my belly area (as most people do heh) and just get more cuts to show up in other places. I'm thinking maybe around like 205 or 200, but only 200 if I don't lose much strength and muscle size. I just hate it when I start to lose weight and notice clothese feeling looser around my chest and arms areas heh.

That said, this is basically what my current eating habits look like during the week.

Breakfast: protein shake with around 50g protein.
10am - 20oz diet soda
11:30am - ham and cheese sandwich
1pm or so - small bag of chips and another 20oz diet soda
2pm or so - turkey and cheese sandwich
5:30pm - english muffin with peanut butter (JIF creamy low fat, pre workout)
6pm - 7:30pm - drink size-on while working out
7:30 - 8pm - protein shake 50g or so
8 - 9pm - dinner, and recently has varied from a ton of stuff, since i've been eating whatever i want while bulking - pasta, sirloin burgers, turkey burgers, pizza
11pm - sometimes a yogurt or bowl of cereal.
12am - 1am - protein shake 50g
Click to expand...

How many minutes per week do you weigh train ?

How many minutes per week do you do cardio ?

How many calories do you take in per day ?

Those shakes - why are you having 3 shakes a day ?
 
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