How's my diet?

[StevenNevets]

This is my target daily diet I've been doing for awhile. When I say target I mean target, lots of times I'm away or my schedule gets messed up and so this gets messed up too.
But assuming I can do this everyday what do you think?



-Meal 1 (7:00am-7:30am): 2 egg whites, 1 Special K bar, vitamins/calcium/fiber(pills)
-Meal 2 (10:30-12:00am): whatever is available (healty)
-Meal 3 (3:00-4:00pm): chicken breast, green apple
>workout> (6:30-8:00pm)
-Meal 4/After Workout (right after): chicken breast, bannana

I'd like to have protein powder but I'm alergic to soy. What sucks is I've yet to find some decent whey protein that doesn't have soy. Even a little bit is no good.




I'm doing the Brad Pit workout
http://www.mensworkoutguide.com/home.html

These ab workouts
http://www.iwantsixpackabs.com/ab_workout_routine.html

And doing high-intensity interval training on treadmil.



Goal is to get my physical abilty higher, gain a little muscle, more importantly losing body fat (hopefully visable abs). Might do track next year, probably 400/800m.
I'm 16 and about 145 lbs and 12% bf.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

*Sigh* Ok, here goes. Your diet looks sparse. You aren't eating enough. Your main goal seems to be losing body fat, which is fine. However, if you don't eat a certain amount, your body kills your metabolism and you don't get any progress. At your age and weight, you should be eating at least ~1700 calories a day. Also, to make sure you know this - your body usually can't gain muscle and lose fat. It has to do one or the other since one is done in a caloric surplus and one is done in a caloric deficit.

To address those workout plans: they are high-rep, low weight exercises. If you're cutting and not doing some heavy weight, low rep movements, you're going to lose muscle during this process also. I think you need to refer to my stickied thread at the top of the forums. It will cover all of this. On top of this, I would like to point out that if you're 12% body fat, you should already have some fairly visible abs. If you don't have visible abs, then you're probably higher.

So in summary - you're not eating enough, your workout plan is not conducive to maintaining muscle while cutting (except HIIT), you can't spot reduce (which means doing ab exercises won't give you abs any sooner. It's all about diet and body fat %), and you have to either bulk or cut - choose one. How tall are you? It would probably be in your best interest to bulk first and then cut or you're just going to be a skinny dude (very skinny) that has a low body fat %. And if you stick to that workout plan, you'll also lose muscle mass along the way. Please refer to the sticky at the very top of the forums though. It'll summarize how to do all this correctly.

 

[StevenNevets]

Originally posted by: SociallyChallenged
*Sigh* Ok, here goes. Your diet looks sparse. You aren't eating enough. Your main goal seems to be losing body fat, which is fine. However, if you don't eat a certain amount, your body kills your metabolism and you don't get any progress. At your age and weight, you should be eating at least ~1700 calories a day. Also, to make sure you know this - your body usually can't gain muscle and lose fat. It has to do one or the other since one is done in a caloric surplus and one is done in a caloric deficit.

To address those workout plans: they are high-rep, low weight exercises. If you're cutting and not doing some heavy weight, low rep movements, you're going to lose muscle during this process also. I think you need to refer to my stickied thread at the top of the forums. It will cover all of this. On top of this, I would like to point out that if you're 12% body fat, you should already have some fairly visible abs. If you don't have visible abs, then you're probably higher.

So in summary - you're not eating enough, your workout plan is not conducive to maintaining muscle while cutting (except HIIT), you can't spot reduce (which means doing ab exercises won't give you abs any sooner. It's all about diet and body fat %), and you have to either bulk or cut - choose one. How tall are you? It would probably be in your best interest to bulk first and then cut or you're just going to be a skinny dude (very skinny) that has a low body fat %. And if you stick to that workout plan, you'll also lose muscle mass along the way. Please refer to the sticky at the very top of the forums though. It'll summarize how to do all this correctly.

I don't have a lot of time to eat a bunch of meals a day. But whenever I do eat more than this I gain weight, mostly fat, very easily. Plus my parents really don't care, it's hard enough to get them to keep enough stock of this stuff, if there's some good food that can be bought bulk and not rot I'll try that. I know cutting calories will cut your fat and some muscle but I was hoping enough protein and resistance training could offset that.

My abs abs already minimum "visable" but they're not nearly as defined as I would like. I'd like to get under 8% bf if possible, that seems to be where abs are how I'd like mine.

I'm aware there's no spot reducting but isn't the whole point of ab workouts to gain muscle which would make for better abs if enough fat is lost? I don't want to gain lots of muscle mass on abs, but instead tighten and strengthen them if that's possible. Do you recommend doing the ab workouts?
5 ft. 9in.
I'll give bulking a try some time. Sense I'm going for abs summer is obviously not a good time for me to bulk. During the school year when there's no track sounds better.



Thanks for the post, if you could respond again that'd be appreciated. I'll read through the sticky but specific advice is always nice.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Originally posted by: StevenNevets

Originally posted by: SociallyChallenged
*Sigh* Ok, here goes. Your diet looks sparse. You aren't eating enough. Your main goal seems to be losing body fat, which is fine. However, if you don't eat a certain amount, your body kills your metabolism and you don't get any progress. At your age and weight, you should be eating at least ~1700 calories a day. Also, to make sure you know this - your body usually can't gain muscle and lose fat. It has to do one or the other since one is done in a caloric surplus and one is done in a caloric deficit.

To address those workout plans: they are high-rep, low weight exercises. If you're cutting and not doing some heavy weight, low rep movements, you're going to lose muscle during this process also. I think you need to refer to my stickied thread at the top of the forums. It will cover all of this. On top of this, I would like to point out that if you're 12% body fat, you should already have some fairly visible abs. If you don't have visible abs, then you're probably higher.

So in summary - you're not eating enough, your workout plan is not conducive to maintaining muscle while cutting (except HIIT), you can't spot reduce (which means doing ab exercises won't give you abs any sooner. It's all about diet and body fat %), and you have to either bulk or cut - choose one. How tall are you? It would probably be in your best interest to bulk first and then cut or you're just going to be a skinny dude (very skinny) that has a low body fat %. And if you stick to that workout plan, you'll also lose muscle mass along the way. Please refer to the sticky at the very top of the forums though. It'll summarize how to do all this correctly.

I don't have a lot of time to eat a bunch of meals a day. But whenever I do eat more than this I gain weight, mostly fat, very easily. Plus my parents really don't care, it's hard enough to get them to keep enough stock of this stuff, if there's some good food that can be bought bulk and not rot I'll try that. I know cutting calories will cut your fat and some muscle but I was hoping enough protein and resistance training could offset that.

My abs abs already minimum "visable" but they're not nearly as defined as I would like. I'd like to get under 8% bf if possible, that seems to be where abs are how I'd like mine.

I'm aware there's no spot reducting but isn't the whole point of ab workouts to gain muscle which would make for better abs if enough fat is lost? I don't want to gain lots of muscle mass on abs, but instead tighten and strengthen them if that's possible. Do you recommend doing the ab workouts?
5 ft. 9in.
I'll give bulking a try some time. Sense I'm going for abs summer is obviously not a good time for me to bulk. During the school year when there's no track sounds better.



Thanks for the post, if you could respond again that'd be appreciated. I'll read through the sticky but specific advice is always nice.

Well, you don't need to eat 6 meals. Three meals will do absolutely fine. You need use to start using a meal recording tool like fitday.com to keep track of your calories. You may think that you'll gain weight with more food, but you probably won't. You probably would consider "more" another full meal, which would be far too much. You do need to take in a certain amount of calories, which you can't argue with, especially if you're trying to lose at. You have to take in x amount - not over, not under.

You're right about resistance training maintaining muscle, but you need a specific type of resistance training (high weight, 4-6 reps per set). Check out the sticky for that info.

Well, heavy weighted ab work will give you bigger ab muscles, but other than that you're usually just strengthening them (which isn't a bad thing, but it's not exactly going to help your abs come out). I recommend doing core exercises like any other muscle group, which is usually something like 2 different exercises, 3 sets of each.

And to be honest, chicks like ripped, but chicks also dig muscles. A bulk during summer wouldn't be the end of the world, I assure you. I got much more notice with my shirt off while bulking than I did with <10% body fat. Just to let you know.

 

[KoolDrew]

You're diet means nothing without a calorie and macronutrient breakdown.