Adjusting Meal Plans

1 Section Title: Breakdown

ADJUSTING A MEAL PLAN MADE SIMPLE by: John Meadows and Frank Mingst

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2 Section 1: Introduction

Introduction So you found the perfect diet. Meal frequency fits your schedule. You’re not too hungry or too full. Your body progress is moving in the right direction. Cruising happily along, you hardly seem to notice as the quality of your results starts to degrade. It’s slow at first. You barely notice it or hang responsibility on that extra ounce of protein or two here or there. Still, you feel it there in the back of your mind, the recognition that all is not as it should be. The weeks go by. Now you’re moving at a crawl. The changes come so slowly they don’t seem to come at all. You wake up one day and look in the mirror and realize with horror-

You didn’t adjust your diet. So your diet adjusted you. Don’t panic. It happens to the best of us. First I’d like to cover some ground rules. These are of significant importance to ensuring progress, so I recommend reading them a la “Fight Club.” That means you read them, and then you read them again.

Contents Introduction Diet Modification Rules Baseline Examples Getting Leaner Strategy #1 - Reducing Calories Carbs 7 Fats 9 Strategy #2 - Increasing Calorie Consumption, aka Training and/or Cardio Steady State Cardio 10 Protein 10 Interval Cardio 12 Training 12 Strategy #3 - Refeed Meals/Days

Muscle Building Strategy #1 - Adding Calories Carbohydrates 15 Fats 19 Proteins 20 Strategy #2 - Changing Training Stimulus and Reducing Cardio No Cardio 20 Minimal Cardio 21 Eccentricless Training as Cardio 21 Training as Cardio 22 Strategy #3 - Increasing Dietary Freedom What to do when it doesn’t go according to plan

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Rule #1 Patience Rule #2 One change at a time Getting Started Rules #3

Small Moves, Get the most out of the least Rule #1 - Patience

Diet Modification Rules

Pick your cliché. Good things come to those who wait. Patience is virtue. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Patience is everything. If you don’t have it you will drive yourself bonkers. It won’t happen overnight no matter how badly you want it to. Accept that now and you will be prepared moving forward. All other rules point back to this one. So read it until you get it.

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Section 1: Introduction

First I’d like to cover some ground rules. These are of significant importance to ensuring progress, so I recommend reading them a la “Fight Club.” That means you read them, and then you read them again.

4 Section Title: Introduction

Rule #2 - One change at a time Refer to rule number one for the why. Making multiple changes at a time will often create more problems than progress. On one hand you won’t know which manipulated variable is producing changes. On the other hand, you skip a chance to extract progress on one variable alone. On someone else’s hand, you could potentially go too far and face the consequences of that.

Rules #3 - Small Moves, Get the most out of the least Don’t make big, drastic changes. You won’t necessarily get drastic results. Why jump from twenty minutes of cardio to an hour and twenty minutes? You will miss out on the progress that you could have seen at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy minutes. Your body will only become efficient to the new task or work load, and then there is nowhere to go from there. So make small moves and leave yourself some room to maneuver.

Baseline Examples For example purposes we’ll be a simplified base template using the macronutrient totals for each meal. We’ll be assuming four training days and three non training days.

4 days a (weight days) Protein

Carbs

Fat

Meal 1

60

10

30

550

Meal 2

45

40

0

340

Meal 3

55

10

20

440

Meal 4

45

40

0

340

Meal 5 - Pre workout

55

30

10

430

Meal 6 - Intra- workout

40

90

0

520

Meal 7 - Post - workout

70

75

10

670

Meal 8 - Before Bed

20

10

0

120

390 x4 cal/gram

305 x4 cal/gram

70 x9 cal/gram

1,560

1,220

630

Totals

Calories

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Calories

3,410

5

Meal 1 Meal 2 Meal 3 Meal 4 Meal 5 - Dinner Meal 6 - Last Meal Totals Calories

Protein

Carbs

Fat

60 45 45 60 45 70 325 x4 cal/gram 1,300

10 50 45 15 45 80 245 x4 cal/gram 980

30 0 10 15 0 15 70 x9 cal/gram 630

Calories 550 380 450 435 360 735 2,910 2,910

Without the meal breakdown we get this:

Training Day Protein 390g 1560 cal

Carbs 305g 1220 cal

Off Day Fat 70g 630 cal

Protein 325g 1300 cal

Carbs 245g 980 cal

Fat 70g 630 cal

Note For speed of reference this manual is split into two pieces: fat loss and muscle gain. While these two are not mutually exclusive and can occur at the same time, the focus of most people will be biased one way or the other. So find the appropriate section and dive in.

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Section 1: Introduction

3 days a week (cardio days)

6 Section 2: Getting Leaner

Strategy #1 Reducing Calories Strategy #2 Training and Cardio Carbs, Fats, and Cardio Strategy #3

Refeed Meals

Getting Leaner There are a few factors that we can manipulate when the intent is to get leaner. These are primarily your nutrition, training/cardio, and supplementation. I’m going to be focusing on the diet and the exercise as those two are the most reliable, have better cost to benefit ratio, and are more universally applicable than supplements.

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Strategy #1 - Reducing Calories Notice the heading says “reducing.” Not hacking. Not chopping. Not decapitating. We’re shaving here. Small moves.

Carbs Your go to macronutrient to shave off is the carbohydrate. But how much to take? The first move here is to total the weekly calorie intake. This is simply the number of training days multiplied by the training day calories, plus the number of off days multiplied by the off day calories. It would look like this: 4 Training Days * (3410 calories) + 3 Off Days * (2910 calories) 13640 + 8730 = 22370 weekly calories In order to make a small change to stimulate some progress, we’re going to cut total weekly calories by 5%. Doing some simple math tells us that 5% of 22370 is 1119 calories. 1119 calories spread across 7 days of the week is 160 calories. Remembering that a gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, we come up with 40g of carbs. So, we need to cut 40g of carbs per day to equate to a 5% push. This change will adjust our macros to this:


Carbs 265g 1060 cal



Carbs 205g 820 cal

Fat 70g 630 cal

The meal plan would then change accordingly. But where do you make the deductions? We advocate that the period around training is the most nutritionally significant portion of a day. So carb deductions are made opposite of wherever training takes place. If you train in the evening, lower carbs in your first meal. If you train in the morning, lower carbs in your last

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meal. If you train mid day, pull carbs from meals at either end. Once the furthest meals are zeroed out, the next furthest meal takes the deductions.

4 days a (weight days) Meal 1 Meal 2 Meal 3 Meal 4 Meal 5 - Pre workout Meal 6 - Intra- workout Meal 7 - Post - workout Meal 8 - Before Bed Totals Calories

Protein 60 45 55 45 55 40 70 20 390 x4 cal/gram 1,560

Carbs 0 (-10g) 10 (-30g) 10 40 30 90 75 10 225 x4 cal/gram 900

Fat Calories 30 550 0 340 20 440 0 340 10 430 0 520 10 670 0 120 70 x9 cal/gram 630 3,410

Using our template above, this 40g cut would look like this:

3 days a week (cardio days) Meal 1 Meal 2 Meal 3 Meal 4 Meal 5 - Dinner Meal 6 - Last Meal Totals Calories

Protein 60 45 45 60 45 70 325 x4 cal/gram 1,300

Carbs 0 (-10g) 20 (-30g) 45 15 45 80 165 x4 cal/gram 660

Fat Calories 30 550 0 380 10 450 15 435 0 360 15 735 70 2,910 x9 cal/gram 630 2,910

This is a simple, linear deduction. It is an effective method, but it is not the only option. This brings us to the non linear deduction, which is a deduction that only effects the non training day. This is a method that can be employed to create an even smaller percentage change in the weekly calorie intake, or to preserve the volume of macronutrient intake on training days to fuel intense training. Using the above 40g deduction example, we know that if it is only applied to the off days, the

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This method of calorie reduction will eventually render the off day a zero carb day, and any additional carb deductions would have to come from the training days. For this reason, it is generally a good idea to alternate non linear reductions with linear reductions to stay away from the extreme method of zeroing one macronutrient for roughly 40% of your week. Remember, small moves.

Fats This is the secondary macro source for calorie deductions. The method for doing so is not quite as simple as for carbohydrates, and is not as compulsory either. You only make cuts in fat intake to preserve the base percentage of fat intake relative to total calorie intake.


Carbs 305g 1220 cal



Carbs 245g 980 cal

Fat 70g 630 cal

Let’s take another look at our base macros. Daily calorie intake for training days is 3410, and non training days is 2910. This makes our fat percentage 18% and 21% respectively. Approximately 20%. So our goal with changes to fat intake will be to preserve this percentage. Bear in mind that this will vary from person to person and diet to diet, so your percentage may be 30%, or even 40%, or it may be different between types of days. For the purposes of the example, we’ll work with 20%. So, how do we go about cutting fat intake? Simply by monitoring the percentage. As you reduce your daily calorie total by reducing the carbohydrates, the fat percentage will rise. You simply make cuts to keep it in check. Now remember Rule #2, one change at a time. That means you don’t change carbs and fats in the same week. You only make changes when progress stops. Let’s use our base macros, then apply our previously calculated linear 40g carb reduction two times.


Carbs 225g 900 cal



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Carbs 165g 660 cal

Fat 70g 630 cal

Section 2: Getting Leaner

overall percentage change goes down. To find out how much, we simply look at the total deduction, 120g of carbs, 480 total calories, divided by the weekly total of 22370 calories, which gives us a reduction of 2.1%. This is less than half of the proposed 5%, and would effect a very small move. If the dieter still wanted to reduce by 5% but only for non training days, we would need to look back at our previously calculated figure of 1119 calories (5% of the weekly intake), divide this number across the three off days rather than the full 7 day week. Doing this gives us 373 calories per day, or 93g of carbs cut from the three off days. The same rules for which meals to pull the carbs from apply.


Now our training and non training day calories are 3090 and 2590 respectively. This puts our total fat percentage at 20% and 24% respectively. Now the training day fat intake looks fine for the moment, but the off day fat intake is starting to move away from 20%. So for the next round of modifications, we can simply snip off that 4%. So, for the off day in this example, we have established a daily calorie intake of 2590. 4% of this number is 99 calories. Now, recall that fats have 9 calories per gram rather than 4. So your cuts to fats will never be as deep on a gram for gram basis. In this case, we’re looking at 11g of fat from our non training days only. Overall this is not a tremendously significant weekly calorie percentage deduction. But overtime small changes like this will add up. Where do we take the fats from? Pull them from your fattiest meals first. This will generally mean breakfast, so make your first cut there. Beyond that, shoot to pull evenly from all meals that contain added fats. This means meals that have nuts or nut butter, or some type of oil (olive, coconut, macadamia, etc) added to them. Avoid zeroing out the fat content in your meals. So you’ll want to start pulling added fats from meals that also include some sort of animal protein as those meals will have an inherent fat content in addition to the added fats. Over the course of dieting, you should rarely need to make deductions in fats. This is as designed. Don’t ever completely zero out the fats in your diet. Doing so can have adverse metabolic and negative general health effects.

Protein There is almost never any reason to reduce calorie intake from protein. So don’t.

Strategy #2 - Increasing Calorie Consumption, aka Training and/or Cardio Depending on your goals, you may or may not be doing any cardio. Use these guidelines to implement cardio if you are trying to get leaner. If you are shifting your focus from muscle building to getting leaner and wish to incorporate some cardio, start with the baselines provided here.

Steady State Cardio We’ll start with fixed cardio as its application is a bit simpler. If you are not currently doing any form of cardio during a fat loss diet, its addition can help move you along. At the onset it is a

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If you are not currently doing cardio, 20 minutes of walking added to your non training days is a good place to start. This is walking at a brisk pace, not casual meandering. You shouldn’t be dying or sticking the landing on a face plant from fatigue, but you should have a sweat going. After implementing the initial cardio, things get a wee bit more complicated. Bumps in cardio should always follow changes in nutrition, but only after progress slows again. So if you cut some carbs out, progress again for a few weeks, then stagnate again, now you can bump cardio a bit. If you do not see results from making a nutrition change, be it carbs or fats, then the following week you can make a change to cardio. Just be cognizant of the fact that the goal is not to make changes every week. We want to make as few changes as is absolutely necessary. Cardio increases are in the range of 20%-33% of total weekly time, and increases are made inversely proportional to the quantity. So as the total weekly volume of cardio you are doing increases, the percentage increase upon making a change decreases. There is no hard set of rules here. Just remember that making small jumps is better than big ones. Once you make a big jump and your body adapts to it is difficult, if not impossible, to take it back and continue moving forward! We don’t want to be doing cardio every waking hour, so keep the jumps small. When your cardio starts to pass beyond 30-35 minutes on your off days, you can start adding it to your training days as well. Start with the least taxing training day (ARM DAY) first, and then work up from there. Keep cardio off of the leg day. You can also progress the type of cardio you are doing as your body adapts. Start with walking, move on to other forms like the elliptical, the step mill or stair climber, the rowing machine, the dreaded Versa-climber, or sled dragging. Cardio doesn’t have to be a snooze fest, you can and should change it up to keep it fresh. It is also not the time to be doing your nails, reading the paper, shaving, talking on the phone casually, or any other type of activity that requires focus. You should be working hard enough that you can listen to or watch something, but not actively participate. No, you can’t play Candy Crush. Here’s an example progression path:

Steady State Cardio Example Progression Activity Walking Walking Walking/Elliptical Walking/Elliptical Elliptical Elliptical

Time 20 20 20 25 25 30

Days per week 3 4 2/2 2/2 4 4

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Weekly Total Time 60 80 80 100 100 120


good idea to implement a bare minimum of cardio prior to implementing any nutrition changes. So before you make that first cut to carbs, add some off day cardio.


Interval Cardio “What about interval cardio?” you may be thinking. Interval cardio has its place, but its implementation is not so simple as steady state, as it is directly related to your ability to recover and, for many people, the quantity of carbohydrates in your diet. If you want to implement interval cardio make sure that your training day carbs are above 30% of your daily calorie intake, and your off day carbs are at least 30%. From there, treat them like habanero pepper sauce, i.e. a little bit goes a long way. If you’re doing no other cardio, implement intervals on your off training days starting at 10 minutes per session. These are 10/50 intervals, which means 10 second sprint backed with 50 seconds rest. From there, increases are made in 2-3 minute iterations, or by adding additional days, and occasionally by increasing the sprint to rest ratio. Do not increase that one facet of interval training at a time. You can also back up your intervals with steady state cardio if you wish. Here’s an example progression path:

Interval Cardio Example Progression Sprint:Rest Ratio 10/50 10/50 10/50 12/48 12/48 12/48 15/45 15/45

Time 10 12 12 12 14 14 14 15

Days 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5

It is important to note that if your recovery starts to falter, your strength gains begins to stagnate, or your strength actually begins to decline, you may need to dial back interval work or remove it all together. The best way to determine if it is the culprit is to eliminate it for a week and see if there is an improvement in recovery and strength. From there you can adjust the frequency of your intervals or make the decision to switch to less recovery diminishing alternative.

Training Adding additional training days follows additional rules as interval cardio. If your recovery is spot on and you feel bullet proof, you can add training days. When doing this, be aware that these are not high intensity training days. You want to get in, get a decent pump, and get out. The purpose of the additional training day is not to obliterate the muscle. The goal here is to get some additional blood flow and metabolic stimulus from additional weight training. Ideally, Mountain dog diet

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Now, we all know one doesn’t just jump into the ring with Ali because one thinks they can box. We also don’t just jump into training seven days a week without first verifying that the ability to recover is up to speed. So don’t get ahead of yourself. When adding training days, we do it at a rate of one day per two week period. This will provide optimal time to analyze how well your recovery is holding up before piling on more work. If, in the course of dieting, your recovery starts to falter and you can’t get it to recover, start pulling those extra training days.

Strategy #3 - Refeed Meals/Days As you progress with your fat loss, you may notice that you begin to look and feel “flat.” Looking flat means that your muscle bellies have no roundness or fullness to them. You may even get so flat as to look like you don’t even train at all. This is a symptom of glycogen depletion and is easily remedied. If you’re feeling flat, you may notice that you have an increased desire to take multiple naps throughout the day and you don’t get excited about much of anything except food commercials on TV. The feeling of “flatness,” may also be accompanied by diminished performance in the gym. You may notice you begin to fatigue earlier in a set with a given weight, or that your lifts seem to have declined a bit. You’ve got no, “pop.” These are all symptoms that can be fixed with refeeds. Refeed is just a goofy word that means, “eating some carbs.” I knew that would get your attention. Now that I have you hooked, you may be thinking, “How do I go about this intriguing concept sir? Do tell.” It is accomplished quite simply. You’re going to calculate 20% of your daily calorie intake, convert that number into grams of carbs, and then spread those carbs across the day of your existing meal plan. So you’ll be taking in an additional 20% of total calories worth of carbs for one day only. Mountain dog diet


you will do the bare minimum amount of work needed to get a decent pump and then go home.


Strategy #1 Adding Calories Strategy #2 Changing Training More Macros, Less Cardio Strategy #3 Increasing Dietary Freedom

Muscle Building Just like getting leaner, there are a number of different tweaks that can be made to nutrition and to training to propel muscle growth.

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Carbohydrates Once again, your go to macro for nutritional changes is the carbohydrate. You will generally have a bit more room for error when adding calories for muscle growth, especially if coming off of a period of calorie restriction. It is still a good idea to play it conservatively with your changes. So once again, we’re going to shoot for changes in the neighborhood of 5% of total calories at a time. You can opt for 10% in the beginning, especially if you’re coming out of a successful fat loss diet, but you’ll eventually need to reign the changes in closer to 5%, so we’ll just start there. Once again, we have our base template:


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 40 0 340 55 10 20 440 45 40 0 340 55 30 10 430 40 90 0 520 70 75 10 670 20 10 0 120 390 305 70 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,560 1,220 630 3,410


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 50 0 380 45 45 10 450 60 15 15 435 45 45 0 360 70 80 15 735 325 245 70 2910 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,300 980 630 2,910

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Section 3: Muscle Building

Strategy #1 - Adding Calories

16 Section 3: Muscle Building

Training Day Carbs 305g 1220 cal


Fat 70g 630 cal


Off Day Carbs 245g 980 cal

Fat 70g 630 cal

We also know that we need to work out the weekly calorie total, like this: 4 Training Days * (3410 calories) + 3 Off Days * (2910 calories) 13640 + 8730 = 22370 weekly calories So, 22370 calories for the weekly total, 5% of this number is 1119 calories. 1119 calories spread across 7 days of the week is 160 calories. Remembering that a gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, we come up with 40g of carbs. So we’ll be adding 40g of carbs per day at the onset. Where are we going to put this 40g? The rules for additions differ somewhat to the rules for deductions. You’ll want to add the carbohydrates around the training period first, and then in successive additions to each layer of meals moving out from training. Once you reach the farthest layer, you start over at adding to the training period again. For non training days, make the additions uniformly or split evenly across a few meals. If splitting across 2-3 meals, when making the next addition, add to the meals you did not add to previously. So our initial addition would look like this:


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 40 0 340 55 10 20 440 45 40 0 340 55 35 (+5g) 10 430 40 120 (+20g) 0 520 70 90 (+15g) 10 670 20 10 0 120 390 345 70 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,560 1,380 630 3,410

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Meal 1 Meal 2 Meal 3 Meal 4 Meal 5 - Dinner Meal 6 - Last Meal Totals Calories

Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 50 0 380 45 50 (+5g) 10 450 60 45 (+30g) 15 435 45 50 (+5g) 0 360 70 80 15 735 325 285 70 2,910 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,300 1,140 630 2,910


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 40 0 340 55 10 20 440 45 60 (+20g) 0 340 55 35 10 430 40 120 0 520 70 90 10 670 20 30 (+20g) 0 120 390 385 70 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,560 1,540 630 3,410


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 10 30 550 45 60 (+10g) 0 380 45 60 (+10g) 10 450 60 55 (+10g) 15 435 45 60 (+10g) 0 360 70 80 15 735 325 325 70 2,910 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,300 1,300 630 2,910

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3 days a week (cardio days)


Now, our next addition would look something like this: 4 days a (weight days) Protein Carbs Fat Calories Meal 1 60 10 30 550 Meal 2 45 40 0 340 Meal 3 55 50 (+40g) 20 440 Meal 4 45 60 0 340 Meal 5 - Pre workout 55 35 10 430 Meal 6 - Intra- workout 40 120 0 520 Meal 7 - Post - workout 70 90 10 670 Meal 8 - Before Bed 20 30 0 120 Totals 390 425 70 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram Calories 1,560 1,700 630 3,410


Protein Carbs Fat Calories 60 20 (+10g) 30 550 45 60 0 380 45 70 (+10g) 10 450 60 55 15 435 45 60 0 360 70 100 (+20g) 15 735 325 365 70 2,910 x4 cal/gram x4 cal/gram x9 cal/gram 1,300 1,460 630 2,910

Our third addition would look like this: You get the idea. Now, we don’t have to add carbs across both days. You can deviate one way or the other. Add carbs on training days only to supply intense training, and retain lower carb days on your off days to preserve some insulin sensitivity and help minimize fat gain. Keep in mind though, that eventually you will have to add carbs to your off days. There is no free lunch, you’re not going to pile on muscle mass rapidly without eating some food. Maximum muscle gain comes with some added body fat.

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If you want to bias nutrition towards one day or the other, you need to once again calculate your weekly calorie intake, then your percentage increase. Using the same figures as the previous example, we get 22370 calories for the weekly total, and using 5% as our percentage increase, we get 1119 calories. Now, instead of dividing the calorie increase by 7 days, we are simply going to divide it across the number of days we intend on adding it to. If that is our 4 training days, we divide by 4 and come up with 280 calories per day or 70g of carbs per day. Then we would distribute these carbs the same way, but on training days only.

Fats Fats are added into a muscle building diet secondarily to carbohydrates. The idea here is to preserve the overall percentage of fats in the diet, and possibly increase it to increase overall calorie intake.

Protein

Training Day Carbs

Fat

390g 1560 cal

305g 1220 cal

70g 630 cal

Protein

Off Day Carbs

Fat

325g 1300 cal

245g 980 cal

70g 630 cal

Taking a look at our initial macro breakdown: Now if we calculate the total percentage of daily calories from fats on training and off days, we get our fat percentages of 18% and 21% respectively. Approximately 20%. Your fat percentage may differ from this, it is important to recognize that the 20% is not a universal, it is just the target of this example. Moving forward, when adding fats to the diet, it will only be to preserve this percentage, or stay fairly close to it. As we add carbohydrates and proteins to the diet, the percentage of total calories from fats will fall. So calculate it every so often and if its 5% or more outside of the target percentage, add those calories in as fats. When adding fats to your diet, start in meals that have an animal protein component to them first. After hitting the meals with animal protein, you can bump the meals that do not have an animal protein component, i.e. shakes and what not. Avoid adding fats to the post training meal and the pre/intra/post training window in general. If you are having issues with satiety while on a muscle building diet, or you are after increased body weight as well as increased muscle mass, you can add fats above the previously mentioned percentage. Stick to the 5% of weekly calorie intake to make your fat increases, and keep your total weekly calories from fat under 40%. Just remember to make small moves, and maintain self awareness with how your changes are making you feel.

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Add carbs on non training days only if you are coming out of a dieting phase and your off days are already very low carb. This will help keep your glycogen stores from decreasing on your off days ensuring that you’ll have fuel for muscle stimulating training on your next training day.


Proteins As long as your strength is holding or increasing there is no real need to add protein to your diet. In the event that your strength gains begin to stagnate for more than a few weeks or begins to decline, you may need to add protein calories. You may notice that you look flat, have little to no muscle fullness, and that your muscles feel soft. If this is the case follow the same guidelines for adding carbohydrates, 5% at a time. Stick to increasing protein from lean animal sources first, rather than adding protein powders. Additionally, keep an eye on the ratio of grams of protein per pound of body weight. In the event that you gain significant amount of body weight as well as muscle mass, you can increase protein as well. Strive to keep a 1g-1.4g per pound of body weight ratio. Once again, make small moves. If you are at a 1g per pound ratio, do not immediately jump to 1.4g. More protein is not necessarily better and may not necessarily be what your body needs to grow. But it is an option. When making adjustments to this ratio, understand that a tiny bump creates a relatively big change calorie wise. So stick to 0.05g/pound increments. Yes, that is ZERO point ZERO FIVE.

Strategy #2 - Changing Training Stimulus and Reducing Cardio You may or not have cardio programmed with your diet currently. In the event that you do, follow your base cardio program at the onset and use these guidelines should you decide to make any changes later down the line. If you are in the process of transitioning from fat loss to muscle building you can follow these guidelines to get your cardio in line with your goal.

Cardio Option 1 - No Cardio This is a bit of an extreme option. This option is also not for those of you who are transitioning over from getting leaner. Sorry. The idea here is that if you are doing a minimal amount of cardio, i.e. 20-30 minutes 3-4 days a week of steady state walking, you can cut it altogether to try and stimulate some muscle growth. Now, understand this is a double edged sword. Your ability to train with intensity and ferocity hinges upon your ability to breathe. Like most things do. You have to keep your cardiovascular system conditioned to some degree to prevent long duration periods of wind sucking between sets that might actually just be classified as warm ups. So consider this option with caution.

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Option 2 - Minimal Cardio Minimal cardio is 20-30 minutes of steady state walking 3-4 days a week. Understand, this is not the, “I’m walking to the pretzel stand while I wait for my wife to finish trying on shoes at the mall,” walking. You need to be walking with sufficient fervor that you get a light to moderate sweat going. You can also engage in other activities, as long as the intensity is roughly the same. In the event you are currently doing more than this, if you would like to transition down to this you can do so in increments. Reduce your total weekly time in minutes by 20% weekly until you arrive at “minimal cardio levels.” For example, if you are doing an hour a day, 6 days a week, that is 360 minutes of cardio weekly. 20% of that is 72 minutes, making for a new total of 288 minutes per week, spread across 6 days that works out to be about 48 minutes, call it 45 minutes per day. Alternatively, you could cut down to 5 days, making 300 minutes total. You get the idea.

Option 3 - Eccentricless Training as Cardio This is cardio that is done with a weighted sled and mimics common training movements. The difference is that there is no eccentric portion to the movements. The eccentric portion of a movement is also known as the “negative.” This is what happens when a muscle is contracted while simultaneously being lengthened. The opposite is the concentric, or “positive” portion of the movement. This is when a muscle is shortening and contracting at the same time. Eccentricless movements are done because they have a minimal impact on recovery, can be done as a form of cardiovascular training, and have a positive training stimulus when coupled with appropriate nutrition. So if you’re already eating and training to grow, why not cardio to grow as well. Unfortunately this topic has a bit too much breadth to be covered here, but recognize that it is an option for cardio to maintain cardiovascular health while simultaneously increasing training stimulus to increase muscle growth. When adding sessions of eccentricless work, start at one session replacing one of your existing cardio sessions, and only increase the number of eccentricless sessions at a rate of one per month, and only if your recovery is holding fast.

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That said, it is an option that you can implement in an alternating fashion, meaning take a week or two off from cardio, and then add minimal cardio back in.


Option 4 - Training as Cardio This is another option that must be worked up to dependent entirely upon your recovery. You can add additional training days, up to training seven days per week, as long as your recovery holds up for it. When doing so, you will switch the new training day’s nutrition to your training menu. This will serve to increase your total weekly calorie intake as well, without making any additional nutritional changes. Just like the option above, adding training days should be done one at a time, and with at least a few weeks between additions. Don’t just jump in to training seven days a week up from 4 days. You have to maintain a solid recovery or you won’t grow. The caveat here is that you can add training days, but if your cardiovascular efficiency within those training sessions begins to fall, you need to scale back and do some standard cardio.

Strategy #3 - Increasing Dietary Freedom When you’re on the upswing, you will gradually be increasing your calorie intake. You can additionally add more dietary freedom in the occasional meal, within the basic framework of your diet. What this means is that if you are making progress and looking tight, you can swap the occasional clean meal for something less clean and more calorie dense. An example would be rather than your grass fed beef and rice, you might go for a burger and fries. Chicken and sweet potatoes? Maybe a nice italian chicken sub. Try to shoot for fairly similar food structure, i.e. a meat and one or two carb sources, rather than all pizza all the time. This is not a license to cheat all the time. It is also not a license to eat bad food. Keep the poor quality fast food to a minimum. You still have to keep a handle on your diet or you can slide too far into fat gain mode. So as long as you are maintaining the “tight” look and not getting bloated, sloppy, and watery, you can indulge in the occasional calorie dense meal. Doing so will stimulate your metabolism and push even more growth. I would also caution you to keep meals like this to after training. You don’t want to be squatting with a double burger and fries sitting in your stomach. Unfortunately there are no real rules for this strategy, it goes very much on how you look and how you feel. Start yourself off at one “free” meal a week to see how your body reacts. Stay away from foods that are going to cause tremendous amounts of bloating or water retention. If you know you will turn into a water whale after eating pizza, stay away from pizza. Also, make sure to drink a significant amount of water around your free meals. If you wake up the next day and you look tighter, you did it right.

What to do when it doesn’t go according to plan Mountain dog diet

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Here are some examples: Cutting carbs did not increase leanness. First, how long did you monitor the change? Sometimes you must give changes time to work. This means more than a week. If no positive progress was made, but no negative side effects occurred, it may be beneficial to ride out the changes for another week. Beyond this, you have other directions you can move in. How much cardio are you doing, and when was it last bumped? What kind of cardio are you doing, have you experimented with different forms? How is your strength and your recovery, perhaps you need a refeed meal? Are your fat percentages in line? All of these variables are interchangeable with one another. If any one of them is implemented and you see no results, you have the rest to fall back on. Increasing calories caused fat gain. You have many options here as well. How many free meals are you having? You may need to scale back there. Are you doing cardio? What kind, how long, and how often? Evaluate your variables and look at your performance indicators. You may need to scale back calorie increases or tighten up free meals for a period of time until your body catches up. Or the solution may be as simple as reversing your most recent change, then monitoring your performance indicators and making new changes when appropriate. I’m not growing any bigger. What has the quality of your training been like recently? Do you feel stronger? If yes, then you *are* getting bigger, and I would suggest riding it out. If you are not getting stronger, I’d suggest trying to evaluate the cause of that. Do you need to add calories? Cut cardio? Increase or change training stimulus? Take an objective look at the whole picture. No matter what I change, I can’t get any leaner. If you find yourself in this position, where you have cut significant calories and added significant cardio and have seen no results whatsoever, you may need to change gears and try to push your metabolism up by gradually increasing your calorie intake. Continue training and doing everything else that you are currently doing, but gradually begin increasing calories by 5% increments using the guidelines in the muscle gain section. Monitor your body weight. As

Mountain dog diet

Section Title: Breakdown

There will always be bumps in the road and progress may not always go the way you believe it should. When you encounter situations like this don’t panic. First and foremost, assess the situation. What change did you make and what was the result? You must identify these two factors before you can do anything else. You always have several options at your disposal. When you can’t move forward directly, you may need to move laterally until the path forward becomes clear again. Evaluate the other variables under your control and how your body has reacted to changes to those in the past. If you have untried variables, then try them.

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long as it does not go up and stay up consistently, continue adding calories. You may eventually find that your body composition begins to change. If this is the case, ride this trend out and then start again moving either up or down in calories. Closing Following these guidelines will help you get the most mileage, efficiency, and variability out of your diet as is possible without interacting directly with a nutrition coach. Best of luck to you and we hope to continue to be a source of knowledge and innovation for you in the future. Good luck in your journey, and should you need a more personalized plan, please contact us via the website at http://mountaindogdiet.com/ You can also “retain” Frank or myself to ask questions by simply joining our member website! John and Frank

Mountain dog diet

Adjusting Meal Plans

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