Getting a grasp on your diet is as easy as getting a grasp on macro nutrition. Macro nutrition is simply the three major nutrition groups that compose your overall calories. Calories are the bodys fuels source; just like a car and gas. The overall amount of calories you will consume in one day will be determined by your stats and goals. Whatever your goal maybe, bulking or cutting; you want to increase your calories or decrease them 500 cals a day or 40%. This assures a steady shift in weight while maintain muscle mass while reducing the overall amount of bodyfat . Here is a macro calculater http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutrients_calculator.htm input your stats and it will provide you with a proper caloric intake. You want to maintain this more and more as you get closer to the show. Everyday adjustments must be made, whereas 10 weeks out you can adjust every other day, or third day. When you're on offseason, the macros become less important as long as you meet and exceed your caloric intake, however the more fat you incur, the more cardio and dieting you will face. Once you determined your calorie intake, you can then divide that by how many meals you plan on eating. I eat three meals
and three shakes a day... so collectively I would divide the calories by 6, as where I will be eating 6 times throughout the day. When we eat out meals throughout the day, we allow our metabolism to work harder, inturn burning more fat. It becomes a constant process, always burning fat as it preserves muscle. Juxtapose to eating fewer times during the day, whereas eating less frequently allows your body to breakdown and store the calories as fat. Now since we understand what calories are, and how to determine your calorie intake, we can move on to the Macronutrients. As I stated early macros are the three major nutritional groups that compose the collective sum of your caloric intake. These three macros are Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats. Let's begin with the most popular; Protein. Protein is essential when building muscle. It's mainly composed of Amino Acids. I personal like to maintain a high protein intake, whereas my carbs are moderate and my fat on the higher end of low, my macro ratio would look similar to 60/30/10. There are different ways to format your macros, but it really depends on your goals. Adjusting these nutritional values can work magic tricks on your body, allowing it to appear fuller or harder. Protein comes in many different forms; such as isolated protein, protein peptides, casein protein. What it boils down to it the time release. Sort of like steroid esters... And isolated protein would be consider a fast acting protein, being their is less buffer between the protein and its chemical composition, allowing the body to metabolise the protein quickly without having the delay. This is ideal for first thing in the morning, being that you've fasted for the last several hours and your catabolic, or right after a training session; your body would also be in a catabolic state. Casein on the other hand is a slow release protein, taking several hours to full metabolise, making this ideal for a night time protein; when you simply can't eat; every 2-3 hours. Any kinda meat, is consider a full protein source, and this simply means, it has BCAA' and EFA's, things our bodies do not produce organically, we must introduce it to ourselves. Next I would like to get into carbohydrates or carbs for short. Carbs are the body's preferred fuel source, once you depleted your carbs; you begin to breakdown BCAA's and protein along with fat, to continue to fuel you. Remember the car analogy? Most of your carbs can be consumed around your workout, being that is when your body will be utilizing it's fuel source. There are two types of carbs, a fast and a slow carb. Before working out I suggest ingesting some slow carbs. Slow carbs take long to metabolize and will fuel your training longer than a fast acting carb. The fast acting carbs, I prefer to take right after I work out. It causes a natural insulin spike and that allows the nutrition to instantly be absorbed into the bloodstream. Below I will post a moderate list of both fast acting and slow carbs, along with the top sources of complete protein. Moving on to the last macro, Fat. I know what your think, Fat; what an ugly word. However there are two kinds of fat, a good and a bad. Fat is essential to maintain good health, it's a buffer between organs to keep the safe. There are two main kind of fats, saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fats are evil, they cause the increase in bad cholesterol and that causes health issues if not controlled properly and in a timely fashion.

Lets take a look at the nutritional facts, located on the back label.

Notice the total number of servings and the amount per serving. This is very important to maintain an accurate count on your nutritional intake. Below that the first thing you should notice is the calories i.e your fuel. Each of the macros nutritional value is relative to the serving size. As you can tell the rest is our macros; Protein, Carbs and Fats. Okay, lets look at my example on how to read and utilize they nutritional facts label. Say you decided you're going to bulk, so your macro ratio is 40/40/20... Lets break down your calories.. example.. 5000 cals daily.

Simple math is the trick here...
5000/6 = 833.33 kals per meal
your macro ratio is 40/40/20
Protein is first 833 / 40% = 333 daily protein intake... take 333/6 = 55 grams of protein per meal
Carbs is second 833/40% = 333 daily carb intake... take 333/6 = 55 grams of carbs per meal
Fat is last 833 / 20% = 166 daily fat intake... take 166/6 = 27.6 grams of fat per meal

Here is a small list of good carbs vs bad carbs

And here is a list of complete protein sources

Your nurition dictates how your body reacts to change. You will not grow if you do not surpass your caloric intake, you will also shrink a lose mass if you don't maintain and exceed your caloric intake. When you're just beginning out it really doesn't matter what you eat, just eat. Put the size on and burn off the fat. If you're thinking hell "Maybe I'll just go get a nutritionist and they make life great" you have a sad thing coming; nutrition is the very basic principle of bodybuilding, and if it's more important to the next person than you, you will ultimately fail at growing. Remember in order to lock in your gains after a cycle you must maintain your basic nutritional intake.