Help With Understanding Diet
Wanted to see if someone could assist me with better understanding dieting and food effects on the body in general. I am 5'8" and weight stays around 210-215lbs, and my body fat isnt crazy. I would estimate it around 13-15 percent normally. My thing is I like to look more lean and keep my vascularity up with good muscle definition. The only time i seem to be able to get my body fat down and look lean with good muscle definition is when I go extreme with my diet and primarily stick to a carnivore diet with the elimination of all carbs from my diet. As soon as I add carbs, I mainly stick to sweet potato's for carb source, I seem to look flat and lose the muscle separation/definition. Everyone says I look great, but, like most people, I just don't see it. I am looking for tips on when I should be introducing my carbs in my meals if I mainly workout at night. If anyone could help or point me to some good articles that can explain how carbs and fats effect the body, and when and which meals should I consume my carbs? An example of my diet is the following:
Breakfast 6am: 4 hard boiled eggs, 1 banana
snack 10am: 1 scoop protein (30 grams of protein), apple
Lunch 12pm: 9oz of either steak or ground beef 85/15, 150 grams sweet potato
Dinner 4pm: 9 oz steam or ground beef 85/15, 150 grams sweet potato
After Training: 1 scoop of protein (about 30g of protein)
This is a typical day for me. What kind of adjustments would you recommend?
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You won’t really look “separated” at 15% bf. So you only eat ~2100 cals a day and stay around 13-15% bf? Your bmr alone at your stats would be around that number. You drinking any cals? Soda? Juice?
It’s hard to imagine eating so few cals and not being extremely low bf. Do you do any cardio?
This was about a month and a half back. I was on carnivore diet for about a month. Added carbs back in and I just seem to lose the separation and definition. Doing something wrong on the diet with carbs so trying to learn the timing and when to add them during the day.
Yea that’s not 13-15% lol. More like 10% or lower. Eating a specific type of carb vs the other doesn’t magically make it turn to fat or not. Storing fat is merely a byproduct of eating over maintenance. Doesn’t matter where those cals come from. You probably just had extra water retention due to the carbs. It’s unrealistic to look magazine cover ready 24/7. You could try some dandelion root supplements to shed some water while eating carbs if that’s important to you. The timing of carbs only becomes important when trying to achieve to certain temporary look (carb cycling) or when cutting in a decent deficit (for workout performance). My normal walking around bf when not bulking is like yours and I eat whatever I want whenever I want. I just keep the cals below a threshold.
Appreciate the response and advice. I'll keep going and just see how it goes, and most likely, as you stated, I'm probably holding on to more water than before. May be going from zero carbs to adding them back in. I definitely dropped a good amount from that carnivore diet, which most likely was a significant amount of water weight.
To clarify on eating whatever I want whenever I want - I will say I’m an extremely routine oriented person, so I eat mostly the same things every day. Sort of like the meals you laid out above, I’ll have the same breakfast, lunch, and shakes at certain times. But if my wife wants to go grab something special I’ll do it whenever she wants. Or if my daughter asks me to get ice cream or donuts we go get that and enjoy it together. Still wanna enjoy my life and not be shackled to a certain diet 24/7.
You’re already big and lean. Any tweaks to your diet would be to get stage ready, so to speak. Your body fat/physique as it is now is what the majority of people are aiming for, even around this forum. So you’re already there.
Appreciate it. Ya not looking to get on any stages. I’m the same as you, I can eat the same thing every single day and be fine. Additionally, I will eat when the wife wants to go out somewhere for a dinner.
Ya, my main cardio is pretty much just jiu jitsu. At the moment I can only get about 2-3 sessions a week. I pretty much stick to only water, and if I do have a soda i'll have a coke zero, which is very rarely. My main thing I forgot to mention is I have sushi with the wife on Friday nights and eat a good amount of calories there. I'm thinking my body fat is most likely lower than that. I tend to be my worse critic and probably have a bit of "body dysmorphia" lol. I can post some current pics, but I would cover up most of my tattoo with would probably hide most of my body. I'm really just trying to learn more on the diet side, especially when it comes to how to time my complex and simple carbs correctly so my body doesn't store them in fat.
Seems like your saving good carbs till afternoon, eating the fast carbs for breakfast and snack. Maybe swap or just strait drop the sugary carbs for better carbs
Thanks for the response, may try dropping the simple carbs for a complex carb and see how that works out for me