After carefully evaluating my progress pics this weekend with Stu, we’ve decided to be more aggressive. While I did have a new low on the scale last week, my quads showed minimal improvements. So, we made some adjustments, to macros and frequency of low/medium days, hoping that we can dig in a little more to ensure I can get better conditioning in my legs. Right now, while I certainly feel a pressure to get leaner for the show in 5 weeks, I still feel I’m close to where I need to be, and we still have some tricks up our sleeve and time is on our side. It’s important not to peak too early, because as hard as it is functioning right now, getting to 3-4% body fat too early isn’t a good thing, and at that point muscle loss can start being a factor. Gotta time the peak just right, and right now I feel like we’re in a good place for that. Gonna run these new numbers and rotation through next weekend, see what’s up, and take it from there.
One adjustment I made is now having all protein fat for breakfast, rather than egg whites and cream of rice. Breakfast is now 3 eggs, a chicken sausage and some veggies. I still need to be able to work throughout the day and write as much as possible, and I noticed that having carbs in the morning feels great for about an hour, and then I crash significantly and have a hard time literally doing anything. Having the fats in the morning keeps my blood sugar more stable, and even though I miss the carbs, I function better throughout the day. I also read some interesting research last year that I found again by Dr. Jacob Wilson, who states that studies showed eating a P+F breakfast compared to a P+C breakfast, even when total daily macros are the same, a P+F breakfast burns more fat throughout the day, he calls it “metabolic conditioning” or “metabolic flexibility.” I don’t think it’s one of those things you try for a few days and get ripped, but Dr. Wilson quite the credible guy, and it makes sense to me that keep carbs exclusively around the workout window will utilize them the best and burn more fat throughout the day. I’m hoping doing this for 5 weeks until the show will have a good cumulative effect, it certainly helps me feel better. Fingers crossed.
I now get my daily carbs in my pre and post workout meals. Pre workout meal is still cream of rice mixed with some Metabolic Drive protein and a Finibar, post workout is chicken, veggies and ezekiel bread. I switched to ezekiel bread post workout because I do want some carbs there, and it helps with nighttime hunger, but the fiber content as well as the GI of the ezekiel bread will digest slower, hopefully keep me fuller longer, compared to cream of rice. These are things I would never think about in the off season or even earlier stages in the prep, but at this point, every detail comes into play.
I am with you on the protein and fat breakfast seem to get through the morning much easier than P+C which I also seem to crash.
