Wanting Opinions About My Plan

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

So I’m currently doing Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss diet while on CT’s BDW (been doing it for about 10 weeks now).

Now, once I come out of the diet, so in 2 weeks from now, I decided that for the period leading to summer I’ll just become a machine and focus everything I got towards my gym goals. I ordered the supplements needed and laid out a plan. Now I’d like your guys’ feedback.

I currently weigh 78 kg and I’m 179 cm tall, hovering in the 15% bf ballpark.

Training-wise, I’ll do Paul Carter Guaranteed Muscle Mass program, with a slight modification that is I’ll do the split 4 days a week rather than 3 (got green lights from him about it).

Nutrition-wise, I plan on eating basically the same stuff day in and day out.

This is what my schedule will look like on a training day:

7AM Breakfast: 3 eggs, 2 slices toasted bread, 30 g cheese, 1 banana
2PM Lunch: 120 g (uncooked) white rice, 150 g chicken breast, 1 tbsp olive oil, chicory
5.35PM 6 capsules Indigo-3G
6.05PM 25 g cyclic dextrin, 15 g hydrolyzed casein
6.30PM WORKOUT: 25 g cyclic dextrin, 15 g hydrolyzed casein
7.40PM AFTER WORKOUT: 40 g whey
8.30PM Dinner: 200 g (uncooked) white rice, 120 g tuna, 20 g low-fat mayo, 140 g pineapple
10.30PM Pre-bed: 20 g micellar casein, 30 g peanut butter, 2 capsules Z-12
TOTAL CALORIES: 2,956 cal, 219 g pro, 382 g carb, 63 g fat

while on non-training days:

7AM Breakfast: 3 eggs, 2 slices toasted bread, 30 g cheese, 1 banana
2PM Lunch: 130 g (uncooked) white rice, 125 g shrimp, 125 g smoked salmon, 20 g low-fat mayo, 1 tbsp olive oil, spinach
7.30PM 4 capsules Indigo-3G
8PM Dinner: 150 g (uncooked) white rice, 120 g tuna, 125 g shrimp, 20 g low-fat mayo, 1 tbsp olive oil, 140 g pineapple
10.30PM Pre-bed: 20 g micellar casein, 30 g peanut butter, 200 g cottage cheese, 2 capsules Z-12
TOTAL CALORIES: 2,975 cal, 202 g pro, 300 g carb, 92 g fat

My goal during this phase is to put on as much muscle possible WHILE trying to stay relatively lean. I’m working hard to shed fat and I want to get to summer as lean and muscular as I can possibly be at this stage.

After 5 weeks (when my Indigo-3G runs out) I will assess progress and see if I can keep going with this plan or, since by then it’ll be May, I’ll evalue if I need to lean down some more.

My main concerns with this plan:

  1. I want you guys to comment on my food selection. You can see I eat quite a lot of fish. Any concern with eating that much tuna?
  2. Are my macros and calories well laid out? I want to watch carbs closely because I don’t want to gain too much fat, but I also heard that while on Indigo you can handle some more.
  3. Are carbs enough/not too many? Are they distributed well on training days so that I get enough around my workout and not too many when I don’t need them?
  4. Any other suggestions/thoughts.

Thank you for your time.

2

I don’t know your body and how it processes food, so I can’t tell you what to do. Nor can anybody else, really. The best way to know stuff isn’t by getting advice from strangers; the best way to learn is to just do something and see how you react after 12 weeks or so.

I will answer some of your concerns, though:

200+ grams of protein for 150 lbs of LEAN muscle is a lot. Especially when 90ish grams of it is coming from protein powders. I wouldn’t worry about the tuna. I’d worry about all that protein powder.

Carbs aren’t the only macro that will make you fat. I’ve known quite a few co-workers who are on the ‘keto’ diet (they’re not, but they think they are) where they’re eating ‘only’ fat and protein…and somehow they’re gaining weight.

At the end of the day, if you’re ingesting more calories than you are expending, you will put on more mass…and not all of it will be muscle, not matter your macro breakdown.

Nutrient timing…one of the concepts that is very individual. Personally, I function better at work if I eat a good amount of carbs with breakfast, and I get a better night’s sleep if I eat a good amount of carbs before bed. That being said, I like to spread them out through the day rather than designating times that I ‘need them’. And a lot of articles will tell you that I’m ‘doing it wrong’. That being said, try what you’ve laid out and see how your body responds.

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3

What’s your suggestion about this if I were to scale it down?

I’m actually trying to follow the tips I got on this website, that is 15 g hydrolyzed casein pre and intra workout (like plazma dosing), 40 g pro post workout to maximize protein synthesis, and 20 g of casein before sleep (from Paul Carter and various others).

4

I would:

  1. Drop the casein before bed because you’re getting the slow-release effects from the cottage cheese. (minus 20g protein)
  2. Cut the post workout shake in half (one scoop instead of two). (minus 16g protein…24 isntead of 40)
  3. I would drink a pre-workout concoction only – 15g pepto-pro (hydrolyzed caseinate) and 30g HBCD (highly branched cyclic dextrin)…and just sip on it for the entire 20 minutes leading up to the workout and then drink water during the workout. (minus 15g protein)

That eliminates 50g (ish) of protein powder (20, 16, 15) bringing your total from 200-220 down to 150-170. It’ll also save you some cashola.

5

That means about 200 calories less each day. Should I make up for that with extra carbs or fat? I think 2,700 calories a day might be too low for me.

6

You won’t know until you try. If it IS too low for you, you’ll know within a day or two. At that point, you have two choices for additional calories…try them both, see which you respond better to.

7

Before dieting, I had ramped my calories up to 3,200 a day because weight gain had stalled at about 2,800 and was slow at 3,000… The question is: is it wise to start back from 2,700 now?

I know the answer is to try it, but I really don’t want to take the chance to waste my 5 weeks of Indigo, I really want to make the most of it…

Plus, what do you refer to with “you’ll know within a day or two?” should I look at the weight gained or at my recovery in order to see if I’m on the right track?

8

Recovery. You’ll know if you’re not recovering properly from your workouts or if you’re just starving all the time.

Indigo 3g messes with carbs, and I didn’t suggest altering your carb intake, so you shouldn’t be wasting that supplement…

9

I don’t see a problem with the protein powder consumption. I used to rely pretty heavily on powders, and saw no tangible difference between that and ‘real food’.

I do agree with Iron that your protein consumption is rather high in general, and if you think lowering the protein will leave you without enough total calories, I would substitute with more carbs.

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