Nicholas is the husband of Miss Olympia Kinzewski and has provided professional sports nutrition guidance for many bodybuilding stars. As a bodybuilding nutrition expert, he has discovered from years of practice that timely assessment of athletes' physical changes and knowing when and how to adjust his diet plan according to the athlete's changing physical status are the two most important things. Below, he will take you to analyze the diet arrangements of two bodybuilders. I believe you can learn some useful things from them and incorporate them into your own diet plan to help you build a more perfect physique.
Case 1 Amateur bodybuilder Kevin Jordan
Kevin Jordan is a very promising bodybuilder. I first met him at a local competition in 2008. His physical condition left a deep impression on me at that time. The referees felt the same way, saying he resembled a young Phil Sith. Kevin won that game overall. I later learned that it was only his second time participating in a bodybuilding competition. So, I took the initiative to find him, and soon he began to accept my guidance.
I soon discovered that Kevin trained very hard and had great ambitions. However, there are quite a few problems with his diet plan, especially the off-season diet plan. Odd as it may be, I find that a large number of bodybuilders, both amateur and professional, make the same mistake. They often only pay attention to their diet plan when preparing for competition. In fact, a good off-season diet plan is no less important than a good cup match diet plan. I made some changes to Kevin's diet plan.
First, I asked Kevin to develop a strict off-season eating plan. Kevin is a personal trainer. Due to his busy work, he often only eats three meals a day during the off-season. In order to train more members, he usually eats fast food and consumes about 4,000 pounds a day. -5000 kcal. On his days off, although Kevin can eat 4-5 meals a day, since he mainly chooses protein powder, protein bars and a small amount of natural foods, his daily caloric intake is often only 3,000 kcal..
The most terrible thing is that even on days with higher caloric intake, his daily protein intake is only 200-250 grams. Whether his fat and carbohydrate intake exceeds the standard depends on whether it is suitable for fast food or healthy food that day.
Eating fast food is the biggest feature of Kevin's off-season diet. Even if he only eats two fast food meals a day, his fat intake can easily exceed 200 grams. Due to his youth and very fast metabolism, even with such a poor off-season diet plan, Kevin can still maintain a low body fat level, but his muscle growth rate has not reached the ideal level.
Second, I developed a new off-season eating plan for Kevin. I require him to eat 6 meals a day, with a daily intake of 300-400 grams of protein, 600-900 grams of carbohydrates, and 20-100 grams of fat. Eat beef for 3 out of 6 meals a day, and eat skinless and boneless turkey or chicken breast at other times. Carbohydrates mainly come from oatmeal, brown rice, white rice or sweet potatoes. In addition to getting fat mainly from beef, Kevin is also asked to consume some nuts or put olive oil in his salad to ensure a variety of fat sources. In addition, Kevin was asked to choose organic foods whenever possible.
After five or six months, Kevin had made significant progress. So, I increased his eating frequency to 7 times a day, eating every 2.5 hours. He is required to consume 450-500 grams of protein and 800-1200 grams of carbohydrates every day. The food choices remain the same, mainly skinless and boneless turkey or chicken breast, beef, potatoes, brown rice, white rice and oatmeal.
This kind of off-season diet plan enabled Kevin to make unprecedented progress and made great contributions to his victory in the youth group championship of the 2011 National Bodybuilding Championships.
Case 2: Professional bodybuilder Fouad
The first time I worked with Fouad was a few years ago, when I successfully helped him obtain a professional card. This year Fouad decided to work with me again. Even though it was a short time away from the competition, I was confident because I had a pretty good idea of how his body would react to various changes before we worked together again.
During this cooperation, I found that he had hit a plateau. Since there was only a short time until he entered the pre-competition diet mode, I decided to use extraordinary measures to make his muscles grow rapidly in a short period of time.
First, I asked Fouad to moderately reduce his protein intake and significantly increase his carbohydrate intake. Previously, the nutritional composition of Fouad's daily diet was 40% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 20% fat. Later, it became 30% protein, 60% carbohydrates and 10% fat. Remember, such a diet plan is only an extraordinary move to quickly increase muscle mass in the short term and cannot be used as a long-term diet strategy.
Second, I asked Fouad to frequently change his intake of various nutrients. For example, protein intake is sometimes as low as 350 grams per day, and sometimes as high as more than 400 grams per day; carbohydrate intake is always high, sometimes as high as more than 1,200 grams per day; fat intake also varies from time to time. High and sometimes low. These practices were very different from what he was used to. As a result, after 6 weeks, he had gained 25 pounds with basically no increase in body fat.
Third, I asked Fuad to be strict about his protein sources.
During the off-season, he no longer eats fish and mainly eats beef. This is because fish is not suitable for increasing muscle mass, because fish is digested very quickly, does not stay in the body as long as beef, and cannot provide a continuous supply of amino acids to the muscles. Therefore, although fish is a good protein, it is not suitable for muscle growth needs in off-season. Beef is the best source of protein to promote muscle growth in off-season. When I completely eliminated fish from the off-season diet of athletes like Ronnie.
After entering the preparation diet stage, I asked Fouad to eat more fish. This is not only because fish has low fat content, but also such a change can prevent him from encountering a plateau.
Most bodybuilders have a misunderstanding. They believe that maintaining a strict diet plan means that they should always eat the same foods regardless of preparation period or off-season. In fact, changes in diet during the off-season and preparation period will make the body respond better and the metabolism will be more efficient. If the diet plan remains unchanged all year round, the body will adapt, leading to a plateau, making it difficult to make greater progress.