Welcome to McDonalds, what can I get for you today? Does this sound familiar? For some power lifters or strength athletes it is probably something they hear once a day. The sad truth is most of us in the power lifting community don’t pay close enough attention to our diets. This is understandable as there is common misconceptions that a power lifting diet is you see it you eat it kind of mentality, then we get all pissed off when we miss that extra five pounds on the bench that would have won the meet.
It seems every time I walk in the gym I get the comment dude you are huge, I bet you eat everything you see. The first couple times I will admit I am like that son of a bitch just called me fat. Sure I am not a skinny guy but what did I do to deserve that. After a while I have learned these guys just don’t know what they are talking about.
I was confronted by a gentlemen in the gym a couple days ago after hitting a PR 475 1 second pause bench press, asking me how I did that. After listening to his story this guy is about 5’9” 200lbs and his bench has been stuck at 235 for ever. First kudos to him for benching more than his bodyweight, this is something a lot of people struggle with and get burned out with. So after listening to him for a while he looks at me and asks what can I do to get past this plateau. This guy was asking me for exercise options and different movements to increase his bench. He was floored when I come back with what do you eat…
“I eat a lot of lean meats you know like chicken fish those kinds of things.”
Ok how much chicken and fish do you eat, how many carbs and grams of protein do you get.
“………….”
Do you know how many calories you get every day?
“Oh yea, I get around 1800-2000 everyday, I make sure I keep track of that”
Are these number before or after your workout?
“Before, why?”
Well dude if you are getting 1800 calories before your workout after you workout you are probably getting fewer calories than a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader…
So I spent the next 20 minutes of my life explaining that he is basically starving himself and needs to increase his calorie intake to grow.
Now I hear some of you thinking but I already get 3000+ calories a day so that isn’t my issue right?
Where are your calories coming from, you can’t eat HoHo’s all day and expect that to increase anything but your waist line. You are what you eat, how many times have you ate a big piece of chocolate cake and said hey man, im juiced lets hit the gym? I would guess to say 0, unless you are like man I just ate 500 calories worth of shit, I need to go run.
Make sure you are getting your protein, I have heard many people say, we are power lifters we don’t need protein. I’m sorry did I just hear you say the dumbest thing I have ever heard? If you have devised a way for your muscles to rebuild please share. As a bodybuilder or strength athlete, you should get at least 1 gram of protein per lean body weight every day.
As far as the rest of your diet, how many calories do you need to gain, lose or maintain your weight. Well that is dependent on many things such as weight, weight, sex, body fat, activity level. The best thing you can do is Google something like calorie calculator I believe about.com has a pretty good one that even breaks down what your calories should be per week based on a target date. I will try to find that and add it to the post later. Calorie Calculator So now you have a target range of calories you need to shoot for, realize this is not an exact science as everyone’s body is different. Try the recommended calories for a couple 3 weeks or so and see where you end up, if you don’t like the results adjust accordingly by raising or lowering the calories by maybe 250 a day. (Remember a pound is 3500 calories) Never try to lose more than 2lbs a week as you will start burning muscle and needed body tissue. Also that weight will have a tendency not to stay off (Yes I am speaking from experience).
Ok now what do we need to make up those calories. The three main things people need to focus on is protein, carbs, and fats. There are a couple different ways to eat if you are a strength athlete. The first is high carb/low fat. This should roughly have a macronutrient ratio of 40-50% carbs, 40-50% protein, 10-20% fat). This will keep your energy extremely high with all the carbs, but also may gain a few extra pounds with the carbs. The other diet is a high fat and low carb diet. This should consist of roughly 30-40% fat, 40-50% protein and 10-30% carbs. Make sure you carbs don’t drop to low are you will start to lose muscle glycogen, water, and generally overall strength. Try to maintain a carb level of 60-150 grams a day.
The reason for having a high fat intake is because without carbs, there has to be something to fill the calories back up close to your maintenance level. You should already be eating as much protein as possible so the calories have to be from fat. The healthiest way to get fats in your diet is from essential fatty acids, such as flax or simply from canola oil or olive oil, which have next to no saturated fat but have mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated.
Basiclly it all comes back to, you are what you eat. If you eat shit, you will perform like shit. Its ok to have a cheat day every once in a while, but you need to keep yourself on track. Set youself some goals, get youself motivated to hit them. Failure can be expected, sticking to a diet is hard, expcilly if you go at it head in. Do not be afraid to ease into it.
Best of luck, and good training
