How does this diet sound?

I have come up with a diet plan which i will be starting this week. I just want to see if theres anything ive missed or if theres anything i should/shouldnt be having. All i want to do is gain some muscle but try and stay slim at the same time.


6AM - 20-30 mins Cardio on an empty stomach (water only) i was thinking maybe 2-3 times a week

8AM - Protein Shake 2 Scoops with no fat milk, 1 Tbsp Flax Seed Oil, 1 Cup of fresh or canned fruit, 1 Multivitamin.

10AM - 1 Cup Cooked Rolled Oats, Omlette (4 egg whites, 1 Yolk), 300ml Water or Green Tea

1PM - Mixed Green Salad and Tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, Medium Baked Potato (or 2 slices of wholemeal bread) and 120g Lean Chicken, Turkey, Fish or Tofu
OR
1 Cup Cooked Brown Rice, 120g Skinless Chicken, 2 Cups cooked Brocolli and piece of seasonal fruit plus tea, coffee or water.

4PM - Protein Shake 1 Scoop in 200ml of water and a handful of almonds.

5PM - 40-50 Mins Of Weight Training. 500ml to 1L of water

6PM - Protein Shake 2 Scoops in 300ml of Apple Juice/No Fat Milk

7PM - 120g Lean Red Meat or 150g Grilled Fish or Skinless Chicken plus A generous serve of cooked green vegetables (brocolli, spinach, green beans) and a fist sized serve of sweet potato plus water or green tea.

8PM - 1 Cup Fat Free Creamed Rice.

Looks good but not sure about the creamed rice as a last meal - what about cottage cheese? ie. something with casein protein?

Yeh, I agree that the creamed rice doesn't sound great.

Possibly add some tuna & chillies in there somewhere too.

check the creamed rice label for sugars
theyre ussually loaded with it

i would avoid carbs for the last meal

post workout shake should be 2 scoops in 50-75g of dextrose and water

im not a huge fan of fruit

I would definitely get rid of the carb source, within 2 hours of bed time, try to get a casein protein there.

Also add some bcaas to your morning cardio.

ditch the creamed rice, replace with cottage cheese and eat it closer to bedtime

Cheers for the feedback everyone. I have a few questions. Is this a good muscle building diet do you think? and how much cottage cheese before bed?

Aim for 30+ g of protein per meal. From memory that's half of a 500g tub of cc. Read the label on the side to help work out how much protein you're getting.

For muscle building it odesn't look like there's enough protein there. Eg. only 4 egg whites as a protein source in 1 meal? try getting some tuna in there too.

Do you have fat loss as your goals as well, because I notice you have some HIIT in a fasted state.

My bad i forgot to add in that with my 1pm meal i have 2 tins of tuna aswell.

not that great for growing LBM (lean body mass). You should know by now, that you need excess calories to grow.

Something that i've been doing for a while, is having a low carb, low calorie approach monday - friday, then all weekend i can eat whatever i want. All i need to do, is chose low fat options & keep protein requirements up. Ie 30-35g of protein per meal. Carbs are essential. I think THIS helps build muscle, in a cutting phase, i have no actual medical proof tho

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Hey Fadi,

I just want to gain some muscle mass but i want to try and not put on body fat if i can. My current training regime is Monday - Chest and Back, Tuesday - Rest, Wednesday - Legs, Thursday - Arms, Friday - Boxing Lesson and then cardio where ever i can fit it inbetween all that. So i thought id better get my diet right because thats most important.

How long have you been training? Because in your first 3-9 months, so long as you consume more calories than you spend, you'll grow - exactly how much protein you have isn't a big deal.

After that, it's as others have said - aim for 1-2g of protein per kg of bodyweight each day, and try to spread it out a bit - ie not just have a big chunk of steak for dinner and nothing else protein-wise each day.

The basic diet seems okay, but you have to just try things and adjust as you go - if you're trying to bulk, then if you ever feel hungry you are not eating enough! Everyone is different, human bodies are not machines, "put X of Y in and get Z result."

I would probably put the 10am meal at 8am, you need a good chunk of carbs at breakfast to keep you going through to lunch. At 10am have something else, even if just a couple of pieces of fruit.

Take the three protein shakes and put them in one container, drink half just before your workout and half immediately afterwards. People are stronger when they work out, recover from workouts more quickly, and grow muscles quicker if they have the protein/carbs drinks before and after the workouts rather than throughout the day - just the way the body works. So you have to adjust as you go.

And it's a protein/carb shake you want - roughly equal amounts of each. You can use your whey protein and dextrose (buy from the brewing section of the supermarket), or else just get skim milk powder, mix about 100g with 500ml of milk and a few eggs.

If you're a beginner, then you'll get the best strength and fitness gains from having cardio and weights on alternate days, so three each a week and a day off. But if your main goal is to bulk up, ditch the cardio entirely. It tends to burn up the muscle a bit. Anyway as your muscles grow they'll burn more calories just sitting around.

Of course if you also want to be fit, then you need the cardio, and you'll just have to accept slower muscle and strength gains.

Also if you're in that first 3-9 months, you don't need to split up your weights routine like that. Just do a full-body routine each time, do a 5-10 minute warmup walking to the gym or treadmill or skipping rope or something, then go for the big compound lifts - in each session,

squat or deadlift
bench press or overhead press
bent-over barbell row or chinups

with a light warm-up set, and then 3-6 heavy work sets for each. Then stretch afterwards.

Once you get good and strong on those basic lifts, then it can be useful to split it all up.

You are right that diet is most important, it's good that you know this, lots of people never get it, let alone at 18, well done mate!

Keep a workout and diet diary, this helps a lot in adjusting things, seeing what works for you and what doesn't over time. Also makes you feel more accountable to yourself, helps you keep things up.

Boxing is good for you, keep at it

Good luck!

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Height or weight isn't enough, we'd have to know body composition, his daily activities like whether he walks to school or work, all that kind of thing. No way we'll ever get that much info, so there's no way we could say he needs to have exactly this many grams of spud or chicken.

Add in the fact of our not being nutritionists or dieticians - I'm not, are you? - but just random forum commenters, and there's just no way we can judge what's perfect for him, not down to grams of this or that. We can make general recommendations only.

All we can do is say if it's in the right footy field in terms of total calories and nutrition, while considering that the human body is as I said not a machine, it's very resilient, people eat a wide variety of diets and manage to live well on them. Once it's in the right range, we then tell the person to keep a diary of it all, and adjust as they go, eating more or less of this or that as required.

He has got some fruit and vegies and legumes, some carbs and plenty of protein. So long as he adjusts as he goes, eats more carbs and fruit/vegies if he gets tired, more protein if he doesn't gain muscle, drops carbs if he puts on too much fat, all that kind of thing - he'll be okay.

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Although you admit you're not a nutritionists or dietician, yet you're willing to pass judgement on whether the diet is okay or not!

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I said it looks basically okay, but the real test was how he feels day-to-day, and whether it gives him the results he wants, and he should monitor it.

I didn't say we couldn't give advice. I said we couldn't give detailed advice. That means we can say, "you need more fresh vegies" to someone with none, but we can't say, "you should have 1 cup broccoli and 100g beans daily." There is nothing major missing nutritionally in his diet. That's what "basically okay" means. He's not going to die of scurvy or something.

I am a qualified chef, so I know a bit about basic nutrition - that's basic nutrition, nothing advanced - and how to make it look and taste alright. I am, as the sig says, studying for Cert III (Fitness), which also gives basic nutrition knowledge, and more importantly lets me know the limits of my knowledge. Both these things give me a strong interest in nutrition which has led to a lot of reading, and a lot of talking to people much smarter and more qualified than me from whom I've learned a lot.

Again, there's general advice, and detailed advice. These are different things. What you're demanding to know, and the things you didn't mention but would have to know as well (like body composition, since that affects BMR so much) is only useful if you want to give him detailed advice.

I don't know anything about you Kyle, so why not tell me a bit about your experience with diet and training.

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Most of the forum knows all this crap about me already, so you can ignore the rest of this post; Ill put it in grey so it's easier to ignore.

Chris, I'm sorry your thread has this. Nonetheless, it's a good experience for you, because forums are like this, for each two posters there are three opinions. Unfortunately you just have to bear through it, do your own research and figure things out for yourself - trust nothing we tell you, just use it as a start to your own research.

Fadi, it's often useful when you come to a new forum to just lurk and read for a bit. Then you can judge properly who you think is worth listening to, and who's just talking crap.

As my gym journal describes, years ago I was scrawny, then joined the Army and had a lot of physical training of various kinds, and built up a lot of strength and fitness and bulk under others' instruction. After that I slacked off for years, and this year took up physical training seriously again.

From January to July this year I lost (if you believe body fat calculations) 9.7kg fat and gained 4.3kg muscle (waist 97 to 84cm, chest 100 to 107cm), doing this with three months of general physical preparation (walks, runs, pushups, situps, supine pullups and squats) followed by four months of heavy (for me) lifting at the gym. Still working on things, got a long way to go.

I had a diet of lots of fresh fruit and vegies, nuts and beans, with some meat/fish and dairy, and plenty of rice, pasta and bread to power my workouts. This diet wasn't difficult for me, it's how we were eating anyway, I just used to have junk and booze on top of it - I cut those out.

So I've had the experience of bulking up from being a skinny young bloke, and slimming down and muscling up (relatively) as a suburban slob in his 30s. Those are very common training experiences, I think; lots of young blokes are scrawny, lots of suburban slobs in their 30s are pudgy, unfit and weak. Never were my results dramatic or spectacular, they're something anyone could do.

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