You have a big road trip. Knowing that you are going to be driving all day, you take your vehicle to the gas station. After you select the proper gas, you fill it up to the top, because you need it.
You wouldn't put rocket fuel or diesel in your two door hatchback. You wouldn't put low cost premium in your V8 hemi-truck. Nor would you only fill up the tank 1/4th of the way for your 8 hour drive.
Say you only have a 4 hour drive but you fueled your car for an 8 hour drive. At the end of the day you park and go to sleep. In the morning your tank is magically empty and your car has another piece of luggage tied on top! It gained weight, and you lost your extra fuel. Bad fueling choice...
Your body is no different!
Timing of food intake is important. Take a step back and think about what you did yesterday. What did you eat and what time? Did you do something active? Did you exercise? Go for a walk? Did you do some strength training or did you get some conditioning work in? Was it a sit by the pool kind of day? Was alcohol involved? What did you eat before you went to sleep?
Let me give you an example:
5:00am - Water, orange juice, banana chocolate muffin, Spark
7:30am - Water, big bowl of oatmeal
10:00am - Water, apple, sweet pepper, advocare bar
12:00pm - Water, big turkey sandwich with avocado and sprouts
1:00pm - Water, Muscle Strength
1:30pm - Mass Impact and Arginine Extreme, or Muscle Fuel
2:00pm - Snatch, squat, bench, triceps and lat work, while sipping on Biocharge
3:30pm - Water, Muscle Gain
4:00pm - Water, baked chicken thighs, beans and rice, sriracha sauce
5:30pm - Beer (not ideal, but hey, necessary)
5:31pm - Pita chips, hummus
6:30pm - Milk, Steak, sweet potato, salad
8:00pm - Nighttime Recovery
8:30pm - Sleep, yes I go to bed at 8:30pm. Sometimes 9:00pm, crazy I know.
Take a look at my day. Being a personal trainer I am on my feet all day doing at least 2 reps of everything. My morning and afternoon consist of fueling my body with the proper carbohydrates needed, knowing that I have a big lifting day coming up. I am consuming water all day. My pre, during, and post workout supplement routine is geared specifically to make sure I can be ready to kick ass and recover. After my training is complete, my fueling is more protein heavy to allow my muscles to build and repair. You have about an hour after you finishing your training to consume as much healthy goodness as you can. This is the "window of opportunity" to pack nutrients into your body.
Yes, I did have a beer at the end of the day. You caught me! I'm not going to lie to you. But, I am over 6 feet tall at 215lbs. My body can process a 12ounce beer without a problem. I'm also not in phase where I am trying to cut body fat. I focus on maintaining my weight and gaining muscle, so extra calories are okay. Plus Arnold said, "Milk is for babies. Men drink beer".
I use Nighttime Recovery to naturally support the production of growth-related hormones, enhance energy production, help my body sustain higher workloads before the onset of fatigue. If I'm in bed on time, I get a full 8 hours of sleep. You get stronger while your sleep, repair, recover, build, de-stress. So make sure you sleep, and sleep well.
If your day is not going to be so active, your fueling strategy should adjust. By adjust I mean less, and less carbohydrates.
Let me give you some guidelines:
Strength training day: Build up carbohydrates before, higher protein rest of the day
Conditioning day: Build up MORE carbohydrates before, less protein rest of the day
Strength and conditioning day: Build up more carbs, more protein rest of the day
Rest day: More protein, not as many calories this day (not needed).
Too many "beers" day: Recover as much as possible, lots of antioxidants, and lemon water to help aid your beaten up liver.
Lets give an example of what the Lady Bear eats on a training day. She trains in the morning (5:00am!), and is on her feet running around until about 5:00pm. Her goals are to increase muscle and decrease fat. She doesn't have time for big meals during the day, so small healthy snacks during the day help fuel her. She tries to drink 3 shaker bottles of water throughout the day. During the week she tries to avoid alcohol, to decrease unneeded calorie intake.
4:30am - Orange Juice, Spark
4:45am - Advocare bar or half a muffin on the way to the gym
5:00am - The rest of the spark, and then water throughout the workout
6:00am - Post Workout Recovery while getting ready and driving to work, other half of muffin
8:00am - Oatmeal
9:30am - Yogurt
11:00am - Apple
11:45am - Half of turkey sandwich (cheese, tomato, sprouts, cucumber)
12:45pm - Other half of sandwich
3:00pm - Sweet Pepper
4:30pm - Carrots (while driving home, sitting in traffic)
5:30pm - Pita and hummus, maybe a couple bites of cheese
6:30pm - Chicken Parmesan, pasta, broccoli
7:45pm - 3 bites of gelato
8:30pm - BED (or asleep on the couch while watching some action movie)
I hope this cleared up some thoughts about how to fuel your day. The majority of your activities should be fueled with carbohydrates. You are a carbohydrate burning machine. The fat burns in a carbohydrate flame. KNOW that. If you don't, read this: How To Lower Body Fat Without Losing Muscle
There are a lot of diets and fads out there. Some may even work for a while. Your friends may have some great success. But, it will fail, they will gain their weight back. When they do gain it back, they may even gain more back.
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Try to eat by fueling your body for exercise and replenishing it afterwards. Do this at least 5-6 days out of the week. Give yourself 1-2 days of doing whatever you want. This will help kickstart your new lifestyle. Don't give up. Never never never give up.
Go FUEL!
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