TPower81’s BodyBlog

I’ve been thinking a bit, as I often do, about things going on in the world and why they are so.  I’m not a nutritionist by any means but I really do think that part of the reason why our society is so padded is because of the whole anti-fat movement in the 90’s.  You look at the ww2 generation that is slowly and peacefully exiting this world and you see people who have eaten eggs whole, butter and not margarine, bacon, whole milk, and red meat all their lives!  Yet, they still remained relatively healthy.

 I think part of this is due to the fact that the latter generation was very hand on, active and not so much of the "sit in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day".  In addition though, I think that dietary fat plays an important role in body composition.

 I remember growing up and all the sudden fitness took the trend of low fat, fat free foods.  All the sudden people were scared to eat fat for fear that it would get them fat!  What I think has happened though is people have replaced fat calories with carb calories.  This has led to two problems.

First of all, the carb increase.  It can be difficult at times to pick good carbs to eat.  Most of the carbs that people eat these days are processed and not low glycemic by any means.  I’m not argueing all carbs eaten have to be low glycemic, only that the average person is not paying attention to this at all when picking foods to eat.  The effect is the body is storing more energy as fat for later use.  It has gone from being in balance, to having too much energy, therefore storing it for later use.

The second thing that I think has happened is the body has gotten used to using carbs as an energy source.  The flip side of this is that fat is no longer breaked down as effectively as before.  A person on a low fat diet doesn’t really notice this because they aren’t taking in fat.  What I think the problem with this is that in addition to not dealing with fat intake very well, the body also is unfamiliar with breaking down fat stores in the body for energy.  In fact, in most cases the body may not even touch these fat stores, instead catabolizing itself and burning muscle for energy over the fat.  Muscle is much easier to get energy from, and if the body is not used to or equipped to transfering fat to energy because there is no fat in the diet, then it will produce "skinny fat" or simply just obese people that can’t figure out why they can’t lose fat while on a 1500 calorie diet.

In my opinion, fat needs to be reintroduced to society as not being all that bad.  No fear, guys, eating fat isn’t going to make you fat.  I hope to show this in the coming weeks while on "The Anabolic Diet".  My calories are coming from roughly 60% fat sources, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

If you have any comments on this, I’d love to hear them.  Once again, I’m not a nutrition expert at all, and most of the time I have no idea how the body works, lol.  Just saying, the way I see it right now, the fat scare of the 90’s combined with all the simple sugar in a lot of today’s pre-packaged foods has made a lot of people overweight.

A lot of people have been asking me about my diet and giving me a lot of good comments on how my physique has developed.  First off, thank you all for these comments.  Its great to hear and really helps motivate me to keep it up.

A typical day of eating for me is 6-7 meals.  On workout days I take in 2 scoops of whey and additional carbs.  I’ve been going low carb for my cut and now am starting to introduce more carbs into my diet to help clean bulk.  90% of the time during the week I will eat the following:

6am Breakfast

1/2 cup oatmeal, 5 egg whites, 1 whole egg, 1 cup green beans, 10 almonds, 4oz lean meat.

8:30 PWO

1/2 cup oatmeal, 1.5 scoops whey, 10 almonds

11:00 1st Lunch

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

1:30 2nd Lunch

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

4:00pm pre-dinner

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

6:30pm dinner

1 cup green beans, 4 oz lean meat, 10 almonds

8:30pm post dinner

protein shake

On NON-workout days I will start eating at 7am, 6 meals puts me at 8ish to eat my last meal.  Sometimes I will substitute tomatoes, edamame, onions, asparagus or broccolli for my veggies but green beans are a staple.  I eat roughly 10lbs of green beans a week.  If I’m a little hungrier than normal I will eat more veggies.  I always try and eat some fat with my meals.  I take fish oil capsules at every meal, and Cellmass before bead and on rise in the morning.

Thats about it…lol.  Pretty boring really.  The fun part is in seasoning the chicken, tuna, salmon, ground turkey and ground beef.  I try and keep it low sodium or at least if I’ve been taking in a lot of sodium the past few days I’ll clean off it for 3 days before taking in more.  I like to eat pretty simple, but stuff is still tasty.

 Lastly, I’m not doing competitions or anything serious, so its not a big deal to get a nice binge meal in here and there.  Yeah its not helping you achieve your goals but since bodybuilding is more of a hobby than anything for me, its not a big deal to only look better than 80% of the people out there instead of 81%.  In the grand scheme of things, this is life, enjoy it.  When cheating becomes so frequent that progress is halted, well thats where I draw the line.

My diet works to help achieve my goals, and so far has allowed me enough flexibility to enjoy eating still.  These are important things when choosing a diet.  It must help you achieve your goals and you must not hate it!

I’ve got all these extra MRP’s I’m trying to get through since I got a double shipment (not complainin really).  So I’ve been eating 3 real meals, 3 shake meals a day.

Moving back on food diet has been slow at first…felt a bit bloated and such.  Now I’m back in full swing I think.  I’m off HotRox, and mostly just eating well and trying to see a little more fat loss.  Slowly increasing carbs around workouts and hoping to see some gains.

My new thing is grilling up veggies like onions, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes, green beans, etc and then throwing in meat to make a meal out of it.  Tastes pretty good, no sugar, no salt, all natural.  Feel good about eating a bit extra food because its all in good, low glycemic veggies.

So…I’ve gotten so used to eating around 2400 calories that eating 3000-3500 is pretty hard, especially on weekends when we sleep in late and go to bed a bit earlier!  Today I felt full pretty much all day, and only ended up eating roughly 2600 calories. 

New favorite food is tuna though.  I grew up not liking it for some reason…but now I love it.  Had a great tuna/tomato omlette this morning.  Good stuff. 

 Back has been bothering me a bit today, more than usually.  Hopefully a good sleep will heal it up.  Tommorow I’m going to do cardio and core, which usually aggravates my back a bit.  We’ll see how it goes.

 Watched biggest loser tonight, the series premier.  Wow.

Good luck to everyone in 2008, here’s to achieving!