Diet Supplement Help

[djmarkiss]

I am starting MMA training this coming Saturday. Right now I weigh about 245, my long term goal is to get down to about 185. I know I need to eat lots and lots of protein but I just want to be sure I am in the right direction. So here is what I have so far, feel free to give me advice or tweak it to make it better.

Here are the supplements I have

Multi Vit
Protein
Creatine
Fat Burner

I wake up at 400AM

Breakfast-Oatmeal, banana
***Note: I am allergic to eggs, so I can't eat them, anything I can/should substitute them with?

800AM Meal 2-Protein Shake

1200PM-Protein source with green veggies

300PM Snack-Fish, sweet potato or brown rice, or wheat pasta

500PM-Workout, I'll be doing Cardio, Sparring, BJJ, Thai Boxing, depending on which day it is.

Protein Shake right after this

Before bed-Protein Shake

Let me know if there is anything I left out or you think I should leave out or change, also should I take the creatine before class or the fat burner before class?

Thanks for any help.

 

[pliftkl]

There is a horrible lack of fat in that diet and an overuse of protein shakes (3 a day?).

I don't think you should plan your diet around a workout regime that you haven't even started yet.

If you are 245 pounds and want to drop 60 pounds, my guess would be that you are relatively inactive now and don't have a clean diet. I think you'll find that if you are able to stick with multiple hours of MMA training per week you could be burning 3000 to 4000 calories per week more than you were before you started training. That by itself would burn 1 pound of fat per week (and achieve your goal weight in about a year) with NO changes to your diet.

I'm guessing that your diet as posted above is a pretty radical departure from what you eat now (or you wouldn't be 245 pounds). I'd look at simply making modest changes to your current diet (remove refined sugars, smaller portions, no booze, etc) rather than switching over to something as spartan as what you are proposing.

 

[djmarkiss]

Yeah you're right I'm pretty much a fat couch potato right now. So what should I do to adjust it or should I just wait until I actually start class?

 

[pliftkl]

Yeah you're right I'm pretty much a fat couch potato right now. So what should I do to adjust it or should I just wait until I actually start class?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't adjust your diet, just that you not go to a radical diet that is going to undernourish you.

What would probably help you right now would be to:
1. Create an eating log and figure out what you actually eat today. You can use one of many free websites that can help you figure out how many calories you are eating and how many grams of fat/carb/protein you are getting today. This would be a very helpful baseline to figure out how much you should be eating. Given your weight, you could be eating anywhere from 3000 - 5000 calories per day.
2. Take the obvious steps to adjust your diet by removing crap foods from it (soda, alcohol, unhealthy snacks). I've seen people start dropping weight by doing nothing other than removing soda from their diets.
3. Read all of the Stickies at the top of this forum and also the S&P forum.

You'll probably need to adjust your diet as you begin training, but try to get a baseline now so that you have something to adjust against.

 

[immovablestone]

Yeah you're right I'm pretty much a fat couch potato right now. So what should I do to adjust it or should I just wait until I actually start class?

Get rid of the pastas, oatmeal, and rice. Replace with meat and some vegetables. Ditch the shakes.

 

[Mooney]

For breakfast, try a few strips of bacon with sausages, or some left overs from dinner last night. Ditch the oatmeal. That should keep you going, ditch the protein shake. If you feel like you need something before lunch take a piece of fruit such as an apple or something.
Your lunch (the 12:00 meal) looks solid. For dinner (3:00 meal) ditch the pasta and rice. Keep a sweet potatoe in there if you like. Don't worry about creatine or fat burners. If you want to take a protein shake PWO once you start working out go ahead, but its not neccessary and you certainly wont 3 a day at the stage you're at.

 

[djmarkiss]

Thanks for the advice! Can you explain to me why I should not drink that many shakes? Every time I talk to someone (not on here) about losing weight, the first thing they say is eat tons of protein and shakes.

 

[Itka]

You can keep drinking the shakes. 3

 

[pliftkl]

Thanks for the advice! Can you explain to me why I should not drink that many shakes? Every time I talk to someone (not on here) about losing weight, the first thing they say is eat tons of protein and shakes.

The primary argument against the shakes is that they aren't food, and they lack the other nutrients that you'd normally get when taking 40g of protein. If it was a choice of not eating or having a shake, then the shake is a good idea. If it's a choice between a shake and some chicken with vegetables, the chicken with vegetables should win every time (with possible exceptions for post workout shakes).

 

[Mooney]

The primary argument against the shakes is that they aren't food, and they lack the other nutrients that you'd normally get when taking 40g of protein. If it was a choice of not eating or having a shake, then the shake is a good idea. If it's a choice between a shake and some chicken with vegetables, the chicken with vegetables should win every time (with possible exceptions for post workout shakes).

As well as this, you just dont need that much protein in a day. Some people throw around 1g protein for every 1lbs of LBM. I think this advice is often given badly, especially if you're trying to lose weight and are not very active. Aim for just over 1g per kg of body weight and youll be doing fine.


Basically just have some meat with each meal and maybe a PWO shake.

 

[djmarkiss]

Cool! Thanks for explaining it. It does make a lot of sense now that you put it that way.