Nutrition

     In this entry, I am going to discuss my diet. The diet I am currently on is called the Ketogenic Diet. It is similar to the very popular Atkins diet in that it is low carb. The basic principle to these diets is that your body will force itself to burn fat for energy as opposed to normal when your body burns carbohydrates. The difference though, is that in the Ketogenic Diet one is to consume low carb, moderate protein, and high fat as opposed to the Atkins diet which is high protein, low fat, low carb.

     To be more specific, Keto is 60/35/5 ratio of calories from fat/protein/carbs. To calculate the grams of fat/protein/carbs into calories from each, you multiply them each by a different number. For fat, you multiply it by 9. For protein, you multiply it by 4. For carbs, you multiply it by 5. So for example, if you ate something that had 5g of fat, 11g of protein, and 2g of carbs, you would be consuming 45 calories from fat, 55 calories from protein, and 8 calories from carbs. This would put you at a 42/51/7 ratio, which for keto would be low in fat. 

     Also, during this diet, you should be consuming between 5-8 meals per day. This does not mean you eat 8 huge meals per day, though. They are smaller meals that should average out to around 2000 or so calories when you are eating at a maintenance. When you are trying to cut weight or lose fat, you should typically eat 500 calories below maintenance- for me, this averages out to about 1900 per day because my maintenance level is around 2400 because I am bigger than an average person at 6'4" 240lbs. 

     A typical day of eating for someone on the ketogenic diet looks like this:

• Breakfast: egg with bacon
  28 g egg, 11 g bacon, 37 g of 36% heavy whipping cream, 23 g butter
• Snack: peanut butter ball
  6 g peanut butter and 9 g butter.
• Lunch: tuna salad
  28 g tuna fish, 30 g mayonnaise, 10 g celery, 36 g of 36% heavy whipping cream and 15 g lettuce.
• Snack: keto yogurt
  18 g of 36% heavy whipping cream, 17 g sour cream, 4 g strawberries and artificial sweetener.
• Dinner: cheeseburger (no bun)
  22 g minced (ground) beef, 10 g American cheese, 26 g butter, 38 g cream, 10 g lettuce and 11 g green beans.
• Snack: keto custard
  25 g of 36% heavy whipping cream, 9 g egg and pure vanilla flavouring

So as you can see, you typically want to eat anything high in fat and protein while low in carbs. This includes most meats, fish, full fat cheeses, etc.

     The reason I chose this diet is because I am just trying to cut a little bit of fat to get more defined, while at the same time preserving as much of my muscle as possible, before the summer when I will be at the pool with my shirt off a lot. I am currently at around 13% bodyfat and hope to drop to around 8-9% before beach season. 

If you want to learn more go to http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=36497