Chronicles of the Forgotten Realm
The Feasting Hall
So you've seen the little guidelines — now for the full guide.
Bear in mind that everything here is to be adjusted a little to you.
I've done calorie counting over the years with some success, but the issue is all the fiddling with the numbers. There's only one metric I track — how much protein I eat. That dictates the amount of meat, powder, and so on that I consume. The rest is all down to portion control of food groups.
There are a number of diet plans here, but all follow the same basic approach. Think of it more like a scale that changes depending on the goal.
Let's divide our food up.
Lean and white meats, lean protein shakes, egg whites. Anything where there are more than trace amounts of carbohydrates or fats included with the protein.
Eggs, red meats, vegan protein sources, milk, most dairy foods. Anything where protein is a large portion of the food but it also contains a significant amount of carbohydrates and/or fats.
Most vegetables and salad, and some watery fruits. These contain low amounts of carbohydrates and high amounts of fibre and/or water. There really isn't a limit to how much of this you can eat.
Potatoes, fruits, cereals, booze, and so on. These contain sugars — either complex or simple. Some may be high in fibre too, but the key difference is that they have a higher caloric value than fibrous carbs.
Oils, nuts, and anything that gets added to food that is predominantly fat. High in calories for very small amounts. Fats are essential to a diet though — don't eliminate everything.
This category exists to highlight something important. Nearly all processed foods contain both fats and sugars of some kind — making them highly caloric. This combination is also highly palatable to humans and triggers all the survival responses that make you keep eating. Not saying to remove all processed food, but reducing it to a minimum is always a good move.
Calories are important, but tracking them is a lot of faff. I prefer focusing on meals and portions instead. Affecting portion sizes will inherently control calorie input.
As for the amount you burn — this varies wildly from person to person, even between people of the same size. My advice is that your body will largely regulate itself. By training, your body is going to use more calories naturally.
I'd rather you focus on the quality of food and the basics of portioning than get bogged down in the details of calories.
This is the only metric to keep an eye on every day.
Look on the back of any food and you'll see a nutrition label listing protein — either per serving or per 100g. Use basic maths to figure out how much you get from the amount you eat during the day.
The amount you're aiming for:
Minimum daily protein (grams) = double your height in inches
That will cover you for a very long time. There's no real upper limit to how much protein you can eat in a day — just make sure you hit the minimum as many days as possible. If you're finding yourself hungry, eat or drink from a lean source.
Sometimes I'll have a really large protein shake containing 100g of protein just to make sure I've already got plenty in before the day is done.
Largely speaking, I eat a balance of everything without thinking about it too much. I generally favour leaner proteins over non-lean sources — though I do love eggs. This is because I'm not actively trying to change my body composition right now.
On top of that, I make everything from scratch, so it's about 95% home cooked. Eat lots of good food, enjoy little bits of naughty food. Just live and enjoy life.
Oh — and I do eat crisps and chocolate daily, so I'm no saint.
This is usually the first stop anyone makes when it comes to diet. What I do is enforce some guidelines depending on how severe I need the fat loss to be — but I always do it in stages. I never jump from no diet to the extreme.
To be honest, Stage 3 is really the limit for 99% of people. Stages 4 and 5 are extreme and are for very short-term use only — really for those aiming for bodybuilding levels of leanness. They definitely affect performance levels.
In all stages: use lean proteins and fibrous carbs to fill up — there is no real limit to how much of either you can have.
This is quite simple and probably the easiest to implement for anyone who has a steady and regular weekly lifestyle routine.
You eat food every day. Say you eat 3 meals (or 2 meals and a dessert) a day Monday–Sunday. That's 21 meals in total.
What you do is start replacing the meals for a whole day with only PSMF meals — lean protein and fibrous carbs. Let's say Monday. Now 1/7th of your diet is PSMF.
To increase this, add another day of pure PSMF. Let's say Thursday. Now it's 2/7ths. You can keep adding days from there.
The beauty of this is that if you have a regular feasting kind of day — usually Friday, Saturday or Sunday — it'll always be there waiting for you.
The more days of PSMF you include, the more extreme it becomes. I'd try to keep at least one day a week for non-PSMF food so it doesn't get too hard mentally.
This is a simple idea. You affect the ratio of non-PSMF to PSMF days over the course of a rotation. It works particularly well for those who work shift patterns.
The idea is to work out how long your rotation is. If you work 4 days then have 4 days off, your rotation is 8 days.
Using 8 days as an example — currently you'd be eating 8:0. Include one day of PSMF and it becomes 7:1. Add another and it's 6:2 — six days of normal eating, two days of PSMF.
The trick is to find the cycle that fits your life. A 3-PSMF:1-non-PSMF rotation can work really well for extended periods — but if your lifestyle routine changes, the plan needs to change with it.
Sometimes you'll want to focus on building muscle. The general principle is that you'll want to increase what you're eating by a bit — but it's the training that's going to make the real difference. And I wouldn't try to build muscle while on any cutting diet.
If you must, then eat more of the right stuff.
There is a rapid bulk approach where you eat roughly double your normal intake. I'm not against it, but it will likely create some short-term fat gain. If you can manage that, go for it. If not, take the slower approach.
But you must make the body use the fuel — otherwise it's just eating a lot.