Starting the cut ready for summer now Chrimbo's gone, needing some much appreciated advice on how much to add to certain meals...
I do not have eating times as I wake at different times on different days. This is what I plan on normally having, could someone please tell me what's wrong:
WAKE
1 scoop of whey in water (20g p)
45MINS - 1HR LATER
3 eggs, 250g cottage cheese, tomatoes fried in olive oil with one slice of wholegrain toast (50g p)
POST BREAKFAST, PRE-BED
During this period I will have:
250g quark with apple and mandarin (30g p)
what is quark?
1 meal consisting of 40g worth of protein in terms of meat, usually tuna or occasionally chicken be it a pasta salad, tuna mash with veg, tuna pancakes (tuna, eggs and oats), etc.
Either as above, or on training days 1 scoop of whey post weights, then aother post 20 mins cardio (40g p total)
END
JUST BEFORE BED
2 scoops of whey in 300ml of semi-skimed milk with 7 fish oil caps (in the hope of making the protein last even longer due to the slow digestion of fat) and an A-Z multi-vitamin (hoping it'll absorb slower and therefore better with the fat in the milk and the fish oil:mrgreen
(50g p)
Total protein 240g
I'm 5'6" and weigh 75KG/156lb approx, looking to lose around 4lb.
My questions are:
1) Is there too much fat in my brekkie? I use just enough oil to cover the base of the pan, plus there's the 3 eggs.
There is a fair bit of fat, true, but I don't think this is a big deal given that its the first meal in the day. But, saying that, if you want to MAXIMISE fat loss, then you could consider dropping some of the cottage cheese, and changing the 3 eggs to say 6 eggs (only 1 yoke) omelette (drop the fat boost the protein)
2) Outside the gym I am very sedentary and have a slow metabolism. How much fat in total should I be aiming for, how many carbs and total calories both non-workout and workout days?
You probably want to get your bodyfat % measured, then you can judge what you want to aim for. Generally, if you are looking for a lean non-fat look that isn't extreme, you want about 10 - 12%. So really you just calculate it from that. Say you are 17% now, you calculate how much fat you have to lose based on your LBM (lean body mass - i.e. muscle mass) and weight. Shoot for about 10 - 20lbs total weight loss if you dont have access to a fat percentage machine maybe !
3) When is it best to have the quark on workout days? I train either after breakfast or after the meal after breakfast. If I eat between brekkie and the gym, should I be having one of the afore-mentioned 40g protein meat-based meals or would quark be better then, or save for PWO or much later in the day?
What the f**k is quark???
4) Anything wrong in general? I've been told that quark and cottage cheese are poor protein sources for cutting but not why, would someone be able to tell me?
Cottage cheese is quite high in fats, you really want to stick as much as possible to lean white meats like chicken breast and turkey (yes... the expensive sources of protein unfortunately), i think somewhere J said he was eating close to 20 breasts a day - thats a little extreme but basically i think a chicken breast every 3 hours would be good.
Cheers for any advice guys!