Cutting/fat loss question

[Usaji]

I was reading this thread: Simple and Effective Fat Loss

The author talked about eating every 3 hours while awake. Does that assume a certain # of hours asleep? I ask because I'm usually up 20-21 hours a day, so I'd be eating 8 meals a day, which seems like a hell of a lot of food, particularly on a cutting cycle.

Before you ask, I've been sleeping 2-3 hours a night for the past 24 years. I've had sleep studies done, I've been prescribed sleeping pills, etc., but my body just requires very little sleep. I wake up on my own w/o an alarm (i haven't set my alarm since I was a teenager), and if I go to bed earlier, I wake up earlier (again, after 2-3 hours).

I'm currently 6'4" 240lbs, and probably 28% bf. I'm lifting more and heavier, so the musculature/strength is increasing, but I'm not dropping weight, so I was looking for diet changes and came across the post above.

Any advice? I realize that my problem is 90-95% diet, but are there any compounds I can use to help? I'm on TRT (started a bout 2 months ago), and I have noticed greater muscularity, but also a greater desire to eat my ass off.

[BushMan]

Holy hell. Wish I had that problem haha I'm such a baby when it comes to sleep. I usually get 8-9 hours of sleep.

I eat 6 meals a day. that seems to be the usual for a lot of BBers and guys on this forum. What does your current diet look like?

[Usaji]

My schedule looks like this:

0400 Wake up
0430 Get to gym, start workout
0545 Finish @ gym
0600 (give or take) Meal 1a: Protein shake (2 scoops whey isolate protein powder + water)
0800 Meal 1b: boneless, skinless chicken breast + mustard + whole wheat sandwich thins (eating this in the car)
1230 Meal 2: beef + carbs (either rice or pasta) + small salad w/ rice wine vinegar
1500 Meal 3: protein shake + 1/2 cup almonds + 4oz V-8
1730 Meal 4: apple sauce (used to hide the taste of the Arimidex as part of TRT) + 4tablespoons 'natural' peanut butter
2000 Meal 5: protein (either chicken or beef, depending on what's available versus what's cooking) + vegetable
2230 Meal 6: something bad (candy bar, popcorn, potato chip - something quick and easy that won't wake up the wife or kid at 1030 at night). It's difficult to force myself into eating another protein at this point, and by this time of day, my sweet tooth is usually aching pretty bad.

[BushMan]

Eat something small before the gym if you can. Maybe a banana (or handful of berries) and a few eggs. I'd hate to keep adding shakes into that. I'd limit myself to 2. but preferably none

Get some carbs in the meal after the gym (1a). Actually, focus most of your carbs pre and post workout.

Meal 2, I don't know how many carbs you are eating but don't get carried away with the rice or pasta. Both aren't bad choices tho. Yams or oats would be better tho. Beef is OK but fish or chicken would be a better choice at this time.

Meal 3- eh, sure why not. Maybe look into low sodium V8. I haven't had one in awhile but if I remember right they have a crazy amount of sodium in them?

Meal 4- drop the peanut butter... If you can't eat more meat, get some cottage cheese and get some type of veggie (asparagus, bell peppers, broccoli)

Meal 5- good

Meal 6- hmm you know what I'm going to say. Drop that haha. You need a healthier meal. If you're trying to lose weight only have 1 cheat meal a week. Something that helps with my sweet tooth but again I hate to add another shake in there is to find an good tasting protein source and vanilla Greek yogurt and mix them together. A cup of yogurt and a scoop of cinnamon protein is what I'm hooked on right now. It tastes like pudding chocolate protein, vanilla, doesn't matter. It's awesome. But you need to try and get a lean protein and veggies instead...

[zi1]

take out mustard and that night bad food,your 7.30pm meal is out of whack,drop it now,dobu use sauces for your meals? drink lot's of water and green tea

[Usaji]

@Bushman: I know the shakes suck, but with my job, it's WAY easier to hide drinking a shake and a few nuts while meeting with clients than it is eating real food. I tend to toss the cookies if I eat too soon before lifting (particularly on leg day), but I can try putting something into my system and see how it goes. The rice/pasta portions are usually fairly small (1/2 a cup cooked size). I could sub w/ oatmeal and try it out. I haven't looked at the sodium content of the V-8. I don't use salt in my cooking at all, so I figured it wouldn't be much of an issue, but I can eliminate it entirely. I just used it as a source of nutrients.

The peanut butter was a recommendation from the TRT doc - the recommendation was the applesauce + PB to mask the arimidex. I'll try incorporating cottage cheese and see if that works to mask the taste. I know the final meal of the day is crap. I actually found some "CNP ProDessert" stuff that I haven't made yet - it's supposed to taste like pudding, so I'll make some tonight and try it out.

@zi1: What's wrong w/ mustard? I used to use ketchup years ago, but swapped to mustard b/c of the no carb content. I don't use sauces on my food (i use lots of herbs and either bake or cook in low sodium chicken stock), so i use the mustard to moisten it up a bit.

I'm doing about 1gallon of water a day and I drink 1-2 cups of green tea (well, it's one of those Keurig green tea things, so who knows WTF is in it).


Should I spread the 6 meals out so that I am eating just before bed (which I don't currently do)? That would make it more like 3.5 hours between meals - but I've always been told that eating just before bed is a bad idea.


Again, I appreciate the help!

[BushMan]

6 meals a day is good. Just spread it out when it works best for you. Sometimes I'll have 4-4.5 hours in between a meal and sometimes 2 hours. Just depends on if I'm busy.

I think what zi1 was getting at is that most dressings have a lot of high fructose corn syrup in them and sodium.

Good job on the water intake. that seems to help a lot of people curve a bit of hunger.

That's interesting about the peanut butter... Are you sure it's arimidex and not aromasin? Aromasin is fat soluble so it's recommended to take it with a fatty meal. Maybe arimidex is too..? I'll look into that.

[Usaji]

I started the new diet yesterday:

Pre-workout: 1oz raspberries about 30min before gym
Post-workout: shake
Meal 1: nonfat yogurt
Meal 2: 4oz ground turkey meatballs (turkey plus spices and red wine vinegar... Boiled in low sodium chicken stock)
5oz lettuce and red cabbage with rice vinegar as dressing
Meal 3: same as meal 2
Meal 4: nonfat yogurt plus the Anasatrozole (it's a pharmacy scrip, so assuming they labeled correctly)
Meal 5: same as meal 2 but no salad
Meal 6: 4oz grilled chicken

Food was all weighed using kitchen scale.

Hunger was manageable all day, but between meal 5 and meal 6 was 1.5hrs of MMA, and I was frikking RAVENOUS after. Scarfed the chicken down in 30s flat and started mewling looking for more, bt figured it was too late in the day to eat more, so I drank 2quarts water.

BTW, I hate water, so I use crystal light most of the time - is that an issue? I live in a metro, so the water tastes like piss, and needs masking.

[md45]

That diet is a ketosis diet. You're meal plan is not set up to fit the description of a ketosis diet. Count your carbs and add in more fat. How much carbs are in the raspberries and how much in the yogurt?

[Usaji]

md45: 1/2 a cup (4oz) raspberries = 7.1 carbs, of which 4.2 are fibre. 1oz is 1/4 of that, so figure 2 carbs (rounding up). The yogurt is 16 carbs with 0 fibre.

The ketosis diet is based on burning fat for fuel, right? Low carb, high fat, high protein? So basically Atkin's?

I know I'm partially an idiot, but some ppl above are saying to eat less fat and remove the peanut butter, and, unless my quick google searching was incorrect, the ketosis diet is all about high fat, right? I need some help sorting out the otherwise-conflicting information, please.