How can people know how to get where they’re going if they don’t know where they’re starting? As competitors progress in their dieting, how will they determine whether they need to increase or decrease calories, or whether to increase or decrease the amount of cardio they do in order to arrive at their target body fat composition for competition day?

A baseline diet establishes a starting point for contest dieting, from which comparisons can be made. A baseline is determined by “cleaning up” the diet, taking in a consistent amount of calories, to all the body to stabilize at a reference point. You should also use this time to clean up the diet and replace any empty calories with wholesome foods.

Why do you need a baseline? Have you ever heard someone who has started a diet tell you that they are not losing weight? Has this happened at the start of your diets in the past? The reason is simple; people do not normally eat the same number of calories each day. You may eat 2000 calories Monday, 3000 Tuesday and 4000 Wednesday. If you start your diet at 2200 your body will see no reason to tap into the fat stores because it has been conditioned NOT to release fat. Why? In this case the body knows it will eventually get a large number of calories in to make up any deficit, so why tap into the precious fat stores?

Now lets do the same diet, but start with a baseline diet first. If we take the three day average, 2000 + 3000 + 4000 = 9000. This is our theoretical three-day average. Take that number and divide by 3 and you get 3000 calories. This will be your baseline caloric target. Now after 3-4 weeks at 3000 calories per day and you decrease to 2300 your body will know at once a deficit has occurred and begin to tap into those fat stores to cover the deficit in energy.

Now for our meal selections. We want to keep the same amount of calories and replace empty calories like soda and snack cakes with energy and muscle building foods like oats, whole grains, yams, chicken, eggs, cottage cheese and other lean proteins. Fruits and vegetables are a must and make sure you take in some nuts or other essential fats. Meals should be typically pieced together using a source of lean protein, a source of complex carbohydrates, and some vegetables (for fiber and vitamins/minerals) to total the desired number of calories and macronutrient ratios.  Tailor your macronutrients to your individual body.

Starting with protein you should strive for 1 to 1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass. Lean body mass is defined as what your body weighs minus your fat stores. You will need to take a body composition test to determine this. Once you know your fat percentage deduct that number from your bodyweight. For example, a 200 pound man at 20% body fat would have 160 pounds of lean mass so he would use 160 x 1.0 or 1.5 to determine his protein needs. You need to take in protein at every meal, so I prefer to split my daily total into the number of meals I take in. At 160 grams and 6 meals this bodybuilder would try to take in 25-30 grams per meal. Remember to choose only lean, quality sources of protein. I also recommend consuming a post workout shake that includes whey protein after each weight training session.

From here determine how many grams of carbohydrates and fats are needed to round out our diet. In our example the baseline calories are 3000 per day. Take the number of grams of protein, in this example 160 @ 1.0 gramps per pound of lean mass, and multiply by 4, or the number of calories per gram of protein. That number is 640. Now deduct the 640 calories in protein daily from the 3000 total calories eaten per day. This will give us 2360 calories per day of carbs and fats. The number of fat and carbohydrate calories is individual and should be based on body type (ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph) as should the amount of protein (1.0 grams or 1.5 grams) but for the baseline attempt to eat about the same percentage of fats and carbohydrates as you normally would. If your not sure then I would suggest taking 65% of the remaining calories as carbohydrates and the remaining 45% as fats. Simply divide the remaining total of 2360 by .75 and then divide that number by 4 (four calories per gram of carbohydrate) and then divide 2360 by .25 and divide that number by 9 (the number of calories per gram of fat) and this will give you your daily macronutrient profile. In this case our 200 pound 20% fat male will baseline on 3000 calories, 160 grams of protein, 440 grams of carbs and 60 grams of fat.

Now a word on carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the primary fuel source during weight training, and you need to make sure your taking in enough to meet your energy demands. Carbohydrates do not make you fat, but poor choices in their intake and poor timing can. When carbohydrates are taken in they enter the blood stream as sugar. This causes the release of a powerful anabolic hormone called insulin. Insulin has two anabolic functions, it shuttles the carbohydrate (sugar) from the bloodstream into the muscle where it is stored as glycogen until needed by the body. The next anabolic role of insulin is driving amino acids into the muscles so that can be repaired after training. You must consume carbohydrates on the baseline to aid in recovery, energy and repair. Too few carbohydrates and the amino acids from your higher protein intake will not be able to efficiently repair your muscles and you will have less energy to weight train. There is a down side, however. The same receptor sites located on the muscle cell are also located on the fat cell. Too high a carbohydrate intake, or consuming too many simple carbohydrates, such as cookies, candy, white bread and processed foods, will cause extremely high and unbalanced waves of insulin to shuttle all that sugar into the fat cell where it will be stored as future long term energy deposits (this is all a fat cell really is) and it will also cause nonlinear energy waves. This is also known as the sugar crash.  Excess carbohydrates can and will make you fatter and this is the reason the old high carb diets of the early 80’s failed. How many grams per day is an individual thing, but I always advise athletes I work with to take in as many grams as they can tolerate without getting fat, as long as they follow the carbohydrate rules.

What are the carbohydrate rules? Now we know that we need to eat carbohydrates to optimize our muscle building and energy systems, but we do not want to get fat along the way so we need to follow some simple rules. First, eat smaller frequent meals through the day. I always shoot for five to six meals, and make sure I have a proper amount of carbohydrates at the pre and post training meals. Next, taper your carb intake to meet your energy cycle and recovery demands. Do this by taking in the majority of your carbs at three distinctive times (meals) per day. The first essential carb meal is breakfast. When you wake after 8-10 hours with no food your glycogen stores are low and carbohydrates eaten at this time are less likely to be stored as fat. The next meal would be the pre training meal 2-3 hours before your workout.  The final meal would be the post workout meal, and this is the only meal where I suggest simple carbohydrates be consumed.  The best option is one of the powdered recovery drinks that are on the market, but the need can also be met with fruit, juice or even better Gatorade. The next whole food meal post training should also contain a good dose of carbs, but keep these as complex as possible. Now taper the remaining carbs in the rest of the meals by increasing the amounts in the early meals with less in the final meal of the day. The final rule is actually two rules in one. Eat protein with each meal and choose your carbs carefully. By eating protein with each meal you slow the insulin release (exception is the whey protein with simple carbs post training, this actually causes a beneficial insulin spike) and a slow and balance insulin release will prevent energy and fat storing spikes. Again choose whole sources such as oats, whole grains, sweet potato, brown rice, beans and lots of fibrous carbs like broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and salads.

The last piece of the nutrition puzzle is fats. There are two types of fats; saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature and derived from animal sources. Saturated fats provide no health benefits and are linked to many health related ailments. Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperatures and are derived from vegetable sources and contain many essential fatty acids such as Linoleic acid. Other essential fats can be found in cold-water fish such as salmon and contain omega 3 fatty acids. Essential fats are required for hormone regulation, can increase insulin sensitivity of the muscle receptor and have been linked to favorable body composition changes. Essential fatty acids are exactly, essential to health, muscle building and fat loss. Avoiding fats of the unsaturated variety would be a foolish as avoiding protein in the diet. Make sure that large portions of your fat calories come from unsatured fats by taking in whole nuts such as walnuts and almonds and a good amount of fatty fish, such as salmon. I also recommend supplemental fats such as flax oil or borage oil and round out the intake with monosaturated, or neutral fats, like olive oil.

Now that the baseline is established you should begin to record all your meals. Make sure to eat 5-6 times per day and make sure each meal your eating a good lean protein source. The recording will make it easy to track your progress and make changes. It will also provide you with the habit of writing and tracking it all so when the contest diet starts you’re already in tune with your body. I cannot emphasis this enough, use a training and diet log through your contest journey. This will provide valuable feedback and serve as a source of documentation for future contest diets. Remember, establish a baseline, eat the proper foods, train hard and keep track of everything and you will easily attain your goal.

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