casual eating to serious dieting

I

imported_fliptight

Guest
i was looking to see if anyone had any experiences to share with trying to work out seriously but refused to change eating habits at first (and hence ate the traditional 2-3 meals a day whenever you felt real hungry)

and eventually decided to go on a serious calculated frequent-eating clean diet (5+ or more frequent meals daily).

whether dieting or bulking, how much impact would you say it made for your workout results?

and i guess i should know if you were a below average, average, good, or excellent responder to weight training as well when you started.
 
When I first gave it a good 16 week try about 2.5 years ago I refused to change my eating habits. I ate about 3 big meals a day. I got nowhere, I didn't look or feel any different. Once I gave it a 2nd try about 6 months later I decided to change that to 8 small 150-190 cal meals a day for 5 days a week. The impact was like an asteroid collision with a planet. Then and there I realized that diet is 75% of the battle whether you're trying to grow muscle or lose fat. When I was through losing fat and wanted more muscle and realized I wasn't growing with what I was eating I did the same thing but higher calorie meals 380-400 cals each meal, every body part grew about an inch to an inch and a half. This was on my 5th HST cycle where before HST I'd done a year of doing non HST stuff. So I was already conditioned somewhat.

At this point I'm probably at my genetic max though, so eating big wont grow me too much more w/o some sort of pro hormones or steroids. This is fine I don't want to be any bigger, I'm almost getting too big for my frame. I'll be staying in diet mode for a while till my abs have as little fat as possible with my genes, then I'm done...maintenence mode from then on.

So in short, the impact is HUGE.
 
Yes, i can't even begin to tell how important diet is. I've lifted for 4 years, only 'almost' a year with a serious diet. I've made more gains in the last 'almost' year than in those other 3 years. No joke.
 
Mindwraith and Lance,

You think it was the actual eating *frequency* that made most of the difference, or were you just eating a lot more calories (or protein)?

Thanks,
Dave Guy
 
I definately ate alot more protein than before. I've gone as high as 425g of protein, to 1 g per lb. Only difference i noticed was that that much protein is very hard to down, and quite expensive. It's alot easier to eat 1g/lb than 2-3, lol, and i didn't notice any better results.

Besides protein and meal frequency though, just eating the right foods. During bulking i didn't gain as much fat at all as long as i was eating clean (which lasted like 2 weeks, lol). Cutting wise, i'm failing miserably right now so i can't tell you. Whenever i have 2-3 days straight on the diet (which is 2000 calories, 1g pr/lb, 25% fat, rest carbs) i get noticably leaner. But the summer, the one time i want to get cut, is the one time i go out all the time. You get hungry late at night, and there's allways somewhere to eat.
 
yeah supposedly eating frequency improves metabolism and hence nutrient partitioning because the body is able to process it better rather than so quickly storing super excess calories into fat.

as far as cutting/dieting goes, i have good stuff to say about meal frequency. of course to lose weight, u eat less right.

now i have a Tanita scale and i know they are not truly accurate, it has been fairly precise for me. i've tried cutting before the traditional way (eat less 3x daily) and statistically i seemed i was losing fat and muscle at almost a 1:1 ratio.

when i finally decided to eat consistently spaced 5 meals a day (3 hours apart) and with a caloric deficit. did this for the whole month of june, and with barely any cardio i lost 6 lbs, and statistically, 5lb fat, 1 lb muscle, 2% bf loss (again dont put too much into the actual accuracy of the numbers)

im trying it for bulking now and hopefully w/ do the same wonders for muscle gain to fat gain ratio.

but nevertheless i wanted to ask for other people's experiences just to confirm the fact that i am not magically experiencing some kind of placebo effect because i "believe" it works.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Mindwraith @ July 16 2004,9:26)]When I first gave it a good 16 week try about 2.5 years ago I refused to change my eating habits. I ate about 3 big meals a day. I got nowhere, I didn't look or feel any different. Once I gave it a 2nd try about 6 months later I decided to change that to 8 small 150-190 cal meals a day for 5 days a week. The impact was like an asteroid collision with a planet. Then and there I realized that diet is 75% of the battle whether you're trying to grow muscle or lose fat. When I was through losing fat and wanted more muscle and realized I wasn't growing with what I was eating I did the same thing but higher calorie meals 380-400 cals each meal, every body part grew about an inch to an inch and a half. This was on my 5th HST cycle where before HST I'd done a year of doing non HST stuff. So I was already conditioned somewhat.
At this point I'm probably at my genetic max though, so eating big wont grow me too much more w/o some sort of pro hormones or steroids. This is fine I don't want to be any bigger, I'm almost getting too big for my frame. I'll be staying in diet mode for a while till my abs have as little fat as possible with my genes, then I'm done...maintenence mode from then on.
So in short, the impact is HUGE.
Click to expand...
What's your current height, weight, and bodyfat %?
 
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