Dietary Update for Cutting

I'm having fun in the gym again, which is great. My numbers are progressing, I (generally) want to go in when I plan to, and I'm always having a fairly good time (even when I'm passing out or talking too much).

My goal now is twofold: Keep getting stronger and drop more weight (towards actual shreddedness).

In light of Greg Nuckols' recent post (http://gregnuckols.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/slow-and-steady-weight-loss-i-think-not/) I'm actually torn on how to go about the weight loss. My experience agrees with his post (gaining back weight I lost very quickly has always been a huge pain in the ass), so I'm going to rethink my dietary approach and head back towards intermittent fasting (and Jamie Lewis-style at that).

My main concerns here have mostly to do with training - I generally train better on a (pretty damn) full stomach, and I'm not sure how I want to handle carbs around training (this is partly pending analysis of Kiefer's thing about avoiding carbs before training). My guess is that I'll emphasize a big meal before training and some manner of carb intake immediately afterwards, and otherwise focus on protein. This is also handy financially.

http://alanaragon.com/myths-under-the-microscope-part-2-false-hopes-for-fasted-cardio.html
I'll need to look further into the liver glycogen thing (it heavily affects whether or not I'll allow myself any fructose), but ultimately it looks like I should have some carbs before conditioning. Emphasis some. It looks like just having reasonably large meals with sufficient protein before and after training will have a pretty decent effect on its own.

Since we're fine-tuning here, my guess is that I should be aiming to get virtually of my fat from saturated, monounsaturated, and omega-3 sources. I'll look into ideal meats for this but it looks like I'm going to be focusing on lamb, beef, pork, fish (including shellfish), eggs, olives, and their fat derivatives. Chicken looks fine with the skin off (skin's w-6 levels are on the silly end). Sesame oil looks iffy (equal mono- and poly- but virtually no w-3), unfortunately. Protein for the rest of the day should be dominantly animal, and I should probably add some leafy greens to everything for general nutritional reasons.

It looks like glycogen replenishment after strength training actually isn't a huge concern - the short durations involved with weight training don't seem to deplete stores as much as I (and a lot of other people) thought they did. Carbs definitely look important after conditioning work, but not as much with the weights. Fruit looks like it'll be a valuable part of the post-training meal due to mental and anticatabolic effects of sustaining liver glycogen. They're also beautifully nutrient-dense (depending heavily on the fruit).

I'm somewhat inclined to ignore Kiefer's stuff on pre-workout carbs - I don't remember having any issues with low-carb meals before training (275x5x5 squat last summer on nothing but a stock of chicken wings, for instance), but I've also had great training days on very large meals (albeit with a decent break to lose some of the fullness) and today was a good example of one that went well on a small meal six hours ahead and a moderate-sized carb-heavy one about 2 hours earlier. The very large meal day is actually the best submax bench day I've had in a while, come to think of it. I'll read the papers he cites, but if they're anything like the rest of his sources they probably say something less relevant than what he claims.

I'm going to try to keep this paleo-based. Given my cooking tendencies, that basically just means no dairy products or derivatives, honey instead of sugar in marinades, and an emphasis on calorie-free mixers at bars and clubs. I'd also like to hit all of my micronutrient targets with whole foods (e.g. actual plants and a reasonable variety of them). Drinking's an evening activity for me, so I'm inclined to keep regular training in the evenings and either do conditioning in the later afternoon or hit it on my lunch break and label Friday something of a cheat day. Given the way my training's set up I don't think I'll do any full-day fasts, but that's subject to revision (heavily based on Lewis's recommendations).

I'm not going to skip breakfast. Between regular sources and review papers Aragon has a staggering body of evidence in support of eating early in the morning, and Kiefer has one source suggesting that a high-energy breakfast is unnecessary and possibly detrimental.

From this we actually get a fairly nice layout:
Have very low-carb, very low-fat, fairly high-protein meals throughout the day (1-3 hours; read Lewis for further guidelines) until about 2-3 hours pre-training (probably marinaded chicken breasts or low-fat fish [e.g. shrimp] plus some leafy greens for micros and fiber). ~1 hour pre-training have a moderately-sized meal consisting of meat, starch (subject to review for lifting days), and greens, followed with fish oil. Post-training have a second meal consisting of meat, starch, fruit, and possibly more greens, followed with fish oil and creatine. Daily intakes should be planned out to meet or exceed RDA for all micronutrients. ZMA before bed.

Protein goal is 25g/meal and 175g/day (both minimum). Collective calorie intake should probably fall under 2000 per day (which works out ok with drinks, actually - a single drink with a zero-calorie mixer comes in at 100-200kcal). It's probably realistic to hit 250g given that a single chicken breast runs up 40g on its own.

For practical food prep this basically means doing all laborious prep on the weekends (e.g. that's when we'll make a shitton of pasted garlic and ginger for stir-fries, set up any chicken kievs, vaccuum seal everything along with the relevant dry rubs or long marinades, etc.) so things are just ready to cook on arrival. I'm guessing I'll marinade the chicken in tandoori+vindaloo the way I have been, though now it'll be sans yogurt and with marinade scraped off after roasting. I'll probably cook the chicken in batch twice each week.

Cheat days should remain approximately paleo as well.

Meal size is subject to manipulation based on performance. If having them both moderate-sized doesn't work out for whatever reason (performance-wise, but also mentally etc.), I'll shift calories pre-workout initially, then try shifting them post-workout, then return to baseline and add calories preworkout, shift that to post-workout, then even out the two meals at the new higher level and repeat until good. My guess for performance is that I'll want pre-workout on the larger end so I've got enough of a "belly base" to use as a foundation - I've found that the sense of satisfaction I get from a big meal seems to carry over to my bench fairly well.