What I'm doing.

Hey Guys,

I get asked a lot from people what my own nutrition looks like and what my goals are.

Now depending on when they ask me they will probably get very different answers. A lot of the time I am trying out ideas for clients, testing products or rotating between a few goals I have throughout the year. Because of this my nutrition is always changing (unless I have a time based goal like a competition).

However at the moment my nutrition is geared to support the following goals,

• Improve my BJJ
• Improve recovery (everything goes to shit after 30)
• Increase strength and explosiveness. 

So if I was to combine these goals then I would need my nutrition to do the following,

• Remain healthy and injury free so I can train frequently.
• Reduce soreness in muscles
• Reduce inflammation in joints
• Increase energy for training sessions and in general
• Support training sessions to hit specific strength goals throughout the year.
• Increase metabolism steadily without weight gain (including muscle mass) due to fitting into a weight class sport.

So what does that look like?

Well it focuses on whole, nutritionally dense foods with a timed approach to carbohydrates. For me personally, I do better on a high protein, high fat diet with my carbs kept to before and during my workouts. 

Having foods that are nutritionally dense helps keep me healthy while foods that reduce inflammation help with soreness and joint issues.

I am slowly trying to increase the amount of food that I consume to increase my metabolism. This is done by slowly adding in calories (around 100-200 per week depending on results) while keeping my weight within a specific range (69-71KG). At this point I am doing this by adding carbs in at certain points. To start with I did this by utilising workout nutrition in the form of Biotest Plazma before and during hard training. As I go on I will be adding carbs into my post training meal then possibly the meal before bed. While I have a figure in mind that I think that my body will tolerate (about 40% above my BMR) as a max, I will be monitoring it as I go incase it stops before that.

Doing this will have the following benefits,

• Allow me to hit my training and health goals.
• Make future weight cuts and fat loss a bit easier
• Allow me to eat more food (I like food).

I am estimating that this will take about a year to complete. To some this may seem like a long time for a fitness goal. However since I plan on training forever this is just a very tiny slice of my training and nutritional life that will only aid my future goals.

I must mention the need for flexibility during this. 

Sometimes life will throw unexpected things at you and for that reason alone you must be prepared to change your goals somewhat. During this time I may fall sick, or want to compete, or have time constraints. The zombie apocalypse may occur. because of these external factors I must be flexible and be prepared to adjust the overall plan to keep moving forward.

If you have any questions about your nutrition, head over to the free Q&A and ask away :)

Stay healthy,

Mike