Hargreaves M, Hawley JA, Jeukendrup A. Pre-exercise carbohydrate and fat ingestion: effects on metabolism and performance. J Sports Sci. 2004;22(1):31-38. doi:10.1080/0264041031000140536.
Breen L, Churchward-Venne TA. Leucine: a nutrient “trigger” for muscle anabolism, but what more? J Physiol. 2012;590(9):2065-2066. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2012.230631.
Gelfand RA, Barrett EJ. Effect of physiologic hyperinsulinemia on skeletal muscle protein synthesis and breakdown in man. J Clin Invest. 1987;80(1):1-6. doi:10.1172/JCI113033.
Biolo G, Tipton KD, Klein S, Wolfe RR. An abundant supply of amino acids enhances the metabolic effect of exercise on muscle protein. Am J Physiol Metab. 1997;273(1):E122-E129. doi:10.1152/ajpendo.1997.273.1.E122.
Hamer HM, Wall BT, Kiskini A, et al. Carbohydrate co-ingestion with protein does not further augment post-prandial muscle protein accretion in older men. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2013;10(1):15. doi:10.1186/1743-7075-10-15; Staples AW, Burd NA, West DWD, et al. Carbohydrate Does Not Augment Exercise-Induced Protein Accretion versus Protein Alone. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2011;43(7):1154-1161. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e31820751cb.
Greenhaff PL, Karagounis LG, Peirce N, et al. Disassociation between the effects of amino acids and insulin on signaling, ubiquitin ligases, and protein turnover in human muscle. Am J Physiol Metab. 2008;295(3):E595-E604. doi:10.1152/ajpendo.90411.2008; Van Loon LJ, Saris WH, Verhagen H, Wagenmakers AJ. Plasma insulin responses after ingestion of different amino acid or protein mixtures with carbohydrate. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000;72(1):96-105. doi:10.1093/ajcn/72.1.96.
Kersten S. Mechanisms of nutritional and hormonal regulation of lipogenesis. EMBO Rep. 2001;2(4):282-286. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve071; Denne SC, Liechty EA, Liu YM, Brechtel G, Baron AD. Proteolysis in skeletal muscle and whole body in response to euglycemic hyperinsulinemia in normal adults. Am J Physiol Metab. 1991;261(6):E809-E814. doi:10.1152/ajpendo.1991.261.6.E809.
Jentjens R, Jeukendrup A. Determinants of post-exercise glycogen synthesis during short-term recovery. Sports Med. 2003;33(2):117-144.
Ivy J. Glycogen Resynthesis After Exercise: Effect of Carbohydrate Intake. Int J Sports Med. 1998;19(S 2):S142-S145. doi:10.1055/s-2007-971981.
Moghaddam E, Vogt JA, Wolever TMS. The Effects of Fat and Protein on Glycemic Responses in Nondiabetic Humans Vary with Waist Circumference, Fasting Plasma Insulin, and Dietary Fiber Intake. J Nutr. 2006;136(10):2506-2511. doi:10.1093/jn/136.10.2506.
Burke LM, Collier GR, Beasley SK, et al. Effect of coingestion of fat and protein with carbohydrate feedings on muscle glycogen storage. J Appl Physiol. 1995;78(6):2187-2192. doi:10.1152/jappl.1995.78.6.2187; Roy BD, Tarnopolsky MA. Influence of differing macronutrient intakes on muscle glycogen resynthesis after resistance exercise. J Appl Physiol. 1998;84(3):890-896. doi:10.1152/jappl.1998.84.3.890; Elliot TA, Cree MG, Sanford AP, Wolfe RR, Tipton KD. Milk Ingestion Stimulates Net Muscle Protein Synthesis following Resistance Exercise. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2006;38(4):667-674. doi:10.1249/01.mss.0000210190.64458.25.
19
How to Make Meal Plans That Really Work
Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
—JOHN WOODEN
You now know how your metabolism really works and how to use food to help you build muscle, lose fat, and optimize your health and performance.
You have in your possession everything you need to forever escape the diet roller coaster that keeps millions of people overweight, unhappy, and unhealthy.
You might be a little intimidated, though, and I understand.
Few people venture this far down the rabbit hole, and those who do are often expert trainers, dietitians, and nutritionists who work with celebrities and top-tier athletes. Soon, you’re going to be able to give yourself this same world-class service for the rest of your life.
In this chapter, you’re going to learn how to make meal plans that really work. That is, you’re going to learn how to take your calorie and macronutrient targets and turn them into precise, meal-by-meal eating plans that help you lose fat and gain muscle like clockwork.
You don’t need to plan all your meals the way I’m going to teach you to get results, but I don’t recommend “on-the-fly” tracking with an app like MyFitnessPal or “eating by feel” until you’ve successfully cut, lean bulked, and maintained with meal planning.
There are two reasons for this:
Meal planning is the simplest and most effective way to put everything you’ve learned so far into practice. So long as you’ve done your math right and stick to the plan, your body composition will change.
Meal planning familiarizes you with the calorie and macronutrient profiles of various foods you like to eat, what different levels of calorie intake feel like, and how your body responds to changes in energy balance.
One for one, the people I’ve worked with over the years who have done the best eating intuitively were master meal planners.
I should also mention that many people, including myself, follow meal plans even though we have the knowledge and “freedom” to eat more spontaneously.
For me, meal planning is actually liberating because I don’t have to waste any time or energy wondering about food—what I’m going to eat and when, how many calories or macros I have left for the day, how many I want to “spend” on one meal versus others, etc.
This is significant because research shows that the average person makes over 200 food decisions per day, and this can contribute to what psychologists call decision fatigue.1
Remember, your willpower is similar to a muscle in that it can only do so much work before running out of steam. All the decisions you make every day, large and small, bring you closer to that failing point, and any effort expended on deliberating over food could be used on other, more productive or enjoyable tasks.
Meal planning is the easiest way to reclaim that mental and emotional energy.
So, now that you understand the value of meal planning, let’s learn how to do it.
Meal Planning Made Easy
When many people find out about flexible dieting, they’re excited because it sounds so easy.
You have protein, carb, and fat targets for the day, and all you have to do is throw together a collection of meals that comes close to those numbers.
When people sit down to do this, though, the questions—and headaches—often begin.
How do you figure out the calories and macros of various foods? What’s the best way to deal with recipes? What about eating out? Is alcohol a problem? Which meals in your plan should you create first? What if you want more variety?
All are good questions, and all have simple answers. Let’s dig in.
How to Calculate What’s in Food
The first thing you’ll need to know to make great meal plans is how to look up the nutritional facts of various foods.
If the food came in a package, you can use the numbers provided on the label.
Most of your meals shouldn’t come in packages, though. They should consist of relatively unprocessed foods that you prepare and cook yourself, and for those, the following websites are good resources:
CalorieKing (www.calorieking.com)
SELF Nutrition Data (nutritiondata.self.com)
The USDA Food Composition Databases (ndb.nal.usda.gov)
One of the things I really like about these tools is that they contain many individual brands of foods (Quaker Oats oatmeal, for example), and in the case of CalorieKing, the average calories and macros for all brands as well.
Finding information on foods on these sites is straightforward:
Search for the food, and if the exact brand or product is listed, use that.
If
the exact brand or product isn’t listed but an “average for all brands” is, use that.
If neither the exact brand or product nor an average for all brands is listed, check multiple entries for the type of item to get an idea of the range. Choose numbers that are in the middle.
For example, if you want to add a cup of Uncle Ben’s rice to your meal plan, you can find this exact food listed on CalorieKing. If it’s a cup of bulk rice, though, you can search for the type of rice it is and choose the average for all brands.
It’s critical that your food calculations are accurate, and that’s why you want to weigh everything you eat before cooking to determine its calories and macros, and when preparing multiple servings, weigh again after cooking to determine portion sizes.
For instance, if you need to cook a pound of chicken for four meals, you would first weigh out 454 grams of raw chicken, cook it all together, and then divide it into four portions of more or less equal weight (which isn’t going to be 454 divided by 4, because cooked chicken weighs less than raw due to moisture loss).
For meals that don’t require cooking, you simply weigh them before you eat.
Remember that when you measure by volume as opposed to weight (cups and spoons versus ounces and grams), small measurement inaccuracies can significantly skew your numbers.
For example, a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter doesn’t look much different from a properly measured tablespoon, but it could add 50 to 100 calories to the meal.
You also must include in your meal plan absolutely everything you’re going to eat. Everything counts—vegetables, fruits, condiments, dabs of oil and butter, and every other bit of food that will go into your mouth every day.
One thing many readers of previous editions of this book have asked for is a quick reference guide of the calories and macros of some of the most commonly eaten foods. I thought this was a good idea, so here it is:
PROTEIN
Food
Amount
Amount
Amount
Amount
Skinless boneless chicken breast
100 grams
120
23
0
3
Skinless boneless chicken thigh
100 grams
121
20
0
4
93/7 ground beef
100 grams
152
21
0
7
93/7 ground turkey
100 grams
150
19
0
8
Plain nonfat Greek yogurt
100 grams
59
10
4
0
Sirloin, trimmed of visible fat
100 grams
127
22
0
4
1% cottage cheese
100 grams
72
12
3
1
Skim milk
100 grams
34
3
5
0
Whey protein isolate
100 grams
345
76
10
0
Whole egg
100 grams
143
13
1
10
Carbs
Food
Amount
Calories
Protein
Carbs
Fat
Sweet potato
100 grams
86
2
20
0
Potato
100 grams
69
2
16
0
White pasta
100 grams
371
13
75
2
White rice
100 grams
365
7
80
1
Brown rice
100 grams
367
8
76
3
White bread
100 grams
266
9
49
3
Pearled barley
100 grams
352
10
78
1
Oatmeal
100 grams
379
13
68
7
Quinoa
100 grams
368
14
64
6
Lentil
100 grams
25
63
1
Fat
Food
Amount
Calories
Protein
Carbs
Fat
Avocado
100 grams
160
2
9
15
Almond
100 grams
579
21
22
50
Walnut
100 grams
619
24
10
59
70 to 85% dark chocolate
100 grams
598
8
46
43
Creamy peanut butter
100 grams
598
22
22
51
Olive oil
100 grams
884
0
0
100
Canola oil
100 grams
884
0
0
100
Butter
100 grams
717
1
0
81
Half-and-half
100 grams