carb timing

The first thing I do when planning a new diet is figure out how many grams of protien, carbs, and fat are going to be necessary for me to reach my goal. To begin with I eat 40-60 grams of protien with every meal.Most people are surprised that while dieting for a contest I almost never eat less then 180 grams of carbs. The key to dieting for a bodybuilding contest and in any diet should be to lose bodyfat while maintaining or better yet gaining lean bodymass. I am going to give you a run down of when I eat the majority of my carbs assuming my carb intake for the day is only going to be 180 grams. It is important to note that I am only talking about starchy carbs not fiberous carbs. I think this is a good time to point out that when dieting I find that the more fiberous carbs I eat (ex: green vegies) the leaner I get also they help to make me feel full at night when I'm not eating the starchy carbs. There are two meals a day that should take up the majority of your carb intake. These two meals are breakfast and post workout. I eat 50 grams during both of these meals. At breakfast I eat the carbs because after waking I haven't eaten in at least 8 hours. I want to get my body back into an anabolic or muscle building state, also I am able to eat more here because I will have all day to burn them and I really need the carbs for energy. I eat 1 cup of oats in the morning which is roughly 50 grams of carbs and very easy to make. Post work out is a bit different. I still use oats but I like to get some simple sugars in at this time as well. My goals for my post workout meal are the same as at breakfast but I want to get these carbs in faster so I use a higher glycemic carb as well as lower ones to make a sort of time released carb post workout meal. I find that if I take one pack of sugar oats and add to it 1/2 cup of plain oats, I get the perfect combination of fast and slow acting carbs. The fast acting carbs will get right into my body and boost me back into a muscle building enviroment while the slow acting ones will stick with me. I have 80 grams of carbs left to spread through out the rest of my meals. I eat 40 of these about an hour before I train. Then take the other 40 and split them between two other meals. I don't eat starchy carbs after 5 o'clock pm unless it is a post workout meal.

how i figure out how many calories i need to eat

start my diet like this I take my lean mass and I eat about that many grams of carbs, then i eat 1.5 to 2 times my lean mass in grams of protien, also I eat about 30 grams of fat
as I gothrew my diet I make adjustments to carbs sources first.
ex: switch from brown rice to yams
then I may lower fat or adjust carbs slightly, finaly towards the end i take fat out completely
i eat the same diet every day as long as im still making improvements at a good pace.
i usually dont have to start cycling carbs till last four weeks
food sources:
eggs wites
egg yolk
chicken breast
flank steak
tuna
brown rice
yams
brocolli
whey protien

really thats all you do

When I meet new people who have never met a bodybuilder before they always ask, "How much time do you spend in the gym? Six hours." When I tell them 45 minutes to an hour a day, 5 or 6 times a week they just don't believe it. They always say "Really! That's all you do?" I think it was Lee Haney who once said, "stimulate don't annihilate the muscle." Some people, including myself, make the mistake of thinking the more you lift the bigger and stronger you get. I remember when I first joined a gym, I was probably 17 at the time, I would do every single exercise I could think of in one 4 hour long workout. In the beggining this worked but it didn't take long for me to hit a wall. So, I went looking for answers on why wasn't having more progress. The first key thing I learned was the idea of a training split. You know, when I first started I was one of those guys who only trained chest, arms, and abs. It wasn't long after I started that I teamed up with my first training partner and we decided to train each bodypart split over 6 workouts during the week. This way of training (concentrating on either one or two bodyparts in a workout and doing each body part once a week) was great. This made a huge difference and I really started to grow.Training this way has two benefits:1. It allows you to concentrate on the one chosen muscle and really blast it hard set after set.2. It allows you a full week of recovery. I didn't realize just how important this was at the time.The second key thing I learned was you don't grow in the gym while your lifting, rather you grow at home while your recovering. It wasn't until I applied this knowledge that I really started growing. I was told years back by my first bodybuilding coach that less is more. And that the body won't stay anibolic if you train for much more then an hour or so without food. This means that after about 2 hours of lifting your body will start to catabolize which is the opposite of what you want. He recommended doing 12 sets per bodypart. ex: 4 sets of 3 exercises, or 3 sets of 4 exercises per bodypart.I was able to blast out 12 sets and finish my workout in one hour. I was in and out of the gym and on with my life. The amazing thing was that even though I was training with less volume or shorter more specific workouts my strength just consistently went up along with my weight. This is when my body started to really make consistent changes. These are the basic rules I have stuck with for training volume and the basis for how I built my physique. Using these rules for lifting weights I have gained a total of 22 lbs of lean mass going from 143 lbs at the 2003 jr USAs to 165 lbs at the 2006 Nationals, while maintaining good balance and symmetry. I should point out that during the last three years when I made the most significant changes to my physique; I followed a very strict and healthy diet program which may be the most important facter of all. I will get more into that when I write about nutrition.

nationals here i come

Its july 3rd and I have spent last few weeks since I decided not to do USAs eating everything insight. I do enjoy myself, but I try not to let myself get fat and maintain abs.
I am definitly doing the nationals and I will begin my diet around august 1st.
Right now I am currently 200 lbs with vissible abs I would say some where around 10% bodyfat. last year I competed in the natiionals as a welterweight weighing 165 lbs. This year I would love to step on stage a full 10 lbs heavier. That would put me in the high end of middleweight class.
Starting in August I will keep a journal of everything I do up to the nationals. I am tracking how much weight I lift, how many reps and sets , what and when I eat, sleep, how much cardio I do. This detailed discription of my contest prep will be found on my members page so you will know just how I transform my body for the biggest show of the year in an attempt to earn my pro card.