hey everyone,
during this offseason i want to add good quality size and muscle, so i keep track of all my calories and food all week, but one meal per week, normally on sunday evenings i take one meal and eat what i want with some dessert. Is this a bad thing, will it cause me to gain to much fat? Or am i just stressing for no reason?
Thanks

Your just stressing. Everything I've heard a high calorie day like that can help spur new growth. Plus it will help keep your sanity lol.

Stressing...I cheat about 3-4 x per week and Im planning on competing again in September. Im 4 weeks post show and my fat reading yesterday was 8%.

Im eaing 210P/350Cho/40F, that is my baseline, you add a day of cheating and the copious amounts of ketchup I put on my two meals of white potato and Im easily over 400.

If you are training hard at least 4x per week you are fine, plus you are young, Id have probably 2-3 cheat meals.

Plus, I believe the more you eat in the offseason the more you can diet on when you do so, why becuase its easier to create deficits....

Right now if I just quite cheating and cut back on about 30-50 carbs in a few weeks I could probably drop back into the 6% range, and that would be easy on 280 carbs....

Anyways...dont stress...cant hold onto that 4-5% contest shape year round if a) you are natural and b) it isnt in your genetic makeup, and very few have that....

Good Luck to you!

Jtheo, How many and how do arrange your meals during off season? Do you evenly divide your macros for each meal? Cheats scheduled or as you feel like one?

Thanks

6 meals per day on average, thats my base diet.

Right now doing 210P/330-350Cho/40F (roughly on the fats).

I then if I feel like it have a cheat meal for one of those meals, I disregard macros at that meal. I try to have this on nights I worked out to help process meal better and use it to fuel recovery.

Once bodyfat climbs a bit Ill up protein slightly and decrease carbs probably to around 280 and see if that brings me back down.

So I basically cycle carbs in offseason as well.

I evenly divide carbs and protein at each meal, when bulking. When calories go lower I do 1.5x average carbs at Meal 5 and then only .5 carbs at meal 6.

quote:

Originally posted by teencomp89:
hey everyone,
during this offseason i want to add good quality size and muscle, so i keep track of all my calories and food all week, but one meal per week, normally on sunday evenings i take one meal and eat what i want with some dessert. Is this a bad thing, will it cause me to gain to much fat? Or am i just stressing for no reason?
Thanks

If your concern is muscle mass and size, you can afford yourself more than one cheat meal! You need a caloric surplus to create an anabolic effect. You need an anabolic effect to create muscle size, mass, and strength. I would think that a large "cheat meal" every 3rd day would be pretty beneficial...

That being said the amount of cheats you can afford yourself correlate to what type of diet you plan on keeping during the offseason. What is your caloric breakdown? Macro's?