IV. Nutrition and Supplements
**A. General Questions
**B. Chubbies
**C. Skinnies
**D. Athletes
Nutrition - Chubbies
Question - Can I do a cut diet and do cardio while on Starting Strength?
Ideally speaking, any initial weight training will be done with a minimum of cardio and while eating a caloric excess. This will allow for optimal muscle growth during the time in your training "career" that is optimal for that muscle growth. Less cardio = more calories for growth, hypothetically speaking.
The need for cardiovascular exercise varies from person to person, and from goal to goal. Very few definites about weight training, bodyfat loss, muscular gain and cardiovascular exercise type/intensity/duration and their interrelatedness exist. However, the following can be stated unequivocably:
*** Muscle builds most rapidly when adequate supplies of micro- and macronutrients are available at all times. This rarely happens unless you are eating a caloric excess.
*** In order to burn bodyfat, you must take in less calories than you need. This generally will result in you taking in less micro- and macronutrients than you need to build muscle, even if you take every supplement on the market.
*** Burning bodyfat while gaining muscular bodyweight is confined to mutants, younger (i.e. teenage) males, those who are new to the iron and those who have been previously well-trained, but are now out of shape and are relying on "muscle memory" to work a little magic while they get back into shape.
*** Males will have a SIGNIFICANTLY easier time increasing their lean mass while reducing bodyfat than women. Younger guys will also have a significantly easier time of this. In fact, it is almost too easy for a younger guy (under 25) to make this happen for several years, and for a teenager, it's WAY too easy.
Case in point...when I first got very serious about weight training, after a few years of farting around, I weighed 185. 2 years later after very serious weight training, I STILL weighed 185, but from the neck down, I looked like an entirely different person. My Mom accused me outright of using anabolic steroids, as did several of my friends (this was almost 20 years ago, before the general public really knew about steroids). I had added a good 500+ lbs to my squat, bench and deadlift in those 2 years, yet I hadn't gained a single pound. My chest and shoulders grew by about foot each, my waistline dropped by about half a foot, and my arms and forearms were almost 2x as big.
Yet I weighed the same. That, my friends, is what happens when a young male with the proper bodytype (I am a meso-endomorphic type) lifts like a lunatic and eats solid and clean (and everything in between....
). I was chubby when I started, and I was pretty damn lean when I was "done". So in essence, I managed to find a balance of calories-in versus calories-out that allowed me to pile muscle on while convincing my body that all that excess bodyfat I had stored up as a semi-lazy teenager wasn't necessary, but the muscle I was piling on WAS necessary.
My basic advice to ANY teenager who starts lifting weights is to do the following
1) Clean up your damn diet. Dump the chips, get rid of the french fries, lose the Pepsi/Coke/Dr. Pepper, and stop with the beer and pretzels on the weekends.
2) Eat every 2 hours. It doesn't need to be a lot, but make sure you have a good 20-40g of protein in each meal, and make sure you eat some complex carbs and some fats with each of those meals. Don't stuff yourself, but eat good solid food or if need be, drink a healthy protein shake...not one of those "megaMass 4000". They are just piles of liquified shit that have 400g of sugar per serving and send your colon into a spastic fit.
3) If you can manage to eat cleanly for a month straight, while taking in sufficient protein, carbs and healthy fats, you will add muscle at a rate that will shoot your metabolism through the roof. Just by eating clean, your body will become very efficient at burning bodyfat, and you won't NEED to diet or do an excess of cardio in order to burn bodyfat. Just eat healthy, lift like your life depends on it, and do some light cardio for your health, and the bodyfat will melt away.
4) As a teen, you should REALLY take advantage of the time when you can add muscle the best. Dropping 10 lbs of bodyfat is easy compared to adding 10 lbs of muscle. Ask anyone who has been around the iron game for any period of time. It's much easier to lose bodyfat than to add muscle. The more muscle you have, the EASIER burning bodyfat will be. So take this time to eat clean and add muscle, and wait until late spring before you start worrying about your abs.
So, to sum it up, do a bit of cardio for health, clean your diet up, and lift hard and heavy. You will burn way more bodyfat than you can imagine by doing this.
Here is a specific diet that I used with great success for recomp (bodyfat loss + strength gain). I'm a natural fatty with a good bit of muscle, and I was getting back into shape. I was 5'9, ~15-18% bodyfat, 215ish lbs.
0600 - 25g Isopure + water + 4g creatine + 4g taurine
0630 to 0730 - cardio
0800 - 1/2c slow oats + 25g whey + 25g casein + 1c skim milk
1030 - 4-6 oz dead animal + "dinner starch" + veggies
1300 - 1c skim cottage cheese + 25g whey + 25g casein
1500 - preworkout drink (50g whey)
1530 to 1700 - lift
1700 - 50g dextrose + 40g whey + 4g creatine + 4g taurine
1700 - 4-6 oz dead animal + dinner starch + veggies
2100 - 1c skim cottage cheese + 2T ANPB + 2c skim milk
2-3g fish oil caps with each non-workout associated meal. On days I didn't lift weights, I cut the 1700 dextrose out. The meat sources were either 95% lean ground beef browned, rinsed and drained, round steak, turkey, chicken (breast AND thighs), and fish (salmon or tuna or perch). "Dinner starch" was either 1/2 yam, 1/2c lentils or 1/4c brown rice. If I had a coffee grinder, I wouldn't have bothered with the dextrose, I just would've ground up some oats, cooked them in water, and added them to the protein drinks pre and post-workout. That is definitely adviseable.
I varied the exact meat and starch sources but the overall serving size was measured. This provided enough variance to keep calorie totals fluctuating enough to prevent adaptation, and it also kept things interesting. Some days, I would have the salmon, steak and ground beef along with the lentils. Those days were higher calorie totals and protein. Other days, I ended up with chicken and turkey breast along with lean fish, so my totals were lower.
The results were that in 4 months, I went from 211 (severely dehydrated) to 212 with a drastic muscle mass and strength increase, coupled with a 4" loss in my midsection measurement. Also note that I went from a dehydrated 211 to a 212 using 8g creatine + 8g taurine daily, both of which are associated with cellular volumization. In other words, you usually gain a lot of weight. The recomp probably allowed me to switch out a good 5-8 lbs of muscle for an approximately equal amount of fat.