Chapter 3: Diet & Nutrition

About a year later, I was out of the woods with my addictions but that meant I had no crutches in life anymore and was white knuckling everything. This had caused me to gain a lot of weight from "stress eating" or "eating my feelings". At a doctors appointment in April 2023, I measured 6'1" and weighed 268lbs. My weight at the time had gotten out of control as before I considered 240lbs to be my threshold for obesity. This was all a part of the growing pains. The cravings for substances might have been gone, but the battles still remained, just on a different front with food. It was about 6-12 months of eating whatever I wanted after quitting my prior addictions before I decided to put my foot down with my diet.

I had previously tried extreme calorie deficit diets and lots of running to lose weight but everything I had tried years in the past was a form of crash dieting/training and could by no means be sustained as a permanent lifestyle and therefore I always put the weight back on afterwards. I realized that if I was going to make a lasting lifestyle change, it needed to be eased into. I first began with reducing my amount of DoorDash orders as well as desserts. Over the next 2-3 months, from early summer into mid summer, I gradually became more strict with the diet I was consuming. The biggest factor in reducing hunger and feeling the need to eat cleaner was when I began weight lifting in the 3rd month of my new evolving eating routine.

I quickly learned that when I exercised, I would automatically feel less hungry throughout the day and felt that fast food, fried food, or heavy foods like pizza would interfere with my workouts and caused me to feel abnormally sick and nauseous. That was the catalyst for me to go from controlling my amount of food to also focusing on quality and nutrition in addition to amount. Technically, you can continue to eat junk food in a calorie deficit and still lose weight effectively, but the reason it is not possible and heavy recommended against is because you will hit your calorie threshold far too quickly and it wont have felt like a lot of food at all. Whenever I eat a cheat meal of very calorie dense food, I end up becoming painfully hungry the rest of the day to stay within my daily calorie budget, or I more likely end up blowing past my daily calorie allowance.

For almost a year now, I have been switching between a cutting and maintenance diet. A maintenance diet is nothing special. It is far less strict than a cut diet and allows for a more reasonable and comfortable calorie budget per day. I can't stress this next sentence enough. Training hard is a complete waste of your time if you're not going to fuel your body properly to carry out the training/dieting effect you hope to accomplish. The key to your success is in a cut diet. Even if you're a skinny guy that needs to bulk, eventually you'll need to hit a cut after a solid bulk anyways to highlight your hard work and progress. I currently eat 2400 calories per day on my cut diet of strictly clean foods so I can still feel full and satiated by the end of each day. I may need to reduced it to 2200 calories soon though but I'm prepared to do so.

My Cut Diet Plan

Breakfast

-8oz Egg Whites (125kcals, 25g Protein)

-3 Links Chicken Sausage (90kcals, 9g Protein)

-1/4 Cup Salted or Unsalted Cashews (160kcals, 5g Protein)

-1 Slice Whole Grain Toast (70kcals, 2g Protein)

-1 Tablespoon Honey with Toast (60kcals)

Morning Snack

-Whey Protein Shake (120kcals, 24g Protein)

-5g Creatine (Mixed Into shake)

Lunch

-6oz Skinless Rotisserie Chicken Meat (240kcals, 44g)

-5oz Cooked Jasmine Rice (180kcals, 2g Protein)

-1/4 Cup Salted or Unsalted Cashews (160kcals, 5g Protein)

-1 Teaspoon of Hot Sauce onto Chicken

Afternoon Snack

-Chocolate & Peanut Butter Kirkland Signature Protein Bar (180kcals, 21g)

Dinner

-8oz Cod or Mahi Mahi Fish (240kcals, 52g Protein)

-5oz Cooked Jasmine Rice (180kcals, 2g Protein)

-1/4 Cup Salted or Unsalted Cashews (160kcals, 5g Protein)

-2 Tablespoons of Soy Sauce