How I Structure my Diet

My like pre workout, I would say pre workout breakfast, I like to call it. So I am a huge fan of squash I really love like all winter squash. So I'll have some kabocha squash with a mixture of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese, which also might sound a little bit weird, but it's really good.

So I'll do that. And then I'll add like a little bit of whey protein in there for some flavor. And then I'll also have some berries and a little bit of nuts or nut butter on top, so I'm getting a good amount of protein, some carbs from the kabocha squash, some carbs from the fruit, which I like to have a combination of fruit and a little bit, start to your carbs. So that is going to help with just facilitating the different transport systems within your body. So we know that the carbs that come from fruit is obviously obviously mostly fructose versus glucose, and they all kind of end up in the same place. But you can think about it as kind of getting to you're getting digested absorb a little bit faster than if you were just going to have, you know, pure glucose.

So I tried to kind of combine that. And then that I would say, have that like two to two and a half hours before my workout. And then if I feel like I am, if it's a longer workout, and I feel like I'm kind of getting like right before my workout, if I feel like I need a little bit of a snack, I'll have like a piece of fruit. And I'll also have maybe a little bit more yogurt with a little whey protein just to kind of take me through the rest of the workout this time of year in the fall, when the winter squash starts to kind of come out. There, they typically have it all all around. I know in New York, when I go back for the holidays, they have it but they don't have it any other time of year, I kind of lucked out. And I think one of the reasons why I'm staying in California is because they have good bocce squashy around sounds. Sounds crazy, but it's really good. But I do implement some fasting. And this is really just to kind of, you know, go back to that whole metabolic flexibility side of things like being able to kind of use the full spectrum of your metabolism is what I like to call it.

And this comes back to, you know, being able to vary your macronutrients throughout, you know, the day throughout the week, throughout the year, implementing some fasting to kind of help with that as well, to kind of continue to to facilitate your body being used to using fat for fuel and being able to tap into that, to that reserve. So with fasting I do, I do try to take just like a day by day basis of how I'm feeling. Sometimes I will like plan out, like I'll generally plan out my week and how my training days are and my off days are. So on my off days, I typically just naturally implement a little bit more fasting, you know, go to bed fast overnight, and then you know, just wake up in the morning get work done. If I'm not going to train at like 11, I might just, you know, continue fasting until I get hungry and just have lunch. If it's a training day, I'll typically try to get a meal in or at least a snack.

And before like I mentioned. And I also implement, if I'm in it's also depends like kind of where I'm at in my goals. So if I'm in, you know, for example, I'm just finishing up a fat loss phase for myself, I went through an eight month building phase where I gained about 15 pounds. And that was the first time that I went through like an intentional building phase or bulking phase, whatever you want to call it gained about 15 pounds. It was kind of obviously combination of fat and muscle. And so I just kind of I'm actually on my last week of my fat loss phase where I'm back down to just above where I started. And within a fat loss phase, I do implement PSMF days, because I find that is a very good adherence tool for myself and for a lot of clients that I work with. Yeah, so PSMF stands for protein sparing modified fast. And if you research it, like if you Google PSMF, you have to just be a little bit careful because the traditional way that a PSMF diet works is that you actually go on like you do a PSMF for you know, an extended period of time for like a few weeks. Whereas I implemented as like a one day or like at the extremes a two day per week type of thing or every other week. And so what it is, is basically exactly what it says protein sparing modified fast.

So I typically describe it as consuming about your body weight and protein maybe a little bit higher, and then filling the rest of your calories in with carbs and fats until you hit about. For females, it's typically about 1000 calories, keep it really simple for males, maybe about 1200 calories. And this is just to basically help you to if we're looking at a fat loss phase for example, if we're looking at having a calorie budget for the week, I like to look at it on a weekly basis versus a daily basis. So if you are someone who knows that you like to go out on the weekend and enjoy, you know a little bit more food and during the week you're kind of in a routine and you're not really food focused, implement Scene a day where you have calories on the lower end, but you're keeping protein still pretty high to facilitate, you know, obviously, holding on to as much lean body mass as possible muscle mass, all of that helps keep you satiated, that will allow you to have a little bit more flexibility for other days when you can bring your calories up a little bit higher.

So I really like to use it as you know, a tool to continue to enhance that metabolic flexibility, right. So if we have someone who is not even low carb, they're just you know, maybe they're higher carb, but they can implement a PSMF day that's going to help their body get back into that lower carb state, and potentially into ketosis again, if that's their goal, and then from a practical standpoint, and we're just looking at the overall week, a lot of people like I said, they just like a lot of people are just, you know, in their routine during the week, and they don't really think about food that much not not saying they don't think about food, but they have a regimen right? And they're busy and all that and then it comes to the weekend and you want to go out and enjoy some dinner out or whatever it may be. And so just gives you a bit more flexibility and especially for looking at kind of that weekly caloric budget in a fat loss phase that I think that's what matters the most. So yeah, I found a lot of success with that with myself and a lot of my clients