Credentials
Age: 29
Height: 178 cm
Weight: 92 kg
Goal: To shred but maintain muscle mass. Chris Hemsworth, Thor like body.
Start Point: Sam was already in good shape, but he wanted to take it to the next level and increase his muscle definition.
Nutritional Analysis
It was obvious from first talking to Sam that he was up for this. Being a gym advocate with plenty of experience, Sam was pretty much open to any nutrition and training suggestions, and eager to achieve his goal. Throughout this challenge, Sam would often say that he wouldn’t want to regret anything despite the numerous temptations to knock him off track. Sam had used nutritional calculators before and recorded a food diary, but this was to be our start point. It’s key to understand where you are at the beginning, and then set some smaller goals and targets to help you get to the desired finish line. In the first few weeks, we wanted to work on consistency, eating healthy to support the new increased training programme.
Here’s Sam’s Nutritional Breakdown:
|
Total Calories = 2504 kcal per day |
||
|
Carbohydrate |
Protein |
Fat |
|
50% |
25% |
25% |
|
1252 kcal |
626 kcal |
626 kcal |
|
313 g |
156 g |
70 g |
|
3.4 g/kg/bw |
1.7 g/kg/bw |
------ |
Typically, a healthy diet to support training should be 60% carbohydrate, 20% protein and 20% fat, however, as we will all testify, it’s far to easy to over eat on carbohydrate; start by setting a good base, similar to your existing carbohydrate intake, and build from there. With the light reduction in carbohydrate, the muscle building calories need to be increased; in this case protein. The idea being that as the body searches for energy the increased protein consumption will protect Sam’s muscle mass.
Similar to many people, Sam’s first thought was to just cut calories, under eating on all the macronutrients. It’s common that when people are trying to cut or shred the thought is to just reduce everything. In truth, it’s about reducing the unnecessary and increasing the required. The table below shows Sam’s suggested macronutrients and calorie consumption for the first two weeks.
|
Day |
Suggested |
Week 1 |
Week 2 |
|
Calories |
2504 |
1547 |
2175 |
|
Carbs, g |
313 |
123 |
172 |
|
Fat, g |
70 |
28 |
61 |
|
Protein, g |
156 |
85 |
210 |
|
Sodium, mg |
2300 |
702 |
1287 |
|
Sugar, g |
125 |
33 |
37 |
As you can see even after 2 weeks, Sam was a little light on the carb intake and a bit higher on the protein. To be honest, if you are going to over-eat, protein is the macro to do it with. After discussion with Sam, we were happy that the carb intake was sufficient to support training, although a little lower than suggested.
“It was hard to keep to a set plan of nutritional intake but extremely rewarding and helpful knowing what you’re putting in to your body.” Says Sam. In reality you should put the same, if not a heightened importance on nutrition, as you do with training. As the weeks grew and to really force Sam to lose body fat, the cut became more severe, reducing the calorie load week by week, leading up to the photo shoot.
Always start with the end in mind, for Sam this is what we worked from:
|
Week |
Calories |
Carbs, g |
Fat, g |
Protein, g |
Comments |
|
1 |
2504 |
313 |
70 |
156 |
50:25:25 – calorie restriction (20%) |
|
2 |
2504 |
313 |
70 |
156 |
50:25:25 – calorie restriction (20%) |
|
3 |
2504 |
313 |
70 |
156 |
50:25:25 – calorie restriction (20%) |
|
4 |
2504 |
313 |
70 |
156 |
50:25:25 – calorie restriction (20%) |
|
5 |
2191 |
274 |
49 |
164 |
50:30:20 – reduce activity adjusted and calorie reduction (30%) |
|
6 |
1878 |
235 |
42 |
141 |
50:30:20 – reduce activity adjusted and calorie reduction (40%) |
Ordinarily a cut this severe is not advised, but with constant monitoring and as recommended to Sam, if you start to feel awful, perhaps dizzy or nauseous, grab for the carbs. It’s also important to stay on top of your hydration and drink at least 2.5 Litres of water per day.
We are so pleased with Sam’s dedication and his result. Great work Sam!
Sam’s Motivation
It’s only fitting to let Sam share a few pearls of wisdom from his experience:
“Nothing was particularly easy. I think you need to have good dedication, determination and PMA to do this. It’s very easy to enjoy a beer with your mates in the sun whilst the World Cup is on! But it’s extremely hard to turn around and tell them you can’t! It was satisfying in a weird way to do so though. I did find it hard dropping carb levels towards the end.”
Just think, 6 weeks actually isn’t that long. Ok, Sam was already half way up the ladder, but anyone can get there. The hardest thing is starting. Try different approaches to goal setting and your nutrition, we are always learning. This is what Sam has learnt from this experience:
“I’ve learnt more about how my body reacts/adapts to foods and their different macros and just how analytical you can be with your approach to food. I learned that I much preferred having small meals as oppose to one big one. I have also learnt that nutrition is so important when it comes to shredding down. This is probably one part that I have neglected historically. It’s not all about chicken, rice and broccoli!”
“It’s important to have that go to snack, especially when the cravings come. I couldn’t recommend the Maximuscle Promax Salted Caramel bar. This is an absolute gem of snack.”
Check out Sam’s pictures and get started today.
View The Plan
