Performance Nutrition When It Really Counts

Do I eat perfectly? No. Absolutely without a doubt NO. I love fast food and doughnuts and potato chips but in a matter of a solid seven days I got hit with a couple of big opportunities and I knew that I was either going to embarrass myself or not, and doing "everything perfect" was going to be the difference between the two. One invitation came in that invited me to Cyprus Strongest Man and immediately following that I got an invitation to World's Strongest Man - Masters. I had a choice to make. Perfection or embarrassment.

I have posted my thoughts on nutrition via some discussions on Facebook (big mistake) and it was met with a lot of resistance. My philosophy is to create a start point and if that isn't enough then increase. If that isn't enough, increase some more. When pushed with the question of "Who an Earth would eat this way?" my answer is simply "Every top strongman athlete that is trying to turn over that final Ace Card". Eddie Hall, Thor, Brian Shaw...obsessive about nutrition. Heck, even listen to some of the interviews with Kaz and listen to him talking about what he did trying to get in his daily intake of 500 g of protein per day. Brian Shaw shipped his meals to WSM last year!

I'll tell you this, nutrition may not be important till it is your last Ace Card in the game, then it becomes really freaking important. When you are in your 20's you may not feel the need to obsess about extreme performance nutrition but when you are in your 30's and 40's and you are trying to figure out what else you can POSSIBLY do to get better, nutrition is the first thing that you should look at. On top of that, once you make nutritional changes you will look back at your 20's and start to think "Had I done this back then, who knows what I could have done..."

I'm not saying that you need to eat like me but I am saying that you should look at my choices and put it into perspective for yourself.

Creating A Start Point: Everything standard in the advice column says that if I am 260-280 lbs that I would need around 280-300 g of protein per day. What isn't emphasized enough is the nutritional value in the choices that you make are huge. I was a huge fan of the hand made pork burger patties here BUT they seem to eat my stomach and land me on the toilet after a couple of meals of them. They are filled with onions and parsley (and who knows what else) but they were easy. This was the first sign that nothing was going to be "easy" for the next 5 months. Hard choices were going to have to be made and they would have to be made immediately and often.

This was the first point when I realized that I needed more NUTRIENT DENSE foods.

I knew that I needed as many carbs as I could possibly get down and non-training days this was easy as I had tons of healthy choices. On training days this would mean that I could down a ton of powdered carbs before, during, and after training and I could also use powdered carbs to make up calories anytime that I needed to. After a couple of weeks I realized that I could take in around 600-700 grams of carbs on non-training days and 1,000+ on training days.

But this wasn't enough and it was quickly adjusted. It didn't take long till my protein was in the 375-400 g per day range. I made the move from 300-400 g simply because I was not recovering at 300 g and the move to 400 g (and the calories that also came with that increase) helped me recover GREATLY! It was night and day. Once this adjustment was made, my caloric intake was steadily in the 6,300-6,700 range and quite often would break 8,000 on a day where I knew that I needed to push foods.

But Clint, eating 6,300 calories per day is easy, I can do that before noon! Yes, you absolutely CAN but keep in mind that I did not eat fast food, I did not eat junk food, and I hand prepared everything that I ate. Not a single Breakfast Burrito was harmed in 5 months but I will admit that I sat down and ate a bucket of ice cream a time or five during my contest prep.

The Choices:

Choosing meat sources became a bargaining game. I needed a lot of protein and I couldn't rob a bank to support my nutritional habits so I had to do some research. Although I did try to buy what was on sale locally, my meat source choices quickly came down to:

Steak: Ribeye, Sirloin, T-Bone
Pork: Long Pork Chops, Medium Pork Chops, Small Chops, Neck Chops, Lountza
Burgers: Beef Burgers (American Style, nothing inside, very lean)
Sausage: Beef or Pork Sausages (local with nutrition labels)
Ground: Pork and Beef
Fish: Salmon, White Fish, Sushi Grade Fish
Chicken: Local Breasts, Varied Pieces (legs, breasts, drums, etc...on bone)

But, hey...Chicken, ground pork/beef, and even white fish HAVE to be your cheapest ways to get in the nutrition that you need, right? Wrong! For years I've seen calories as nutrition and I still see people everywhere say that all you have to do is "Get your calories in and you'll be fine!". The fact is, calories is not the same thing as nutrition. Chicken is not superior to ground beef and ground beef is not superior (or even the same as) steak. Chicken is basically just protein and some water (maybe) which is fine if you are a dieting bodybuilder or figure competitor, but we are not! We are performance athletes and we not only need protein but we need every bit of vitamins and nutritional content that we can get per bite!

But Ground Beef is just Steak run through the grinder: No...you have no idea where that ground beef comes from as it is normally from all of the leftover parts that a butcher has once they have cut all the good stuff away. Might be amazing, might actually be nutritionally greatly inferior and I'm not taking any chances. I did use chicken to "add protein" to my daily intake and there are a few dishes that my wife likes to eat that have chicken baked in spices and olive oil with potatoes. My son LOVES long pasta so it is easy to add ground beef or ground pork to that on the side for myself and my wife as a meal. I also used shredded cheese to make any meal taste a little better and it also added a little protein and fat.

It is a good note to put here that I have a friend that imports fish for his sushi restaurant so about every 2-4 weeks I would order with him and he would literally show up at my house, straight from the port, with a giant bag filled with an uncut tuna. I had to cut it myself but it would give me around 15-20 large sushi steaks that I could cover in soy sauce and wasabi and enjoy when I wanted it. Amazing and if you can find a connection to get fresh sushi grade tuna then I highly suggest it.

Choosing carbohydrate sources wasn't as easy as one might think since I needed as many carbs as possible with as little intestinal disturbance as possible. My general rule has always been that if the food is eaten with a fork it is a diet food and if it is eaten with a spoon it is a bulking food, but that isnt' 100% true. Still a guide though. For instance, pasta is eaten with a fork. If I ate an entire 1 pound bag of pasta it is only about 300 g carbs. That is barely enough to bget my day started! DIET FOOD! Sweet potatoes I can make and scoop the insides out with a spoon and they just glide down my throat, covered in butter! Bulking Carb!

Basmati Rice was my go to carbohydrate choice. It tastes sweet, doesn't stick together, digests quick and although it is the most expensive rice here where I live it isn't outrageous. I added soy sauce, cheese, salt, salsa, pasta sauce...whatever it took to get it down when I needed the food but didn't feel like eating. Potatoes are cheap and you can do a ton of things with them. Mostly I would take a few hand fulls every day, wrap them together in aluminum foil and put them in the oven for an hour (covered with salt and olive oil). My wife would also mash them from time to time (but that is way too much work for me!). Sweet potatoes might just be my favorite since they are basically "spoon ready" once they are cooked and they go so well with butter but they are much MUCH more expensive here than a normal potato and they are not always available. Quinoa became a favorite near the end of my contest prep, especially once I began mixing it with buckwheat and kidney beans.

One might think that fats are covered from the meat section but I added extra QUALITY fats every chance that I got. We get olive oil from our (OUR) olive fields here so we add it to everything. Olives are eaten as a snack. Actually if you buy some olives and want to preserve them...just put them in a bowl and pour some olive oil on top of them and put the bowl in the refrigerator. The olive oil will basically create a "seal" over them and protect them and they will last for freaking ever! Avocados were eaten daily and I tried to eat 2-3 on training days and 1 on non-training days.

Fruits would have once seemed like a waste of stomach space and money but deep down inside I know that fruits have nutritional value and I need them in my life. My personal goal was to eat 2 pieces of fruit per day no matter what they were. Just eat something...anything that I could get down. This meant that I ate a bananna before bed or before training and I ate at least 1/2 of a green apple before training. A buddy of mine SWEARS that green apples will help to "detoxify the body" if you are not feeling good from excess training (or excess anything else that we can't go into here). I also ate my fair share of pears when apples were not available or when I needed some variation.

Vegetables is the point where I wish that I could just drink them or find a tablet and be done with it...but I know better. I was not going to just grab a tomato and bite into it so I had to find the best options available that I could eat on a consistent basis. Basically, I just wanted to say that I was eating my vegetables! In the end I settled on making a big family salad every day for lunch and eating on it throughout the day. It included bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach leaves, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, feta, and sometimes pickled beets or any other fresh vegetable that we found at the market fresh (like asparagus).

Hydration is a huge issue with me (and probably you too, know it or not). I am extremely prone to muscle tears and the bigger that you are, the hotter that it is, the more that you train, the more likely you are to dehydrate. I've worked with athletes that are regularly at HIGH RISK of heart attack and stroke post training session. Most strongman athletes fall into this category after every Summer training session that they have. Yes, this means you! I did not risk anything and I had to make the best choices possible for my situation at hand. This meant that I needed to consume as much Coconut Water as possible. Coconut Water is loaded with electrolytes (depending on the brand) but it tastes horribly bad! To remedy this I mixed it with my favorite fruit juice, Cranberry Juice. Cranberry Juice is extremely bitter but when mixed 1/2 and 1/2 with Coconut Water both mix well together and create a drink that I can down quickly and in mass quantities. You can also add loads of BCAA and EAAs to this and they magically seem to taste much MUCH better as well. I will admit to drinking two cans of soft drinks per day (one with lunch, one later in the evening once I finished work) as well as an energy drink in the morning with my "breakfast".

And since I mentioned Breakfast...it was one of the few meals that was pretty consistent. Let me take you through a day of eating, roughly.

Breakfast almost always ended up being
750 ml (big shaker) of cranberry juice and coconut water
EAAs
BCAAs
Electrolyte powder
90 g carbohydrate powder
A bowl of mixed peanut butter with bananas and jelly
There were times (many times?) where I scrapped the mix and just had a huge piece of Carrot Cake instead
Carrot Cake is a vegetable

I then began cooking in the oven, on the stove, and on the grill at the same time.

The Minimums Were:

* Every meal would include EAAs, BCAAs, Electrolyte powder, a fish oil capsule, carbohydrate powder, multivitamin, etc...
* Training days would be in the area of 4 lb of meat focused around beef and sausage
* Non-Training days would be in the area of 3-4 lbs of meat focused around pork chops and ground pork
* Vegetables on every plate
* Complex carbs on every plate
* 1/2 - 1 lb of meat on every plate
* 2 pieces of fruit per day

Lunch (pre-workout):
1 lbs (450 g) meat
100 g complex carbs
piece of fruit
any vegetables
1 avocado
100 g carbohydrate powder
Soft drink (1 can)

Arriving at the gym:
Pre-Workout powder
60-90 g carbohydrate powder
EAAs and BCAAs

During Training:
60-100 g carbs per hour of training
10 g BCAA per hour of training
10 g EAAs per hour of training
2 liters of coconut water
2 liters of cranberry juice

Post Training:
100-150 g carbohydrate powder
10 g BCAA
10 g EAA
1/2 liter of coconut water
1/2 liter of cranberry juice
20 g protein from Pepto Pro
60-100 mg caffeine

Post Training Meal:
3/4 - 1 lb of meat
100-150 g complex carbs
any vegetables
30-60 g carbohydrate powder

The next 3-4 meals between here and bedtime will all include the following:
1/2 to 1 lb of meat
complex carbs
vegetables
30-120 g carbohydrate powder

When I went to bed every night I would take 1 banana and 1 flapjack bar (500 calories each) and 1/2 liter of fluids and I would consume all of it when I would wake up hungry. I also used the flapjacks as snacks or anytime that I needed to make up calories as quickly as possible.

Did I ever eat out? During this entire time I did go to TGI Fridays once with my wife and I did eat pizza once with a friend. The pizza (3-4 slices) nearly killed me so I knew that it could not be on the menu again till after the contests were over.

So, what was the outcome?

The most important outcome was that I showed up and competed healthy and it was the longest injury free streak of training I've had in years, which I greatly attribute to my nutritional obsession.