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Hey guys, just about to start the MANS Diet. I'm 16 about 5 7" and weigh about 140 pounds (and its not muscle ). My weight training starts tomorrow but I'm still confused about the diet, I think my BMR is around 1677 so if I ate 2000 calories a day would that be fine? Also what do I eat? So far its been bacon, eggs, cheese and the odd vegetable (all I really had in the house, my family are big on the carbs).

Basically what I'm asking for is help with the diet, what to eat? how much to eat ect. Thanks in advance for the help.

Sean

Sean wrote:Hey guys, just about to start the MANS Diet. I'm 16 about 5 7" and weigh about 140 pounds (and its not muscle ). My weight training starts tomorrow but I'm still confused about the diet, I think my BMR is around 1677 so if I ate 2000 calories a day would that be fine? Also what do I eat?

You're my same size, so let's use me as an example. My maintenance calories are 1750/day, based on my last measured fat-free mass of 102 lbs.
Here's a posting of a sample day for me: diet/timing-of-meals-and-quantity-of-food-t646-10.html#p3698. Bear in mind I am trying to shed fat, not gain muscle (at this time, but that will come later), so I eat lower-calorie than you probably will if you're wanting to gain muscle instead.

Don't eat all the Splenda and drink all the diet soda like I do. It's not clean eating, but it's not negotiable for me. I do make concessions to a lower-calorie model because I am so close to an "ideal" weight that my body does not want to shed any more and it does want to have a full stomach. However, you can simply back-substitute the full-fat versions to increase your calorie and fat intake.

Anywhere you see Almond Breeze, you can try heavy cream.
Anywhere you see light margarine, you can use butter.
Anywhere you see egg white, you can use whole egg.
Anywhere you see low-fat cheese, salad dressing, or turkey versions of bacon/sausage, feel free to use the "real" equivalents.

Eat plenty of low-carb vegetables to make sure you get enough vitamins and minerals. This is easiest for me by eating spinach, whereas for others, broccoli is their go-to vegetable of choice. It's a little carby for the amounts I want to eat.

Hope this gives you a place to start. Do try the recipes Mark has posted on musclehack. They're really great options if, again, you're not trying to lose weight and you don't mind putting on a tiny bit of fat with your muscle (which you can peel off later, and it's much less than traditional bulking phase diets!). Good luck and keep us posted!

Thanks for the reply mate, here is the last meal I ate. 3 eggs, 1/2 red pepper, 50g broccoli, 70g onion and 30g cheese, fried together in the pan.

3 eggs:
Calories 303

From Carbohydrate 15.6
From Fat 201.6
From Protein 88.5

Protein 20.6g
carbs 3.9g
fat 7.4g

1/2 red pepper:

Calories 31
From Carbohydrate 24.3
From Fat 2.7
From Protein 4

protein 1g
Carbs 6.3g
fat 0.3g

Broccoli 50g:

Calories 17.0
From Carbohydrate 12.0
From Fat 1.6
From Protein 3.4

Protein 1.4g
carbs 3.3g
fat 0.4g

onion 70g:

Calories 28.0
From Carbohydrate 25.3
From Fat 0.6
From Protein 2.1

protein 0.8g
carbs 6.5
fat 0.1

cheese, cheddar 28g:

Calories
113
From Carbohydrate 1.5
From Fat 81.6
From Protein 29.8

protein 7g
carbs 0.4g
fat 9.3g


Total calories 492
Total protein 30.8g
Total carbs 20.4
Total fat 17.5

Is this a sutible meal?

Also a few other questions,
1. Can I eat suger?
2. What kind of fats should I be eating?
3. How much fat?
4. How much protein?

Sean

Sean wrote:Thanks for the reply mate, here is the last meal I ate. 3 eggs, 1/2 red pepper, 50g broccoli, 70g onion and 30g cheese, fried together in the pan.

I'm not sure about the nutrition facts you list here, but they're close enough I think. The red pepper and onion are going to be pretty carby, so if it was me, I'd hold to about 14 grams of onion and 42 grams of red pepper, and add some spinach and mushrooms, which are nutritionally packed but have lower net carb counts. Crimini mushrooms are good sources of potassium, as is, of course, spinach. The more kinds of veggies you can eat, the better, because variety is how to cover your nutritional bases.

Actually, it sounds like quite a delicious meal, regardless!

Sean wrote:Is this a sutible meal?

Also a few other questions,
1. Can I eat suger?
2. What kind of fats should I be eating?
3. How much fat?
4. How much protein?

20 carbs for one meal is pretty high, considering you're supposed to be shooting for 30 or less in the whole day. Don't worry, you can tweak things and bring them down.

Don't eat sugar. That one's pretty much a given no matter what diet you choose. If you're going to use a sweetener, I suggest stevia. I'm a splenda-whore, but I don't recommend you get hooked on it if you're just now eliminating sugar. Stay away from nutrasweet if you can. Acesulfame Potassium ("ACE-K", it's sometimes called) is fine, and you often see it in combination with sucralose/splenda in ready-made products, as there is a synergistic effect when combining artificial sweeteners that makes things sweeter than the same amount of one kind of sweetener alone. However, it's probably best for you to go at least two weeks without sweeteners, to give your body time to break its addiction to sweet. It's sucky, but I suppose worth it in the long run.

Don't worry about what kinds of fats you should be eating. Just eat a variety of foods. I like nuts and avocados, which have tons of the "healthy fats" the mainstream health-care community pushes. I also like cheeseburgers and pork rinds. So there. Olive oil and red wine (or apple cider) vinegar makes a delicious salad dressing, so please try that on your green salad. Please try to avoid balsamic vinegar, as it is high in sugar compared to red wine or apple cider vinegar.

Since you're about my size, let's use my numbers as a starting point for you and then you can adjust from there. I'm going to assume you're 20% body fat, because you're probably leaner than me, being young and male. That's a little bit fat, since you said you weigh 140 and it's not muscle. So we'll work from there. 80% of 140 is 112, which is what I'm guesstimating your lean mass is. That's about 50 kg, and then multiply by 2.75 to get your protein needs. So I estimate you need about 140 grams of protein per day.

Assuming that you take in 30 grams of net carbs per day and an additional 30 grams of fiber carbs, that's 800 calories from protein and carbs. If you're going to eat 2000 calories per day, that leaves 1200 calories. At 9 calories per gram, that's 133 grams of fat.

If you eat fewer net carbs and fiber, you can adjust the number of fat grams upward. A rough guide is for every two grams of fiber or net carb, you can trade one gram of fat. It doesn't work the other way though. You can't under-eat fat and replace it with protein or carbs. That would not be the sort of low-carb diet advocated here. Fat should be the primary source of calories.

So to sum up: NO sugar, any kind of fats you want, 140 grams of protein and 130-135 grams of fat. Does this help?

Yea it does, thanks. But....I'm not sure if I can do this diet, is it absolutly necessary? Couldn't I just eat less of what I used to eat to lose weight and do weight training to build muscle?

Anyway thanks for the help,
Sean

Sean wrote:Yea it does, thanks. But....I'm not sure if I can do this diet, is it absolutly necessary? Couldn't I just eat less of what I used to eat to lose weight and do weight training to build muscle?

Many bodybuilders do a GLAD-style or ZONE-style diet to reach their goals. Bear in mind that only a CKD -- Cyclical Ketogenic Diet, like MANS or The Anabolic Diet -- appears to have the ability to build muscle while reducing fat, though it does each less optimally than focusing your diet on either goal alone.

If you want to build muscle? Consume at least 1g of protein per pound of LEAN body weight, and eat enough calories to allow your body to grow. If you want to reduce fat while retaining muscle? Consume at least 1g of protein per pound of LEAN body weight, and eat few enough calories to allow your body to reduce.

It's not rocket science; there are just certain advantages a CKD grants. Chief among those is that it's superb for anabolism even on a reducing diet, but it's definitely not absolutely necessary.

--Matt B.

Sean wrote:Yea it does, thanks. But....I'm not sure if I can do this diet, is it absolutly necessary? Couldn't I just eat less of what I used to eat to lose weight and do weight training to build muscle?

Anyway thanks for the help,
Sean

Maybe... your mileage may vary.

If you eat less of what you used to eat to lose weight, you will end up with less muscle mass than you had when you started your diet. The end result will be a slower metabolism and you will consequently be able to eat less going forward. This is what is known as "teh sux0rz," trust me. Eating less sucks.

Then when you go to put on muscle, you will have that much longer of a road to put back on the muscle you want to add when you start lifting and eat big enough to add muscle. And hope that you don't gain too much fat when you do it.

That's the point of the MANS diet. You hold onto muscle while you lose fat, or you can minimize fat gains while you're building muscle. They both involve a low-carb phase. They both do not involve eating less of what you used to eat. Look at it this way. The food you used to eat is what gave you the body you have today. Are you satisfied with that? If you are, then why are you here?

You have a golden opportunity to start your adult life off with good eating habits. Most of us have had to struggle at least part of our adult lives with crap diets and it may have permanently harmed some of us (bone loss, diabetes, lost muscle mass, etc.). You can choose to squander this opportunity and have to learn the same hard lessons in 20 years or so that we've learned, or you can learn from our mistakes. This is your experiment. You are responsible for your results, so you get to choose your methods. I wish you nothing but the best.

I don't want to lose muscle, so ill try the diet for another few days. What about sugar in fruit? Is that allowed?

Redgiki, I was reading some other stuff on the forum and I believe it was you who said you don't eat dairy products, is that correct? If it is do you just eat meat and vegetables all day? Isn't that hard to do?

Thanks for the help and support,
Sean

Sean wrote:Redgiki, I was reading some other stuff on the forum and I believe it was you who said you don't eat dairy products, is that correct? If it is do you just eat meat and vegetables all day? Isn't that hard to do?

I avoid dairy; I don't eliminate it completely. Hard cheeses, for instance, don't cause me much trouble unless I eat a lot of them.

Well, let's see, let's look at today's menu.

Breakfast: two eggs and two strips of bacon with water, multivitamin supplement, and some leftover sugar-free Jell-o from last night.

Morning snack: 30g dried edamame (salted soybeans) with 30g walnuts.

Lunch: enormous salad: 50g spinach, 100g lettuce, 100g cauliflower, 100g cucumber, two hard-boiled eggs, and a can of tuna mixed with mayo, mustard, and relish. Note that this salad I actually usually spread into two meals, around half at lunch and the second half later in the afternoon. I should include a serving of salad dressing with this, since my fats are a little low!

Afternoon snack: Well, I feel like edamame today, so I packed a second serving, and a second serving of walnuts. Usually I'll finish my salad around this time.

Dinner: Whatever the family is having. This is the variable in my day, but as I work out after dinner, I'm going to shoot for around 50g of protein, up to 30g of fat (I doubt I can choke it down, I need some more fat in my day today and am not sure where I'm going to get it!), and around 5g of carbohydrate probably from whatever veggie my son, who's making dinner tonight, comes up with.

Post-workout shake: IsoPure 50g serving with L-Glutamine and Creatine.

"Spare" snack: I have an Atkins Advantage Caramel Chocolate Peanut Nougat bar in my lunch sack. I don't have a specific time to eat it, but it's a great emergency food. It has 8g of carbohydrate (even though they claim, since it's glycerol, that it's only a "2g net carb bar"), but I've budgeted that into my day.

So that's my day, mostly packed in a bag sitting next to me right now. Certainly not all meat and veggies, but plenty of meat and veggies. Totals: 203g protein, 142g fat, 30g of net carbohydrate, 40g of fiber.

Any questions?

Regards,
Matt B.

Yes, just two.
1. How many calories should I eat to lose weight?
2. What are net carbs and fiber carbs?

Thanks again,
Sean