Vigor Nutrition Part 4: Breaking Plateaus, Cheat Meals & Workout Nutrition

In Part 1 I covered the essential 10 steps that lead to a better diet, health, physique, and how those habits are the most crucial changes needed to see results.In Part 2 I introduced calories and explained what they are, why you need to be aware of them and how to utilize them to see better results.In Part 3 I broke down macronutrients so you can determine how to split up your calories, into protein, carbs and fats, to see the results you’re looking for and help stop the confusion of how much nutrients we need to be consuming daily.And now, the finale, Part 4 of The Vigor Ground Nutrition Series!When writing this it was difficult for me to decide on how many topics I would tackle during this article... But after giving it some solid thought, I decided to stick with just a few that I get frequent questions about.So today we will cover Breaking Plateaus, Cheat Meals, and Workout Nutrition.

Breaking Plateaus

This one is always a tricky one to go over with clients because it could be so many different things. But before I result to thinking that the training program is off or not intense enough, they need more conditioning or cardio, they’re consuming too many calories or that their nutrition is off by some kind of macro. It comes down to one question that YOU, the client, must always be 100% honest and transparent about...Have you TRULY been following the program given??The reason this is the first question is because 90% of the time there is some minor detail you’re probably slacking or being lazy with that could be improved.If you think your diet and training is perfect, think again. We all can improve some how and in some way we could try a little harder to get our training and/or diet spot on.So when it comes to plateaus, ask your self if you’re honestly going as heavy and hard in the gym as possible?Are you being lazy with rest periods? Maybe you can speed up the breaks a bit by actually timing your rest periods or take away all gym distractions, like your phone or conversations. Don’t get me wrong; we’re all about having a fun and community like atmosphere at Vigor… But business is business and we know that we need to turn up the intensity to truly see some crazy results.Are you training enough? Maybe your routine of 3 workouts a week isn’t enough anymore. This is common as the more you train, the more your body adapts. So it’s quite obvious that eventually we will need to step it up sooner or later.Are your calories coming from the right sources? This is an easy one to look at. Take a good look over your daily food log and determine if you could switch anything out for a better food source.For example, if you eat quite a bit of grains or higher glycemic index foods for your carbs maybe try switching them up to vegetable sources instead. I am a huge fan of starches for recovery carbs, but making the switch from breads and rice’s to root veggies such as sweet potatoes and squash is an easy switch that can help speed up the progress.This can also be done with fats and one of the ones I see most is people over consuming nuts. Yes at first it will work because nuts are extremely healthy for you and if you’ve stayed within your calorie and macro range you will lose the weight. But eventually you may need to split it in half and eat some other fat sources to help speed up results, such as coconut oil, salmon or avocados.Is your recovery on point? This is another huge one people over look because the typical though with diet and training is that “More is better”, when in reality it is far from that.Sometimes you need to have determined rest days where you just relax, incorporate ice baths to reduce muscle fatigue, sleep more to prevent overtraining and improve hormonal function and last but not least hydrate more! So many people I come in contact with do not drink enough water, so my recommendation to you is that you NEED to get your bodyweight in fluid ounces at the very minimum!Lastly, and probably what you would’ve thought to come first, are you over consuming calories or specific macros? We do not want to consume to many calories or too much of the wrong macro, but the reason this came last is because as a nutrition coach I will result to reducing the amount of food you consume after looking at all of the above.The reason is because food is fuel. It not only fuels our training but it fuels every system in the body. So it is important to take care of training, recovery, hydration, and everything else before reducing calories.Once we reduce calories too much, we can slowly destroy our metabolism. So even if we eventually hit our weight loss goal by reducing them, we will be unhappy because we can eat much food at all and any chance we get to go enjoy a “cheat” meal with friends or family will result to unnecessary fat gain.On top of that, however long it takes us to diet down to a specific goal just means it will take at least that long to bring our calories back up to a healthy level without adding fat in the process. That means adding 10-20 calories per week, which is a painfully slow and frustrating process… trust me, I know!The next two topics can directly correlate to fat loss and muscle/strength gain plateaus because they can help break through these plateaus, so lets keep it rollin’!

Workout Nutrition

This topic definitely has an “it depends” type of answer when someone approaches me with a question about it.What exactly does it depend on?What the end goal is, where the clients currently at with body composition, what the clients current diet is looking like, and of course the type of workout they’re performing.So lets start with what you’re end goal calls for as that’s where it all truly starts.No matter what your goal is, you will need an adequate amount of protein throughout your day and my typical suggestion for taking in protein around your workouts is to do so about an hour prior to training and within about 1-2 hours post training as well.Just like protein, regardless of your goal you will need an adequate amount of fat throughout the day. Fat sources are what provide our body with nutrients needed to fuel our hormonal system and without our hormones functioning properly, we cannot train hard enough, recover properly, break down nutrients properly and overall will not get the results desired.As far as around your workout goes with this macronutrient, I suggest my clients to ingest a small amount of fat with the protein source prior to training. This is going to be about 5-10g depending on bodyweight and the main purpose of this fat source is that it will slow down the digestion of the protein allowing the body to utilize it for energy and recovery more efficiently throughout the workout.Now when it comes to carbs, it can get pretty individualized. With this macronutrient it depends on whether your goal is fat loss, muscle/weight gain, or to stay lean and maintain the physique you’ve achieved.For any of these 3 goals I will suggest post workout carbohydrates from a whole food source, such as sweet potatoes or rice.If your goal is strictly fat loss and you are looking to drop as much body fat or weight as possible, we’ll leave it at just that single meal of carbs for your day.If your goal is more maintenance based, such as building lean muscle and to stay or get a bit leaner, we can add 1-2 lower glycemic carbohydrate meals. But these meals will still be post workout.If you’re goal is strictly to build muscle, gain weight, or increase as much strength and performance as possible, I may add a pre-workout carb source about 1 hour prior to your training sessions.This pre-workout meal will typically be a lower glycemic carb source, an easily digestible fat source and also an easily digestible protein source. My personal favorite, and one I give to many clients, is whey protein, almond butter and oats. How much of each may depend on your bodyweight and metabolic needs.And just to give an extra piece of advice, mix the three together with very little amounts of water creating a pudding like substance. Throw it in the refrigerator for 20+ minutes and then eat it up! I call it “Sludge”… may sound weird or different, but I promise you its delicious!One other big factor that determines what protocol you should go with is your current diet and body composition.The best way to determine how your workout nutrition should look like is by tracking your current diet and take notice if you’re on a fat dominant or carb dominant diet.This directly links to body composition as most people who are very lean are better at handling more carbs in their diets, these are the people who I will typically allow more carb dense meals throughout the day and post training.For those who aren’t as lean, I will stick with just the post training carb meal and make sure that the rest of their day is filled with high protein/fat meals.So you can see how your goals and your current situation come together to ultimately determine exactly what your workout-nutrition should look like.Last but not least, the type of workout you’re performing has a big effect on what your workout-nutrition will be. Now this can change daily and that’s ok, it just means you will need to make some minor modifications to your diet.My typical recommendation is simple for this and directly links to carb-cycling, which we spoke of in Part 3.To keep it basic, don’t touch your fat and protein amounts or ratios. Leave these the same regardless of what type of workout it is.But if you are performing cardio, conditioning or have a rest day, then you should lower your carbs anywhere between 25-50% depending on your goals [Fat Loss being the goal intended for a higher percentage drop].This will lower your overall calories as well, which is what allows us to lose the body fat or stay lean.Put as simply as I possibly can, our bodies naturally will need much more energy during a heavy and intense strength training session. These are the days that we load up on more nutrients, specifically carbs, for proper recovery. But when we are performing cardio, conditioning or nothing at all, we do not need to take in as much calories or carbohydrates and therefore we cut them back a bit on these days.So as you can see, workout-nutrition can be pretty confusing because of how much info is out there and also how many factors come in to play. But with this cheat sheet I just provided, you should be on top of exactly what YOU need to do!And lastly, what most people are always interested in the most...

Cheat Meals

Just like the last topic, this really depends on each individual and what their goals ultimately are.For instance, if you have a good amount of fat or weight to lose or you’re getting ready to step on stage, then a cheat meal may not be necessary very often.But as we described in Part 1 when going over the 10 Guidelines of nutrition, we apply the 90/10 rule and the 10 is the cheat meal.First thing I must say before going into this is if you have any issues with sticking to one single cheat meal or you tend to let it take over your self-control, then I typically wouldn’t recommend having a cheat meal yet at all. I would focus on whole foods and creating a good relationship with dieting, where you can be happy by just eating and focusing on the habitual steps.I say this because it is very common, I’ve done it plenty times myself and quite frankly it can be hard to stop at one little meal when you’ve been dieting for a consistent amount of time.But for the sake of this article and giving you the right knowledge to be able to do so, I will explain the best way to go about having cheat meals.First step, have a plan. Make sure you know what it is you will be eating, how much you plan to eat and also what you will be eating that day leading up to the meal.The reason this is important is because you do not want to let it control your entire day or turn this into a binging session.So here’s an example of what your day would look like...Eat the same number of meals you would typically eat throughout the day but change them to strictly protein and veggie meals. This will lower the calories a ton, give you good fiber and keep your metabolism going.It will also save you from going to your cheat meal starving and cause you to over eat.As you can see this will result in you saving your cheat meal for your final meal of the day, which also avoids it being to big of a meal.If you can factor your cheat meal into your macros, do it! That’s great and will make sure you stay within your caloric range, or at least close to it.But most of the time, this isn’t the case. So make the adjustments during the day and go out and enjoy that meal, keyword here is “Meal”.Oh and I cannot forget, TRAIN! Make sure this is a heavy or intense training using some big body parts that will utilize a lot of calories; I usually suggest leg days or full body training sessions involving the legs a lot.And to be honest, that’s pretty much it! Not much to over think here with cheat meals, just do the right meal adjustments leading up to it, train hard and make sure you keep it to a single meal.Now as far as scheduling them, this is where it will depend on the individual most.As I said before, if you got a long road ahead of you then you will not need them much or as frequently. That being said, I will always give them to a client at the least of once per month as I think everyone needs them to keep their sanity during a hard diet.But if you’re pretty lean or not in a rush for your fat loss goals, then once a week is acceptable. From there I just determine how serious the fat loss plan is and suggest anywhere between 1-4 weeks.There it is folks! How To Break Plateaus, Workout-Nutrition and Cheat Meals!The final article of the 4 Part Vigor Nutrition Series is done...but don’t worry, I’ll be back with more topics and nutritional fire to spit!

P.S.

If you need help with designing a nutritional program you can stick to, get amazing results and maintain it as a lifestyle, sign up for a free strategy session with Cody to go over your current nutrition, goals, lifestyle, and how to get your to the body you want.