Boxing/Strength workout and diet - give me your thoughts!

Hi all,

Wanted to get the opinion of some experienced primal lifestylers on my workout/eating plan – feeling good and starting to lean out but a check in is always good.

Background
27 years old, 80kg. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. I am obsessive by nature so follow my diet/workout structure to the letter. I have done martial arts for a long time, so have done the primal diet to get ready for fights on and off for years, also used to training hard and pushing my body.
On my current plan I do get hungry, a little flat now and then but overall I feel healthy and able to stay really active. My only induldgence is spurred by hunger and I go a bit crazy on the almond butter (half a jar crazy nearly every night)....I am assuming this is pointing to a deficit in my diet or over training? Please have a look over the following and let me know your thoughts!
Diet:
- 3 poached eggs
- 5 strawberries + 5 tbsp seed mix (inc. Almonds/shredded coconut)
- 2 raw carrots
- 4 cups salad/1 cup chicken
- 1 small can tuna in springwater
- Whey Protein shake WPI
- Multi Vitamin, Vit C, Fish Oil
*Almond butter

Workout Plan
Monday
Weights (currently using Mark’s suggested weights workout: Squats, chip ups, shoulder press, bench press 5X8’s)
Sprints – 10X50m

Tuesday
Boxing morning class (skipping, 5X2 min bag work, ab work)
Boxing evening class (45 min total: skipping, focus mitts, intensity work, sparring, ab work etc.)
Wednesday
Weights
Boxing evening class

Thursday
Boxing morning class
Evening walk

Friday
Weights
Boxing evening class
Saturday
Weights

Sunday
Rest

You seemed to have posted your breakfast and possibly a small lunch, you need to eat more.

Apologies - I forgot to put in my dinner. I also eat around 2 or 3 cups greens with 1.5 chicken breast/porterhouse steak.
I will snack on around 6-8 more tbsps of seed/almond/coconut mix in the afternoon.

If you believe I am still under-eating - what are suggestions for food intake to increase?
I currently sit around 12% body fat, I would love to be able to maintain a healthy >10%

are you losing weight or gaining weight? how do you feel? are you full or hungry all the time?

After main meals - breakfast, lunch, tea I am not hungry - although I could eat more. It is one or two hours after I feel hungry, but I will only eat a snack - and after these I don't always feel completely full or content.

My weight is fairly steady - I haven't been tracking but I can definitely see I have lost weight from my appearance. Hoping not too much of it is muscle - I have ordered some skin fold calipers for another reference point.

Nutrient/calories wise does my diet seem ok? Any obvious gaps or improvements?

[QUOTE=wyattgra;1050079]After main meals - breakfast, lunch, tea I am not hungry - although I could eat more. It is one or two hours after I feel hungry, but I will only eat a snack - and after these I don't always feel completely full or content.

My weight is fairly steady - I haven't been tracking but I can definitely see I have lost weight from my appearance. Hoping not too much of it is muscle - I have ordered some skin fold calipers for another reference point.

Nutrient/calories wise does my diet seem ok? Any obvious gaps or improvements?[/QUOTE]

Your appearance won't really describe your weight. When I was in college I saw a picture of 3 young men standing side by side. Each was 6' tall and weighed 200 lbs. One of them looked thin, one looked good and the third looked slightly obese. It was my first introduction to "weight is a measure of mass - not health". Wish I could find that pic now.

Looks like you're eating paleo and you can't hurt yourself with more paleo food. Eating more food will give you more energy because you're not eating junk that will be shunted to storage. If you feel hungry - eat more food and for heaven's sake - stop counting calories.... that's only for the poor schlubs eating the wrong types of food.

Ok - I am hearing the advice, thank you. I have naturally began lifting the amount of food I am taking in. Any particular foods I should focus on for 'filling up' or just more primal stuff - meat and veggies?

I read a post on here about carb refreshing once a week - I haven't down a carb breakdown but do you think that would be an option based on current diet/workout plan?

It doesn't seem like you are overtraining based on the training cycle you've posted. I also do high volume training, some things I would suggest:

- Start your days with the meat and nut breakfast, made famous by strength coach Charles poliquin. Google it, it's made a huge difference in my body comp and hunger post breakfast.

- Add some Glutamine to your PWO shakes and take some before bed, 10-20g. Awesome for gut health as well as recovery which could help with the overtraining feeling that could be causing the hunger.

- STOP eating that much almond butter in one sitting!!!! That is probably the biggest reasons you're sitting at 12% BF. We all can agree that fat is not the enemy, but you can easily overdue it, especially with nuts. I had a problem eating too much nuts/nut butters so I limit myself to 3 servings a day. A serving in ONE handful (30g) for nuts or ONE tbsp for nut butters which is around 32g, but butters do not fill me up as much because one serving just looks so small.

I shall look into the meat and nut breakfast - although I must admit I will struggle moving away from eggs. Originally I was eating a massive bowl of fruit...so the eggs have made a big difference. Always looking for improvement however so I'll check it out.

Glutamine - great suggestion, I'll action that.

I have ceased eating the almond butter good call. I think I would go over the 3 servings a day for nuts - suggestions for low carb/convenient and satisfying alternatives whilst I'm at work?

Thanks for the help!

[QUOTE=wyattgra;1052832]I shall look into the meat and nut breakfast - although I must admit I will struggle moving away from eggs. Originally I was eating a massive bowl of fruit...so the eggs have made a big difference. Always looking for improvement however so I'll check it out.

Glutamine - great suggestion, I'll action that.

I have ceased eating the almond butter good call. I think I would go over the 3 servings a day for nuts - suggestions for low carb/convenient and satisfying alternatives whilst I'm at work?

Thanks for the help![/QUOTE]

This is a normal day for me, hope it can help ya with some ideas:

*ill use times to make it easy, but I don't have a stopwatch or anything telling me when to eat, this is just a typical day:

0530: -10g Glutamine/BCAAS mixture in ice water
- 4oz of any primal meat (I try to rotate meats daily)
- 30g nuts (also rotate daily, almonds, pistachios, macadamias, walnuts, cashews, brazil)
- Black Coffee
- Multi, Fish Oil

0630: Gym (10g BCAA, 5g Creatine)

0800: PWO Shake (40-50g whey, 15g Glutamine, 5g Creatine)

0900: 2 egg, 3 egg white veggie omelette

1200: Always do a big ass salad, tons of veggies, avocado and always change meat (thanks Mark)
- Fish Oil

1430: - 30g Nuts
- Meat OR a protein shake (always eat the nuts first if having the shake to limit insulin spike)
- Coffee with heavy cream

1730: - Always do a fun primal meal when have time. Coconut Flour coated chicken breast with veggies, etc. I always try to make
new healthier things every night that I can. Dinner is why I love being primal.
- Fish Oil

2000: -1 cup of organic Greek yogurt
- 1 scoop of whey
- Cinnamon
- 1 tbsp of almond butter or 30g nuts
- Multi/Magnesium/10g Glutamine

I hope this helps you out. Like I said, this isn't to the tee everyday, but this is a typical day. Looks like a lot of food but it is pretty low cal, eating like this along with training it is impossible to put on fat.