Tonight's Dinner & Snacks

I'm pretty thankful that I enjoy healthy-ish food. It would be a lot harder to maintain physique and training intensity if I didn't primarily eat lean chicken and turkey, enjoy oatmeal with protein powder, prefer my veggies grilled and have a strong dislike for most candies. That said, obviously you can do without any of these and still train hard and be healthy, but what I have found works for my body is following a *mostly* "healthy" eating plan. (Please note: I believe a lot of  eating plans are "healthy"... it's really about finding the one best suited for your body)

I haven't yet become brave enough to put a lot of variety in my diet to see how it affects my training. At some point I would like to. I am definitely not as strict as many fitness models or competitors. Whenever I view their "typical" daily diet on Bodybuilding.com -- or any other site that profiles and details such things -- their diets mainly (and I am not joking) are limited to:

• Lean chicken/turkey
• Fish (mostly tilapia and some grilled salmon)
• Veggies 
• Oatmeal
• Almonds
• Rice cakes with PB
• Brown Rice
• Egg whites
• Sweet Potato
• Small amount of fruit (banana pre-workout being the most common)

Now, I enjoy a lot of things on this list, but I definitely could not eat a combination of this every day. Even though I don't value variety that much, I most definitely need to have some "cheat type" foods in there. I try to make healthier versions of sweets such as Jamie Eason's Cinnamon Protein Bread and  Layne Norton's Brownies. But I also allow myself veggie chips, grits (since I'm in the south!) and PB Ice Cream (as we all know I love!) once in a while.

                                            

Tonight's Dinner: Grilled Chicken and Veggies                                      

One thing that I've learned from Ryan is that you can eat these sorts of things (amount depends on your body) and have it not negatively affect your training or physique. Now sure, if I were dieting down for a competition or a shoot then I would have to watch this a lot more closely. But if what I'm trying to do is build muscle and stay lean, its the overall diet that matters and not that I eat from the list above every day without exception.

Tonight's Snack Part I

Tonight's Snack Part II

At some point I may test out a stricter diet, just to experiment and see. But my feeling is I won't enjoy it enough to make a lifestyle change out of it...and that's the important part.