Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (25 page)

EATING 101: FOOD CHOICES AND HOW TO BUILD YOUR MEALS

W
e want to make your new style of eating as simple as possible. We know that there will be an adjustment period, but this approach should be the
least
restrictive diet you've ever tried. For that reason, you have all the freedom to choose the foods you want. In this section we provide an extensive list of foods to choose from to satisfy meal composition and macronutrient requirements during the various phases in this program.

As should be very clear by now, our utmost goal is to teach you as much as possible about training and nutrition over the course of the program. This way, when you are no longer our Padawan,
^*
you will be able to maintain your new physique by instinct, knowledge, and familiarity.

To that end, while we'll give you a few examples of meals, we are literally giving you
all
the tools necessary to create healthy, physique-friendly meals for yourself, every single day. Remember, part of being Alpha is being self-sufficient—and the ability to feed yourself is a basic human function that has been lost on the men of the world. As an Alpha, it'll be your job to help reverse the trend. (You should probably learn how to cook, too, but that's another book altogether.)

At this time, we would like to introduce you to your new favorite thing: MyPlate by Livestrong.com (www.livestrong.com/myplate). Livestrong.com has one of the most comprehensive food databases in the world, including listings for every food we include on the following lists—and nearly every food we didn't! MyPlate uses that database to tell you the breakdown of the nutritional content.

For any food you select from the list (or elsewhere), simply go to the website and type in the name of the food and how much you ate; MyPlate will do the rest. In addition to telling you the calorie content and exactly how many grams of carbs, fat, and protein are in the food, MyPlate can act as your food journal—just set up an account (it's free), and you can save your meals.

In order to get the most accurate information, you
will
need to measure your food, either by weighing it on a food scale (recommended) or making a general estimate (don't be so lazy). Sure, this is a pain in the ass for the first week or so, but it's a process that has tremendous long-term benefit: by creating your meals in this way, you will begin to develop an uncanny sense of what a serving size should look like for your body and your goals, even as they change.

Think of yourself as Daniel-san in
The Karate Kid
—we're like Mr. Miyagi, making you do seemingly mundane and pointless tasks, but just when you're thinking we've been wasting your time going all wax-on, wax-off, it turns out—
bam
—we taught you karate.
^*
Yeah, that's basically what's going on here.

We should mention that if you're consuming a food that has nutrition information on the package, there's no need to check the site—always rely on that information for the most accurate nutrition facts. But you should still go ahead and log it on the site for your records.

Finally,
please
recognize that for reasons pertaining equally to sanity and spatial constraints, we can't list every food you can eat—that's what MyPlate is for. The lists below cover only a fraction of the foods you can eat while on the program; these are just a few dozen items of each type that we eat regularly. Keep in mind that the nutritional guidelines are less concerned with
what
you eat than they are with
when
you eat it.

Engineering the Alpha was designed this way so that people of
any
dietary discipline can do the program. Whether you're paleo or vegan, gluten free or a pescatarian, as long as you get the correct number of calories and each macronutrient, and you stick to the meal-timing recommendations, you can eat whatever you like. Within reason.
^*

We're giving you a lot of autonomy here, so be smart and make Alpha decisions.

 

 
CALORIE AND MACRONUTRIENT REQUIREMENTS (OR, HOW MUCH TO EAT)

Determining Your Daily Calories

First, we need to figure out your daily caloric need—the basic food intake you'd need to stay exactly as you are now. Obviously, this is just a starting point that we will manipulate to transform you into an Alpha.

There are all sorts of formulas to determine this (most are not very good), and it's important to recognize that no calorie formula is perfect. But having a formula that helps you determine how much you should be eating is one of the most effective ways to keep you on track without confusion. To that end, Roman has spent the last ten years testing and tweaking custom calorie formulas to come up with a chart that we have found to be exponentially more accurate and effective for fat loss than the others.

To determine your maintenance caloric intake for Engineering the Alpha, we'll be using the following chart:

 

 

To use the above chart, you must first find out your body fat percentage and your LBM. As a reminder, here's how to figure your LBM:

1. Figure out your body fat percentage.

2. Subtract your body fat percentage from 100. This is your fat-free mass.

3. Multiply your fat-free mass (as a percentage) by your body weight. This result is your LBM.

Now, looking at the chart, you see a pretty big range; someone with low body fat is going to eat more calories than someone with very high body fat. The reason for this is rate of fat loss—the more fat you have on your body, the faster you can lose it. Moreover, the more of it you can lose
without
sacrificing LBM. Therefore, you can consume fewer calories and still have a great rate of fat loss without really affecting the metabolic processes responsible for losing fat and gaining lean muscle. After all, if you go too low on calories, your fat loss can slow to a crawl and gaining muscle can become increasingly difficult. It's the whole reason why we're making sure your hormones are optimized so your body can make the types of changes that you want to experience.

In any event, once you know your body fat and LBM, simply find your percentage on the chart and multiply the corresponding number by your LBM. This number is your
maintenance
caloric intake.

Let's take your average two-hundred-pound guy who is 20 percent body fat. We'll call this man Steve.

    
200 pounds x 20% body fat = 40 pounds of body fat

    
200 pounds – 40 pounds of fat = 160 pounds of LBM

    
160 x 14 (because our 200-pounder is between 19 and 22 percent body fat) = 2,240 calories per day for Steve

 

 
PRIME: THE DIET

Determine Your Daily Caloric Intake During Prime

Of course, you're not interested in maintaining; you want to lose fat and gain muscle—during Prime, you're going to achieve the former and set yourself up for the latter.

For this phase, you're going to adjust your daily caloric intake as follows:

 

• 
To determine your calories for workout days, subtract 300 from your maintenance calories.

• 
To determine your calories for non-workout days, subtract 500 calories.

 

So Steve would be eating 1,940 calories per day on workout days and 1,740 on non-workout days.

Once you've done that, we can move on to figuring out how much of each macronutrient to eat.

 

 
MACRONUTRIENT BREAKDOWN

Protein

Protein intake is determined by your lean body mass, and during this phase you'll be eating less protein than at any other time of the program. One of the goals of Prime is to minimize insulin production, and eating too much protein can actually create an insulin spike. That's because the amino acids in protein can signal your pancreas to produce insulin.
^*

Protein intake will be set as follows:

    
Workout days: 0.8 grams protein per pound of LBM

    
Non-workout days: 0.7 grams protein per pound of LBM

Let's use Steve as an example again. Remember, our two-hundred-pound man with 20 percent body fat has an LBM of 160 pounds. Given that information:

    
160 x 0.8 = 128 grams of protein on workout days

    
160 x 0.7 = 112 grams of protein on non-workout days

Protein has 4 calories per gram, so that works out to 512 calories from protein on workout days. If you want to think of calories like a bank account, here's where Steve would currently stand on workout days:

    
Beginning balance: 1,940 calories

    
Protein: –512 calories

    
Remaining balance: 1,428 calories

Carbs

We've already discussed carbs in a general sense, but let's look at them in terms of calories. Like protein, carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram.

So during Prime that would look like this:

Weeks 1–2

• 
Workout days: 30 grams (120 calories)

• 
Non-workout days: 0 grams (0 calories)

Week 3

• 
Workout days: 75 grams (300 calories)

• 
Non-workout days: 0 grams (0 calories)

Week 4

• 
Workout days: 100 grams (400 calories)

• 
Non-workout days: 50 grams (200 calories)

Going back to Steve's calorie balance on training days:

    
Beginning balance: 1,940 calories

    
Protein: –512 calories

    
Carbs: –120 calories

    
Remaining balance: 1,308 calories

Fat

At this point, you know your daily calories and have subtracted the caloric values of both your protein consumption and your carb intake. Now, you still have a balance of a few hundred calories; these will come from fat sources—and yes, that generally equates to a lot of fat. But, as you know by now, if you're getting healthy fats from quality sources like steak, eggs, and salmon, you're taking another step on the path toward hormonal optimization.