michael raiti wrote:

>From:    Todd 
>  I may consume 1,500-2,000 kcals at that meal,
>
>Todd,
>How much time passes between when you finish dinner
>and when you go to sleep?
>  
>

It varies, but probably four or so hours.

>Did you have to work up to eating that much in one
>meal?  How did you transition?
>  
>
It feels a little...odd, at first.  I have to make myself eat as much as 
I comfortably can, which is different from the usual dieter's 
preoccupation with eating as little as one comfortably can.  Even as a 
paleo dieter, I could never completely ignore the amount of food I was 
eating, if I wanted to lose weight.

>The guy who wrote the Warrior Diet (I don't remember
>his name now) stated (in a body building mag) that
>low-carb diets don't work. (I don't remember if he
>made a similar statement in the book.)
>
Ori Hofmekler.  I think low-carb diets don't work well for bodybuilders, 
for a number of reasons.  One is that these guys spend a lot of hours in 
the gym doing multiple sets, and they therefore require more glucose for 
all this anaerobic exertion than a normal person would.  Also, their 
goal is to be in an anabolic state much of the time, to "bulk up", and 
that requires insulin.  On the other hand, bodybuilders often go through 
cycles of "bulking" and "cutting", i.e., trying to lose fat without 
losing muscle, and during the "cutting" phase they may do a ketogenic 
diet.  Their challenge is to bulk up without gaining too much fat, and 
to cut without losing too much muscle.  The reality is that one will 
always gain *some* fat when building muscle, and one will always lose 
*some* muscle when losing fat.  The trick is to optimize these, and 
bodybuilders are all about that.

Note:  Some people will jump in and say how they lost fat and gained 
muscle at the same time when they went to lowcarb or paleo.  I think 
this can happen in certain circumstances, but not to bodybuilders who 
are already beyond their natural genetic limits for muscle mass (thanks 
to steroids).

> It seems to me
>that there is a limit to the amount of grams of
>protein that can be digested from one meal and be
>handled comfortably in the stomach.  As I understand
>it, eating a large quantity of protein will result in
>a decrease in the percentage that is assimilated.
>

That's right, although there seem to be a lot of unanswered questions 
about how much, under what conditions.  I've seen research that 
indicates that fasting improves protein utilization (and nutrient 
utilization in general).


>  I
>could imagine eating a pound of meat at a sitting. 
>That would be (16 oz x 7 grams/ounce = ) 112 grams of
>protein which is about 450 calories.  Do you then eat
>the rest mainly in fat?  How much carbs do you take
>in?
>  
>

Well, suppose I have a pound of cooked ground beef, 85% lean, as is 
often sold in supermarkets.  Not the most appetizing thing, but okay as 
an example.  According to USDA that's 1,132 kcals, and 117g protein.  
Throw in a large sweet potato and that's 680 more kcals, so I'm up to 
1,812, with 37g of carbs and 4 more grams of protein.  If I put a little 
butter on that, as I probably will, that's another 100 kcals or so from 
fat, so in all likelihood my meal comes to 2,000 kcal.  If I choose a 
more appetizing cut of meat, such as a nice eye of the round roast, it's 
a bit leaner, so my meat total would come to 734 kcals, and the protein 
would be about 132g.  With the sweet potato, that meal would come to 
1,600 kcals or so.  I might add some more carbs by having a banana for 
dessert.

Todd Moody
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