Two Meal Muscle
Turning the Status Quo Standard into an actual food intake is anything but an exact science because the known science doesn't force slavery. Beyond eating nourishing foods (and, oppositely, limiting foods that don't agree with your body), there aren't many rock-steady rules. Personal preference has a heavy hand in the process. To speed things along, I'm simply going to regurgitate what I do and reverse-engineer the oddities as I inch along.
Let's inch.
1, Two meals.
I eat two meals per day. Lunch around noon. Dinner around six o'clock. Prior to lunch, I drink black coffee. This minimizes hunger pangs and doesn't impact my remainder-energy budget (coffee contains trace calories).
I eat two meals for practical reasons rather than physiological reasons. By skipping breakfast, I can eat more at dinner. This isn't magic. This is math. If I ate breakfast, I'd chew through some remainder energy intake earlier in the day.
People eat eggs, toast, potatoes, and hyper-processed cereals for breakfast. They eat sandwiches with nuclear side dishes for lunch. (What kind of lunatic invented potato salad?) They've amassed way more ⚡ than I have before dinner, meaning they have to be careful with how much ⚡ their dinners contain. Nothing wrong with this. Some people do better eating more energy in the morning.
Not me (currently).
I'd rather eat a big dinner and have more freedom at the dinner table. And by skipping breakfast, I'm simply rearranging the dominos to fall later in the day instead of earlier. This is known as “backloading.” The practical (not physiological) impact of backloading on my life is heavy because it unlocks effortless fat loss.
1.1, Lunch.
First meal is lunch around twelve o'clock noon. My lunch is consistent for long stretches of time; I like eating the same lunch on a day-to-day basis regardless of my objective. (Of course, my lunch will eventually change as my tastes change.) This is my current lunch:
- 0.5-1 oz beef liver*
- 0.25-0.5 tsp raw honey*
- 3.5 oz sardines 🥩
- 3/4 cup full-fat Greek yogurt 🥩⚡
- 1 banana ⚡
*These are small portions. Small portions don't agree with my symbol system. Such is life. Shortcuts have a price.
1.1-1, SPECIFICS.
I eat these foods for a variety of reasons, not all of which are utilitarian. In the end, foods are containers for microscopic materials the body needs like vitamins, minerals, and bacteria (seriously). Even though some foods have more beneficial subatomic particles than others, there's no complete must-eat food for adults. (The only food capable of sustaining human life by its lonesome is breast milk.)
My current lunch is a rather deliberate creation in order to pack a big nutrient punch based on my beliefs, but it's not above the law. For the most part, I see the specifics of my diet as drag-and-droppable and slave to the Standard.
For the curious, I'll indulge…
Liver is one of the most nutrient-rich foods on the planet, which is why I only eat one ounce of the stuff. More would be overkill considering I eat it every weekday.
Raw honey goes on top of the liver. Beyond making the liver taste better, raw honey also has countless health benefits.
Sardines are the top dog of canned fish. They contain omega-3 fatty acids and are a great source of proteins. They're also cheap and convenient. (Tuna and tilapia are for plebs.)
Unpasteurized sauerkraut and other unpasteurized fermented foods like kimchi are great for gut health. (Pasteurization kills the beneficial bacteria.) Canned sauerkraut in supermarkets is pasteurized. Unpasteurized sauerkraut needs to be kept cold.
Yogurt is also great for the gut. I lean toward Greek yogurt because I'm addicted to Fage (brand). No other yogurt I've tried tastes like Fage (although some have come close).
Bananas are cheap and healthy and I love how they taste with full-fat Fage.
1.1-2, PROTEINS.
Lunch contains roughly 50 grams of protein. Not ideal. If I were smart, I'd eat more protein. Perhaps add a chicken breast. Perhaps add another can of sardines. My target protein intake is 205 grams and splitting the load between both meals would be best for muscle growth.
(Seeing my protein intake on paper inspired me to eat more protein at lunch: I've recently added a chicken breast.)
Some research suggests the body can only use a limited amount of proteins (for muscular purposes) within a window of time. Any additional proteins eaten within this window will be used for energy-recycling purposes.
The ceiling appears to be 0.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight and the window of time appears to be four hours long. In other words, to maximize muscle growth, research suggests eating four meals per day (one meal every four hours) and fracturing daily protein intake somewhat equally across each meal. And yet, I only eat two meals per day. (During the most muscularly fruitful time of my life, I only ate one meal per day!)
I'm (somewhat) dismissive of this research because it was performed with protein supplements (whey protein), which have notoriously fast absorption rates. Whole foods are digested and processed slower.
Also, the ceiling isn't set in stone. For instance, your body can use more than 0.2 grams per pound within the four-hour window after a bout of muscle-based training. Perhaps even after a prolonged period of fasting, too.
Maybe I am wrong, though. Maybe I'm not eating in such a way that maximizes muscle growth. Self-awareness wins: I'm more concerned with fat loss. And for fat loss, meal frequency doesn't matter as much as the overall quantity of food consumed each day.
1.1-3, BACKLOADING.
This meal contains minimal energetic material: just enough to keep my taste buds happy and my body nourished. This is done by design to backload the majority of my high-energy food (read: 2S carb and fat) intake.
Backloading unlocks anxiety-reducing freedom at the dinner table; I eat a rather large and filling meal every night. See for yourself. When I factor out my lunch, this is what's left of the Status Quo Standard:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
Lots of lightning bolts.
Just as planned.
I generally eat healthy nutrient-dense homemade dinners, but I don't have to with how much energy I have available; I could eat pizza, nachos, and other commonly frowned-upon foods if I were smart with my portions.
I could backload even more. I could eliminate all energy nutrients from my lunch, but I don't because…
First, I usually lift weights prior to lunch. Eating some 2S carbs after muscle-based training is a good idea. Doesn't have to be directly after or within a fabled thirty-minute window of opportunity. Just after.
Second, backloading hard often backfires. I used to have an eating disorder. If I save up for a huge dinner, I will splurge and overeat. Including some energy nutrients in my lunch keeps me honest.
Third, I enjoy my lunch more when there are some energy nutrients included. Enjoyment is important.
1.2, Dinner.
Second meal is dinner around five or six o'clock at night. (I eat early, like an old person. After my second son was born, I didn't eat dinner until nine or ten o'clock at night. It was awful. Had frequent nightmares and sleep quality sunk. I like keeping some distance between my final feeding of the day and when I fall asleep.) Unlike lunch, my dinner changes every day, but the outline is always similar. Since my lunch is consistent, I always work within similar walls.
Course 1: Plants and (usually) proteins.
3 cups boiled broccoli
8oz cottage cheese 🥩⚡
This first course consists of a revolving door of plants: cabbage, asparagus, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, or some other plan carb. Usually topped with cottage cheese. I love me some cottage cheese.
Remaining:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
Course 2: Protein punchout and energy.
3 pucks grass-fed beef 🥩🥩🥩⚡⚡⚡
More than enough cheese ⚡⚡⚡
Homemade french fries (cooked in oil) ⚡⚡⚡⚡
This second course consists of a revolving door of proteins: chicken breast, chicken thighs, ground beef, salmon, or eggs. I try to punch out the remainder of my protein needs. Since I have a lot of energetic freedom, I'm not too concerned with the source. Could be lean proteins, chubby proteins, or a mixture of the two.
Alongside proteins, I'll have appropriate portions of “energy,” typically in the form of potatoes, rice, plantains, raw honey, cheese, and avocado (fats used for cooking also fall in this category). The amount depends on my protein source(s). If I'm eating chubby proteins, I'll be stingy.
Remaining:
🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡⚡
⚡⚡⚡⚡
Course 3: Dessert.
2 tbsp peanut butter ⚡⚡
1 banana ⚡
8 oz whole milk ⚡⚡
This third course is rather consistent, but if I have a “real” dessert to eat, I'll skip my “normal” dessert and eat the “real” one instead in moderation, trying to respect the energetic load.
Remaining:
🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡
Unlike my lunch, my dinner is focused on macronutrients (and pleasure) more than micronutrients (and utility). I don't have a lawyer's defense for eating most of these foods.
I eat plant carbs for fiber and volume (makes my belly feel full). I eat cottage cheese for proteins and taste. I eat meat for proteins (although I believe grass-fed meat is one of the healthier meats, certainly healthier than the genetically-modified chickens I eat).
In general, because my dinners are much more nutrient superficial, they're also much more drag-and-droppable. For instance, I'd feel somewhat guilty replacing the nutrient-dense sardines with mercury-laden canned tuna. I'd feel less guilty replacing potatoes with bread.
1.3, Status Quo stragglers.
Transforming a theoretical food intake into an actual food intake is more art than science. As you can see, there are a few straggler symbols. That's okay. Close enough. After all, I didn't account for the liver or the honey at lunch. I didn't account for the plant carbohydrates at dinner. The yogurt I eat contains 15 grams of protein per serving and not 25 grams like one 🥩 should. There are also condiments.
I don't eat the soles of rubber shoes. I spice up my meals. Sometimes. (I love dry foods.) I generally stick with no-calorie condiments and spices like mustard, hot sauce, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and red pepper flakes. I also use low(er)-calorie condiments like marinara sauces, barbeque sauces, and salsas from time to time.
These condiments aren't inherently low-calorie. You have to check the nutrition facts. Some barbeque sauces contain ten calories per tablespoon whereas others contain sixty (I owe my life to G Hughes).
This system isn't supposed to be perfect. It's a beginning, not an end. And with this beginning, eating these foods in these quantities, I'd expect to maintain the status quo.
2, Modifying the Standard.
I established the Status Quo Standard to set a baseline, similar to defining a room temperature in order to establish what's “hot” and what's “cold.” Adjusting the Status Quo Standard toward either fat loss or muscle growth is simple because there's only one thing that changes: the amount of energy I eat (at dinner).
That's all.
Just one variable shifts.
This is why I like this diet.
It's beautifully simple.