On the recommendation of several people that I lift/train with, I met with a nutrition consultant yesterday. I tried this route once before in the past (probably about three years ago?) but it wasn't a great fit and I didn't get a ton out of it. This one makes a far better impression than the previous one, so that's a good start. Advantages:
* Competed in bodybuilding at heavyweight (her off-season weight is in the 180s, which I relate to far more than having someone in the 100-130 range program for me)
* Meal plans have way more choice built in (my last one was essentially "eat this every day").
* Caloric breakdown comes with the meal plan, so I can actually see what I'm getting (versus my last one where it was just a plan and if I wanted to sate my curiousity or analytical side, had to dump everything into MFP)
* Supplement recommendations (this has become more important to me as I try to take my game up)
* Big 'ol homo (this is just a nice add-on)
I wasn't terribly happy with where my weight was sitting at but my BF% wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, so there's that. At 25% I'm an "average" person. The goal is to move me to 20%, which will put me in more of an athletic range.
My eating habits will be getting a major overhaul; I go through stages where I do quite well (although my protein has still likely been too low), but then I get busy with work and overwhelmed and fall off. Having a set plan works very well for me in terms of my lifting, so we are going to try and apply those same principles to my eating, too.
I'm hoping to be down about 20# before the start of football training, so we'll see what happens there. The long term goal is 30# over the course of the next six months, so that would put me on the field for next season at said new playing weight. This gives me a chance to run a meet preparation lifting cycle after this off-season cycle as well, prior to ideally competing in a new weight class. My current program is slated to end the week of November 21; if I run a 10-week contest prep after this, that's going to take me to January 30th...so actually, I may be better off doing another off-season cycle from November 21-January 30 and then do pre-contest from then until April 10th. This would also give me another couple months to pscyh myself up to change gyms, which wouldn't be terrible (if I do pre-contest I need to start doing band work, and if I'm going to do band work, I need to go lift with the powerlifting boys). Another off-season cycle would probably work better if I want to do another Strongwoman show January 25th as well...I'll have to chat with my pseudo-coach about this.
