nutrition for competition

Question
I am a 20 year old student who would like to start training for the npc bikini
competition. Maybe as a step towards doing a fitness competition. I'm 5'4 and
weigh 110 pds. I work out 4 days a week, chest/triceps on Mondays,
back/biceps on Tuesdays, Wednesdays off, legs/abs Thursdays, and
shoulders on Fridays. It usually takes 45 minutes to an hour. When it comes to
nutrition I have no idea how much I should be eating or what I should be
eating. Right now I eat the typical pop-tarts and sandwich college diet. My
goal is to have athletic smooth muscles for competition.  

Answer
Whitley-

congrats on your choice to train for soemthing :) thats great to hear not enough people do.

As far as diet I would keep it simple right now. You just need to make a change from the so called college diet you speak of, to one based in real foods. That's going to make a huge difference slowly switch to that until you can make that habit and you will see huge changes without having to get complicated.

I would shift you to a more fat and protein based plan. In the stead of the ineffective and unhealthy low fat carb reliant diet. I would have you shift your grains, breads etc to green leafy veggies and a few fruits a day.   We must have fat to simply have basic life function in a healthy manner. I would make your eating as varied  as possible, meaning lots of variety of real whole foods. Things that grow outside and live outside, veggies, fish, cow, pigs, nuts, seeds berries fruit, eggs etc.. Thing you would find in nature. The day you find a bread tree is the day that should be a staple in your diet. Its very hard not to lose weight by just eating real foods in variety especially when the majority of it is protein and fat.

Later you can add those foods in for targeted reasons to put on muscular body weight etc.

Phil Stevens

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