Diet comes from ancient greek “diata” meaning “way of life, regiment, dwelling” and doesn’t limit itself to what we ingest, but to our whole lifestyle. For bodybuilding, strength and health, we see thousands of different diet and lifestyle that, if they are honest and helpful toward the people yearning to learn, more or less the same in their principles.

Yet, like everything, lifestyle, goals, context, ethnicity, genetic and personal preferences will give in time tendencies and customisation, since, after all, we are all the same, but with some differences.

After more than a decade of bodybuilding, half of that being a professional personal trainer and sport nutritionist, I had all the time to experiment, see what works good, not so good, doesn’t work at all, on me and others.

Here is my bodybuilding diet, who is basically the same since about 3 years and barely different from years ago.

Overview of my Diet

For bodybuilding, strength and health, I eat 3 to 4 meals a day. No snacking, no special shakers, no whatever fitness influencers are saying nowadays.

My caloric total depends of my current goal (bulking, cutting) and if it’s a rest or training day. I eat less on rest days, but sometimes, I got no appetite or time on a training day, so I will pig out on a rest day when I got more time to eat to “load up”. Still, it’s not something I usually do or recommend, but it works.

I get a breakfast, lunch, sometimes a little afternoon snack pre or post training, and dinner. That’s it.

I prioritize whole food, organic, local, free range, GMO free, etc. You get it, if I can get high quality, I do it.

In a sense, I follow Ray Peat guidelines for my bodybuilding diet, and just tweak them to suit my lifestyle.

I do my best to eat at the same hours and that’s about it.

Breakdown of my diet for Strength and Health 

Before we go any further, if you are a beginner and a total neophyte, I suggest you read these articles first to have basic but solid understanding and knowledge about the subject :

My Ultimate Diet Guide in 8 Steps

10 Reasons Everyone should Eat Healthy

Bodybuilding Breakfast for Strength and Health :

For breakfast, I get coffee from italian coffee machine, and ground coffee. Along with french brewing machine, this is the best way to do your coffee both for taste and health. This gets me micro-nutrients, guts clearing/activation and allows me to drink something hot to get started. I like to get two full cups, one before meal, one after, where I will get the supplements in.

With that, I will make a mixture of fat free cottage cheese, whey protein powder, cinnamon powder with dark chocolate squares on the side. That way, I get proteins, carbs and fat, good amount of calcium and others micro-nutrients such as copper and a pro thyroid meal.

To top it off, I will add some fruits, either dried ones (I like figs) or whole fresh ones, (banana, pears, orange) or mixed (apple, strawberry,…) or jam. Along with many vitamins, such as A, C and E, I will also get more sucrose (carb molecule of glucose and fructose), which are very good for quick available energy and for liver.

I don’t write the quantities since they vary if I am bulking, recomping or cutting. You will have them all at the end of the article.

Le French Lunch for Strength and Health :

As a french born and raised man, I was blessed with good food and nice recipes.

One of the easiest and fastest thing to eat we do is “jambon beurre” sandwich. We take a baguette bread, either full or half of it, split it, put butter, ham, emmental cheese and some lettuce salad with sauce, and voila, nice sandwich.

That’s what I eat for months, either making it myself or buying it in a bakery when I was working a heavy manual labor job, along with an orange or two clementines as a dessert. As simple and weird as it looks, that’s actually a great, fast meal idea, and here is why :

First, cheese and bread proteins allow to create a full aminogramme profile, not missing any amino acid, essential, non-essential or semi-essential. As such, it’s a great, cheap, vegetarian friendly way to get high amounts of proteins in.

Second, you get some simple and complex carbs with the bread and fruits, so no high spike of insuline, no crash later, energy levels will be consistent and solid for hours, since both your liver and muscles will get what they need.

Furthermore, the cheese contains saturated fats, which are essential for muscle building, health and endocrine function. On the micro-nutrients side of things, you get everything from vitamin A to K, a good calcium/phosphorus ratio, also a good amount of insoluble and soluble fibers. No tummy doing a hurty for you.

One little problem could arise, and that’s the iron load, which is even better absorbed with the vitamin C in the fruit, but you can easily counteract that with another coffee or tea with this meal. No heavy metal overload, hypothyroidism and tired liver with that !

My Diet Glorious Dinner :

After a gruesome workout or a long day of working, my diet allows for a huge diner to enjoy.

I will prepare 12 whole eggs, cooked in butter or olive oil, a 200-250gr chunk of lean meat (turkey, chicken, beef,…), and about half a kilo of baked potatoes or same from cooked rice or pasta.

I specify the quantities because this meal alone is a great testament to what you need to do as a bodybuilder : you wanna get big, you ought to eat big. 

This meal alone represent about 2000kcal in one sitting. Yes, it’s a lot, no I don’t care. Yes you can work your way up and get used to it, no it’s not unhealthy.

What I find unhealthy is to always carry a dozen of tupperware and eat like a bird the whole day, and then complain about digestive system inflammation or feeling bloated. No shit bro. It is better to be doing one thing at a time than to try and multi task; either study, work, train, or sit on your ass and eat, relax, play, read or chill.

Our ancestors from Ancient Greece would snack or fast in the morning, take a light late lunch, and then have a big dinner. Our ancestors from Scandinavia, what most people call “vikings”, ate only two meals, one in the morning, one in the evening. Inmates also eat thrice a day. Our bodybuilding forefathers from the bronze and silver era also would eat 3 times a day, and as for the golden era ones, most would copy that, with maybe one or two added snacks when they tried to bulk up.

If they all did this, it’s not out of luck. Success leaves clues, follow them.

My Bodybuilding Diet for Strength and Health Summary :

Light, easy breakfast, practical lunch, huge glorious dinner. Rince and repeat. Day in day out, for months, for years.

My bodybuilding diet in a nutshell.

To give you more precision, I used an online diet calculator, it’s called Chronometer and is quite good. I don’t use it, it was just for the example. I still recommend it though.

Macro-nutrients wise, it looks like that :

As for micro-nutrients, they look like that :

I hope this article was of help to any of you readers, and I also hope it made you understand that you do not need to overthink it. Bodybuilding, muscle building, getting stronger, is a marathon not a sprint. Better to have an OK training and diet for years, than an ultra optimized totally unenjoyable and draining lifestyle for a few months.

My bodybuilding diet is exactly it, for me, my context, my goals, my preferences, my lifestyle, my body. You can inspire yourself from it, but don’t copy it blindly, you don’t have my genes and gut flora.

I drink about a liter of coffee per day. Is that a lot ? Twelves eggs a day ? Shocking !

Keep strength and health the goal, not one above the other. They stack, as we say.

Your light keeper,

Hersovyac.