You don’t need to worry about limiting your diet to certain foods for contest prep (yep—the tilapia/asparagus bodybuilder diet was founded on broscience), but there are a few things to keep in mind when dieting with Avatar:
1. Try to stick to the "sustainable" or "moderate" weight loss settings and use the "aggressive" weight loss setting sparingly. To retain the most muscle possible while keeping training intensity high, you want to diet on as many calories as possible. Being in too large of a calorie deficit for too long can compromise muscle mass and workout quality.
2. Give yourself plenty of time to diet. People typically underestimate how much body fat they need to lose to be stage lean, and you’ll want to avoid crash dieting the last few weeks. In fact, it’s better to be ready a few weeks early so that you’ll have time to test peak week protocols (see point 7 below).
3. You’ll want to manipulate the carb/fat slider based on energy and hunger levels. Avatar will give you optimal protein recommendations based on your lean mass and weight loss setting, but you’ll be able to adjust your ratio of carbs to fat based on preference. It’s common for some people to set their carb/fat preference toward carbs so that they’ll have more energy for intense workouts (since carbs are the body’s preferred form of fuel during hard training). On the other hand, some people feel more satiated by a higher fat diet and choose to pull the slider more toward fats. The optimal ratio of carbs to fat is highly individualized and will have no impact on weight loss.
4. Fill up on high fiber, high volume foods. As your contest date approaches and calories drop, you’ll likely start to feel pretty hungry. To alleviate some of that hunger, try to incorporate fiber-rich foods like vegetables, oats, and fruit, and volume-rich foods like Greek yogurt and various types of hot cereals.
5. Make your macros stretch as far as possible by making Avatar recipes (insert link to recipes here) and using calorie free foods and condiments where you can.
6. Ramp up cardio strategically throughout your prep as needed and try to avoid doing excessive amounts. There is no need to start out doing cardio every day. Instead, start out doing the minimum amount possible (even zero) and let your diet do the work. As weight loss begins to slow down, you’ll be able to add extra bouts of cardio in to jump start fat loss again. If you start out doing a lot of cardio, you won’t be able to increase it much.
7. If you don’t have the experience needed to make your own peak week and show day plan, we suggest hiring a coach for the last 4-6 weeks of your prep who can help you. Typically, macros are manipulated on peak week to maximize the appearance of muscle fullness, and this plan is very unique to the athlete. The exact protocol used (for example, whether carbs are depleted and then loaded) is prepared by someone who can objectively view your physique and who has an understanding of how your body reacts to food and carbs specifically.