How To Eat Over 7,000 Mostly Clean Calories In A Day

[totalrecomp]

Since my diet is so controversial to some I wanted to quantify my current results with a DEXA scan - and it had me at 285.5lbs. at 10.5%.

I had this at BodySpec instead or DEXA Fit. I believe the body fat percentage is incorrectly high based on visuals, precious DEXA scans, and the fact I still have defined glutes, and they tell you themselves it can be a few percent off in either direction. Based on previous scans I expected to weigh 280-281lbs. so it was also incorrectly high there. But I'll certainly take 285.5lbs.!

I'm going to drop a few screenshot from my report and physique pictures from this morning.

Below is the visual color coding of lean and fat tissue. As you can tell from the lack of blue there's not much fat.

Below is the bone density report. My bone density has been off the top of the chart for years.

Thank you for posting this Z-score % reference. I had one of these on some lab work and had no point of reference other than the "Normal Range" they provided. I was a 0.9 so I am denser than 69-93% of the gen pop, so it turns out all those people telling me how dense I have been my whole life were right! Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner(which will probably have too much fat in it.)

 

[madg]

I do some..."unconventional" things to stay at 250+ (5'9) and fairly lean but I rarely mention them because some skinny fat who started lifting two weeks ago would promptly lecture me about how "you're doing it all wrong bro".
I'm too old and tired to put up with this crap.

Yep and this is the reason many big guys bs the small ones

Ppl not understand that and just want to judge

I agree brother i have done my fair share too

 

[juggy38]

When I was playing ball in college, I’d eat a Tony’s Walmart pizza every day after 6pm dinner. They were 2.79 for the pepperoni.

And Arby’s had the pick 5 for 5.95. I smuggled them into the library every evening. Dans diet doesn’t surprise me. Real life growth requires calories.

5-10 at 241lbs…I was eating shit that would send some people to the ICU lol.

 

[danieltx]

When I was playing ball in college, I’d eat a Tony’s Walmart pizza every day after 6pm dinner. They were 2.79 for the pepperoni.

And Arby’s had the pick 5 for 5.95. I smuggled them into the library every evening. Dans diet doesn’t surprise me. Real life growth requires calories.

5-10 at 241lbs…I was eating shit that would send some people to the ICU lol.

If I tried to do this volume in 100% clean food it wouldn't work. My digestion would get hampered quickly.

If guys have been active regularly that last few years then they've seen me post detailed days of eating like this and they know I've always done it this way. It's a method of eating that's nutrient-rich, that I enjoy, that produces great gains, and that I can do indefinitely. I still get hungry regularly at 280lbs. It's my perfect bulking diet and I share it because some part of it will be useful to someone out there. I got this far by reading posts like these so this is my way of giving back.

 

[Mufasa123]

When I was playing ball in college, I’d eat a Tony’s Walmart pizza every day after 6pm dinner. They were 2.79 for the pepperoni.

And Arby’s had the pick 5 for 5.95. I smuggled them into the library every evening. Dans diet doesn’t surprise me. Real life growth requires calories.

5-10 at 241lbs…I was eating shit that would send some people to the ICU lol.

I think I skipped 7 pages of apparent judging and bickering but your post was me as well back in college. Sure, plenty of eggs and meat and veggies/rice but if everything else is in place, calories are the absolute limiting factor. If that was 2 for $3 fast food burgers...I ate them. Pizza sure. All you can eat BBQ after we hit the gym, hell yes and we'd have a few pitchers of beer too. Hell, I've met world champions (not bbing) who trained in the sun drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Russians dominated the sport of OL and lived on vodka. Ideal? Maybe not, but all of them damn well got enough protein and calories...and they fucking won real shit which is a lot more notable than what I assume most of us on this forum have managed, monk clean diet or not.

I'm older now but one thing I've always seen with few exceptions is that the people who are highly critical and espouse these ultra clean diets...are nearly always small. We have some of the rare exceptions here but putting down 7k plus calories of clean food daily on a consistent basis is damn hard and basically you need to be gifted in that regard as well as adopting a professional eating machine lifestyle. I personally always had to bring in more calorie dense food over time (not monk clean and often much worse than what's listed here). And that's closer to the rule than exception when hitting these intake numbers. Granted I never chose to or wanted to max out my size but a lot of people who talk are the ones who never got very big and have never actually eaten the amounts required to get there, otherwise they'd know it's not that easy.

 

[Doitagain]

Yep and this is the reason many big guys bs the small ones

Ppl not understand that and just want to judge

I agree brother i have done my fair share too

I guess it'd raise a scandal to disclose that my post-wo carbs entirely consist of dried apricots and figs

 

[Thehulk95]

If I tried to do this volume in 100% clean food it wouldn't work. My digestion would get hampered quickly.

If guys have been active regularly that last few years then they've seen me post detailed days of eating like this and they know I've always done it this way. It's a method of eating that's nutrient-rich, that I enjoy, that produces great gains, and that I can do indefinitely. I still get hungry regularly at 280lbs. It's my perfect bulking diet and I share it because some part of it will be useful to someone out there. I got this far by reading posts like these so this is my way of giving back.

Not only has this approach worked incredibly well for you, but I bet it makes life so much more enjoyable for yourself and those around you. Whether guys wanna admit it or not eating nothing but lean protein and rice really sucks and you end up missing out on a lot of quality meals with friends and family. Having a diet that allows you to eat something outside of stereotypical bro foods and still make progress is a lot more fun and sustainable than the alternative. Sure not everyone can do this, but if you can and still be 10% bf or less at 280+ why the hell wouldn’t you??????

 

[SouthernMuscle]

I guess it'd raise a scandal to disclose that my post-wo carbs entirely consist of dried apricots and figs

WRONG.

supposed to be eating dates

 

[danieltx]

I think I skipped 7 pages of apparent judging and bickering but your post was me as well back in college. Sure, plenty of eggs and meat and veggies/rice but if everything else is in place, calories are the absolute limiting factor. If that was 2 for $3 fast food burgers...I ate them. Pizza sure. All you can eat BBQ after we hit the gym, hell yes and we'd have a few pitchers of beer too. Hell, I've met world champions (not bbing) who trained in the sun drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Russians dominated the sport of OL and lived on vodka. Ideal? Maybe not, but all of them damn well got enough protein and calories...and they fucking won real shit which is a lot more notable than what I assume most of us on this forum have managed, monk clean diet or not.

I'm older now but one thing I've always seen with few exceptions is that the people who are highly critical and espouse these ultra clean diets...are nearly always small. We have some of the rare exceptions here but putting down 7k plus calories of clean food daily on a consistent basis is damn hard and basically you need to be gifted in that regard as well as adopting a professional eating machine lifestyle. I personally always had to bring in more calorie dense food over time (not monk clean and often much worse than what's listed here). And that's closer to the rule than exception when hitting these intake numbers. Granted I never chose to or wanted to max out my size but a lot of people who talk are the ones who never got very big and have never actually eaten the amounts required to get there, otherwise they'd know it's not that easy.

I don't get how people missed my diet being set up in this same 80/20 format.

My breakfast is made at home - omelette and oats. Lunch and dinner are Icon Meals - ultra clean meals from the original bodybuilding meal prep company. Intraworkout and postworkout are two of the most common clean supplements. Then I use my last meal to pile in the calories and eat the fun stuff.;

 

[madg]

I guess it'd raise a scandal to disclose that my post-wo carbs entirely consist of dried apricots and figs

Im on watermellon and pineapple kick

 

[Doitagain]

WRONG.

supposed to be eating dates

Yeah Milos would be totally ashamed of me.

 

[SouthernMuscle]

Yeah Milos would be totally ashamed of me.

Not Milos, me. I prefer dates so obv you should too

 

[totalrecomp]

WRONG.

supposed to be eating dates.

And when you hit a plateau to switch to the date pieces rolled in oat flour, more complex carbs brah!

 

[totalrecomp]

If I tried to do this volume in 100% clean food it wouldn't work. My digestion would get hampered quickly.

If guys have been active regularly that last few years then they've seen me post detailed days of eating like this and they know I've always done it this way. It's a method of eating that's nutrient-rich, that I enjoy, that produces great gains, and that I can do indefinitely. I still get hungry regularly at 280lbs. It's my perfect bulking diet and I share it because some part of it will be useful to someone out there. I got this far by reading posts like these so this is my way of giving back.

When you were eating much lower total calories were you "stricter" with the food source? Was there a calorie number that you hit when you said: Ya, I can't do this 100% whole food "clean?" Thanks.

 

[SouthernMuscle]

And when you hit a plateau to switch to the date pieces rolled in oat flour, more complex carbs brah!

View attachment 203269

Gross

Chopped dates in dextrose

 

[danieltx]

When you were eating much lower total calories were you "stricter" with the food source? Was there a calorie number that you hit when you said: Ya, I can't do this 100% whole food "clean?" Thanks.

I definitely was stricter when calories were lower. But one of things I read in the archives here - and I'm confident I've read more of the archives than anyone which is why I've progressed more than 90% of guys who have ever joined here - is that the bigger guys got the more junk they were regularly eating to maintain it and keep getting bigger.

One of the key factors in how freely I can eat is my muscle mass - the bigger I've gotten the crazier my metabolism has become and that's still the case at 37 years old. Trust me - it still surprises me what I can get away with diet-wise and still wake up with ripped glutes at this size.

I don't recall exactly but I'd say it was probably around 6,000 calories that I knew I had to change things up - the volume of food per meal was getting to be too much, hampering digestion and leaving my constantly distended. One of those ways I got from @Big A was adding shakes to meals. I'd do my whole food meal then wash it down with a shake of say 25g protein and 25g carbs.

But I do think there's a metabolic benefit - not a gains benefit, just a metabolic benefit - to eating whole food over drinking shakes. So I haven't added shakes to meals for the last two years, just found ways to get easier digesting foods in.

Since I know some will ask this, the only time I do shakes is intraworkout (50-75g carbs and 36-48g protein from Karbolyn and PeptoPro) and posworkout (75g protein and 75g carbs from ON hydro whey and Karbolyn) and usually at my last meal on training days since food is so high those days. The size of that shake varies based on the macros of the meal. I also add one scoop hydrolzyed whey in my morning oats to get protein in ASAP.

 

[Flex500]

while our goals may not be the same, I always love these threads by @danieltx!

 

[Mufasa123]

One of the key factors in how freely I can eat is my muscle mass - the bigger I've gotten the crazier my metabolism has become and that's still the case at 37 years old. Trust me - it still surprises me what I can get away with diet-wise and still wake up with ripped glutes at this size.

So true and I think this really illustrates that at some level the human body is a calorie burning machine and it's much more pronounced the more muscle you have. I think Luki has made the point that it's really hard to get or add substantial fat when your body is burning up so many calories just to hold what it has. Providing a diet isn't a constant absolute unbalanced and inadequate shit show, calorie intake vs expenditure is the core driver.

 

[Heath82]

Does dexa and other scans count water weight as lean body mass?

 

[TheOtherOne55]

I definitely was stricter when calories were lower. But one of things I read in the archives here - and I'm confident I've read more of the archives than anyone which is why I've progressed more than 90% of guys who have ever joined here - is that the bigger guys got the more junk they were regularly eating to maintain it and keep getting bigger.

One of the key factors in how freely I can eat is my muscle mass - the bigger I've gotten the crazier my metabolism has become and that's still the case at 37 years old. Trust me - it still surprises me what I can get away with diet-wise and still wake up with ripped glutes at this size.

I don't recall exactly but I'd say it was probably around 6,000 calories that I knew I had to change things up - the volume of food per meal was getting to be too much, hampering digestion and leaving my constantly distended. One of those ways I got from @Big A was adding shakes to meals. I'd do my whole food meal then wash it down with a shake of say 25g protein and 25g carbs.

But I do think there's a metabolic benefit - not a gains benefit, just a metabolic benefit - to eating whole food over drinking shakes. So I haven't added shakes to meals for the last two years, just found ways to get easier digesting foods in.

Since I know some will ask this, the only time I do shakes is intraworkout (50-75g carbs and 36-48g protein from Karbolyn and PeptoPro) and posworkout (75g protein and 75g carbs from ON hydro whey and Karbolyn) and usually at my last meal on training days since food is so high those days. The size of that shake varies based on the macros of the meal. I also add one scoop hydrolzyed whey in my morning oats to get protein in ASAP.

I bolded two hugely important points. I've tried to stay out of this thread because its a shit show. There are two ends of the spectrum, clean clean and a little non clean clean. BOTH can get you huge and lean. Daniel was giving one perspective that works. Daniel can do this because he trains ridiculously hard at the gym and has 99.9% of all the other factors lined up. All his i's are dotted and t's are crossed. If another person on this board tried to do this, they would fail as they are not as buttoned up as him.

That being said and back to the bolded parts, nothing allows you to eat more food than being more muscular. The bigger you get, the more your body becomes a furnace, burning through and assimilating allll nutrition. Your caloric demands are sooo high that just to maintain that level of muscle mass, you can truly eat what you want. When your maintenance is 5k+ its actually HARD to get fat. I remember @Shelby had a thread on here like 10 years ago saying one of the best fat burners was MORE muscle mass. At the time, i didnt fully understand what that meant. I was 220lbs lean and was still just trying to grow and not get fat. And as 220 turned to 250, then 270, then 290, then 310... you start seeing it up close. I could eat 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's, 2 sleeves of oreos and a protein shake and that wont even touch the scale. Im not saying i do that, but when the goal is growth and you are realistically TRYING to get 7k calories down, large amounts of food need to be eaten every 2-3hrs. Trying to do that with plain chicken and rice is verrry difficult. You NEED to find quick digesting calories, stuff that allows you to get in the proper macros yet still allows you to eat in 2hrs. Shit gets very difficult and tiresome. Basically, you can get away with a lot. Listen to Jamie Johal from some past interviews...James Hollingshead too. Both have talked about their ability to eat 85% clean food then throw some trash on top to stay in a surplus. For instance, right now im trying to stay on my plan and eat pretty clean food. But when i get that craving to crush some extra cals, i've been housing fruit. Extra carbs from apples and grapes and berries. Yeah, if i want a fuckin milkshake i'll have one but at this moment im craving sweets so i need to knock that out by other means.

And Daniel's recommendation (from Big A) is a life saver from me. I have 6 meals right now at 75g of protein. If i try to do that with meat that is sooo much food volume and that not even adding in the carbs and fats yet. Therefore, i will do 50g of protein from meat and get the rest in from a shake or egg whites. My shake is most likely is a blend of whey iso/egg white/beef iso/casein that i make with TrueNutrition. I want a slower digestion, one thats comparable to whole food rather than something super fast like just whey iso. I only incorporate this in when im pretty maxed out on appetite...ie now. Food is sky high so i just need creative ways to eat every 2-3 hrs.