Diet for Foundation One

Just a general question - do y'all eat more calories during your Foundation One workouts?  I'm following the automated schedule - core, upper body and lower body - all just once a week.  Early on, the workouts were pretty easy, but now they are getting progressively harder so I'm wondering if I should be consuming additional calories on those days in order to aid in muscle recovery.  My brother-in-law will eat 4000 calories a day when he is doing his heavy weightlifting workouts in order to recover.  However, his workouts are more intense than mine, I'm sure, at this point. 

Also, are you able to continue to make progress with just doing each of the workouts (core, upper and lower body) once a week?  My background for strength and conditioning is primarily with weightlifting so we were often doing a certain workout 2x or 3x per week.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

49 minutes ago, Sam Jarvis said:

do y'all eat more calories during your Foundation One workouts? 

Eating during workouts gives me a stomach ache  

I'm kidding. I gotcha, Sam, and this is a really complex question. The answer depends on a million factors including your goals, current size, how much you are already eating, etc. I also doubt you and your brother-in-law are the exact same size, so it's not worth comparing his 4,000 calories to your needs. You two are also training much differently if he is doing heavy lifting and you GST. Instead of going down that rabbit hole, let's simplify. Most of the time, when questions like this arise, the solution is to return to the basics and build up from there.  When it comes to nutrition, Thrive is your answer. You won't need to count calories on that program, which is both liberating and convenient. You will also make incredible GST progress so it's a win-win: it meets your goal of progressing with GST and eliminates the issue of calorie counting.

1 hour ago, Sam Jarvis said:

Also, are you able to continue to make progress with just doing each of the workouts (core, upper and lower body) once a week?

 

I suggest this schedule of each workout once per week for at least the first month. From there, you can gradually increase your weekly workout frequencies if you'd like. Just be sure to stick with the same schedule for at least a month before adjusting. 

2 hours ago, Sam Jarvis said:

Just a general question - do y'all eat more calories during your Foundation One workouts?  I'm following the automated schedule - core, upper body and lower body - all just once a week.  Early on, the workouts were pretty easy, but now they are getting progressively harder so I'm wondering if I should be consuming additional calories on those days in order to aid in muscle recovery.  My brother-in-law will eat 4000 calories a day when he is doing his heavy weightlifting workouts in order to recover.  However, his workouts are more intense than mine, I'm sure, at this point. 

Also, are you able to continue to make progress with just doing each of the workouts (core, upper and lower body) once a week?  My background for strength and conditioning is primarily with weightlifting so we were often doing a certain workout 2x or 3x per week.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Hey @Sam Jarvis, I'm neither a nutritionist nor a forum coach so take my comments with a healthy dose of caveats, but I can speak from experience.

when I started GST I was about 75kg and lacked general upper body strength (I could do one poor chin up). I consumed about 2,500 calories - not all healthy and frequently also consumed unhealthy snacks such as crisps and chocolate. I was getting a bit pudgey so needed to make some changes.

I've now got to about 70kg, having done GST since September last year. I also run about 20+km per week, with one long run at the weekend. I haven't really changed my diet at all, although I probably try and target a bit higher protein content. I can now do 10 chin ups with good form having done no weight or chin up specific training.

could I have had better gains and fat loss had I been on a more restricted/target diet? For sure, but not doing so didn't prevent GST and a healthy dose of cardio exercise from delivering! What I am almost positive about is a more focused diet would have led to fewer niggles and aches during my training!

i started with one of each exercise per week staggered but quickly built up to 2 and now I can cope with 3 quite easily. I hope that's all useful!

Purely anecdotal but I find myself much hungrier the day after GST, especially a F7 session. This has surprised me as I have found it more noticeable than during other programs with higher perceived exertion eg HIIT, CrossFit. Too many variables/confounding factors to say anything with certainty but this has been my observation.