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Nutrition Diet and Training Assistance

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Just looking back to @Caine 's OP, some suggestions I got from a nutrition pro that really made a difference for me:

Timing of food generally -- eat three meals a day. This one surprised me. I had been eating healthily, but throughout the day, including fruit as a snack, which supposedly would result in an insulin roller coaster. Solution was to abandon even healthy grazing and eat three meals a day.

Timing of carbs -- only in my post workout meal, and that includes no more fruit as a snack during the day. If no training that day, then no high-carb food that day.

Quality of carbs -- good natural stuff with lots of nutrition benefit like sweet potatoes. A serving of fruit is fine. Ezekiel bread mentioned above also fine. Again, only in the post-workout meal. (Half a baked sweet potato topped with some chili may be unconventional but it's good!)

Sleep -- do it.

Sleep is definitely something I struggle with between working at 3:30 AM - 8/9 AM everyday and going to school from 10 AM - 9 PM three days out of the week. My sleep schedule is so irregular that I find it difficult to go directly to sleep when I should most nights.
 
My sleep schedule is so irregular that I find it difficult to go directly to sleep when I should most nights.
That's most likely a substantial issue. Sleep is a very important mechanism for regulating a number of hormones (cortisol, testosterone, and growth horomone are a few), which in turn have a significant influence on how your body stores/burns energy. If there's nothing you can do about it now, then I'm sorry and I hope your situation is only temporary. However, there are probably some things you can do to improve the quality of the sleep you do get, even if you can't get more hours. Things like the light in your room, vitamin D intake during the day, and how much screen time you get in the hour or so before bed are just a few things that influence how well you sleep. You can also use some basic breathing/relaxation techniques before bed to help get into the frame of mind, and the occasional, very low dose (not more than 1 mg) of melatonin can be helpful in "resetting" your internal clock. If you haven't already, it's worth doing some research into how to get better sleep, since getting more may be unrealistic.

Now that my sleep rant is over, I was just going to suggest The Perfect Health Diet by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet. I know, the title is pretentious as sh*t, but hear me out. They're a couple of PhD's who don't come from the nutrition field, and the book is easily the most thoroughly researched and well cited book I've read on nutrition(that being said, it is written at a very readable, easy to understand level). They essentially advocate a whole food, moderate carb, moderate protein, high fat diet combined with some easy intermittent fasting. If I could give all my friends and family two books in the hopes that they would live long and healthy lives, I would give them The Perfect Health Diet and S&S.
 
Snowman, I strongly second your recommendation of Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet's book and blog. If I could I would have all of my family and friends read and follow their diet recommendations. I learned a great deal in the last three or four months reading their book and blog about nutrition. I'm on the second reading, I've made some changes which have had a positive effect, I sleep through the night and wake up alert and ready for work at 5 am almost every morning. The ectopics (irregular heartbeats) I was having occasionally after workouts have disappeared (I have had three rf ablation procedures for atrial fibrillation). The Perfect Health Diet book is extremely well researched and if you search the web Paul Jaminet has been interviewed many times and will give very detailed explanations for all of his conclusions, he welcomes criticism, he doesn't think he has all of the answers but is continuing to research and refine. I greatly admire these two people, they are a force for good in the world. Here is a search of the website on circadian rhythm and shift work which may have helpful information: circadian rhythm - Google Search
 
I have to read this book...

Seeing sleep is such an issue, I'll say the pro I referred to earlier did more than say do it as I implied; she also gave suggestions for quality of sleep. Some of those @Snowman already mentioned. A few others were to sleep in a coldish room, use eyeshades if you can't get the room dark enough, get off electronics an hour or so before you turn in, and have no caffeine less than 8 hours before you turn in. Hope this helps.
 
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