Hey Clraik peeps!

We talk a lot about exercising and what we do, but I'd like to know how you fuel for the exercise you do. I've been watching a lot of videos on how different athletes choose to fuel and I find it so fascinating how different people eat depending on the sport they play or how they train/goals.

For me, I do powerlifting as my sport. I always loved food and never excluded any food group or individual food from my diet. I grew up eating anything from fresh veggies to junk food. I like it all! I would just pay attention to what made me feel better or worse when eating adjust there. For example, eating too many nuts can cause me to breakout or other skin irritations. Eating a lot of highly processed sugary snacks do that too, but I mean if I eat 2 sleeves of cookies lol, not if I eat 3-4 Oreos. I tried to manage my portions and be more mindful of eating more nutritious foods as I started to get serious about losing weight when I was attending university.
Now, being fully involved in powerlifting (training to compete at my first meet early 2025), I try to strategize my eating around my lifts. I find it fascinating because I'll be at the gym and see guys n gals walking around with bags of sour patch kids to get those quick carb/sugars to replenish the glycogen stores for their muscles. I don't track macros, but generally try to think of eating more balanced meals with fats, carbs, and prioritizing protein. I generally get an idea of calories, but I know that I need to eat more before and after my lifts. I worked with a nutritionist out of curiosity and she told me I needed to have around 50g of carbs prior to a lifting session. I used to train fasted (I workout early in the AM and don't want to eat food at 4AM lol), but I noticed a HUGE difference when I started to eat more carbs, especially around a lifting session. I try not to workout fasted anymore when I can, but also eating bigger meals after a lift too. Also, I got blood work done recently and saw that I don't have as much of the good cholesterol as I should, so I'm consciously eating more fats in my diet now.
So an example of typical meals for me looks like:

- protein "pizza" made on a spinach flour tortilla with, bbq sauce, turkey pepperoni, and mozzarella cheese
- 2 eggs scrambled with rice and ketchup
- tuna from cans over rice with furikake and a lil bit of olive oil
- greek yogurt with protein powder (seeq mango protein...seeq protein is my fave!) mixed in, frozen fruit I microwave for a bit to warm it up, and granola on top
- Soba noodles, grilled chicken, broccoli and edamame with a homemade peanut sauce
- Turkey sandwich lol
- Snacks: protein bars, cheese whisps/string cheese, on the go protein shakes, Kodiak granola bars, fruit, carrots (the only veg I snack on), "artisanal" slices of bread with butter and jam on top, popcorn, and the occasional cookies/chips when I feel like it
- Eating out with coworkers once a week which can be anything from shawarma wraps, burgers, burritos, breakfast scrambles, Vietnamese noodle bowls, etc.

I will be doing a cut in March (when I come back from vacation) so I'll be in a manageable deficit and will lightly follow some macro guideline for this and keeping my training the same.

So how do you fuel for your fitness/sport/lifestyle? Following any specific diet protocol? What has worked or hasn't worked for you? Any food hacks you got that help you keep to your goals?