Q: Hi mike, i am from question 743 u aked for my diet as detailed as possible...and well for breakfast i know i arent that good i eat cookies but im stopin that and replacing it with cheerio's and some O.J. for lunch i am starting today a Peanut butter and banana sandwish with some basked chips and a gatorade, my mom is on weight watchers so for dinner we usually have a well balanced meal, and a salad, but like i said i started this diet today...should i be ok? what should i do to lose 40 punds of fat and put 30 pounds on my bench press?

A: Yeah, that diet is no good at all. The dinner is hopefully OK depending on what the balanced meal is, but the rest of it has to change completely. The only good thing you mentioned was the banana and Cheerios is passable, but OJ (eat whole fruit instead), peanut butter sandwich, and especially chips and gatorade are all bad bad bad.

You're not getting enough calories to support good metabolism considering your age and your physical activity levels and most of the calories you are getting come from all the wrong sources. Look at this diet -- that is about what you should be eating! Very different from your diet. I would normally recommend this diet to somebody trying to gain muscle, but considering your age, size, and activity level it should be just about right to lose fat as well. Look at it carefully and adopt it to fit your own life. It's not going to be easy for you, but it'll be an effort well worth it. Your current dinner could be one of the meals, probably replacing meal #5 in the sample diet. But you gotta figure out what to eat the rest of the day based on the sample diet. You can combine some meals to bring the total number of meals to 5 per day, but I wouldn't recommend going lower than that. Spend some time on figuring how you can model your diet after this sample, come up with your own daily diet plan, post it here and I'll give you my feedback on it.

It's going to be an effort and a lot of hassle, but it's worth it and necessary to achieve your physique goals. Remember that you can always make healthy sandwiches like sample meal #4 to take with you that you can eat on the road. You can also take different cold meals with you in tupperware containers. Check out http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/junk-food-served-at-school for ideas what to eat as a student.