Lifting writer Casey Johnston has a line about what it takes to get strong: you have to learn to eat like a big, beautiful horse. Undereating and dieting, she says, are incompatible with lifting heavy. I read that and knew she was right. Knowing it and doing it turned out to be different.
I’m training for my second powerlifting meet in July. The first was in May 2025: squat 170 pounds, bench 100, deadlift 222. The plan this time is to match or beat those numbers. I’m not there yet, but the work is headed in that direction. At the start of May, I could barely get through one set of three at 90 on the bench. In early July, I did six sets of three at 90. Now I am doing doubles at 95 and singles at 100. A year and a half older, and ten pounds lighter, I may not make these past lifts, but I want to be prepared and do my very best.
Making it better
At the end of a session with my trainer this week, I tallied it up: more than 6,000 pounds moved in an hour. Then I went home and took a nap, which is what often happens when I enter a new heavy lifting phase (and recovery is so important!)
This month has been a series of 145- to 155-pound squats, 90-pound bench, and 185- to 190-pound deadlifts, over and over. I know that kind of effort is based on rest and food, so in early July I imported my food log into a ChatGPT project I built to track my training, then showed it a few weeks’ worth of meals. It told me to eat three to four hundred more calories on training days, along with more protein and carbs. Which I already knew, but hadn’t been doing.
I made a guide and put it on the fridge. The targets: 100 to 120 grams of protein a day, 1,350 to 1,600 calories, and a weight held around 165 to 167. Three rules: every meal has a protein anchor, every training day has carbs, and every day one “extra” protein: cottage cheese, a tuna packet, edamame. Sweets are allowed; occasional ice cream is fine.
Eating this way has been fun: more protein and more carbs than usual (a whole sandwich instead of half, for example, or turkey sausage meatballs as snacks). I also saw how fast the scale responds. A few days with a younger family member, eating the cookies, ice cream, and rice pudding supposedly intended for them, put me right at the top of my range.
Getting ready for the meet
My lifts are not where I hoped they would be, but they are solid, and I think eating more is helping me be stronger. At the same time, it’s not magic. My meet is in 7 days, and instead of exceeding my May 2025 records, I’m probably going to meet or just be under them.
My coach and I will figure out the last bit of the lifts a few days from now when we meet for the last time before competition. I want to feel like the meet is fun and I am sharing lifting with my community, rather than pressure myself to hit an additional five or ten pounds of weight.
Once the meet is over, I’m going to keep lifting, but cut back on both my competition-level calories and my carbs, while still eating like that Big Beautiful Horse Casey Johnston has installed in my brain.
Lifting writer Casey Johnston has a line about what it takes to get strong: you have to learn to eat like a big, beautiful horse. Undereating and dieting, she says, are incompatible with lifting heavy. I read that and knew she was right. Knowing it and doing it turned out to be different.
I’m training for my second powerlifting meet in July. The first was in May 2025: squat 170 pounds, bench 100, deadlift 222. The plan this time is to match or beat those numbers. I’m not there yet, but the work is headed in that direction. At the start of May, I could barely get through one set of three at 90 on the bench. In early July, I did six sets of three at 90. Now I am doing doubles at 95 and singles at 100. A year and a half older, and ten pounds lighter, I may not make these past lifts, but I want to be prepared and do my very best.
Making it better
At the end of a session with my trainer this week, I tallied it up: more than 6,000 pounds moved in an hour. Then I went home and took a nap, which is what often happens when I enter a new heavy lifting phase (and recovery is so important!)
This month has been a series of 145- to 155-pound squats, 90-pound bench, and 185- to 190-pound deadlifts, over and over. I know that kind of effort is based on rest and food, so in early July I imported my food log into a ChatGPT project I built to track my training, then showed it a few weeks’ worth of meals. It told me to eat three to four hundred more calories on training days, along with more protein and carbs. Which I already knew, but hadn’t been doing.
I made a guide and put it on the fridge. The targets: 100 to 120 grams of protein a day, 1,350 to 1,600 calories, and a weight held around 165 to 167. Three rules: every meal has a protein anchor, every training day has carbs, and every day one “extra” protein: cottage cheese, a tuna packet, edamame. Sweets are allowed; occasional ice cream is fine.
Eating this way has been fun: more protein and more carbs than usual (a whole sandwich instead of half, for example, or turkey sausage meatballs as snacks). I also saw how fast the scale responds. A few days with a younger family member, eating the cookies, ice cream, and rice pudding supposedly intended for them, put me right at the top of my range.
Getting ready for the meet
My lifts are not where I hoped they would be, but they are solid, and I think eating more is helping me be stronger. At the same time, it’s not magic. My meet is in 7 days, and instead of exceeding my May 2025 records, I’m probably going to meet or just be under them.
My coach and I will figure out the last bit of the lifts a few days from now when we meet for the last time before competition. I want to feel like the meet is fun and I am sharing lifting with my community, rather than pressure myself to hit an additional five or ten pounds of weight.
Once the meet is over, I’m going to keep lifting, but cut back on both my competition-level calories and my carbs, while still eating like that Big Beautiful Horse Casey Johnston has installed in my brain.