See also this post. Alan is probably one of the most knowledgable nutritionists out there. 
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=279974.msg3960319#msg3960319
Well, very nice of you to quote No 7, but leave out No.3 of the original post. Ever checked what your Guru said there about "No Cardio, Meal timing is not necessary"??
3. In your own training past, what would you say were your worst mistakes in terms of training, nutrition or both? Put differently, what would you do differently now?
Nutrition wise, I think my worst mistake I ever made was not taking advantage of my massive energy expenditure as a result of biking my way through college.
Not having a car was my meal ticket - literally - to eating more quality junk food and not taking any significant hits to the gut. Unfortunately, I took it for granted and never took full advantage of it.
I often reminisce about having a pint of Hagen Daaz (discontinued flavor: honey vanilla or New York Superfudge Chunk) every single night right before bed. This of course was after I biked to school, then biked to work, then biked my ass back home. [/i][/u]I would make a stop at 7-11 and get the beloved pint of ice cream. I was leaner than I ever was in my life. Now I don't have time for the kind of work output I used to have, so I have to be a lot more careful with my indulgences. Hindsight hurts - badly.
Another nutritional mistake I made was neglecting the timing of protein and carbs. Basically, I HAD no nutrient timing. I just trained as hard as I could, and ate when it was convenient. Talk about taking one step forward and one step back. If you can remember as recently as 10 years ago, it was all about postworkout nutrition. Improvements in size and strength really didn't exponentiate for me until I grasped on to the "sandwich your training bout with protein + carbs" concept. On a tangent, this actually gets a little weird, but as of late, I've been remiss about pre-workout mental prep. Dorian Yates talked about mentally preparing for the training bout the night before, and continuing that prep for up to an hour prior to the bout. I don't have that kind of time, but there's something to be said about pre-training psyching and visualization.
Another nutritional mistake I made in the past was spending my money on isolated BCAA. It's amazing how you can get taken in by the hype of certain things, and I'm certainly not immune to it. BCAA is one of the most hyped supplements in the last decade, of course with an emphasis on leucine. The thing is, no one wants to accept that they're already taking down an ass-ton of BCAA if they consume the high amount of protein typical of bodybuilding diets. Anyway, I experimented with dumping my supplemental BCAA and slightly increasing my overall protein intake. Whaddaya know, progress never ceased, and I've been saving a lot of cash that would have literally gotten pissed down the drain.
Training mistakes I've made in the past were a couple of things. 1st of all, as a youngin' I got my initial routines out of Flex magazine, during an era when bodybuilders obliterated their bodyparts once a week with a whole lot of volume. As soon as I cut my volume in half and doubled the frequency, my gains accelerated. I've tried cutting volume down further to hit BP's 3x a week, but found that it didn't quite work as well. I also was a fan of Mike Mentzer, so I truly believed that every working set had to be taken to failure, with with partials, and occasional negatives. As soon as I became happy with sticking to concentric failure and nothing more, I saw a definite hike in progress. As an experiment I took failure training out completely for a stint of time, and didn't see the same rate of gains, not by a long shot.
Another training mistake I've made in the past - one I think that we've all done - is go more by the numbers than by the feel, letting the numbers dictate the workout rather than letting the muscles do it. I was overly concerned with the quantitative awareness of load progression, rather than what one of my old training partners called "finding the pump". This might be more of a bodybuilding thing than anything else, but people should work up to a point where they are indifferent towards the number stamped on the iron. Trainees should practice developing a sense of optimal resistance for the given goal of any set, even if you're completely unaware of the actual weight. Blindfolded sensation-based training, so to speak.
