Correct bodybuilding nutrition has many people debating, and throwing theories around the world over. A lot of research has been done on the proper nutrition for building muscle and a lot of theories that were thrown around have been both approved and dissaproved. The subject of nutrition should be heavily concentrated on by the beginner, as getting the correct bodybuilding nutrition is the key to any successful bodybuilding program. Below is listed some of the most important bodybuilding nutrition areas you would need to focus on to build muscle and gain weight successfully.

Firstly we’re going to talk about water intake. This is very important for building muscle as well as your bodies overall health. It helps your body get rid of waste, which is very useful as this will prepare the bodies cells for the intake of fresh nutrients. This will therefore allow your cells to replenish and make way for additional cell growth. Getting shut of all these toxins in the body is instrumental to this process and without it no cellular growth will occur and your bodybuilding efforts will be shot down before they have even started.

Food, the bodies fuel. Food is the numero uno for building muscle and it’s the foundation to any diet. The correct amount of each of the nutrients carbs, fats, and protein, will amount to a successful weight training program. An improper ratio of these nutrients will amount to fat retention, energy loss, and unsuccessful muscle building efforts. Please consult a specificlly designed program that is put together by professionals. An ideal one would be No Nonsense Muscle Building by Vince DelMonte.

Another important nutritional addition to a successful bodybuilding program is the nutritional bar. This is absolutely ideal for bodybuilders who need the quick fix of protein when they’re on the go. These bars are high in protein and low in carbs, and an important thing that must be considered when choosing the right bar would be the ratio of fats to carbs. Complex carbs are most preferable, with a high amount of protein, and some fats. A nutritional bar with nuts would be absolutely ideal. As certain nuts have a healthy supply of fats, and fats are ideal for gaining weight and building muscle.

Finally, wer’re going to talk about supplements. These shouldn’t be heavily relied upon at all. You should concentrate fully on getting all the nutrients you need from whole foods first of all. The only supplements you really need and should be taking are multi-vitamins, EFA’s (Essential fatty acids), and a whey protein powder. These are the building blocks of any successful supplement implementation program and they are all you need to build muscle.

Using all of the above to great effect and in conjunction with one another you will have your basis for a successful bodybuilding program.

Now that you have a basic idea of what correct bodybuilding nutrition is, you now have to get an ideal bodybuilding program to implement a bodybuilding diet to. A good bodybuilding program to follow is Vince DelMonte’s No Nonsense Muscle Building, in it he guides you all the way through building a correct bodybuilding diet and a successful bodybuilding training regime.

If you are a naturally skinny person who wants to gain lean muscle mass it becomes essential for you to undertake a healthy weight gain diet plan. It is even more important than getting the right weight training program. In this post I’m going to be talking about the different fundamentals that compose a successful weight gain diet plan and more importantly when and what you should be eating in your weight gain diet daily plan.

Firstly I’m going to talk about something that unless your totally new to this which I doubt if you’ve been skinny all your life….

CONSUME MORE CALORIES!

I’ve decided to capitalize the letters to highlight the importance of this. The only way that it’s even possible to gain weight is to consume more energy than burn off. There is no getting shut of the basic laws of the bodies anatomy, it’s just a fact, a define fact!! People have different anatomy’s in terms of there metabolism (the speed in which food is transferred into energy). Those of us that have fast metabolisms (Me included) need to eat even more to successfully gain weight when compared to a person with a slow metabolism.

Now, eating more calories doesn’t immediately mean go out and stuff yourself with  processed and saturated fats from your local fast food restaurant. The solid basis on which you must build your weight gain diet plan is good nutritious, calorie rich foods. If your appetite isn’t much to go off and you find hard to put weight on then the challenge you face is trying to eat enough calories without beginning to feel full at the time. Don’t worry, this can be done….pretty easily too.

Well…How many calories should I consume?

There isn’t a set amount for people to gain weight. This has to be formulated for every single person based on the speed of their metabolism. It can be based soley  on your age and your weight, other people can take lean mass into account and the more thorough people would be recounting every single bit of activity they did during an average day.

When you’re calorie counting to figure out your daily needs it’s not much fun, but don’t worry, it’s not something you have to do long term. Once you establish a good understanding of the amount of food maintains your ideal weight, you will then begin to instinctively know how much you need to eat every day.

Protein….

Is the subject of many opinions with bodybuilders, nutritionists, and sports scientists alike. The main differentiation between the above is how much protein should be taken. It has been the subject of fierce debate for years and I don’t think it’s going to change. I’ll leave the debate on protein for now, I’ll leave it for another article so we can cover it more detail.

If you talk to any bodybuilder they will all agree that you need a much higher amount of protein in your body than the FDA recommends. They have been doing it for years and they have some really convincing arguments to prove it too. In fact some researchers are going as far as agreeing with the bodybuilders in some arguments. According to many bodybuilders a general rule of thumb is that an average weight gain diet plan should contain up to 2g per kg of bodyweight. Yes, this may seem like a lot but don’t forget you have to consume more calories than the average person and the calories have to come from somewhere don’t they. If you take the same amount you are now your just going to stay the same way you are, that’s a fact. The amount of calories you eat should be from a carbs, fats, and protein. But mostly protein depending on what your goal is.

What’s so important about protein?

Well….from a weight gain point of view protein is full of amino acids, in fact there are 20 all together and 8 essential amino acids must come from the food we eat. When you undertake your weight training program it is important that you take in more amino acids than you would have done previously as the bodies demand for amino acids increases. If the bodies need for amino acids isn’t met by your weight gain diet plan then this will cause the muscle tissue to break down. Without a sufficient amount of amino acids and protein in your diet muscle gain is impossible.

Great sources of protein are fresh and canned fish, chicken, low fat milk, turkey, lean red meat, low fat yoghurt, low fat cottage cheese, egg whites, soy products, and protein powder (In particular Whey).

Carbohydrates

A successful weight gain diet plan should contain a lot of unrefined carbs. Because your protein intake has increased, your carb intake has to increase too.

Carbs are converted into glucose and glycogen in the body and they are only macronutrient that can supply your body with and immediate boost of energy, which is essential for any type of training.

Sources of carbohydrates in a successful weight gain diet plan should be whole meal bread, pasta etc. Potatoes, brown rice, couscous, high fibre cereals are good too.

Fats

There are several dietary fats that the body needs in a weight gain diet plan. One gram of fat contains more calories than one gram of both carbs and protein. In fact, a tablespoon of flaxseed oil contains more calories than a whole banana. So taking this into consideration it makes sense to add a good source of fat into your weight gain diet plan.

So what is good fat then?

Without going to scientific on your ass, fats can be sub divided. They can be divided into saturated fats, mono-unsaturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats. The fats that you want to consume are monounsaturated fats, which can be found in olive oil and avocado’s; and polyunsaturated fats which can be found in oily cold water fish, flax, sunflower, safflower, cod liver oil, and also some raw nuts.

EFA’s or essential fatty acids are something that has been the subject of many a happy discussion between health professionals. EFA’s which are also know as Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids are found in polyunsaturated fats. They are the ultimate in a proper weight gain diet plan and essential in any weight training program. They have a substantial amount of health benefits and they play a huge part in building muscle.

A healthy weight gain diet plan should contain foods that are high in these healthy fats as they will not only help you build muscle, they will improve your overall health and help you live longer too.

Meal frequency

Right.. now this is important. You should forget about eating just 3 sqaure meals a day and couple of snacks in between. You have to be serious here. The method that many a successful bodybuilder uses when planning out there weight gain diet plan is they tend to eat 6 small meals a day at a regular interval of every 2 to 3 hours. This supplies your body with a constant supply of nutrients and allows your body to fully digest your food.

Another point I want to touch on before you go is that you should be eating a variety of fresh fruits and veggies in your weight gain diet plan too. They are a particularly great source of vitamins and minerals (and particularly antioxidants). They both also have substantial health and weight gain benefits.

All the things we have covered above have a big influence on your weight gain and muscle building goals. There are many other factors that should be taken into consideration but I didn’t have time to talk about them here. Things like vitamins and minerals, fibre, water, alcohol and cholesterol, they are all important to your overall health and weight gain aims.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a good weight gain diet should contain, you should incorporate the things you have learned as soon as you can to your weight training program. To stay on top of all the latest info from this blog make sure you sign up for its RSS feed on the right.

Macronutrients play a very important role in building muscle and gaining weight. The main three are protein, carbs, and fats, but the most important for weight training purposes are protein and carbs.

Carbs – These are simple sugars that are in most types of foods. As we eat these carbohydrates our body is turning them into sugars and in turn using these sugars to generate energy. That is why you hear that a main sportsmens meal before any event is pastas and rice and things of that nature. Therefore we ourselves use carbohydrates to provide us with energy for our daily activities, and for our own exercises and workouts.

Protein – Protein is a major player when it involves building muscle, but in actual fact it helps in a number of other various activities around the body. But most importantly is helps towards generating new muscle tissue and repairing damaged muscles. If a loss of carbohydrates occurs the protein which is in our bodies will be used to generate energy. This will therefore make it abundant when needed to repair or grow new muscle tissue.

In evaluating this info you should have become to realize that our body cannot build muscle effectively without the use of both carbs and proteins. It is essential that our bodies has an adequate supply of both these macronutrients as we need energy to build muscle and we need the protein to rebuild our tissues after weight resistance and therefore build muscle, so any loss of either of these macronutrients would lead to an unsuccessful muscle gain program.

The general consensus of dietitians is in fact consistent with this view. In order to build muscle and gain weight, it is generally recommended to eat carbohydrate containing meals two hours before a workout (to provide energy), but immediately after a workout, to eat foods containing both carbohydrate and protein (so as to both provide energy and regenerate muscle).

There’s been a lot of talk about Omega 3 fats in the last few years and how it can be used to help lose weight, gain weight, and just generally improve the bodies overall health. It is nothing new, what I mean by that is you’ve probably been having Omega 3 in your diets for years, all your life for some people. However, it’s only just recently been covered and researched by health professionals and people are still unsure of what food sources they can get this essential fatty acid from.

Foods that are rich in Omeag 3 can actually be seperated into two main categories which are plant foods and animal foods. There are not many animal sources that contain high amounts of omega 3 fatty acids such as EPA and DHA. A well known source of Omega 3 is fish as it contains large amounts of both EPA and DHA.

Another great source of Omega 3 other than fish, shrimps, and various other sea foods is Plant oils. Oils such as Hemp oil, soybean oil and flax seed oil are all great sources of Omega 3 Fatty Acids. These oils have a number of healthy benefits as they are pure and do not contain and impurities whatsoever. Another plus for these oils is that they contain a good quantity of Omega 6 fats also which is required to compliment all the benefits of Omega 3 in the body.

Out of the mentioned plant oils, hemp oil has to be the number ones choice as it contains the best ratio of both omega 3 and 6. Flax seed oil is another great choice however as it contains better amounts of ALA which is a longer chain fatty acid. ALA is broken down by the body into both EPA and DHA.

Other sources that have been known to provide adequate amounts of Omega 3 are things such as tofu and omega 3 rich eggs which also provide good amounts of both DHA and EPA. Others include Navy beans, walnuts, kidney beans and almonds are all good sources of Omega 3.

If you don’t eat any of the sources that I have suggested above I would definitely think about adding them to your diet as soon as possible and have them on a regular basis as the benefits are extreme.

You can also buy supplements on the market which contain concentrated amounts of omega 3 and various other essential fatty acids. These products are really useful if you don’t have time to get the required daily amount of EFA’s and they can be consumed by people of all ages.

I would recommed only buying big name brands of this stuff made from only pharmaceutical grade fish oil. In addition to this advice I would also suggest, if possible, that you get products that are madel from the oil of the hoki fish which is found in New Zealand. This Omega 3 enriched fish not only has great amounts of EFA’s but it also has very low amounts of mercury and other various toxins.

Want to learn how to gain weight and build muscle naturally and healthily? Check out this site now and you will learn all you need to know on bodybuilding and nutrition.

I bet you have read a lot of rubbish about you needing to cut out as much as can, well this is partially true.

Whatever you may read always remeber that there are good fats and there are bad fats. Fat is mainly present in the form triglycerides in foods. Triglycerides consist of three fatty acids and glycerol. The fatty acids can be saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

The saturated fats are considered to be the bad fats, and unsaturated fats are known as the good ones.

Saturated fats tend to form a waxy form inside the body which then clogs up the arteries. If you have ever used a Goerge Foreman to grill bacon or sausage then you will know what I mean. Saturated fast are known to also increase the cholesterol levels. It is found in most dairy products, as well as some veggie oils.

Polyunsaturated fats tend to lower the bodies cholesterol levels. This source of fat is usually found in plant sources.

Monounsaturated fat tend to lower the bad cholesterol in the body (LDL). It can be found in both animal and plant sources.

Although margarines sound quite good with them containing monounsaturated fats, the way they make them is not. Because the supermarket chains and big food companies want the margarine easier to spread and also to last longer, they tend to add hydrogenated fats. During this process of making man made fats they create Trans Fats, which are as bad if not worse than saturated fats. The trans fats appear in many processed foods. Always check the labels of foods to see if they contain any man made fats. If they are try to find something else to eat instead. You never know how much of the trans fats you will be taking in as they do not tend to state the actual amount conatined on the foods labels. There’s been quite a big clamp down recently on man made fats in foods but you can still find them in some products.

Try to stick to a small amount of saturated fats in your daily diet, and it would be best if you could get it out of your diet all together but weheres the fun in that, a lot of great tasting foods have staurated fats in them. If you want to limit this in your weight and muscle gain diet just treat yourself at the end of every week or a couple of times through the week.

Remember to always read those labels!

Your in for a treat today because I’m going to share with you one of dirty little secrets that I have never shared with anyone before. I’m talking about a delicious dessert that satisfies my sweet tooth and suplies me with lot’s of quality nutrients.

This dessert is a very healthy version of a peanut butter fudge. If you don’t like either the nuts or the butter, it’s not a problem because you can leave them out and just have a chocolate version which is just as delicious. Make sure you take notes of this recipe as there are certain ingreadients in this fudge that make it a lot more nutritional for you.

This fudge is not low calorie per se’, as I’m not a miracle worker, but it is full of essential healthy fats, protein, tons of antioxidants,relatively low in sugar, and it also contains a decent amount of fiber as well. I would really recommed this snack as it help curn your appetite, it fuels your muscles, fills your body with anti-oxidants, and it it stops that sweet tooth dead in it’s tracks. If your anything like me and you have a real temprimental sweet tooth then this recipe is worth its weight in gold.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup organic coconut milk (make sure you get the organic version as well, the watered down version of this is not going to cut it)
• 1 bar of extra dark chocolate that has at least 70% cocoa.
• 4-5 tablespoons of peanut butter or any other nut butter of your liking.
• 3/4 cup of raisins (which is totally upto you but it seems to go really well with it)
• 1/2 cup of whole peice almonds (also optional, but again, it’s really nice with them)
• 2 Tbsp of raw wheat germ
• 2 Tbsp of rice bran (you will probably have to visit a health stor for this)
• 1/2 Teaspoon of vanilla extract
• And last of all, a little stevia powder to sweeten it and add a bit more flavour.

Now lets get to the cooking part……

Start off by adding the organic coconut milk and the vanilla extract to a small pan and place on a very low heat. Now, break up the dark chocolate itno small chunks and add them into the pan. Add the nut butter of your choice into the pan with the stevia as well, and stir continuously until you get a smooth mixture.

Now thats down to  smooth mixture you can add the raisins, almonds, wheat germ, and the rice bran. Keep stirring until they are fully blended in with the rest of the mixture. When thats done you can spoon the fudge mixture into some waxed paper in a dish and place it in the fridge for around half an hour or until it cools and hardens. Remember to cover the mixture in the dish so that it does’nt dry out when cooling.

Enjoy small squares for dessert and for small snacks throughout the day. This is about as good as it gets for a healthy yet delicious treat!

I was at the grocery store today picking up some ingredients for a black bean & brown rice with seasoned venison strips dish I was planning to make, when an interesting thing happened.

I had gone straight to the grocery store after training a couple clients at the gym. Well, as I was grabbing some frozen veggies, a friendly lady (who must have seen that I was a fitness coach from my shirt), asked me my advice on a couple frozen prepared box meals she was picking out (by the way, those prepared frozen meals are usually highly processed crap loaded with sodium and other chemicals).

Now I will say that this woman was VERY overweight, and she mentioned that she has “tried everything” to get rid of all of the excess body fat and always failed.

Keep in mind I hear about 50 people a day tell me they’ve “tried everything” to get in shape. The problem that they don’t realize is that they’re trying all of the wrong things…they’re trying all of the gimmicks and fads that are out there instead of just adopting a TRUE healthy active lifestyle.

Back to the woman in the store…

So we started chatting about her struggles with getting in shape, and I began scanning her grocery cart. If I can remember, these were some of the contents she thought were healthy:

• Slim fast shakes (far from healthy…they’re actually loaded with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and a bunch of other chemicals)
• Fat Free Rice Cakes (ok…despite so many people believing these pieces of crap are healthy…they really are nothing but pure refined starch with zero fiber, which basically breaks down immediately into sugar in your body, spiking insulin and promoting fat storage…doesn’t sound so good anymore, huh)
• Protein bars “Scientifically Slim Body Engineered” or some BS statement like that (I took a gander at the ingredient list of these so called “healthy” protein bars and sure enough… hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and enough sugar alcohols to give you diarrhea for a week!)
• Canned fruit in syrup (I guess she could do worse here…but still, why not just eat fresh whole fruit which still contains the skins, fiber, active enzymes, etc, instead of resorting to processed, canned fruit that’s been cooked and loaded with syrup)
• Reduced Sugar Dessert Cakes (ok, so these are loaded with artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, preservatives, and a chemical ingredient list about 15 lines long)

Do you see what’s going on here? This is the same scenario that I see all the time.

Most people are fooled by what the FRONT OF THE BOX says, leading them to believe what they are buying is healthy. On all of these items, the FRONT of the packages had all kinds of great sounding things like “fat free”, “reduced sugar”, “high protein”, “low cholesterol”, “low carb”, etc.

However, the TRUTH is on the BACK OF THE BOX! Ah yes, the ingredient list and nutrition info is where the real truth is. However, I’ve realized that most of the general public doesn’t know how to fully understand the ingredient list and nutrition info, so they rely on the advertising claims on the front of the package to guide them.

BIG MISTAKE!

If you notice, this woman thought she was doing great with her grocery shopping and buying all kinds of healthy stuff for her and her family.

In reality, EVERYTHING she was buying was highly processed and full of chemicals and industrially refined ingredients. No wonder “nothing has worked” for her to get in shape and lose the body fat… she actually hasn’t been doing anything right. She’s been mislead by all of the confusing marketing and labeling and conflicting nutrition info in the mass media.

40-30-30 Nutrition Plan Review

The premise of the 40-30-30 Diet is simple: “Your genes have not
changed very much during the past 100,000 years”. 

Our body is a biochemical machine, and for hundreds of thousands
of years, our digestive system operated correctly when eating
just 2 food groups:

1. Lean Protein

2. Natural Carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables

Evolution works very slowly, and as far as our genes are concerned,
we are still build to eat those 2 food groups. By evolutionary
standards,  agriculture is still relatively recent and therefore
our digestive system has not yet adapted to eating large quantities
of dense, highly processed carbohydrates like grains, pasta and bread. 

Because we haven’t evolved to a stage where we can properly digest
large amounts of high density carbohydrates, our body experiences
adverse biochemical effects like fat gain, diabetes, heart
disease, sluggish feeling, etc. The 40-30-30 Diet is designed to
feed our body according to its genetic makeup.

What you eat and how you eat has a powerful effect on your body
and health. This diet plan treats food as more than just a source
of calories that must be counted and restricted.  It views food
as a powerful agent that has significant effects on our body. 
For example, certain foods can cause severe surges in insulin
production.  Significant swings in insulin levels can negatively
affect mood, endurance, mental focus, and fat.  The 40-30-30
Diet Plan was designed to keep our body balanced and performing
at its peak.  It does this by incorporating 4 key elements:

The 40-30-30 Nutrition Plan
The use of mono-unsaturated fats
Supplementation with Omega-3 oils
Exercise

40-30-30 Sample Meals and Snacks Diet Menu

Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs Florentine with cheese and grapes

Snack: Yogurt with raspberries and almonds

Lunch: Chicken Salad Pita Sandwich with asparagus salad

Snack: Turkey and Cheddar Lettuce Wrap

Dinner: Zesty Broiled Fish with couscous