Sports Nutrition Guide - Part 5
Diet and Nutrition Conclusion
This pretty much concludes my (rather
long) bodybuilding guides. I had not intended to drag it
on for this long. But hopefully you've picked up some useful
information from these guides - from the supplementation
guide to the weight lifting and workout guide, and finally
to the diet and nutrition guide.
No matter how well you plan your supplementation,
diet, and lifting sessions for the next few weeks, it's
important to understand that you have to have the discipline
to follow through on every one of these - and not have a
1 week of infatuation with your new schedule, and don't
follow through for the rest of the times. This brings to
the point of keeping detail records for each day, for your
lifting journal, and as well as your daily food-intake journal.
Write down everything you do during your workouts, and after
each meal and snack, record the food you just consumed.
Look back each day and each week at what
you've accomplished, both as a motivation, and as a way
to gauge your progress and feel good on how well you've
disciplined yourself and stuck with the plan! Take weekly
measurements of your size and weight, and also take weekly
pictures. When you look back, you will be quite amazed at
what you can accomplish.
Diet and Nutrition Conclusion
I figured I will conclude this first,
since the other two sections had their own finishers already.
;-) As far as diet and nutrition goes, keep these point
in mind (with a goal of gaining weight and size):
- feed yourself plenty and often - you should not go more
than 3 hours without food
- feed yourself clean food, food high in protein and good
carbs - refer to the glycemic
index article for good choices of carbohydrate foods
- I may have neglected to mention this earlier, but drink
plenty of water. While there is no set amount, you should
always have a glass of water handy, and drink up as much
as you can. You should know that protein synthesis requires
a lot of extra water. Most recommend at least 8 glasses
of water a day - I drink about 12 to 15 glasses a day.
Don't worry about making too many trips to the can.
- Write down everything (EVERYTHING) you eat throughout
the day
- Don't forget, you can always use the USDA food nutrition
database to find the nutritional values. USDA
food nutrition database.
- Plan out your daily caloric requirement - figure out
how much protein, carbohydrates and fats you should target
for based on your goals and body weight. Refer to part
1 of the diet nutrition guide here.
- Don't be scared of carbs! Don't buy into all this low
carb non-sense and jump on the band wagon! Your body is
made to work on carbs as fuel and energy, just be smart
about what types of carbs you consume!
And get the Muscle Building Nutrition
e-book by Will Brink. What I've written here in the diet
and nutrition guides barely scratches the surface of nutritional
science - Muscle Building Nutrition goes into much more
detail than I am able to here, and you should find that
a good read.
Supplements and Weight Lifting
Conclusion
In the supplements section, we had covered
quite a few different supplements, and I had grouped them
into 3 categories: regular supplements, other supplements,
and health supplements. The regular supplements category
are supplements I use most often, such as whey protein,
creatine and glutamine. Other supplements category are supplements
that are worth trying, but not essential - such as NO2 supplements,
tribulus, taurine etc.. Health supplements includes flax
seed and a multi vitamin.
Update: Previously, I
had been a solid believer in the fact that glutamine and
protein supplements should be taken at least 30 minutes
apart to maximize absorption of both, since the amino acids
would fight for absorption. However, after some recent research
and reading, I've learned that glutamine and whey can be
taken together without competing for absorption. The original
article on the AST web site which I first read about this
had updated their research.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Take your whey protein during and post workout with
water to allow fastest absorption, and take your protein
(s) with milk or soy milk at other times of the day.
- Take in a simple carb drink after each workout (ie.
my homemade celltech recipe will do fine)
- Keep your body fueled with food, snack, or a shake every
2 to 3 hours (you want to grow right?)
- Make sure to allow time for at least one more solid
meal after your workouts - you have a 3 hour window where
your body is in an anabolic state, and you want to take
advantage of this by feeding your muscles
Some key points about my workouts:
- Focus on compound lifts - squats, deadlifts, and bench
press
- Rarely doing any isolation type of exercises like concentration
curls, flies, etc...
- Using heavy weights and low reps - using a weight that
allows only 4 to 6 reps of strict form exercises
- Low volume workouts - approximately 8 to 10 sets per
muscle group - usually done with 3 different exercises.
- Large muscle groups done before smaller muscle groups
- Compound lifts done before anything else - meaning exercises
like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses are done before
other exercises for the same muscle groups
- Record the sets and reps of all your workouts, and try
to add a few pounds in the following workout
Keep in mind that its a common myth that
lifting lighter weights with higher reps leads to definition,
while heavy weights and low reps leads to size and strength.
That's just a myth and nothing more. Definition does not
depend on how many reps you perform, but how much body fat
you carry - which is determine by your body type, genetics,
and diet. It's your diet that will have the largest impact
on how defined your look, not how many reps you perform
each set.
Stop wasting your money on the advertising
filled magazines. Go and get the Arnold's Modern Encyclopedia
of Bodybuilding. It's a must have for anyone serious about
bodybuilding.
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