Natural Body Building

Natural body building with the right nutrition

In order to build muscle, along with a good weight training program, you need good nutrition. When you workout, microscopic tears occur in the muscle tissue. In order to rebuild the torn muscle, your body needs protein. After training, your body also needs carbohydrates for fuel.

After a workout, your body has used most of your carbohydrate energy and will use protein for fuel if your don't feed it some carbs. Now, you want the protein to be used for repairing and building muscle, rather than energy

To check out the how many calories you need each day, or how much fat, protein, or carbohydrates you should eat, visit the "calculation of calories" page. After you know how many calories you need per day, you need to determine the composition of your diet.

For building muscle, a diet composed of 60% carbohydrate, 20% protein, 20% fat is best. Don't get caught up in all the high protein diet stuff. Nutritionists agree that between 0.7g and 1.0g of protein per pound of body weight is plenty for even competitive body builders.

IMPORTANT TIPS

  • Don't let your fat intake drop bellow 20%. Your body actually needs vitamins and minerals only found in certain fats in order to maximize muscle growth, and is also essential for healthy skin, etc.

  • Next, the standard 3 meals a day is not going to be enough. Your body needs a constant 'flow' of nutrients and protein for optimal growth. Depending on your size, the body can only absorb around 30g of protein at a time. So if you only ate one big meal a day consisting of 100g of protein (a lot of steak and milk), the body would still only absorb about 30g of that protein, the rest would go to waste. A good rule is to eat every 3 hours, which adds up to 5 or 6 meals a day (depending when you go to bed and how much sleep you need). No later than one hour before going to bed (your 6th meal)

Last meal of the day

Try to only eat protein, no fat, no carbs. Tuna is an excellent choice. An average can has just over 30g of protein, 1g of fat or less, and 1g of carbohydrate or less. This is because your body doesn't require much energy while you sleep. The average active person will burn under 50 calories per hour in their sleep. 50 calories is equivalent to eating about 2/3 of an apple! So don't go loading up of food before bed. It's most likely going to turn to fat. For some great recipes refer to our body building diet & recipes section

Breakfast

breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Your body has just gone 9 hours or so without food, and needs fuel for today’s workout as well as for continuing to build and repair torn muscle from the last workout(s). you can have have All Bran or Oatmeal with a chopped banana and skimmed milk, an apple, an egg, some peanuts, and yogurt.

Maybe a weird combination for some of you, but it is a great nutrient dense meal to start the day. It hit all the food groups (grains, fruits & veggies, dairy, and meats & alternatives). It is approximately 95g of carbs, 20g of protein, and 10g of fat. A great 550 calorie way to start to the day!

Post-workout meal

post-workout meal is also equally important to breakfast . After the work out body has used most of the carbs so it will use proteins from muscles if it is not feeded with carbs so include carbs and proteins as a fuel for muscles in the post-workout meal

Do remember

Try to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, grains, low fat dairy products, and lean meats. Minimize or eliminate other junk foods. Go ahead and eat that donut once in a while if you want.

Finally, drink lots of water. 8-10 glasses a day is usually good enough. Those cups of coffee don't count. Water means water. Not coke. Its helps in hydration, transportation of nutrients, and blood flow.

For some great recipes do visit our body building diet & recipes section