Ovaj clanak koji je napisao Chris Aceto je izuzetno dobar i trebalo bi ga prevesti na nas jezik. Posto vecina vas zna engleski procitajte ovaj clanak u kojem Chris dijeli svoje bogato znanje iz nutricionizma.
Tekst je veliki i ima dosta da se cita, ali svaka rijec vrijedi i treba tekst procitati vise puta.
Hvala gospodinu Aceto-u sto je podijelio samo dijelic svoga znanja sa nama!
Shortcuts to packing on new muscle mass and getting ripped to the bone are frequently peddled on late-night TV, but sadly, these feats cannot be accomplished with quick fixes or next-day miracles. You can, however, implement certain dietary practices that, over time, will guarantee your investment in fitness. Yes, getting in your best shape ever requires hard work in the gym, but without the proper nutrition to fuel your gains, you're dead in the water. Feeding your body the right way is just a matter of repetition--learning and developing the kinds of dietary habits that leave your body with no choice but to respond with cover model-worthy size, strength and detail. By applying the bulk of these 31 strategies to your diet, you'll find that things really do fall into place automatically, even if they don't happen overnight.
SLOPPY TO SLICED
>> Adding new muscle to your frame is an admirable pursuit, but no matter how much weight you lift in the gym, you'll never obtain that tight, shredded look you covet without chipping away at your bodyfat stores. Many people mistakenly think that losing fat is simply a matter of exercising more and eating less, yet a bodybuilder can't afford to arbitrarily hack calories and run until it hurts. It's about striking a balance. These tips will help you get lean without losing hard-earned muscle.
1) Cycle Carbs Limit your carbohydrate intake for 4-5 days, then boost carbs for the following two days. When you cut calories you lose fat, but when you cut calories and limit your carbs to 100 grams or less for 4-5 days, the body goes into a fat-burning mode that's influenced both by fewer calories and a favorable hormonal shift. When you reverse the process and increase your carb intake to 250-300 grams for two days, you drive your metabolism even higher. Just remember to keep protein intake high to spare muscle tissue.
2) Clock Your Carbs Too many carbs can make you fat, but too few for an extended period can slow your metabolism. That's why timing is important: Consume a hefty sum of your daily carbohydrates at breakfast and after training. Eating at least 50 grams of fast-digesting carbs first thing in the morning and immediately postwork-out hinders training-induced muscle breakdown and keeps cortisol, a stress hormone that destroys muscle and slows metabolism, in check.
3) Use BCAAs to Preserve Muscle To help prevent catabolism, take 5-10 grams of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) with breakfast as well as before and after training. Ingested preworkout, BCAAs are used by the body as a substitute fuel source so it doesn't tap into stored muscle protein to get through a session. Also, when you're going low-carb, BCAAs can better trigger protein synthesis.
4) Make Carbs Work for You Since building muscle is the best way to burn more fat in the long run, you need to make your workouts intense enough to elicit the gains you want. Taking in 20 grams of fast-digesting whey protein and 20-40 grams of slow-digesting carbs (from sources such as fruit, sweet potatoes or brown rice) 30 minutes or less before your first rep helps you power through your workouts with the required intensity. Keep the weight loads up and your rest periods short to burn through your preworkout fuel.
5) Increase Neurotransmitters What's a neurotransmitter? Think spark plug. These chemicals in the brain signal the body's internal fat-burning machinery to shift into an active state. Caffeine, evodiamine and tea (green, oolong and black) boost these fat-fighting chemicals, especially when taken before training and in the absence of carbohydrates. Dosages vary, but each can be taken in a stack with other fat-burners 2-3 times a day, with at least one of those doses coming 30-60 minutes preworkout.
6) Prioritize Slow-Burning Carbs Slow-digesting carbs such as beans, whole-grain breads and pastas, oatmeal, brown rice and sweet potatoes should constitute the bulk of your daily carbohydrate intake (the exceptions being first thing in the morning and immediately postworkout). Slow carbs reduce the effect of insulin, the hormone that initiates both hunger and fat storage. Research confirms that athletes who consume slow-digesting carbs burn more fat throughout the day as well as during exercise.
7) Snack Right Sugar-free yogurt and cottage cheese are quite possibly the perfect snack foods. Their slow-digesting carbs prevent your insulin levels from going through the roof. Also, dairy products contain plenty of calcium, which can affect calcitriol levels in the body; calcitriol makes the body's fat-storing system inefficient at manufacturing fat. Keep low-fat cottage cheese and sugar-free yogurt at your office to avoid the call of the vending machine throughout the day.
Always Feed the Machine Prolonged low-cal diets end up impairing your metabolism over time. One way to get around these inevitable slowdowns is to eat constantly in small quantities. Consuming multiple small meals each day--eating every 1 1/2-2 hours--stimulates thermogenesis, which supports metabolism. While dieting is about restriction, doing so while eating as often as possible allows your body to roll right through potential metabolic slowdowns.
9) Employ Arginine Taking 3-10 grams of this amino acid an hour before training increases blood flow to the muscles, boosting metabolism and enhancing your pump. It also magnifies the natural growth hormone (GH) burst associated with training, which amps muscle growth and steers the body toward using fat for fuel instead of muscle protein and glycogen.
10) Avoid Carbs Late Hit the sheets light on carbs. When you go to bed in a carb-deprived state, your body maximizes its natural GH output. GH favorably shifts metabolism and causes more calories to be burned, with a greater amount of those calories being derived from bodyfat. One caveat for evening trainees: You should still consume 40-60 grams of fast-digesting carbs immediately after workouts to kick-start recovery. The bulk of those carbs will be burned or stored as glycogen, leaving blood-sugar levels fairly flat. As long as your blood sugar is stable at bedtime, you'll max out on GH release while you slumber, putting you in a position to grow muscle, not fat.
11) Drink Tea Regularly Adequate hydration is essential for performing at optimum levels and keeping your metabolism high. Drink about half your bodyweight in ounces per day; in other words, if you weigh 180 pounds, drink about 90 ounces of water daily. Yet that doesn't mean you can't make some of that liquid work overtime for you. For instance, try brewing green tea, which contains antioxidants that increase calorie-burning, or adding ginseng, which can keep blood-sugar levels stable to help you get lean.
12) Use Glutamine and Taurine These two aminos help maintain your body's anabolic environment while dieting. When you reduce calories and carbs, cortisol levels often rise. Glutamine interferes with cortisol uptake, staving off protein loss and muscle breakdown. Taken postworkout with fast-digesting carbs, glutamine also assists in recovery by pulling water into muscle cells; it has been found to significantly boost metabolic rate as well.
Another crucial amino acid, taurine enhances water retention within muscles, giving them a greater anabolic edge. Take 5-10 grams of glutamine and 1-3 grams of taurine pre- and post-workout to continue dropping bodyfat.
13) Eliminate All Fat Okay, not all of it. Do away with most fat for 4-5 days to bust through a sticking point in your fat-loss efforts. (Temporarily eliminating fat leverages the body to burn more stored body-fat.) No chicken breasts, no lean meat, no egg yolks. Ditch even oatmeal, which contains small amounts of fat. Instead, consume near-zero-fat protein sources such as turkey breast, egg whites, fat-free cottage cheese and protein powders. Your body is extremely adaptable, however, so even the zero-fat approach stops working after 4-5 days. That's when you can return to protein-rich foods that provide more fat.
MASS MADE SIMPLE
>> Gaining mounds of appreciable muscle doesn't seem to come easy for most people. It's rarely for lack of enthusiasm in the gym, though; where most lifters fall short is in their diets. Using the proper approach with whole foods and supplements makes all the difference between being barrel-chested and bare-boned. This assortment of tactics will help you start piling muscle onto muscle in no time.
14) Ditch the Low-Fat/Fat-Free Approach Strict low-fat diets are for getting lean. When gaining mass, make sure you include olive oil, avocado and whole eggs in your diet, as well as lower-fat--not fat-free--yogurt, milk and cheese. These types of dietary fats drive growth and recovery. Fat also spares the use of protein as an energy source, meaning the protein you eat is directed to its most crucial role--building mass. Fat also supports the natural production of testosterone and GH, two major players in the mass game. Make sure your daily calorie intake is about 30% of calories from fat, mostly from healthy sources such as egg yolks, fatty fish, nuts and seeds.
15) Splurge Occasionally Stepping up your calorie intake once a week can actually trigger new growth. When you radically increase calories--even with foods you may not typically find in the pages of M & F, such as pizza, burgers, fried food and desserts--the body responds by increasing anabolic hormones responsible for repairing damaged muscle tissue. Plus, this type of occasional dietary splurge keeps you sane while eating clean.
16) Use Powder Protein is nutrient No. 1 when it comes to building mass. To maximize your protein intake, make at least two of your 5-6 daily meals a protein shake. Powders are more readily absorbed than tougher proteins such as meat and poultry, and you can generally control your portion down to the gram. The two most critical times to have protein shakes are right before (20 grams) and after (40-60 grams) workouts.
17) Crank Up the T & C Weightlifting boosts levels of testosterone, the muscle-building hormone, and increases the density of T receptors in muscles, allowing greater amounts of testosterone to do its job. After a few weeks, however, the training-induced testosterone burst declines. That's where T boosters come into play. Taking 500-750 mg of tribulus terrestris an hour before workouts increases luteinizing hormone, which in turn improves testosterone levels. In addition, taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C after training lowers levels of cortisol, the stress hormone released during training that suppresses testosterone uptake by muscles. The net effect: enhanced testosterone status, leading to greater muscle strength, recovery and mass.
18) Go With Garlic How can something that's edible but contains hardly any calories, carbs, protein or fat yield gains in mass? By influencing natural hormones in the body that support growth. Getting big is about macronutrients--protein, carbs and fat--as well as hormones. Animal research shows that a high garlic intake combined with a high protein intake produces increased testosterone levels and less muscle breakdown--the elusive anabolic state!
19) Supplement During Training A sports drink consumed during exercise can shut down the usual muscle breakdown associated with hard training. Select a product that contains glucose (50-60 grams of carbs), add 10-20 grams of whey and sip throughout your workout.
20) Flush the System Everyone hits plateaus. You eat like crazy and yet inevitably hit a wall. What to do? Take 10 days and pull back on your carb intake, then go back to high carbs. Let's say you're eating 400 grams of carbs a day. Cut back to 200-250 grams for 10 days, then go up to 500 for a couple of days before leveling back off to 400. What happens? Your body slingshots right through that plateau and you continue to grow. A chronic high-carb diet makes enzymes that store carbs lazy and less effective. When you pull back on and then add carbs back in, you revamp and recharge your glycogen-storing machinery, allowing you to get back on a growth spurt.
21) Let Salt Work for You Bodybuilders often make a fuss when someone recommends salt as part of a diet, but keep in mind that sodium is a major mineral your body needs. Salt regulates metabolism by increasing the body's ability to store carbohydrates in muscles. Generally, greater carb storage yields greater mass gains. That's why bodybuilders who eliminate salt in hopes of getting ripped for a competition often fail to look the way they hope to. A lack of sodium reduces the body's ability to make muscle glycogen, and too little glycogen leads to muscles devoid of fullness.
In addition, salt helps amino acids and creatine pass readily into muscle cells, creating growth. We're not suggesting you shovel in salt at every meal, but you don't need to worry about buying low-sodium foods. And if you feel like a dash of salt on your steak or rice, go right ahead.
22) Eat Meat When it comes to mass, red meat is the way to go. Gram for gram, lean red meat contains more B vitamins, creatine, iron and zinc--all vital for growth--than any other protein source. If mass gains are something you're truly serious about, you must consume red meat on a fairly frequent basis.
23) Eat Fatty Fish Six-ounce helpings of fatty fish such as bluefish, sardines, salmon and trout provide 32 grams of muscle-building protein and up to 18 grams of omega-3 fatty acids. These fats reduce muscle inflammation, in turn encouraging muscle repair and helping to control cortisol. As cortisol levels fall, testosterone levels generally rise, promoting gains in mass. Omega-3s also alter the fate of glucose, the energy byproduct of carbs. Glucose can be stored as muscle glycogen (promoting growth) or bodyfat, and consuming a diet rich in omega-3 fats shortchanges bodyfat stores by pushing the majority of glucose into muscles.
24) Adjust for Inflation If you're not gaining mass yet have energy in the gym, it's likely that you're eating enough carbs but not enough protein to build new muscle tissue. So if you're currently following the golden rule of 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, immediately move that up to 1.5 grams per pound and muscle will come your way.
25) Emphasize Post-workout Nutrition How and what you eat right after the gym can make or break your physique. Packing in 60-100 grams of fast-digesting carbs, such as a sports drink, fat-free sorbet or white bread with jam, and 40-60 grams of whey protein immediately after training drives muscles into a state of growth and recovery.
GENERAL TIPS
>> While the previous tips are aimed at two specific groups--those looking to get lean and those wanting to gain mass--some advice applies to every physique-minded lifter. The following tips should be used by all bodybuilders, no matter the training goal.
26) Cheat Right If you're a bodybuilder getting ready for a show, you know you have to get onstage with one small piece of cloth as the only thing preventing you from being naked. It's easier to stay motivated and never cheat in that context. But the rest of us who just want to look better are a little more susceptible to the occasional food binge. That's okay. But if you go overboard, do it on protein. Choose a very large steak, a small potato and salad over a huge pasta meal or pizza because the protein and fat in steak hangs around the gut far longer, making you feel full and allowing you to reassess how hungry you really are. Also, protein can increase chemicals that signal the brain to make you feel full, whereas carbs can do the opposite and trigger the release of chemicals that make you feel hungry.
27) Pack Your Food One reason many trainees fail to get big and ripped is that they get suckered into cheating by eating foods that are off the reservation. When you cook and pack your food, you're the master of your destiny. Reaching into your insulated lunch box for a microwaveable helping of steak and rice is much better for you than hitting the drive-thru every day.
28) Snack Right Stuck in a cubicle all day? We know the feeling. But that's no reason to fall off the wagon every time you get a sweet tooth at work. Cucumber slices marinated in vinegar, salt and Splenda; sugar-free Jell-O or Popsicles; strawberries; and cantaloupe are some of the very best get-ripped snacks because they yield next to nothing in the calorie department and satisfy the urge to eat something sweet. If you snack on something else--say, a banana nut muffin--you have no one to blame but yourself for the effect on your physique.
29) Go Big at Breakfast If you're looking to lean out, breakfast helps ignite your metabolism for the day ahead. When you skip this meal, your metabolism sputters like a dying campfire. A healthy breakfast also keeps you from gorging on something less nourishing at mid-morning.
For mass-gainers, eating breakfast puts the brakes on sleep-triggered catabolism. Remember, when you wake up you've essentially been fasting for 6-8 hours, sending your body on the hunt for energy anywhere it can find it, and eventually your muscles become the target. For either goal, strive for breakfast containing a minimum of 30 grams of protein along with 30-50 grams of carbs.
30) Hydrate Consuming plenty of water is easy to do. It's also easy to overlook. Getting an adequate amount of water ensures that your body runs on all cylinders. Need we remind you that your body is more than 70% water and that nearly every bodily process requires it? Plus, you're active, which means you need more water than most. Forget about 6-8 glasses a day--aim for at least half your bodyweight in ounces of water per day, minimum. As a bonus, chugging 2 cups of cold water can have a positive impact on your metabolism.
31) Be Punctual Whether you're trying to get shredded or pack on the mass, always eat immediately after training. Is it pointless if you wait longer than three minutes after your final rep to chug your protein shake? No, but you shouldn't wait more than an hour after training--that's just too long. When you hit the iron, your hormones and enzyme processes go haywire and demand energy in the form of carbs and protein to get the body back to a state of balance. If you eat fairly soon after exercise, you match up supply with the body's demands. If you wait, demand wanes. Calories taken in after the one-hour window are still used for recovery and growth but not nearly to the same extent.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0801/is_4_69/ai_n24924026/pg_1
