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All your efforts in the gym would be wasted without proper nutrition. Nutrition is pretty much as important as training itself, so it becomes important to understand how we can optimize our nutrition to match our training goals.
The classic approach in bodybuilding was to 'bulk up' for several months, and then 'cut up' for nearly just as long before a competition. I believe that with all the research that's been done, and all the knowledge that's been gathered, we can take a much more educated approach towards achieving our goals.
It should be possible to build appreciable amounts of lean body mass without the accompanying bodyfat. We have to keep in mind that eating only replenishes energy stores and provides some building material for muscle synthesis. Carbs aren't necessary for muscle synthesis, but they are necessary for preventing the body from breaking down muscle for energy.
The body's needs change throughout the day and depend on activity level, so here I will discuss timing of meals, and when to eat what and why!
Breakfast
The body has been deprived of nutrients all night. Chances are it has already resorted to muscle tissue for energy, so it is important that we eat as soon after waking as possible. And to ingest protein to prevent further muscle wasting.
Also, the liver will be it's most depleted of glycogen in the morning, which allows for a great deal of carbohydrate intake for breakfast. Having a fully loaded liver may minimize some of the muscle wasting that goes on during the day. (Liver holds avg. 90 grams of carbs, so breakfast should supply roughly the same amount)
Now's a good time to take all your vitamins and minerals too, that way you'll have all the micro-nutrients available to your bodies regular processing throughout the day. After exercise you may want to consider replenishing some of the key nutrients as well, as they get broken down and may leave you depleted. Perhaps a small multi-vitamin/mineral supplement would do the trick.
Insulin sensitivity is also the highest in the morning making it an ideal time to load up on creatine for the muscles, as well as after exercise. You can get away with the most sinful foods in the morning, so if you're gonna be naughty, try and do it in the AM hours!
Mid-Day Meals
This should include about 3-4 meals, depending on the size of each meal and your schedule. You should include a protein in each meal, as well as some fruit. One huge myth that really frustrates me is that fructose is a simple sugar. It's probably the most 'complex' carbohydrate there is!
If not fruit, at least have some veggies with each meal. The reason for this is not only vitamins and minerals, but also fiber which is both extremely good for you, and lowers the glycemic index of your meal. And a low glycemic index is exactly what you should be aiming for!
After breakfast, your liver is saturated and you only need to eat enough carbs to keep it full and maybe replace some carbs that were used up in the muscle by lifting, walking, etc. You can roughly figure out how many calories you burn per hour by dividing your basal metabolic rate by 24. Actually, the calculation would be more complex because you burn more during the day.
The basal metabolic rate is affected by recent food ingestion, muscle exertion, environmental temperature, height, weight, body surface area, age, sex, emotional state, body temperature, pregnancy, menstruation, level of thyroid hormones, and "stress" hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine). For more information see this site.
Say you BMR is 2000 calories/day which works out to be, on average, 83 calories per hour. So during the day, this may be closer to 100. Of that, only a fraction are burnt carbs, the rest is fat (carbs are used primarily for nerve function, fat for tissue maintenance). So you burn a max. of 100/4 = 25 grams of carbs per hour, which, after taking walking, lifting, typing etc. into account, may be a close approximation.
I suspect the value is much lower, since a lot more fat is burned for tissue maintenance than glucose. So lets assume 20 grams of glucose/hour are burned. If your meals are spaced 2.5 hours apart, you should eat only 50 grams of carbs per meal. This is little more than a cup of cooked pasta, or 3 apples.
The body does feel a need to burn amino acids for fuel, why this is, I am not sure. The most effective method of preventing muscle breakdown to meet your body's energy needs is to consume protein with each meal. Several supplements exist on the market that are supposed to help in sparing muscle. Most notably HMB and Glutamine.
By keeping the amino acid pool in your blood (fed by either muscle catabolism or diet) full, you prevent further muscle breakdown. How much protein you should eat is a much debated subject. You could find proponents of anywhere from .5-2 grams per pound of body weight per day, or 10-50 grams per meal. You may have heard your body can only assimilate 25 or 30 grams, but what about a 120 pound girl? Or a 250 pound weightlifter?
Keep in mind that excess protein can be stored as fat, so just gobbling up massive amounts to ensure you get enough isn't necessarily the answer. You need enough protein to keep you amino pool full, and to provide building blocks for cell repair and protein synthesis.
I will try to find more information on the necessary quantity of protein, the size of the amino pool and more in the future.
Lastly, I'd like to mention fat. Fat is digested and absorbed differently from protein and carbs. Fatty acids from a meal may not enter the blood stream for up to 5 hours. So I don't know how important it is to make sure you get the right amount of fat each meal.
However, fat does slow digestion and lowers the glycemic index, so it's not a bad idea to include some with every meal. Overall intake should be at least 20%, any less and you might be risking health problems and lack of energy.
Pre/Post Workout meals
The post workout meal is the most important, but I'd also like to say something about pre-workout meals. Many people talk about the importance of ingesting protein after a workout to prevent muscle wasting, but how long does it take protein to be digested and absorbed? When does muscle start to get catabolized during a workout?
As you might have noticed, I am eluding to the idea of eating protein before working out, say no more than an hour before. That way, protein is starting to get absorbed into the blood when you start your workout. Since when you work out your body goes into energy burning not storing mode, your amino acid pools may remain elevated rather than be converted into fat.
And since your amino acid pool is fully stocked, your muscle tissue gets spared as you work out, as well as shortly after. Consuming protein afterwards is also of utmost importance, but don't forget the pre-workout protein! Also consider muscle-sparing supplements before working out (HMB, Glutamine).
A big misconception about pre-workout foods is that you should eat something sugary to give you that energy boost. Well, here's my rebuttal.
When exercising, you use the glucose in your muscle tissue, not in your blood. The glucose in your blood only serves to feed you nervous system. Since your body is in energy burning mode during exercise, it can't even store the excess glucose while you workout. And when you start your workout, you've got lots of insulin in your blood which tries to store away the glucose and interferes with glucagon, which is necessary for energy utilization.
Studies have shown that high glycemic foods actually impair athletic performance if ingested before or during exercise, so stick with low glycemic foods. Though fruit has low GI, it probably isn't the best choice because it follows a different digestion path which requires energy, and may take longer leaving you feeling bloated.
So like I said, you do want to consume protein after your workout as well. But more importantly, now is the time to consume 'simple', low glycemic carbs! You've depleted a large amount of muscle tissue of glucose and your nervous system has been busy too. Muscles hold about 300 grams of carbs, so if you worked legs, expect to replenish upwards of 100 grams of carbs.
High glycemic foods are important because they evoke a large insulin response which helps transport glucose, protein, and creatine into muscle cells. And your cells are ready for it! Now is also a good time to take insulin enhancers/mimickers like vanadyl because they allow you to super-saturate your muscles with nutrients allowing for greater protein synthesis, quicker recovery time, and more energy for your next workout.
Some people also claim some fat in your post-workout meal is important. I think, because of the slow absorption time, it would be wiser to ingest some quality fats in the meal prior to your pre-workout meal, that way all the essential fatty acids will be readily available after your workout.
If you do decide to include fats into your post-workout meal, save them until after you've ingested your simple carbs and protein.
For a good post-workout meal I would recommend something like a sports drink (Gatorade, Powerade, grape juice, etc.) with 5-10 grams of Creatine. This should contain at least 30 grams of carbs. Let this settle for about 10 minutes before taking down a meal replacement shake with about 30-50 grams of protein, and 30-70 grams of carbs.
I'm not a big fan of weight-gain shakes (not to be confused with meal replacement shakes), but they could actually serve a useful purpose as a post-workout supplement.
Consuming Simple Carbohydrates During a Workout
I have seen many arguments both in favor of, and against this idea. Some say it gives you more energy for your workout, and even has an anabolic effect with the associated release of insulin. Others say it results in poor performance, and lack of energy.
Let me just say that I am against drinking a carb drink during a workout, but that doesn't mean I'm right(even though I think I am). Here's a list of arguments against this practice, on which I base my decision. (I'll also keep my eye open for solid research)
Even during intense exercise, the body utilizes liver glycogen to maintain blood glucose, so if muscles could use it, it would always be there.
Muscles, as far as I know, rely primarily on glycogen stored within the cells, not blood glucose.
Consuming carbohydrates, even in liquid form, would cause blood to be redirected to the gut (and away from muscle) for digestion/absorption.
Elevated blood glucose levels cause by carb ingestion result in insulin release, which may be anabolic, but might interfere with breakdown of glycogen and fat for energy.
The primary argument for carb drinks is they provide glucose for quick energy. Under exercise conditions, this glucose would not get transferred to inside the cell, so the question is, too what extent can muscle cells utilize blood glucose for energy?
After a meal when blood glucose is high, insulin is required for glucose transport into muscle cells, so does this happen when a carb drink is consumed? And how effective is insulin, an energy storage hormone, when the body is in an energy consuming state? My guess would be not very!
And if muscle could use blood glucose, whose levels are maintained by the liver, would we even need a carb drink? We have ~90 grams worth of carbs in the liver waiting to replenish blood glucose!
Here is an article discussing sports drinks before and during exercise and importance of glycemic index. Relatively good article, except a claim that ephedra causes brain damage and death! Maybe at mega-doses, but aspirin causes more deaths in a year, but we still use it.
There has been a lot of support for use of sports drinks containing carbs during endurance exercise. Here is a page with some points and audio clips discussing research and the like: High Tech Shower Int.
Evening meals
By this time, insulin sensitivity is down and your metabolism has slowed down considerably. You probably won't be too active anymore either. Evening meals should be light, low glycemic, and with a fairly even spread of nutrients so your body has everything it needs to repair tissue during the night.
This would include protein, and maybe a small shot of quality oil. Include just enough carbs to fill up your liver, no more than 40-60 grams. Before bed consider a slowly digested protein source so your amino acid pool is being replenished well into the night. Maybe also consider the usual anti-muscle wasting supplements.
If you're gonna wake up in the middle of the night in an effort to further prevent muscle wasting, have a very light, not even half serving of a meal replacement shake ( 1 full serving usually has around 35 grams protein, 25 grams carbs for a total of 240 calories).
Carb-Loading
In the good 'ol days, carb loading meant eating over 5000 calories a day for weeks, or even months. This was pretty much the same as 'bulking up', and usually also included quite a bit of bodyfat accumulation.
If you've ever read anything on the 'Anabolic diet', you'll know they also include some 'carb loading'. The anabolic diet basically requires that you eat no carbs during the week, but on weekends you eat anything and everything, and carb load.
The idea is this, by depriving your body of carbohydrates, your muscles become depleted of glucose as they turn more and more towards fat (ketones) as an energy source. This also greatly increases insulin sensitivity (notice that without carbs, virtually no insulin gets secreted during the week). So when the weekend comes, your muscle is like a super-soakable sponge, and they take up unusually large quantities of glucose.
When you go the gym a few days later with your super-saturated muscle, you're an animal! Remember, it's the glucose in your muscle that counts, and you've got tons of it! So how do we make this principle work for us?
By consuming simple carbs after a workout, and lots of them, we kind of carb load, but there may be more we can do. Supplements and vitamins that increase insulin sensitivity definitely help. And depleting a muscle also helps.
Perhaps doing a morning workout, and eating no carbs all day, then doing a depletion workout at night would work? I don't know, I'm just going out on a limb here, but maybe I'll try it.
I think eating loads of carbohydrates after a regular workout is probably the simplest way to carb load. Consuming 100 grams of carbs right after a workout, and another 100 grams in a meal 2 hours later would bring some pretty decent results. Bear in mind that some excess may get stored as fat though.
The classic approach in bodybuilding was to 'bulk up' for several months, and then 'cut up' for nearly just as long before a competition. I believe that with all the research that's been done, and all the knowledge that's been gathered, we can take a much more educated approach towards achieving our goals.
It should be possible to build appreciable amounts of lean body mass without the accompanying bodyfat. We have to keep in mind that eating only replenishes energy stores and provides some building material for muscle synthesis. Carbs aren't necessary for muscle synthesis, but they are necessary for preventing the body from breaking down muscle for energy.
The body's needs change throughout the day and depend on activity level, so here I will discuss timing of meals, and when to eat what and why!
Breakfast
The body has been deprived of nutrients all night. Chances are it has already resorted to muscle tissue for energy, so it is important that we eat as soon after waking as possible. And to ingest protein to prevent further muscle wasting.
Also, the liver will be it's most depleted of glycogen in the morning, which allows for a great deal of carbohydrate intake for breakfast. Having a fully loaded liver may minimize some of the muscle wasting that goes on during the day. (Liver holds avg. 90 grams of carbs, so breakfast should supply roughly the same amount)
Now's a good time to take all your vitamins and minerals too, that way you'll have all the micro-nutrients available to your bodies regular processing throughout the day. After exercise you may want to consider replenishing some of the key nutrients as well, as they get broken down and may leave you depleted. Perhaps a small multi-vitamin/mineral supplement would do the trick.
Insulin sensitivity is also the highest in the morning making it an ideal time to load up on creatine for the muscles, as well as after exercise. You can get away with the most sinful foods in the morning, so if you're gonna be naughty, try and do it in the AM hours!
Mid-Day Meals
This should include about 3-4 meals, depending on the size of each meal and your schedule. You should include a protein in each meal, as well as some fruit. One huge myth that really frustrates me is that fructose is a simple sugar. It's probably the most 'complex' carbohydrate there is!
If not fruit, at least have some veggies with each meal. The reason for this is not only vitamins and minerals, but also fiber which is both extremely good for you, and lowers the glycemic index of your meal. And a low glycemic index is exactly what you should be aiming for!
After breakfast, your liver is saturated and you only need to eat enough carbs to keep it full and maybe replace some carbs that were used up in the muscle by lifting, walking, etc. You can roughly figure out how many calories you burn per hour by dividing your basal metabolic rate by 24. Actually, the calculation would be more complex because you burn more during the day.
The basal metabolic rate is affected by recent food ingestion, muscle exertion, environmental temperature, height, weight, body surface area, age, sex, emotional state, body temperature, pregnancy, menstruation, level of thyroid hormones, and "stress" hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine). For more information see this site.
Say you BMR is 2000 calories/day which works out to be, on average, 83 calories per hour. So during the day, this may be closer to 100. Of that, only a fraction are burnt carbs, the rest is fat (carbs are used primarily for nerve function, fat for tissue maintenance). So you burn a max. of 100/4 = 25 grams of carbs per hour, which, after taking walking, lifting, typing etc. into account, may be a close approximation.
I suspect the value is much lower, since a lot more fat is burned for tissue maintenance than glucose. So lets assume 20 grams of glucose/hour are burned. If your meals are spaced 2.5 hours apart, you should eat only 50 grams of carbs per meal. This is little more than a cup of cooked pasta, or 3 apples.
The body does feel a need to burn amino acids for fuel, why this is, I am not sure. The most effective method of preventing muscle breakdown to meet your body's energy needs is to consume protein with each meal. Several supplements exist on the market that are supposed to help in sparing muscle. Most notably HMB and Glutamine.
By keeping the amino acid pool in your blood (fed by either muscle catabolism or diet) full, you prevent further muscle breakdown. How much protein you should eat is a much debated subject. You could find proponents of anywhere from .5-2 grams per pound of body weight per day, or 10-50 grams per meal. You may have heard your body can only assimilate 25 or 30 grams, but what about a 120 pound girl? Or a 250 pound weightlifter?
Keep in mind that excess protein can be stored as fat, so just gobbling up massive amounts to ensure you get enough isn't necessarily the answer. You need enough protein to keep you amino pool full, and to provide building blocks for cell repair and protein synthesis.
I will try to find more information on the necessary quantity of protein, the size of the amino pool and more in the future.
Lastly, I'd like to mention fat. Fat is digested and absorbed differently from protein and carbs. Fatty acids from a meal may not enter the blood stream for up to 5 hours. So I don't know how important it is to make sure you get the right amount of fat each meal.
However, fat does slow digestion and lowers the glycemic index, so it's not a bad idea to include some with every meal. Overall intake should be at least 20%, any less and you might be risking health problems and lack of energy.
Pre/Post Workout meals
The post workout meal is the most important, but I'd also like to say something about pre-workout meals. Many people talk about the importance of ingesting protein after a workout to prevent muscle wasting, but how long does it take protein to be digested and absorbed? When does muscle start to get catabolized during a workout?
As you might have noticed, I am eluding to the idea of eating protein before working out, say no more than an hour before. That way, protein is starting to get absorbed into the blood when you start your workout. Since when you work out your body goes into energy burning not storing mode, your amino acid pools may remain elevated rather than be converted into fat.
And since your amino acid pool is fully stocked, your muscle tissue gets spared as you work out, as well as shortly after. Consuming protein afterwards is also of utmost importance, but don't forget the pre-workout protein! Also consider muscle-sparing supplements before working out (HMB, Glutamine).
A big misconception about pre-workout foods is that you should eat something sugary to give you that energy boost. Well, here's my rebuttal.
When exercising, you use the glucose in your muscle tissue, not in your blood. The glucose in your blood only serves to feed you nervous system. Since your body is in energy burning mode during exercise, it can't even store the excess glucose while you workout. And when you start your workout, you've got lots of insulin in your blood which tries to store away the glucose and interferes with glucagon, which is necessary for energy utilization.
Studies have shown that high glycemic foods actually impair athletic performance if ingested before or during exercise, so stick with low glycemic foods. Though fruit has low GI, it probably isn't the best choice because it follows a different digestion path which requires energy, and may take longer leaving you feeling bloated.
So like I said, you do want to consume protein after your workout as well. But more importantly, now is the time to consume 'simple', low glycemic carbs! You've depleted a large amount of muscle tissue of glucose and your nervous system has been busy too. Muscles hold about 300 grams of carbs, so if you worked legs, expect to replenish upwards of 100 grams of carbs.
High glycemic foods are important because they evoke a large insulin response which helps transport glucose, protein, and creatine into muscle cells. And your cells are ready for it! Now is also a good time to take insulin enhancers/mimickers like vanadyl because they allow you to super-saturate your muscles with nutrients allowing for greater protein synthesis, quicker recovery time, and more energy for your next workout.
Some people also claim some fat in your post-workout meal is important. I think, because of the slow absorption time, it would be wiser to ingest some quality fats in the meal prior to your pre-workout meal, that way all the essential fatty acids will be readily available after your workout.
If you do decide to include fats into your post-workout meal, save them until after you've ingested your simple carbs and protein.
For a good post-workout meal I would recommend something like a sports drink (Gatorade, Powerade, grape juice, etc.) with 5-10 grams of Creatine. This should contain at least 30 grams of carbs. Let this settle for about 10 minutes before taking down a meal replacement shake with about 30-50 grams of protein, and 30-70 grams of carbs.
I'm not a big fan of weight-gain shakes (not to be confused with meal replacement shakes), but they could actually serve a useful purpose as a post-workout supplement.
Consuming Simple Carbohydrates During a Workout
I have seen many arguments both in favor of, and against this idea. Some say it gives you more energy for your workout, and even has an anabolic effect with the associated release of insulin. Others say it results in poor performance, and lack of energy.
Let me just say that I am against drinking a carb drink during a workout, but that doesn't mean I'm right(even though I think I am). Here's a list of arguments against this practice, on which I base my decision. (I'll also keep my eye open for solid research)
Even during intense exercise, the body utilizes liver glycogen to maintain blood glucose, so if muscles could use it, it would always be there.
Muscles, as far as I know, rely primarily on glycogen stored within the cells, not blood glucose.
Consuming carbohydrates, even in liquid form, would cause blood to be redirected to the gut (and away from muscle) for digestion/absorption.
Elevated blood glucose levels cause by carb ingestion result in insulin release, which may be anabolic, but might interfere with breakdown of glycogen and fat for energy.
The primary argument for carb drinks is they provide glucose for quick energy. Under exercise conditions, this glucose would not get transferred to inside the cell, so the question is, too what extent can muscle cells utilize blood glucose for energy?
After a meal when blood glucose is high, insulin is required for glucose transport into muscle cells, so does this happen when a carb drink is consumed? And how effective is insulin, an energy storage hormone, when the body is in an energy consuming state? My guess would be not very!
And if muscle could use blood glucose, whose levels are maintained by the liver, would we even need a carb drink? We have ~90 grams worth of carbs in the liver waiting to replenish blood glucose!
Here is an article discussing sports drinks before and during exercise and importance of glycemic index. Relatively good article, except a claim that ephedra causes brain damage and death! Maybe at mega-doses, but aspirin causes more deaths in a year, but we still use it.
There has been a lot of support for use of sports drinks containing carbs during endurance exercise. Here is a page with some points and audio clips discussing research and the like: High Tech Shower Int.
Evening meals
By this time, insulin sensitivity is down and your metabolism has slowed down considerably. You probably won't be too active anymore either. Evening meals should be light, low glycemic, and with a fairly even spread of nutrients so your body has everything it needs to repair tissue during the night.
This would include protein, and maybe a small shot of quality oil. Include just enough carbs to fill up your liver, no more than 40-60 grams. Before bed consider a slowly digested protein source so your amino acid pool is being replenished well into the night. Maybe also consider the usual anti-muscle wasting supplements.
If you're gonna wake up in the middle of the night in an effort to further prevent muscle wasting, have a very light, not even half serving of a meal replacement shake ( 1 full serving usually has around 35 grams protein, 25 grams carbs for a total of 240 calories).
Carb-Loading
In the good 'ol days, carb loading meant eating over 5000 calories a day for weeks, or even months. This was pretty much the same as 'bulking up', and usually also included quite a bit of bodyfat accumulation.
If you've ever read anything on the 'Anabolic diet', you'll know they also include some 'carb loading'. The anabolic diet basically requires that you eat no carbs during the week, but on weekends you eat anything and everything, and carb load.
The idea is this, by depriving your body of carbohydrates, your muscles become depleted of glucose as they turn more and more towards fat (ketones) as an energy source. This also greatly increases insulin sensitivity (notice that without carbs, virtually no insulin gets secreted during the week). So when the weekend comes, your muscle is like a super-soakable sponge, and they take up unusually large quantities of glucose.
When you go the gym a few days later with your super-saturated muscle, you're an animal! Remember, it's the glucose in your muscle that counts, and you've got tons of it! So how do we make this principle work for us?
By consuming simple carbs after a workout, and lots of them, we kind of carb load, but there may be more we can do. Supplements and vitamins that increase insulin sensitivity definitely help. And depleting a muscle also helps.
Perhaps doing a morning workout, and eating no carbs all day, then doing a depletion workout at night would work? I don't know, I'm just going out on a limb here, but maybe I'll try it.
I think eating loads of carbohydrates after a regular workout is probably the simplest way to carb load. Consuming 100 grams of carbs right after a workout, and another 100 grams in a meal 2 hours later would bring some pretty decent results. Bear in mind that some excess may get stored as fat though.
yw
