how to grow muscle fast
If you believed the ads for protein supplements, there would be no way to build muscle and increase healthy body weight on a raw food diet. Bodybuilding magazines usually recommend one to two grams of protein per pound of body weight. It is my own opinion that they’ve advocated such a high protein intake, first, to sell protein supplements, and second, due to the clogging of the cellular basement membrane, which actually creates a protein deficiency. Now, this may be the actual reason some people need that much protein in order to build muscle. But that is not the case with a raw foodist.
Why? Well, according to my own experience and the researchers at the Max Planck Institute, raw protein has double the strength of cooked protein. That means that as a raw food eater, you require half the protein that a cooked food eater needs to build muscle.
So, how much protein do you really need? I addressed this question back in 1999 while finishing up my book How Long Do You Choose to Live? In chapter 12, “Exercise,” I wrote, “Remember proteins are built from amino acids and your ability to assimilate them is increased with exercise. You only need to increase the exercise, not the amount of protein.”
In Pumped: Straight Facts for Athletes About Drugs, Supplements, and Training by C. Kuhn, Ph.D., S. Swartzwelder, Ph.D., and W. Wilson, Ph.D., they conclude, “Even heavily training athletes can easily consume enough protein in the average American diet. Men need between 50 and 60 grams of protein daily, depending on their age, and women need between 40 and 50 grams…If an athlete is eating a normal diet, there is no strong evidence right now that taking these bizarre products provides a benefit in terms of muscle deposition or athletic performance.”
These authors also bring up the use of supplemental creatine, which many athletes use to increase muscular size. They state, “Training normally increases the enzymes that make creatine phosphate: training alone can increase creatine stores by as much as 30%, a change comparable to that claimed by dietary supplements.”
The old-time strongman and wrestler George Hackenschmidt, the Russian Lion, stated in his book The Way to Live, “Man is born without frying pan or stewpot. The purest natural food for humans would therefore be fresh, uncooked food and nuts.” I certainly agree. That’s why I include so many raw, organic nuts and seeds in my diet. I load my salads with high-protein sunflower seed sprouts and alfalfa sprouts, both high-nitro.
If you drive through farm country, the deepest, richest green fields are alfalfa. Farmers know that because alfalfa is incredibly rich in nutrition, they have to feed it sparingly to cattle and horses. But once again, consider how strong and muscular these animals get on grass alone.
Quinoa is another good protein source, but I get mine from the wild. If you’ve ever seen pigweed or lamb’s quarter, then you’ve seen North American quinoa. In the fall, you can harvest handfuls of these protein-rich seeds into a can or bucket. Then just sprinkle them on your special raw dish. In my newest book, Alive and Well with Wild Foods: A Raw Food Survival Guide, I’ll teach you how to easily find all sorts of muscle-building foods in the wild.
Remember, building muscle is as much a matter of nitrogen and minerals found in green leafy plants as of protein stores. You will need more calories and more grams of protein than someone who doesn’t work out, but half the protein intake of the cooked food eater.
In order to build muscle, you must bring oxygen to the cells. In order for muscular contraction to take place, the electrical potential of the nerve and muscle fibers must be high and in place. Well, you might ask, “How do you do that?” With organic calcium. Almost every person living in an industrialized nation is deficient in this mineral. Why? Because drugs, soft drinks, caffeine, and other Western luxuries rob and block calcium absorption. Here’s something to consider: even if a food is known to be high in minerals such as calcium, if it is a poor-quality food, you’ll only absorb around 10%. If the food source is a high-quality organic food, the absorption rate will be around 80%.
Here’s the reason: calcium supports your liver function so that gastric juices can be produced as well as enzymes. Your entire digestive system will not absorb the vital elements if the food you eat is of poor quality, as is the case with most food produced worldwide.
Now, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the difference between two carrots, one from your garden, one from the supermarket?” Yes, they look identical—maybe the store-bought carrot even looks more uniform. But all that changes once you take a bite. One tastes sweet and the other bitter. Organically grown produce will always taste sweeter. To what do we attribute the sweetness? As odd as it might sound, it’s the calcium the plant picks up from the soil. This is measured by the plant’s Brix reading—the natural plant sugars the plant contains. The higher the plant sugar, the higher the energy release. Indigestion is simply the failure of a food to release its energy; this is why many cannot digest raw foods. These foods simply lack enough calcium to release the plant sugars as energy.
Did you know that pigweed or lamb’s quarter is one of the richest sources of calcium you can find? And it’s free for the picking. It’s so strong that Monsanto’s poison “Roundup” weed killer can’t kill it. Here’s another interesting fact: the early settlers were told by the native people to let pigweed grow in their corn patch. Not only did it hold the corn up during windstorms, but it actually made the corn taste sweeter.
So, the veggies you consume raw with a high Brix reading will grow muscle faster than anyone eating the S.A.D. diet—the standard American diet. Yes, you can build muscle on a raw food diet if you go about it in an intelligent fashion.
Why? Well, according to my own experience and the researchers at the Max Planck Institute, raw protein has double the strength of cooked protein. That means that as a raw food eater, you require half the protein that a cooked food eater needs to build muscle.
So, how much protein do you really need? I addressed this question back in 1999 while finishing up my book How Long Do You Choose to Live? In chapter 12, “Exercise,” I wrote, “Remember proteins are built from amino acids and your ability to assimilate them is increased with exercise. You only need to increase the exercise, not the amount of protein.”
In Pumped: Straight Facts for Athletes About Drugs, Supplements, and Training by C. Kuhn, Ph.D., S. Swartzwelder, Ph.D., and W. Wilson, Ph.D., they conclude, “Even heavily training athletes can easily consume enough protein in the average American diet. Men need between 50 and 60 grams of protein daily, depending on their age, and women need between 40 and 50 grams…If an athlete is eating a normal diet, there is no strong evidence right now that taking these bizarre products provides a benefit in terms of muscle deposition or athletic performance.”
These authors also bring up the use of supplemental creatine, which many athletes use to increase muscular size. They state, “Training normally increases the enzymes that make creatine phosphate: training alone can increase creatine stores by as much as 30%, a change comparable to that claimed by dietary supplements.”
The old-time strongman and wrestler George Hackenschmidt, the Russian Lion, stated in his book The Way to Live, “Man is born without frying pan or stewpot. The purest natural food for humans would therefore be fresh, uncooked food and nuts.” I certainly agree. That’s why I include so many raw, organic nuts and seeds in my diet. I load my salads with high-protein sunflower seed sprouts and alfalfa sprouts, both high-nitro.
If you drive through farm country, the deepest, richest green fields are alfalfa. Farmers know that because alfalfa is incredibly rich in nutrition, they have to feed it sparingly to cattle and horses. But once again, consider how strong and muscular these animals get on grass alone.
Quinoa is another good protein source, but I get mine from the wild. If you’ve ever seen pigweed or lamb’s quarter, then you’ve seen North American quinoa. In the fall, you can harvest handfuls of these protein-rich seeds into a can or bucket. Then just sprinkle them on your special raw dish. In my newest book, Alive and Well with Wild Foods: A Raw Food Survival Guide, I’ll teach you how to easily find all sorts of muscle-building foods in the wild.
Remember, building muscle is as much a matter of nitrogen and minerals found in green leafy plants as of protein stores. You will need more calories and more grams of protein than someone who doesn’t work out, but half the protein intake of the cooked food eater.
In order to build muscle, you must bring oxygen to the cells. In order for muscular contraction to take place, the electrical potential of the nerve and muscle fibers must be high and in place. Well, you might ask, “How do you do that?” With organic calcium. Almost every person living in an industrialized nation is deficient in this mineral. Why? Because drugs, soft drinks, caffeine, and other Western luxuries rob and block calcium absorption. Here’s something to consider: even if a food is known to be high in minerals such as calcium, if it is a poor-quality food, you’ll only absorb around 10%. If the food source is a high-quality organic food, the absorption rate will be around 80%.
Here’s the reason: calcium supports your liver function so that gastric juices can be produced as well as enzymes. Your entire digestive system will not absorb the vital elements if the food you eat is of poor quality, as is the case with most food produced worldwide.
Now, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the difference between two carrots, one from your garden, one from the supermarket?” Yes, they look identical—maybe the store-bought carrot even looks more uniform. But all that changes once you take a bite. One tastes sweet and the other bitter. Organically grown produce will always taste sweeter. To what do we attribute the sweetness? As odd as it might sound, it’s the calcium the plant picks up from the soil. This is measured by the plant’s Brix reading—the natural plant sugars the plant contains. The higher the plant sugar, the higher the energy release. Indigestion is simply the failure of a food to release its energy; this is why many cannot digest raw foods. These foods simply lack enough calcium to release the plant sugars as energy.
Did you know that pigweed or lamb’s quarter is one of the richest sources of calcium you can find? And it’s free for the picking. It’s so strong that Monsanto’s poison “Roundup” weed killer can’t kill it. Here’s another interesting fact: the early settlers were told by the native people to let pigweed grow in their corn patch. Not only did it hold the corn up during windstorms, but it actually made the corn taste sweeter.
So, the veggies you consume raw with a high Brix reading will grow muscle faster than anyone eating the S.A.D. diet—the standard American diet. Yes, you can build muscle on a raw food diet if you go about it in an intelligent fashion.
Bodybuilding : Growth Hormone and the Importance of Sleep
Growth Hormone and the Importance of Sleep
Medical science has discovered that growth hormone can help increase muscle mass. This finding included people who didn’t exercise and whose muscles were atrophied. So, human growth hormone was administered to the frail and elderly who were rapidly losing muscle mass. This muscle wasting condition accelerates if one is bedridden; you can age decades in only weeks if confined to a bed with an injury. However, if you take human growth hormone, it can prevent nitrogen loss, allowing you to maintain your muscles even if you’re unable to work out. |
Growth Hormone and the Importance of Sleep |
Stress hormones or corticosteroids increase your blood sugar, thus revving up your engine for a fight-or-flight reaction. Once you’re in that wired state, forget about gaining muscle. For anabolic growth, you need peace of mind, rest, and sleep. Can you remember how hard it was for you to get out of bed in the morning as a teenager? That was because of human growth hormone. Human growth hormone increases the size of your muscles, strengthens bones, and heightens your sexual potency.
When your brain is in a delta wave state, you'll have strong spikes of growth hormone release. Thus the need for sleep. You know how good you feel after a deep dreamless sleep? That’s because of the delta brain wave frequencies. Did you ever find it curious that older people get less sleep? Unlike teenagers, whom you have to drag out of bed in the morning, the oldster is already up at the crack of dawn.
That’s because by age 60, most people produce very little human growth hormone. Growth hormone is said to drop by 14% for each decade of adult life. Not only is growth hormone destroyed by stress, but stress causes the brain to oversecrete brain-destroying cortisol. Cortisol reduces the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which is essential for you to feel happy. When your pleasure pathways are blocked for a long period, a common condition called anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure, is established within the body. The happiness chemicals of youth have been burned up by life’s stressors, leaving in their wake a grouchy old impotent senior or old bitchy witch. Yet look at the marvelous transformations that take place once you start exercising. What causes it? It has been discovered that vigorous exercise stimulates the production of growth hormone.
Exercise also increases the amount of oxygen and glucose the brain receives. It clears away mental cobwebs and necrotic debris (dead brain cells). Exercise increases the pleasure chemicals called endorphins and decreases high-density lipoproteins which clog brain circulation. Exercise also decreases the stress hormone, cortisol. By doing so, it erases depression and lowers blood sugar levels that predispose older people to diabetes.
The brain requires blood sugar in the hippocampus to lay down memory, but stress inhibits that function. This is why exercise is so important as a stress reliever. Bear in mind that stress releases cortisol, which interferes with your neurotransmitters. That causes the loss of concentration and memory so common among the elderly. The bottom line is that cortisol kills your brain cells, allowing harmful fats to accumulate and literally causing your brain to rot! Do you think a good exercise program might be a good idea?
Exercise relieves stress. When you don’t exercise on a regular basis, stress chemicals like cortisol release a brain chemical called neuropeptide Y, which gives you an insatiable appetite for carbohydrates that makes you FAT! Stress is why people eat too many sweets and starchy foods. Stress makes it almost impossible to adopt a raw food diet.
I also want to mention again that intense exercise can deplete choline levels, which are vital for proper brain function. If your brain doesn’t get enough phosphatidylcholine, it will literally cannibalize its own brain cells to get it. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, oats are rich in choline. Choline is derived from lecithin, which keeps cholesterol soluble and flowing. Lecithin helps your body to digest and transport fats by increasing the gallbladder’s ability to make bile.
The choline that is derived from lecithin is presently used to help people with Alzheimer’s disease. It prevents brain deterioration. This is another reason to have a chlorophyll-rich “green drink” every day. You'll probably get a minimum of 2000 mg of lecithin in this drink. You'll find lecithin not only in the brain and nerve fibers, but also in semen, bile, and breast milk. However, if phosphorus is in short supply, lecithin cannot be produced in the body. Thus, feeblemindedness, memory loss, lack of nerve vitality, neural degeneration, and impotence ensue. Lecithin is primarily made up of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. However, calcium, sulfur, and phosphorus play important roles as well; without phosphorus, lecithin is handicapped and powerless.
You’re probably wondering, “Where can I obtain this extremely valuable mineral?” Again, try raw organic oat groats! They’re our main source of choline, and it comes with its own supply of phosphorus. Almonds are also excellent sources of phosphorus. Once again, I’ll mention my favorite nut snacks, available from Raw Organic Live Nuts—I urge you to try some of the great almond combos.
Another potent source of phosphorus are sea veggies like kelp and dulse. One of my most delicious meals is a combination of sea veggies, soaked nuts and seeds, warm water, and organic extra virgin olive oil. Olives are also on the list of the highest-phosphorus foods, as are seeds and nuts. Phosphorus-rich foods trigger muscle growth.
Do you remember the celery stuffed with almond butter? Next time you try it, realize that you’re nourishing your brain, allowing it to overcome the crippling effects of muscle-eating cortisol, and preparing your body to keep producing human growth hormone.
Growth hormone is released in bursts, targeted directly to your muscles and bones. This infusion of hormone triggers growth. Here’s how it works: growth hormone causes the liver to produce somatomedin, or insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF). It travels to the muscles, where muscular growth is stimulated. What is left over after the first hour is then neutralized by the liver and flushed through the gall bladder. The gall bladder’s bile (think choline, lecithin, and phosphorus) flushes the residue so it can be eliminated from your body. Remember, your body has no lymphatic pump to move the waste that enters the lymph, so you must exercise to get this waste into the bloodstream for elimination.
While you can eat certain foods for more effective growth hormone production, you can’t demand results. The greatest releases of this muscle-building hormone come during intense exercise and a half-hour to an hour after falling asleep. If you’re really committed to packing on the muscle, you’ll want to take a half-hour to one-hour nap after your workout. This will match the natural growth hormone release cycle with your muscles being more receptive and hungry for growth hormone.
I’ve found it quite effective to use a brain entrainment unit set on a delta brain wave track and a fifteen minute to half-hour subliminal program especially designed for muscle growth and maintaining youthfulness. I do this before my workouts for fifteen munutes, thus soaking my muscle fibers with growth hormone, making it instantly available for my body during my workout. Since my workouts are usually quite intense, that triggers an additional burst of growth hormone.
It is also good to take the amino acids arginine, ornithine, and alpha-ketoglutarate one hour before you work out and before you go to sleep. Arginine is so effective in releasing growth hormone that it has been used successfully to improve pituitary function in the brains of undersized children. At the University of Turin, arginine was administered to adults 66 to 82 years old to stimulate the production of human growth hormone and combat muscle loss.
Ornithine has also been given to patients after surgery to prevent muscle loss. When you hear alpha-ketoglutarate, think of the amino acid glutamine. Combined with ornithine, it has been proven to increase the production of human growth hormone much more than any of the other amino acids separately.
If you choose to supplement your training program with these amino acids, do it in a cycle not more than 12 weeks on and 6 weeks off. Of course, if you are not working out on a particular day, no aminos should be taken. Bear in mind that you must also have lots of vitamin C for these to be effective.
Once again, this brings us back to potassium. When the serum potassium levels in your body go down, this deficiency triggers your brain to reduce levels of growth hormone and insulin growth factor 1 or IGF. The reason I’m nuts about nuts is that the lecithin, choline, and acetylcholine they contain stall the production of somatostatin, which halts the release of growth hormone.
Some of my favorite veggies are some of the highest-potassium foods, like beets, broccoli, kale, olives, parsley, raisins, spinach, and sunflower seed sprouts (which I pile on my salad by the handful), not to mention almonds and walnuts. I also pour on the sesame seeds and oil in many of my recipes. Additionally, I include plenty of Raw Fermented Organic Veggies, It's the secret of youthfulness of many of the worlds longest living people.
For a potassium-rich salad dressing, you can’t get better than raw apple cider vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. I might sound like a broken record mentioning my almost daily portion of dulse, kelp, sea lettuce, karango, etc.—all on the list of the highest-potassium foods. Bear in mind that the strongest men in the world have the highest concentration of potassium in their muscles. (As a side note, you’ll never go bald with potassium in your system.)
By now you’re beginning to see the valuable connection these foods have to preserving and promoting growth hormone levels and maintaining a healthy, fit, and muscular body far beyond what some consider old age.
You’re probably wondering where you can get the amino acids I mentioned. You’ll find arginine in all berries. This is why I include blackberries, cranberries, blueberries, and the renowned Himalayan goji berry in my raw oat breakfast, which is loaded with nuts and seeds (also on the list of foods with high arginine levels). Don’t forget raw apple cider; drinking a large glass before and after your workouts will boost arginine and trigger the release of human growth hormone.
Remember, glutamine increases glutathione levels. This is important in preventing memory loss and the deterioration of brainpower. Of course, as you’ve just seen, it triggers the release of human growth hormone. It’s richly supplied in my favorites: oats, parsley, and spinach (which I grow right through the winter in cold frames).
By juicing spinach and parsley, you will create a powerful cocktail to replenish lost glutamine from exercise. This is important because glutamine prevents muscle deterioration by catabolism and glutamine levels are directly related to how your muscles synthesize protein. After intense exercise, large amounts of glutamine are released from your muscles; up to 50% of the amino acids excreted from the body are glutamine.
Leucine is another amino acid that triggers the release of human growth hormone. It is burned in large amounts during long workout sessions. The good news is that, if supplied abundantly, it will spare other muscle-dependent amino acids from being used up. One of the problems an unhealthy athlete experiences is that both these amino acids generate increased levels of ammonia to be discarded by catabolism. Again, to supply leucine, eat nuts and seeds, apples, and tomatoes.
To gain and keep muscle, you need human growth hormone, but also insulin growth factor. Without it, not even your hair will grow. Take starving African children; their human growth hormone levels are surprisingly high, but their IGF levels are so low that no muscle growth takes place. This is what I’ve seen in the raw food community and lots of vegetarians, especially vegans. As a raw food advocate, I’m certainly not bashing the countless health benefits of these diets, but let’s face it—the concentration camp look, even if it is in vogue, is not at all healthy! That’s why I’ve written this book. Muscle is a healthy alternative to skin and bones.
If you fast for five days, your IGF will drop by 66%. That’s when you get into a negative nitrogen balance. A negative nitrogen balance means your body is in a catabolic state and you’re eating up your own muscles to supply protein. If you work out intensely, you may not want to hear this, but you’ll require a lot more protein in your diet in order to remain in a positive nitrogen balance. Your insulin growth factor level is in direct proportion to your protein intake. On an average diet, forget about your anabolic drive—you’re doomed to be weak and skinny (or worse, weak, fat, and diabetic!).
I am aware of the high fat content of nuts and seeds, but remember that all harmful cholesterol comes from animal products. Still, the abundance of oils found in nuts requires that you burn that fat for energy. This means not missing workouts. If you want a high-protein food without the oils, then add sprouted peas and beans combined with raw organic wheat germ. These are the best protein sources that contain more that 20% protein and are also under 20% fat.
Beans combined with grains form complete proteins. So, combine raw soaked oats with sprouted beans or corn and peas and you’ll get the very best carbohydrates with under 5% fat and a super high energy content of over 70% complex carbs.
Now, I hear many people object to all that sugar from grains. That’s what fiber is all about, and that’s also why you go to the gym. There is no more wonderful fiber than what you get from raw oats and fruit and vegetable pectins like the ones in apples and carrots. A high daily intake of dietary fiber is said to stabilize glucose levels so that pre-diabetics never resort to insulin injections and other diabetics are able to get off insulin altogether.
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Muscle Building
How to Develop Your Muscle-Building Base
If you were going to build a house, you would first need to decide on what the best materials would be. Naturally, the choice of materials would be governed by the anticipated strength of the structure. The size of your structure would require enough materials to be available for the construction.
Assuming you’ve chosen the best and highest-quality materials to build with (which I’ll list for you as we go along), you’ll have to be aware of a few facts from the start. I hope this doesn’t stop you in your tracks, but here it is. If you want to add one pound of muscle, you are going to have to eat more food. Your calorie intake should be at least 2500 calories more than required to maintain your current weight. (however raw foodist require less calories to maintain weight than a cooked food eater). If you do this, you can gain a pound of muscle in a couple of weeks, providing you work your butt off in the gym. Are you willing to make that commitment, or are you content to be a scarecrow?
If you’re a 140-pound man, it will take you 9 weeks to gain 5 pounds of muscle if you follow the program in this book. If you are a woman weighing 100 pounds, the same gain in muscle will require 10 weeks. For a 10-pound gain, simply double those figures. For every additional 20 pounds of original weight, deduct half a week. So a man weighing 160 will take 8.5 weeks to gain 5 pounds of muscle, while a 180-pound man requires only 8 weeks.
Since muscle is built with protein, you will have to increase the number of grams of protein you eat per meal. However, you will only assimilate a small amount per meal; the rest of the excess unassimilated protein will be stored as body fat. This is why it is important to begin eating more small meals per day, perhaps as many as five.
I personally enjoy high-calorie/high-protein snacks like the nuts I carry on my website, Raw Organic Live Nuts. enzyme-rich organic foods. If I sit down and enjoy a 4-oz. package of their pesto walnuts, that’s an extra 600 calories and 16 grams of protein.
Before workouts, you can eat some dehydrated fruit. As fruits dehydrate, their natural sugars become concentrated. Just a small handful of dried fruits, about ¼ cup, will yield another 120 calories. Now, finish it off with a glass of fresh apple cider and add another 120 calories. Raw organic juices add a very important component in building muscle—potassium.
Potassium removes waste products that accumulate in your muscle tissue during hard workouts. These include monopotassium phosphate, paralactic acid, and carbon dioxide. The sugar that releases workout energy is glycogen. It must be oxidized and converted to usable power within the muscle. Potassium salts are essential elements in this process. When oxidation is impaired, glycogen is not consumed, other sugars and starches cannot be used by the body, and your muscular activity comes to a halt.
In order for you to keep your muscles and nerves healthy, you must have a high percentage of potassium in your body. What I especially like about high-potassium foods and drinks is their ability to neutralize acids and toxins; they dramatically increase the alkalinity of your blood and lymph. Potassium literally washes your organs and muscles in a process called saponification, which is the conversion of fat into soap. You wash the built-up workout acids out of your muscles, giving you better muscular gains in less time.
One of the highest-potassium foods on earth are black olives, especially organic Greek olives. Just two olives will give you around 40 calories and a whopping 250 grams of potassium. In addition to my regular lunch of raw salad, I’ll always consume at least 20 raw, organic black Greek olives—that’s 400 calories. Since I usually get up in the middle of the night to drink extra water, vital for muscle tissue, I will also eat a couple of bananas. This ups my snack calorie count by another 210 calories.
Every afternoon, my wife and I have quiet time and enjoy a glass of red wine; we do the same before bedtime. Those two glasses of red wine add another 240 calories. However, I may omit the evening glass and opt for one of my favorite drinks, a “Merrie Wabbit.” This is a combo of raw carrot, beet, and tomato juiced in the juicer with horseradish, garlic, cayenne pepper, half a lemon, and half a lime. I add a dash of vodka for my enjoyment (which you may want to leave out). Then I sprinkle dried onion and parsley on top. This drink contains 350 calories, making a total of 1750 extra calories from snacks and drinks. Oh, I almost forgot six small sticks of celery with a tablespoon of raw organic almond butter on each piece—there’s another 780 calories (plus 42 grams of protein), making the snack total 2530 extra calories. This will allow you to gain a pound of muscle every two weeks.
So, you can see, it’s really not that difficult if you count. And at present, I only eat two meals a day. By adding one extra raw meal, I could gain five pounds of muscle in a little under two months. But, again, I’ve got to count calories and work out constantly. More on that as we go along.
Remember, muscle is 70% water, 22% protein, and 7% lipids or fat. Here’s where we get back to those phospholipids we talked about earlier. You must train with sufficient intensity to stimulate new muscle growth by drawing amino acids from your bloodstream. Trained muscles do that more easily than untrained muscles.
The reason I find it easier to gain muscle on a raw food diet is that I get plenty of sleep. Your body’s natural growth hormone is released mainly during periods of deep sleep. The delta and theta brain wave rhythms of deep sleep release the vital chemicals the body requires for growth and repair in around two-hour to four-hour cycles.
Assuming you’ve chosen the best and highest-quality materials to build with (which I’ll list for you as we go along), you’ll have to be aware of a few facts from the start. I hope this doesn’t stop you in your tracks, but here it is. If you want to add one pound of muscle, you are going to have to eat more food. Your calorie intake should be at least 2500 calories more than required to maintain your current weight. (however raw foodist require less calories to maintain weight than a cooked food eater). If you do this, you can gain a pound of muscle in a couple of weeks, providing you work your butt off in the gym. Are you willing to make that commitment, or are you content to be a scarecrow?
If you’re a 140-pound man, it will take you 9 weeks to gain 5 pounds of muscle if you follow the program in this book. If you are a woman weighing 100 pounds, the same gain in muscle will require 10 weeks. For a 10-pound gain, simply double those figures. For every additional 20 pounds of original weight, deduct half a week. So a man weighing 160 will take 8.5 weeks to gain 5 pounds of muscle, while a 180-pound man requires only 8 weeks.
Since muscle is built with protein, you will have to increase the number of grams of protein you eat per meal. However, you will only assimilate a small amount per meal; the rest of the excess unassimilated protein will be stored as body fat. This is why it is important to begin eating more small meals per day, perhaps as many as five.
I personally enjoy high-calorie/high-protein snacks like the nuts I carry on my website, Raw Organic Live Nuts. enzyme-rich organic foods. If I sit down and enjoy a 4-oz. package of their pesto walnuts, that’s an extra 600 calories and 16 grams of protein.
Before workouts, you can eat some dehydrated fruit. As fruits dehydrate, their natural sugars become concentrated. Just a small handful of dried fruits, about ¼ cup, will yield another 120 calories. Now, finish it off with a glass of fresh apple cider and add another 120 calories. Raw organic juices add a very important component in building muscle—potassium.
Potassium removes waste products that accumulate in your muscle tissue during hard workouts. These include monopotassium phosphate, paralactic acid, and carbon dioxide. The sugar that releases workout energy is glycogen. It must be oxidized and converted to usable power within the muscle. Potassium salts are essential elements in this process. When oxidation is impaired, glycogen is not consumed, other sugars and starches cannot be used by the body, and your muscular activity comes to a halt.
In order for you to keep your muscles and nerves healthy, you must have a high percentage of potassium in your body. What I especially like about high-potassium foods and drinks is their ability to neutralize acids and toxins; they dramatically increase the alkalinity of your blood and lymph. Potassium literally washes your organs and muscles in a process called saponification, which is the conversion of fat into soap. You wash the built-up workout acids out of your muscles, giving you better muscular gains in less time.
One of the highest-potassium foods on earth are black olives, especially organic Greek olives. Just two olives will give you around 40 calories and a whopping 250 grams of potassium. In addition to my regular lunch of raw salad, I’ll always consume at least 20 raw, organic black Greek olives—that’s 400 calories. Since I usually get up in the middle of the night to drink extra water, vital for muscle tissue, I will also eat a couple of bananas. This ups my snack calorie count by another 210 calories.
Every afternoon, my wife and I have quiet time and enjoy a glass of red wine; we do the same before bedtime. Those two glasses of red wine add another 240 calories. However, I may omit the evening glass and opt for one of my favorite drinks, a “Merrie Wabbit.” This is a combo of raw carrot, beet, and tomato juiced in the juicer with horseradish, garlic, cayenne pepper, half a lemon, and half a lime. I add a dash of vodka for my enjoyment (which you may want to leave out). Then I sprinkle dried onion and parsley on top. This drink contains 350 calories, making a total of 1750 extra calories from snacks and drinks. Oh, I almost forgot six small sticks of celery with a tablespoon of raw organic almond butter on each piece—there’s another 780 calories (plus 42 grams of protein), making the snack total 2530 extra calories. This will allow you to gain a pound of muscle every two weeks.
So, you can see, it’s really not that difficult if you count. And at present, I only eat two meals a day. By adding one extra raw meal, I could gain five pounds of muscle in a little under two months. But, again, I’ve got to count calories and work out constantly. More on that as we go along.
Remember, muscle is 70% water, 22% protein, and 7% lipids or fat. Here’s where we get back to those phospholipids we talked about earlier. You must train with sufficient intensity to stimulate new muscle growth by drawing amino acids from your bloodstream. Trained muscles do that more easily than untrained muscles.
The reason I find it easier to gain muscle on a raw food diet is that I get plenty of sleep. Your body’s natural growth hormone is released mainly during periods of deep sleep. The delta and theta brain wave rhythms of deep sleep release the vital chemicals the body requires for growth and repair in around two-hour to four-hour cycles.
Tag :
Muscle Building
Why You Need Muscle
The only difference between a beautiful, young, fit, athletic body and an aged, frail, and withered-up body is the amount of human growth hormone available. During exercise we release HGH. That's why exercise is so important to your health, youth, and wellbeing. HGH is also released during sleep and available by supplementation. But, the bottom line is that you need muscle to remain youthful. That's what this book is about.
First of all, the most important muscle in your body, your heart, wouldn't beat if the muscle was weak. In fact, you'd be dead without muscle tissue at work. You'd be a vegetable, unable to move even your littlest finger. Look what happens to people as they age; many have muscles so weak they're unable to even get out of their walkers. Soon, they become so weak they become bedridden, and then they die. Is this what you envision as your inevitable destiny?
I think it's outrageous when I hear people talk about the big 40. That's when somehow, like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin once the clock struck twelve, you suddenly lose all your athletic ability. Nonsense! That's simply the time when age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function begins for most people.
It's also the time when the ratio of fat mass overcomes muscle mass, although you've got to admit that in developed nations, children appear to be born fat. It's no wonder researchers have drawn a correlation between waist size and the likelihood of developing diabetes. If your waist size is under 34 inches, you're probably safe; however, if your waist size is over 40 inches, you've probably already been diagnosed with diabetes. Now, the question resurfaces: do you want to be fat or fit? Don't answer. The fact that you're reading this book in the first place shows that you want to be fabulously fit and lean with lots of beautifully sculpted muscle.
While the medical fraternity generally focuses on the loss of bone mass (osteoporosis) in aging adults, the real problem is the creeping deterioration of muscle mass. Most people take it for granted that you're supposed to lose your athletic prowess as you age. I certainly hope you don't believe that. I don't, and as a pre-baby boomer senior, I still put on muscle easily and am as strong as I have been any time in my life.
Actually, after I first began eating 100% raw foods, I did lose muscle. I seemed to drop weight like a lead balloon—30+ pounds of it. My body fat index was at 6%, and I looked like an anatomy chart. However, I made a startling discovery: my body weight settled down at 172 pounds, and I soon began to gain muscle weight faster than in any time in my life. This discovery of how to gain muscle on a raw food diet is the reason I've written this book. You don't have to be thin as a rail and just as frail; you can pack on all the muscle you desire. Now, don't misunderstand me—you will have to work hard to do it. Have I scared you yet?
Well, this ought to concern you. The progressive loss of muscle mass is just like the unseen loss of bone density. The medical term for this loss of muscle tissue is sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a multifaceted process including loss of growth hormone, loss of testosterone (needed by both men and women), oxidative stress, and loss of motor nerve cells.
One of the potential problems many experience on a raw food diet is a lack of adequate protein and calories. If this condition persists, there is a progression of sarcopenia that is difficult to reverse; however, it is not impossible if one begins today. Since sarcopenia is first evident in adults around the age of 40 and greatly accelerates after 75, now is the time to do something about it.
It is believed that this loss of muscle mass is associated with a decline in mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are where your body generates energy through the production of ATP. The lower the ATP levels, the more the body's muscle mass index declines. Without those energy molecules, it is more difficult for the body to detoxify and replace the cell damage that occurs with intense exercise.
More on how to increase the energy stores of your body later, but first understand that calories are needed for fuel. No matter what you hear about weight gain or weight loss, the bottom line is that it is measured in calories. Of course, the question arises, “Calories from what?” We will discuss that in detail when we discuss how you metabolize your food.
The point I really want to make is that you need muscle tissue and you should do everything you can to build and maintain it. Of course, there are things you should not do in an attempt to build muscle: taking steroids or eating chemically laden meat or cancerous chickens, for example. The bottom line is that muscles are good and it is unhealthy to be without them.
Listen, I've been lifting weights and exercising for more than 50 years. Once, I found an abandoned old tractor axle on my grandfather's farm. I could barely get my hands around it, but it made a great barbell. So, being the impetuous young man that I was, I began lifting it with regularity.
My aunt came to visit and saw me lean, tan, and fit. She scornfully rebuked me, “Why, you're going to get those ugly bumps all over your body from doing that!” (The bumps she referred to were muscles.)
I retorted, “I should be so lucky!”
She argued, “Look at my Paulie.” That was my cousin Paul. I just hated it when she called him Paulie. “Paulie doesn't exercise or try to hurt himself like you do, and he does just fine. Why, he's got a very good body!”
To which I countered, “He's FAT!”
She huffed off quite offended. By the way, he was not only fat—he's dead. Yep, died about 25 years ago. We were the same age.
So, does exercise kill you? Well, certainly not in my cousin’s case. But we hear the tales of strongmen who die young—is there any truth in that? What is the defining difference between strength athletes who break the century mark and those who die before 65?
Author Bob Brown conducted a study of the longevity of 70 old-time strongmen that was reported in the 2005 June-July issue of Iron Man magazine. When Brown checked the ages at death, here is what he found. He divided the group of 70 men into the early death group and the long life group. Then he compared the life spans of the strongmen to that of the average, untrained man.
Here's what he found: 55% of the average men suffered an early death before reaching 65 years of age. However, only 25% of the strongmen fell into the early death group. They had more than double the survival rate of the average untrained man—and consider, this was in spite of poor diet and bad habits! Of the average untrained men, only 10% lived past the age of 75. Again, the statistics are incredibly impressive—50% of the trained men made it to the long life group.
Now contemplate this: at the time when these strongmen lived, there were only 200 million people in the United States, and only 200 broke the century mark. That's 1%. Of the 70 randomly selected strongmen, with a vast difference in diets and habits, 2 men lived beyond the century mark. That means almost 6% of the strongmen lived beyond 100. That's 600 times more than the untrained group, in which only 1% of the population made it beyond 100 years of age.
Do you think it might be a good idea to maximize your chance of a long life by putting more muscle on your bones?
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it is definitely a priority. Of course, this also requires knowledge of the foods that can supply your muscles with what they need to grow. As an example, intense exercise can deplete levels of choline, a B vitamin. In a marathon, runners experienced a 40% drop in plasma choline levels. This could have been avoided by an increased consumption of phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are very, very important in supporting your brain, nervous system, liver, and heart.
Now, the reason I bring this up is that I sincerely doubt any of those long-lived strong men knew anything about it. If they had, could they have lived even longer? If you're already on a raw food diet and you exercise on a regular basis, you may be lacking in choline, which is richly found in oats, cabbage, and cauliflower. This is one of my reasons for consuming lots of raw, organic oat groats for breakfast. You could say I'm usually feeling my oats—that means my testosterone is flowing strongly. Remember, muscles love testosterone; it’s one of the major muscle stimulators. It is both an androgenic and an anabolic. As an androgenic, it produces maleness; thus, in addition to other functions, you develop a larger sex organ. As an anabolic, which means it builds tissue, testosterone produces larger muscles and greater strength.
While we're on the topic of this growth promoting hormone, a warning: don't ever take injections of testosterone. When your body no longer produces its own, your pituitary gland will shut down your libido permanently, your testes will shrink, and you'll probably develop prostate cancer. None of that will happen if you obtain hormone stimulation from raw organic foods.
Your production of testosterone can naturally be increased by choosing the proper foods to make up your raw diet. To grow muscle, your body must have enough cholesterol; without cholesterol, your body would be incapable of producing steroid hormones. Steroids are a large group of lipids or fat substances that play many vital roles in maintaining the health of your biological systems. Testosterone is a steroid. Muscles love testosterone!
I'll try to keep this simple. Cholesterol affects the production of pregnenolone, which generates progesterone, which generates DHEA and androstenedion, which cause the production of testosterone, which stimulates muscle growth. All major steroids descend from cholesterol.
One of the difficulties of building muscle on a raw food diet is the lack of enough healthy cholesterol to promote an anabolic reaction. From my personal observations, men become feminized without these dietary essentials. I've also seen women looking like the skeletons used to teach students in an osteopathic college. Women also need testosterone; they produce it in both the ovaries and the adrenal glands. In a male, most testosterone is produced by the leydig cells in the testes, and some comes from the adrenals. In one study I read, older men had half the leydig cells of younger men—thus, half the sex drive and muscle, due to half the testosterone.
First of all, the most important muscle in your body, your heart, wouldn't beat if the muscle was weak. In fact, you'd be dead without muscle tissue at work. You'd be a vegetable, unable to move even your littlest finger. Look what happens to people as they age; many have muscles so weak they're unable to even get out of their walkers. Soon, they become so weak they become bedridden, and then they die. Is this what you envision as your inevitable destiny?
I think it's outrageous when I hear people talk about the big 40. That's when somehow, like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin once the clock struck twelve, you suddenly lose all your athletic ability. Nonsense! That's simply the time when age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function begins for most people.
It's also the time when the ratio of fat mass overcomes muscle mass, although you've got to admit that in developed nations, children appear to be born fat. It's no wonder researchers have drawn a correlation between waist size and the likelihood of developing diabetes. If your waist size is under 34 inches, you're probably safe; however, if your waist size is over 40 inches, you've probably already been diagnosed with diabetes. Now, the question resurfaces: do you want to be fat or fit? Don't answer. The fact that you're reading this book in the first place shows that you want to be fabulously fit and lean with lots of beautifully sculpted muscle.
While the medical fraternity generally focuses on the loss of bone mass (osteoporosis) in aging adults, the real problem is the creeping deterioration of muscle mass. Most people take it for granted that you're supposed to lose your athletic prowess as you age. I certainly hope you don't believe that. I don't, and as a pre-baby boomer senior, I still put on muscle easily and am as strong as I have been any time in my life.
Actually, after I first began eating 100% raw foods, I did lose muscle. I seemed to drop weight like a lead balloon—30+ pounds of it. My body fat index was at 6%, and I looked like an anatomy chart. However, I made a startling discovery: my body weight settled down at 172 pounds, and I soon began to gain muscle weight faster than in any time in my life. This discovery of how to gain muscle on a raw food diet is the reason I've written this book. You don't have to be thin as a rail and just as frail; you can pack on all the muscle you desire. Now, don't misunderstand me—you will have to work hard to do it. Have I scared you yet?
Well, this ought to concern you. The progressive loss of muscle mass is just like the unseen loss of bone density. The medical term for this loss of muscle tissue is sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a multifaceted process including loss of growth hormone, loss of testosterone (needed by both men and women), oxidative stress, and loss of motor nerve cells.
One of the potential problems many experience on a raw food diet is a lack of adequate protein and calories. If this condition persists, there is a progression of sarcopenia that is difficult to reverse; however, it is not impossible if one begins today. Since sarcopenia is first evident in adults around the age of 40 and greatly accelerates after 75, now is the time to do something about it.
It is believed that this loss of muscle mass is associated with a decline in mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are where your body generates energy through the production of ATP. The lower the ATP levels, the more the body's muscle mass index declines. Without those energy molecules, it is more difficult for the body to detoxify and replace the cell damage that occurs with intense exercise.
More on how to increase the energy stores of your body later, but first understand that calories are needed for fuel. No matter what you hear about weight gain or weight loss, the bottom line is that it is measured in calories. Of course, the question arises, “Calories from what?” We will discuss that in detail when we discuss how you metabolize your food.
The point I really want to make is that you need muscle tissue and you should do everything you can to build and maintain it. Of course, there are things you should not do in an attempt to build muscle: taking steroids or eating chemically laden meat or cancerous chickens, for example. The bottom line is that muscles are good and it is unhealthy to be without them.
Listen, I've been lifting weights and exercising for more than 50 years. Once, I found an abandoned old tractor axle on my grandfather's farm. I could barely get my hands around it, but it made a great barbell. So, being the impetuous young man that I was, I began lifting it with regularity.
My aunt came to visit and saw me lean, tan, and fit. She scornfully rebuked me, “Why, you're going to get those ugly bumps all over your body from doing that!” (The bumps she referred to were muscles.)
I retorted, “I should be so lucky!”
She argued, “Look at my Paulie.” That was my cousin Paul. I just hated it when she called him Paulie. “Paulie doesn't exercise or try to hurt himself like you do, and he does just fine. Why, he's got a very good body!”
To which I countered, “He's FAT!”
She huffed off quite offended. By the way, he was not only fat—he's dead. Yep, died about 25 years ago. We were the same age.
So, does exercise kill you? Well, certainly not in my cousin’s case. But we hear the tales of strongmen who die young—is there any truth in that? What is the defining difference between strength athletes who break the century mark and those who die before 65?
Author Bob Brown conducted a study of the longevity of 70 old-time strongmen that was reported in the 2005 June-July issue of Iron Man magazine. When Brown checked the ages at death, here is what he found. He divided the group of 70 men into the early death group and the long life group. Then he compared the life spans of the strongmen to that of the average, untrained man.
Here's what he found: 55% of the average men suffered an early death before reaching 65 years of age. However, only 25% of the strongmen fell into the early death group. They had more than double the survival rate of the average untrained man—and consider, this was in spite of poor diet and bad habits! Of the average untrained men, only 10% lived past the age of 75. Again, the statistics are incredibly impressive—50% of the trained men made it to the long life group.
Now contemplate this: at the time when these strongmen lived, there were only 200 million people in the United States, and only 200 broke the century mark. That's 1%. Of the 70 randomly selected strongmen, with a vast difference in diets and habits, 2 men lived beyond the century mark. That means almost 6% of the strongmen lived beyond 100. That's 600 times more than the untrained group, in which only 1% of the population made it beyond 100 years of age.
Do you think it might be a good idea to maximize your chance of a long life by putting more muscle on your bones?
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it is definitely a priority. Of course, this also requires knowledge of the foods that can supply your muscles with what they need to grow. As an example, intense exercise can deplete levels of choline, a B vitamin. In a marathon, runners experienced a 40% drop in plasma choline levels. This could have been avoided by an increased consumption of phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are very, very important in supporting your brain, nervous system, liver, and heart.
Now, the reason I bring this up is that I sincerely doubt any of those long-lived strong men knew anything about it. If they had, could they have lived even longer? If you're already on a raw food diet and you exercise on a regular basis, you may be lacking in choline, which is richly found in oats, cabbage, and cauliflower. This is one of my reasons for consuming lots of raw, organic oat groats for breakfast. You could say I'm usually feeling my oats—that means my testosterone is flowing strongly. Remember, muscles love testosterone; it’s one of the major muscle stimulators. It is both an androgenic and an anabolic. As an androgenic, it produces maleness; thus, in addition to other functions, you develop a larger sex organ. As an anabolic, which means it builds tissue, testosterone produces larger muscles and greater strength.
While we're on the topic of this growth promoting hormone, a warning: don't ever take injections of testosterone. When your body no longer produces its own, your pituitary gland will shut down your libido permanently, your testes will shrink, and you'll probably develop prostate cancer. None of that will happen if you obtain hormone stimulation from raw organic foods.
Your production of testosterone can naturally be increased by choosing the proper foods to make up your raw diet. To grow muscle, your body must have enough cholesterol; without cholesterol, your body would be incapable of producing steroid hormones. Steroids are a large group of lipids or fat substances that play many vital roles in maintaining the health of your biological systems. Testosterone is a steroid. Muscles love testosterone!
I'll try to keep this simple. Cholesterol affects the production of pregnenolone, which generates progesterone, which generates DHEA and androstenedion, which cause the production of testosterone, which stimulates muscle growth. All major steroids descend from cholesterol.
One of the difficulties of building muscle on a raw food diet is the lack of enough healthy cholesterol to promote an anabolic reaction. From my personal observations, men become feminized without these dietary essentials. I've also seen women looking like the skeletons used to teach students in an osteopathic college. Women also need testosterone; they produce it in both the ovaries and the adrenal glands. In a male, most testosterone is produced by the leydig cells in the testes, and some comes from the adrenals. In one study I read, older men had half the leydig cells of younger men—thus, half the sex drive and muscle, due to half the testosterone.
Tag :
Muscle Building
Muscle Building Diet Plan
As you go about your muscle building diet plan, there are a few things that you should be keeping in mind that will make it much easier for you to maintain so you can see the muscle growth results that you’re looking for.
For most people sticking with their workout isn’t a problem – they enjoy going to the gym and regularly push themselves as hard as needed to build up a good amount of muscle mass.
Where the problem occurs however is with maintaining the proper diet that is going to encourage good muscle growth.Unfortunately though, since the muscle building diet plan will make or break your results, this is something you can’t go wrong with. Let’s go over a few of the helpful tips that you can use immediately to boost your adherence to your muscle building diet plan and see top notch results.
Pre Plan On The Weekends
The first thing that you should do with your muscle building diet plan is make sure to do as much of the planning on the weekend as you can. This is generally a time where most people are more relaxed and can easily plan out all the meals they will have throughout the week.
By knowing ahead of time what you’ll be eating there will be no question of what’s for dinner or whether or not you’re meeting your calorie requirements.
Instead you have a complete list of all the foods you have to eat so all you have to do is execute the plan.
Pre-Cook Your Protein
Second, another helpful tip for following your muscle building diet plan is to try and cook your protein sources as much as possible over the weekend as well. Both chicken and beef will freeze very well in the freezer so if you cook up all the servings you need ahead of time, all you need to do is take them out to thaw the day before you need them.
This will dramatically cut down on your total cooking time and could really influence whether you’re able to stick with your muscle gain diet.
Get Grab-And-Go Snacks
Having a good selection of ‘grab and go’ snacks to choose from is also a wise move. Snacking is something that will really help you get that calorie intake up higher and encourage a good rate of muscle growth so it’s not something to be overlooked.
Some good options for grab and go snacks include peanut butter and a bagel, trail mix, beef jerky, or a pop top can of tuna. All will provide quality calories that support good muscle building.
Stock Up On Staples
Finally, the last thing you can do to help stick with your muscle building diet plan is to make sure that you stock up on all the staples that are needed. This includes foods such as rice, oats, cereal, nuts, nut butter, and frozen meat.
Getting these all stocked up in your kitchen ahead of time will make your week to week shopping trips that much easier.
So keep these quick tips in mind. The more of them you can make use of with your muscle building diet plan the greater your chances of success will be.
For most people sticking with their workout isn’t a problem – they enjoy going to the gym and regularly push themselves as hard as needed to build up a good amount of muscle mass.
Where the problem occurs however is with maintaining the proper diet that is going to encourage good muscle growth.Unfortunately though, since the muscle building diet plan will make or break your results, this is something you can’t go wrong with. Let’s go over a few of the helpful tips that you can use immediately to boost your adherence to your muscle building diet plan and see top notch results.
Pre Plan On The Weekends
The first thing that you should do with your muscle building diet plan is make sure to do as much of the planning on the weekend as you can. This is generally a time where most people are more relaxed and can easily plan out all the meals they will have throughout the week.
By knowing ahead of time what you’ll be eating there will be no question of what’s for dinner or whether or not you’re meeting your calorie requirements.
Instead you have a complete list of all the foods you have to eat so all you have to do is execute the plan.
Pre-Cook Your Protein
Second, another helpful tip for following your muscle building diet plan is to try and cook your protein sources as much as possible over the weekend as well. Both chicken and beef will freeze very well in the freezer so if you cook up all the servings you need ahead of time, all you need to do is take them out to thaw the day before you need them.
This will dramatically cut down on your total cooking time and could really influence whether you’re able to stick with your muscle gain diet.
Get Grab-And-Go Snacks
Having a good selection of ‘grab and go’ snacks to choose from is also a wise move. Snacking is something that will really help you get that calorie intake up higher and encourage a good rate of muscle growth so it’s not something to be overlooked.
Some good options for grab and go snacks include peanut butter and a bagel, trail mix, beef jerky, or a pop top can of tuna. All will provide quality calories that support good muscle building.
Stock Up On Staples
Finally, the last thing you can do to help stick with your muscle building diet plan is to make sure that you stock up on all the staples that are needed. This includes foods such as rice, oats, cereal, nuts, nut butter, and frozen meat.
Getting these all stocked up in your kitchen ahead of time will make your week to week shopping trips that much easier.
So keep these quick tips in mind. The more of them you can make use of with your muscle building diet plan the greater your chances of success will be.
Tag :
Muscle Building
,
Nutrition
Nutrition to support Training
Research suggests that nutritional support of training with both pre and post training snacks rich in carbohydrate and high quality protein creates an environment conducive to gains in muscle size and strength. The protein helps to further stimulate muscle building while the carbohydrate provides additional energy to fuel training and also reduce protein breakdown.
A positive protein balance, which helps stimulate muscle growth, can be achieved by spreading protein intake over the day and also including appropriate pre-and-post training snacks or meals. Just 20-30 grams of carbohydrate and 10-20 grams of protein, taken around training, can influence lean muscle mass gains,
which even individuals on a low energy budget can afford. It is best to include a pre-training snack or meal that provides a good mix of carbohydrate and protein, 2-3 hours before training. This
should be matched by a similar snack or meal following training (within 1 hour if possible) to achieve both muscle building and recovery goals.
Tips for increasing energy intake
• Increase meal / snack frequency. It’s easier to eat more frequently than increasing the size of existing meals and snacks. This should become a priority, even during busy days. Aim to include three main meals and multiple snacks each day, including pre and post training snacks.
• Make use of energy-dense drinks (e.g. smoothies, milk shakes, powdered meal replacement formulas, fruit juice, cordial, sports drinks) and other nutritious, energy rich foods (e.g. cereal bars, dried fruit/trail mix). Skim milk powder can be added to homemade milk drinks for an extra protein and energy boost. These drinks can be particularly useful for athletes unable to tolerate solid food before/after exercise or those with smaller appetites.
• Moderate intake of high fibre options. As you look to increase your overall food intake, allow your intake of low energy fruit and vegetables to remain steady. Although a great source of important nutrients, maintaining your intake of these foods will allow more room for energy-dense, nutrient-rich options.
• Plan the day’s intake of food. This ensures suitable foods and drinks are at hand as needed. Keep a ready supply of nonperishable snacks in your training bag e.g. tetra packs of UHT
flavoured milk/fruit juice, cereal bars, dried fruit, powdered meal replacement formulas and sports drinks.
More Protein?
For many years it was thought that eating more protein would allow for optimal muscle building, however most athletes in hard training already consume adequate protein in their usual dietary intake. Attention should be focused on a wider distribution and variety of protein over the day, even on non-training days.
Inclusion of a small serve of a protein rich food at each meal and snack throughout the day helps to create an optimal environment for gains in muscle mass. If you train early in the morning, a pretraining snack is an excellent start to the day. See the fact sheet on Protein for Athletes for further information on protein needs.
Supplementary Support?
Athletes attempting to increase muscle mass are particularly vulnerable to the emotive marketing of supplements promoted to build muscle. Popular muscle building supplements include protein powders, creatine, HMB, nitric oxide, colostrum and individual amino acid supplements which may come in the form of sports bars, drinks, pills and capsules, powders and gels.
However, most of these products fail to live up to expectations and the scrutiny of scientific support. Liquid meal supplements and creatine may be an exception to the rule. The support of a Sports Dietitian will not only help you identify fact from fiction in the supplement industry but also provide guidance on appropriate protocols for their use.
Liquid Meal Supplements
For individuals who struggle to achieve increased energy needs, liquid meal supplements or ‘protein powders’ offer convenient, compact options for boosting energy, carbohydrate and protein intake when everyday foods are not available or are impractical to consume. When choosing a protein powder, look for one that is rich in carbohydrate, moderate in protein, low fat, fortified with vitamins and minerals, tasty and economical. Alternatively, home made shakes can be made up to provide a similar nutrient profile at a fraction of the cost. Ask a Sports Dietitian for their recommendations or a suitable recipe!
Creatine
Creatine supplementation is particularly popular among athletes attempting to increase muscle mass. While debate continues over the direct muscle building effect of creatine, it may indirectly support gains in muscle mass by promoting recovery between exercises and allowing you to do more total work (see Creatine supplementation and sports performance). Support for the muscle-building claims associated with other products like HMB, colostrum and specific amino acids are limited or lacking. Stick with the proven winning formula of a well planned training program and meal plan. ‘Magic bullets’ will come and go, but truly successful muscle building programs are based on hard training and a well planned daily intake of food.
Training
To gain muscle mass, an appropriate and specific resistance training program needs to be adopted. This program should be specific to your performance and aesthetic goals as well as your lifestyle and training schedule. The off-season is an ideal time to work on muscle mass gains. A strength and conditioning coach can help you develop an effective training program to achieve the right balance between resistance and other training.
Pre and Post Training Snack Ideas
• Tub of low fat yoghurt & fruit
• Bowl of cereal and low fat milk
• Sandwich with lean ham & salad
• Low fat instant noodles, pasta sauces & ‘light’ cheese
• Homemade smoothies on low fat milk & yoghurt, honey and fruit plus a scoop of skim milk powder for an extra energy boost
• Fruit muffin or toast and a glass of low fat milk
• Breakfast/cereal bar & liquid meal supplement
Each snack provides at least 10 grams of protein and 35 grams of carbohydrate which research indicates is enough to promote muscle building during exercise.
Conclusion
• Increase daily energy intake by increasing meal/snack frequency and making use of energy-rich drinks/snacks.
• The meal plan should be based on nutritious carbohydraterich foods, and include a small serve of protein-rich food/fluid at each meal/snack to optimise training responses, especially before and after training.
• Get organised - plan food and fluids throughout the day to make sure suitable choices are always available.
• To increase muscle mass, a suitable and specific hypertrophy program should be designed in conjunction with a strength and conditioning coach.
• Only after training and diet have been optimised should you consider a sports supplement. The professional support of a Sports Dietitian can help you determine the best supplement for you.
• Set realistic goals and monitor progress regularly. To see how effective your training program is, assess your body mass and composition.
• Commitment, perseverance, and consistency are essential. Developing optimal levels of strength and muscle mass for your sport may take years, especially if you don’t have the luxury of a prolonged off-season each year.
A positive protein balance, which helps stimulate muscle growth, can be achieved by spreading protein intake over the day and also including appropriate pre-and-post training snacks or meals. Just 20-30 grams of carbohydrate and 10-20 grams of protein, taken around training, can influence lean muscle mass gains,
which even individuals on a low energy budget can afford. It is best to include a pre-training snack or meal that provides a good mix of carbohydrate and protein, 2-3 hours before training. This
should be matched by a similar snack or meal following training (within 1 hour if possible) to achieve both muscle building and recovery goals.
Tips for increasing energy intake
• Increase meal / snack frequency. It’s easier to eat more frequently than increasing the size of existing meals and snacks. This should become a priority, even during busy days. Aim to include three main meals and multiple snacks each day, including pre and post training snacks.
• Make use of energy-dense drinks (e.g. smoothies, milk shakes, powdered meal replacement formulas, fruit juice, cordial, sports drinks) and other nutritious, energy rich foods (e.g. cereal bars, dried fruit/trail mix). Skim milk powder can be added to homemade milk drinks for an extra protein and energy boost. These drinks can be particularly useful for athletes unable to tolerate solid food before/after exercise or those with smaller appetites.
• Moderate intake of high fibre options. As you look to increase your overall food intake, allow your intake of low energy fruit and vegetables to remain steady. Although a great source of important nutrients, maintaining your intake of these foods will allow more room for energy-dense, nutrient-rich options.
• Plan the day’s intake of food. This ensures suitable foods and drinks are at hand as needed. Keep a ready supply of nonperishable snacks in your training bag e.g. tetra packs of UHT
flavoured milk/fruit juice, cereal bars, dried fruit, powdered meal replacement formulas and sports drinks.
More Protein?
For many years it was thought that eating more protein would allow for optimal muscle building, however most athletes in hard training already consume adequate protein in their usual dietary intake. Attention should be focused on a wider distribution and variety of protein over the day, even on non-training days.
Inclusion of a small serve of a protein rich food at each meal and snack throughout the day helps to create an optimal environment for gains in muscle mass. If you train early in the morning, a pretraining snack is an excellent start to the day. See the fact sheet on Protein for Athletes for further information on protein needs.
Supplementary Support?
Athletes attempting to increase muscle mass are particularly vulnerable to the emotive marketing of supplements promoted to build muscle. Popular muscle building supplements include protein powders, creatine, HMB, nitric oxide, colostrum and individual amino acid supplements which may come in the form of sports bars, drinks, pills and capsules, powders and gels.
However, most of these products fail to live up to expectations and the scrutiny of scientific support. Liquid meal supplements and creatine may be an exception to the rule. The support of a Sports Dietitian will not only help you identify fact from fiction in the supplement industry but also provide guidance on appropriate protocols for their use.
Liquid Meal Supplements
For individuals who struggle to achieve increased energy needs, liquid meal supplements or ‘protein powders’ offer convenient, compact options for boosting energy, carbohydrate and protein intake when everyday foods are not available or are impractical to consume. When choosing a protein powder, look for one that is rich in carbohydrate, moderate in protein, low fat, fortified with vitamins and minerals, tasty and economical. Alternatively, home made shakes can be made up to provide a similar nutrient profile at a fraction of the cost. Ask a Sports Dietitian for their recommendations or a suitable recipe!
Creatine
Creatine supplementation is particularly popular among athletes attempting to increase muscle mass. While debate continues over the direct muscle building effect of creatine, it may indirectly support gains in muscle mass by promoting recovery between exercises and allowing you to do more total work (see Creatine supplementation and sports performance). Support for the muscle-building claims associated with other products like HMB, colostrum and specific amino acids are limited or lacking. Stick with the proven winning formula of a well planned training program and meal plan. ‘Magic bullets’ will come and go, but truly successful muscle building programs are based on hard training and a well planned daily intake of food.
Training
To gain muscle mass, an appropriate and specific resistance training program needs to be adopted. This program should be specific to your performance and aesthetic goals as well as your lifestyle and training schedule. The off-season is an ideal time to work on muscle mass gains. A strength and conditioning coach can help you develop an effective training program to achieve the right balance between resistance and other training.
Pre and Post Training Snack Ideas
• Tub of low fat yoghurt & fruit
• Bowl of cereal and low fat milk
• Sandwich with lean ham & salad
• Low fat instant noodles, pasta sauces & ‘light’ cheese
• Homemade smoothies on low fat milk & yoghurt, honey and fruit plus a scoop of skim milk powder for an extra energy boost
• Fruit muffin or toast and a glass of low fat milk
• Breakfast/cereal bar & liquid meal supplement
Each snack provides at least 10 grams of protein and 35 grams of carbohydrate which research indicates is enough to promote muscle building during exercise.
Conclusion
• Increase daily energy intake by increasing meal/snack frequency and making use of energy-rich drinks/snacks.
• The meal plan should be based on nutritious carbohydraterich foods, and include a small serve of protein-rich food/fluid at each meal/snack to optimise training responses, especially before and after training.
• Get organised - plan food and fluids throughout the day to make sure suitable choices are always available.
• To increase muscle mass, a suitable and specific hypertrophy program should be designed in conjunction with a strength and conditioning coach.
• Only after training and diet have been optimised should you consider a sports supplement. The professional support of a Sports Dietitian can help you determine the best supplement for you.
• Set realistic goals and monitor progress regularly. To see how effective your training program is, assess your body mass and composition.
• Commitment, perseverance, and consistency are essential. Developing optimal levels of strength and muscle mass for your sport may take years, especially if you don’t have the luxury of a prolonged off-season each year.
Tag :
Nutrition
Bulking up
Bulking up can be an important performance or aesthetic goal in the development of an athlete. Commonly, athletes will desire muscle mass and strength gains; with few wanting an increase in body fat. For a gain in muscle mass, the combination of a welldesigned training program plus an energy-rich diet with adequate protein is essential. Muscle mass is influenced by an array of factors including genetics, training program, training history and dietary intake. If all are optimised, gains of 0.25-0.5 kg per week may be possible initially, but this will depend on genetics and training history. Overall body composition goals must also be considered as well as performance and training schedules.
Far too many athletes want to increase muscle mass and reduce body fat simultaneously, often during a competitive season. This is not achievable for most individuals as gaining muscle and losing fat have mutually exclusive nutritional goals, which may be in opposition to performance nutrition requirements. To promote gains in muscle mass, the priority must be to increase overall energy intake while effective fat loss demands a reduction in energy intake (see Body Fat Control & Making Weight). Priorities and timeframes must be set with training and diet adjusted accordingly.
Increasing Energy Intake
Increasing dietary energy intake (i.e. kilocalories or kilojoules) is essential if significant gains in muscle mass are to be achieved. For some athletes this can be a real challenge. Frequent and/ or prolonged training sessions can limit opportunities for meals and snacks while intense training can curb your appetite. Novel strategies like eating more energy-dense snacks and drinks, particularly around training may be required to overcome such obstacles. While an increase in energy intake is essential for gains in muscle mass, it should not be considered an excuse to indulge in high-fat, nutrient-poor, convenience food. Additional dietary fat can increase body fat stores which may pose an issue for some athletes, although for others, nutritious high fat foods like nuts and seeds may be an important inclusion to increase energy intake. For those concerned about gaining extra body fat, small increments in energy intake should be introduced until desirable results are achieved. Regular body composition assessment may help to alleviate concern among athletes with body fat gain fears.
Far too many athletes want to increase muscle mass and reduce body fat simultaneously, often during a competitive season. This is not achievable for most individuals as gaining muscle and losing fat have mutually exclusive nutritional goals, which may be in opposition to performance nutrition requirements. To promote gains in muscle mass, the priority must be to increase overall energy intake while effective fat loss demands a reduction in energy intake (see Body Fat Control & Making Weight). Priorities and timeframes must be set with training and diet adjusted accordingly.
Increasing Energy Intake
Increasing dietary energy intake (i.e. kilocalories or kilojoules) is essential if significant gains in muscle mass are to be achieved. For some athletes this can be a real challenge. Frequent and/ or prolonged training sessions can limit opportunities for meals and snacks while intense training can curb your appetite. Novel strategies like eating more energy-dense snacks and drinks, particularly around training may be required to overcome such obstacles. While an increase in energy intake is essential for gains in muscle mass, it should not be considered an excuse to indulge in high-fat, nutrient-poor, convenience food. Additional dietary fat can increase body fat stores which may pose an issue for some athletes, although for others, nutritious high fat foods like nuts and seeds may be an important inclusion to increase energy intake. For those concerned about gaining extra body fat, small increments in energy intake should be introduced until desirable results are achieved. Regular body composition assessment may help to alleviate concern among athletes with body fat gain fears.
Tag :
Muscle Building
