Eating correctly for adding muscle involves starting early, and eating the right things on a consistent basis throughout the day. Here are a few tips for helping to make this happen.

Plan Breakfast

You should always know what you’ll be having for breakfast before you go to sleep each night. We don’t always think the clearest in the morning, and failure to have the materials on hand for a good breakfast can result in the bodybuilders either skipping that first meal, or grabbing some junk food instead. It’s easy to mentally plan out your meals as you work each day, but much harder when you’re staring at your fridge blankly at 7 am. Plan ahead and start your day out right!

Shop Unprocessed

As you shop at the grocery store, purposefully select items which are as unprocessed as possible. The more processed a food item may be, the less bodybuilding nutrition it will provide. Filling your fridge with unprocessed foods greatly increases the chances of you eating better all of the time.

200 minutes – Maximum!

if you want to build new muscle, you need to be eating every three hours religiously throughout the day. If 200 minutes has passed since your last meal, then it means you have gone over three hours without a meal. Always keep protein shakes and cups of whey on hand for those times when preparing a meal is just not feasible. A stopwatch or timer can be your best friend when it comes to remembering when to eat. Once you eat religiously every 3 hours for a few weeks, your body will adapt and you’ll suddenly be hungry every three hours form that point on.

Increase The Volume Gradually

Let’s assume you are eating 40 grams of protein and 100 grams of carbohydrate each meal, for your 6 daily meals. You will reach a point where growth of muscles stops occurring. Even if your rest, training, and supplementation are perfect, you’ll still miss out on any new growth until you bump those grams up. Moving to 45 grams and 110 grams respectively would be your best bet. Each week you are seeing steady growth without fat gain, you should feel free to bump up your numbers a bit. Once the body fat starts to creep up, you should cut back the grams a bit.

Don’t Snack

If you’re a bodybuilder seeking steady muscle growth, snacking isn’t advised in most cases. Snacking works to dull the appetite with low calorie treats, which isn’t desired in bodybuilding. The goal of bodybuilding eating is to deliver a steady stream of low fast, moderate carbohydrates, and high proteins at intervals of every three hours. Snacking is great for dieters, but will work against your goals of steady muscle gains.

Pre-Workout Matters!

Lots of slow-burning carbohydrates (such as pasta and rice) along with a nice 40 mg dose of protein and plenty of water combine to deliver the perfect pre-workout meal. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and post-workout nutrition helps us to recover the most. However, when it comes to influencing the quality of our workout, the meal we eat 45 minutes before is the most important.

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