The men's fitness blog

I was reading that after training all day, Arnold Schwarzenegger had for his dinner, a whole chicken and a pitcher of beer. Ordinarily, you might not associate this kind of meal with someone who looks like Arnie; but the truth is, if you're doing the work, you need the fuel.

If you're trying to build muscle, you need to eat more than your normal amount. If you don't eat more calories than you're consuming by working out, your body will break down muscle to repair itself. On the other hand, if you eat large amounts of the right kind of food - chicken, fish, eggs - your body can build the muscles you damaged in training up to make them even bigger and stronger than before.

Arnie got one thing wrong, though - eating a few large meals can be counterproductive. Your body can't digest, say, a whole chicken at once, so a lot of it will end up as, ahem, "waste".

You should eat regular, small meals throughout the day adding up to a more than a "normal" amount. This will give your body the stream of protein and nutrients it needs to create lean muscle.
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website: FitnessForRealMen - proven muscle and strength training techniques; fitness and nutrition tips

Labels: chicken, eating, fitness for real men, food, nutrition, protein

This post is taken in part from Fitness for Real Men. In this site's Nutrition section you can read more about supplements and muscle mass building nutrition.
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To get big, rippling muscles, you need to carry bulk. You may have heard professional bodybuilders refer to the "bulking-up" phase. The idea behind this is to add muscle and fat at the same time. During this phase, you need to focus only on gaining as much clean mass as you can. We emphasize the clean mass - in other words, this does not mean gorging on junk food and snacks.

Instead you need to eat protein-rich foods, and you need to eat regularly. Don't go crazy, but be ready to increase your intake of calories by a good amount. The "three-large-meals-a-day" diet will not work as effectively.

If you start feel hungry, your body goes into "famine mode" and stores more fat - in other words "I'm hungry, therefore there must be a famine, therefore store fat for survival".

This means you need to eat more regularly, with portions a little smaller than usual. You also need to train as heavy as you can, to convert this to muscle rather than fat.

Once you have done this for a couple of months, you are ready to increase the amount of cardio you do, and decrease your weights. The idea is that you have built muscle and fat simultaneously, and now you can "blowtorch" the fat away, hopefully leaving a statue!

This 2-3 month process can repeat for a long as you want. Enjoy.
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FitnessForRealMen - proven muscle and strength training techniques; fitness and nutrition tips

Labels: fitness, food, nutrition, protein