Why do you have to eat six meals a day?
It's not that eating only three or four meals a day is not good, but eating five meals a day is better than eating four meals, and eating six meals a day is better than eating only five meals. More and more evidence shows that in promoting muscle growth and reducing body fat, less meals are better than more meals. Eating six or more meals a day can help your body digest food more effectively, so that you can eat more protein and other important nutrients. Of course, it should be noted here that every meal with more meals should be less.
Eating once every three hours can make your nutrition supply more stable and sufficient. Doing so can also make your stomach smaller and tighter, reduce the risk of body fat storage, promote you to develop healthier eating habits, and enable you to consume more dietary fiber, fruits and vegetables, as well as protein and water.
In order to gain muscle, you must eat wisely instead of eating everything you see. You must also consider other guidelines about bodybuilding and nutrition.
1. Take at least 0.5g of protein per kg of body weight every day.
2. Drink at least 30 ml of water per kilogram of body weight every day, and drink as much as possible.
After training, you should arrange a meal or drink a mixed drink of nutritional supplements.
4. Breakfast should not be missed.
5. Stay away from foods containing sucrose and saturated fatty acids, as well as refined foods.
6. Use nutritional supplements to improve the efficiency of training and nutrition.
Combining the above strategies and forming a diet plan is the cornerstone of your bodybuilding diet.
Although your genes, as well as the composition of each meal, can affect your best meal frequency every day to some extent, it seems that eating six meals a day has become the basic practice of most successful bodybuilders in the past 50 years.
In addition to using nutritional supplements, bodybuilders and athletes in other strength events often gain weight through forced eating. The older generation of bodybuilders used to adopt a diet called "what you see is what you get", that is, eat whatever food you see. Of course, they will stay away from most junk food. At dinner, they may eat 400g sirloin steak, a baked potato and a vegetable salad. Whether physically or nutritionally full, as long as the meat is not finished, they will force themselves to continue eating until they can't swallow another bite.
Sounds primitive, doesn't it? By today's standards, it is. However, this method is very effective for many people and can help them build stronger muscle blocks.
However, most people will eventually consume some unnecessary extra calories after adopting this forced eating method. It's like eating a lot of whole eggs to ensure enough egg whites.
Times have changed. Now, you can plan your nutritional intake more accurately and effectively. You can eat food with certain ingredients at certain times. This is one of the most important strategies for bodybuilders to promote muscle growth and reduce body fat.
When making a diet plan, you need to make wise choices and don't follow your feelings. Use the tools you can to create a convenient and delicious diet plan that suits your weight and daily schedule.
Make full use of today's advanced sports nutrition, such as various protein powders, meal replacement products, protein bars, creatine, calcium hydroxymethylbutyrate (HMB), zinc magnesium valine (ZMA) and so on. These sports nutrients can maximize the benefits of eating more than one meal a day. They can make it easier and more convenient to eat six or more meals a day, whether you are in the stage of gaining muscle or losing fat.
Of the six meals a day, it is very important to have three.
breakfast
After waking up in the morning, you should eat something as soon as possible, whether you are doing strength training or aerobic training immediately, or going to work or school. Like other time periods, you must try to find out the best protein, carbohydrate intake and intake ratio. It is best to prepare breakfast for the next day on the first night, so that you can eat it immediately after getting up in the morning.
After training
After the training, it is the prime time to supplement nutrition. You'd better drink a high-protein drink made of whey protein, glucose and creatine immediately after training. Although the specific intake depends on everyone's weight and training objectives, we usually recommend taking 30? 50 grams of protein, and about twice as much carbohydrate. For men, we also recommend taking 5g creatine and10g glutamine after strength training.
Taking the above nutrients in the form of mixed drinks as soon as possible after training can inhibit the level of cortisol and prevent the body from decomposing and destroying muscle tissue. In addition, the nutrients ingested at this time are also more easily absorbed and utilized by muscle tissue. At this time, all or almost all the nutrients you consume will be used to repair and strengthen your muscle tissue, liver, internal organs and immune system.
Before going to bed
During sleep, you can't eat for 6-9 hours. In order to minimize the decomposition and injury of muscles during sleep, it is very important for most bodybuilders to eat carbohydrate food and protein with slow digestion and absorption before going to bed.
At this time, it is best to eat some foods rich in casein or nutritional supplements, such as concentrated milk protein powder. Because the digestion and absorption speed of casein is relatively slow, compared with whey protein with faster digestion and absorption speed, casein can supply amino acids to the body stably for a long time.
If you only have whey protein powder on hand, you can mix it with pure milk, or add some peanut butter when mixing whey protein powder to slow down its digestion and absorption. Although sleep experts say that you can't eat before going to bed, as long as you don't eat much, it won't cause gastrointestinal discomfort when you sleep, and eating before going to bed is completely ok. Some bodybuilders,