Rule 1: Eat regularly-every 2.5 to 3 hours.
Don't expect to gain effective weight just by eating three meals a day-only gain weight without gaining weight. Three meals a day allows you to eat a lot of protein and fat at every meal. Your body can only store so many calories in a meal. Guess what? Swelling, malabsorption, and counterproductive obesity. Your first meal should be eaten from 15 to 20 minutes after getting up, and then every 2.5 to 3 hours. Set your timer to ring until you eat. Don't treat this as a chore, treat every meal as a good opportunity to refuel and gain muscle.
Think about it, the next meal is a fuller chest, broad shoulders, thick arms and a rock-solid abdomen! If you miss a meal, imagine you are in a sea of piranhas. These guys eat your muscle tissue like a barbecue buffet in 28 yuan. And these horrible guys can't even eat enough meat for you. In fact, they will make your muscles smaller. If you miss a meal, your arms will not be thinner by an inch immediately. However, when you start eating an average of 3 to 4 meals a day instead of 6 to 8 meals, don't feel depressed if others don't believe that you often practice bodybuilding! So how many meals should I eat a day? It's simple-divide the time you're awake by 2 or 3. I suggest you get used to eating once every three hours and then consider eating once every two hours. So if you are awake 18 hours every day, eat 6 meals. What if I just want to eat a meal before going to bed? Eat it!
Seize this opportunity to eat. If we are a little extreme, we should have a meal every three hours in the evening. No matter what you have heard, such as don't eat after 7 pm, leave it alone, believe me!
Thirdly, don't treat this meal as a "snack". If you want to gain muscle, you shouldn't have this idea. Let's find a place to cool off! Do you think Ronnie Kalman would say something like "Hey, I need a snack"? In order to keep healthy, you must have a meal every three hours.
Principle 2: Diversity of food.
All kinds of food. If you eat almost the same thing every day, you will soon get sick. Just as we often change our training plan to avoid boredom, you should always change your diet. I usually eat everything at home, so the best way is to buy different foods every week. With different backgrounds, comrades who go to the food market will not have this problem. This will not only make your diet balanced, but also let you know how your body reacts to different foods. Don't eat the same thing.
Principle 3: Eat enough calories.
Growing meat is actually a kung fu, because your muscles need calories to grow. Insufficient calorie intake is like trying to buy a 50 thousand car with 25 thousand. Bullshit. If you want to gain weight 1 to 2 kg a week, you have to add some extra carbohydrates and protein before and after breakfast.
This step cannot be skipped. Even if you have a perfect training plan, it's no use without enough nutrition. It's like building a house without brick, cement and wood. If you want to make sure that your muscles have enough fuel for training, heavy weight, high frequency and recovery, if you want to grow muscles, don't forget to record what you eat. There is nothing to say. Failure to do this is the number one reason why most thin immortals are not fat, and some people are only fat.
Recording your diet is much easier than it sounds. Perhaps most people find it difficult to do so they bypass this point. Of course, you have to spend some time reading the label on the container (studying the nutritional ingredients), but isn't it worth the effort compared with gaining 20 kilograms in a few months? The good news is that over time, you will remember the nutritional components of these foods, you will eat almost the same things, and your food nutrition database will expand rapidly.
Principle 4: Take 40 to 60 grams of protein per meal (more than 300 grams for 6 meals! Let's calculate this item according to the weight and kilogram × 1.5-2).
Muscle gain is not the primary task of the body-survival is the first priority. Insufficient intake of protein can cause organs to snatch protein from your muscle tissue. The body will get the amino acids it needs by eating itself! This is the last thing a thin fairy who wants to gain muscle wants to happen.
Protein should account for at least 35% of your calories. For people weighing less than 200 kg, taking 40 to 60 grams of protein per meal can keep appetite, increase muscle mass, accelerate recovery and keep body fat at a low level.
Recommended food: lean meat: eat some ground beef, chicken or turkey. Fish: salmon, tuna (this is extremely expensive. I eat shrimp, eels and cheap sea fish.
Principle 5: Eat 60 to 80 grams of carbohydrates per meal.
Not eating enough carbohydrates will make you feel like you have a bear on your back during training. I deeply understand that without adequate nutrition, high-intensity training is self-mutilation. Your body is like a car, and its fuel tank is full of carbohydrates. You can't drive very far without carbohydrates. Lack of carbohydrates in your diet will slow down your muscle gain process, because muscle tissue will be used as fuel.
It is best to eat all kinds of high-fiber and complex carbohydrates, which decompose more slowly in the blood and provide energy continuously; For example, cereal processed foods-bread, steamed bread, etc. ) and low glycemic index (low blood sugar concentration after digestion), instead of taking simple carbohydrates (sugar and processed food) from fast food, fried food, processed food and junk food. Complex carbohydrates decompose more slowly in the body and can provide energy continuously, which is very important for high-intensity training. Complex carbohydrates rarely turn into fat unless you eat too much. If you find that there is more fat in your waist and abdomen than in your muscles, you should reduce your carbohydrate intake and increase your aerobic exercise.
Recommended food: barley, bran, buckwheat, beans, brown rice, corn, oatmeal, macaroni, potatoes and cereals.
Principle 6: Eat 20 to 30 grams of fat per meal.
Your diet should contain about 30% fat-for everyone. For skinny people or people who want to maximize muscle growth, the proportion of 30% is crucial for the increase of testosterone levels. However, the key is to balance the intake of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Every intake of 1/3 can make your health and muscle growth reach the best state. It's not as complicated as it looks.
Note: The role of unsaturated fatty acids:
1. Maintain the relative fluidity of cell membrane and protect the normal physiological function of cells.
2. Esterify cholesterol and reduce blood cholesterol and triglycerides.
3. It is the precursor of prostaglandin and thromboxane synthesized by human body.
4. Reduce blood viscosity and improve blood microcirculation.
5. Improve the activity of brain cells and enhance memory and thinking ability.
6. Most of the fat is stored in human fat cells, and a small part is stored in other human cells such as plasma.
7. Fat can protect the human body, reduce the influence of external factors on important organs, and can be converted into energy.
8. Fat is conducive to the formation of new cells and plays a vital role in maintaining the normal development of the brain and nerve function.
9. Fat is also necessary to carry and help absorb fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A, D, E and K and carotenoids.
Because North America is very short of monounsaturated fatty acids (olive oil) and polyunsaturated fats (fish oil), and there are enough saturated fatty acids, your task is to eat more olive oil and fish oil in your diet.
The only fat you should avoid: trans fat.
Trans fatty acids produced when vegetable oil hardens into margarine or ghee (vegetable oil is produced at high temperature) also exist in foods other than margarine and ghee, such as French fries, fried chicken, biscuits, soda biscuits, cakes and doughnuts. In the United States, typical French fries contain 40% trans fatty acids, and many popular biscuits and soda biscuits contain 30% to 50% trans fatty acids. Donuts contain 35% to 40% of this substance. To determine the content of trans fatty acids in food, you must know how to read food labels.
At any time, the higher the content of ghee, hydrogenated oil or partially hydrogenated oil (hydrogenation of edible oil is also one of the reasons for producing trans fatty acids) you see on the label, the more trans fatty acids there are.
Principle 7: Eat vegetables at every meal.
What is vegetable long muscle? If you want to grow tall and strong, your mother is right to tell you to eat more vegetables. Vegetables not only contain vitamins and minerals, but also contain an important phytochemical necessary for human body to function.
The advantage of the most easily overlooked vegetables is their role in recovery. Of course, you need carbohydrates to grow, but you also need the high antioxidant content of these vegetables to reduce the free radical content increased by intensive training. They can accelerate your recovery by repairing damaged muscle cells. Most people don't realize that a large amount of protein and grain intake will increase the acidity of blood. If we don't achieve the acid-base balance in the body by eating fruits and vegetables, too many acidic substances will reduce the strength of bones and the volume of muscles. The harm of acidic constitution is not limited to these. Therefore, it is very important to keep the acid-base balance in the body by eating vegetables and fruits.
Principle 8: Eat on an empty stomach before breakfast, before training and after training.
No matter what others say, I believe this is the safest and most effective way to maximize the muscle/body fat ratio. In this article, we don't discuss the timing of nutrient intake. In short, we will discuss how to control the calories in your diet according to the time of catabolism and anabolism in a day, so that you can practice hard and avoid the risk of muscle decomposition, not to mention having enough calories to gain weight. How much you should eat at a certain time should be determined by the needs of your body at that time.
Principle 9: Plan ahead.
This principle can easily occupy the first place, because it is not the lack of information that hinders progress, but the lack of persistence and creativity. I bet that if you don't change your current diet, but make sure to eat when it's time to eat, you will reach the peak of your growth. I quite agree with such an old saying: "Everything is established in advance, and it will be abolished if it is not predicted." This is a fact. You must make a plan to make sure that you prepare an accurate proportion and quantity of food every time you eat.
This requires you to spend several hours cooking food on Sunday night and storing it in Tupperware containers. This means getting up half an hour early to get ready for the day. This requires you to take your lunch bag with you wherever you go. This may also mean that if you are on the road most of the day, you should bring more shaking cups. Bottom line: Be prepared.
Principle10: Eat natural food 60% of the time and liquid food 40% of the time.
I often ask my students to eat as little supplements as possible in the first few months of training. Go all out to implement the diet plan, ensure reasonable training and sleep, and you will be surprised at the growth you get.
You must ensure that there are high-quality food sources 60% of the time, and 4 out of 6 meals. Food contains vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and cellulose that pills can't provide. Natural food also contains enzymes (digestive enzymes), which can be digested and absorbed, thus preventing you from eating too much processed food. Nutritious brewed drinks (such as Gao Legao's Force Shake) make your life easier, so that you don't have to prepare and cook food all day. You can eat 2 meals a day; Don't eat more than three meals a day unless you are very busy.
conclusion
Use the next 12 weeks to practice these muscle building principles. Because it is reasonable for you to eat a lot. Muscle gain is a cool and simple thing. Master these principles, implement them and make them a part of your life.