It does not matter how often you work out or how hard unless you have good nutrition to back it up. Just because you workout a lot, that does not mean that you can eat whatever you want. You have to make healthy choices in your eating habits to enforce what you do in the gym.
Eat whole or organic food as often as possible. Do not eat products that have a lot of preservatives or manufactured ingredients in them. You should avoid boxed food or meals as often as possible, as well as many other foods. You will need to be very aware about what is in your food if you are serious about losing fat and gaining muscle. It is okay to have a pizza or some other kind of “cheat” food occasionally. But make sure you keep it just that, occasionally.
Here are some foods that are not only great for you, but still taste good. In order to get the essential fats that you need, try eating nuts, fish, real butter, and using products like olive oil, or flax seed oil, instead of the traditional oils. To get your carbs eat products made from whole grains only. These foods literally use the whole grain of wheat, which captures all of the nutrition in it. Also, try brown rice and oats.
Be sure to eat a lot of veggies and fruit as well. These foods can have complex nutrients and minerals that digest slowly and have much less chance of becoming fat. It is very easy to buy fresh fruits and veggies at the produce section of your local grocery store, and many frozen veggies are now sold in bags that can be steamed to preserve nutrients. Never boil veggies, this takes all of the nutrients and minerals out of them, and puts them in the water, which you will not be drinking. Always steam veggies or eat them raw. If you want them cooked, try stir-fry or baking them. Do not fry or boil veggies.
Another important key for good nutrition is to eat often. The best thing to do is to have six mails a day. This does not mean Sunday dinner size meals each time. This is small meals. An example would be, and apple with whole wheat toast, and a glass of skim milk for breakfast, and then having fruit and cottage cheese in between lunch and breakfast, then having a turkey wrap in a whole wheat tortilla or pita bread with a bottle of water and carrot sticks for lunch. Keep the meals small and sensible, but have more meals each day than the standard three.
Eating more meals during the day boosts your metabolism. The rule of thumb is to eat every three hours. Always eat your breakfast, as they say this is the most important meal of the day. Also, plan a meal right after your workout. This will replenish your body after you burned all of the calories.
If you are hungry, eat! Just make sure that you are eating the right things. If you eat the foods mentioned here, you can eat more without gaining as many calories. Remember that even if you have a great training program in place, if you don’t have a nutrition program to back it up, all of your work will be for nothing.
Need more ideas? Here are some successful Body Building Techniques
The most successful body building techniques incorporate proven weight routines. A weight routine is a set of exercises, done in repetition, that develops specific parts of the body. For example, to build chest muscles, a body builder may use a weight routine that incorporates flat bench press (3 repetitions), bench dumbbell (2 repetitions) and inclined bench press (3 repetitions). The other important function a weight routine serves is to split a training program so different muscle groups are used.
Building Biceps
Dumbbells are a common piece of equipment used to build bigger biceps. The most popular technique to get the desired result is to hold the dumbbell closer to the inside of the plates. Routines for building biceps include dumbbell curls either inclined or standing, or both.
Building Chest Muscle
Good chest muscle building exercises are routines that incorporate bench presses and flyes. An even more effective way to build chest muscle is to split the chest into 3 zones – upper, middle and lower. By working each separately, using exercises that specifically target that area, you can build up some impressive chest muscle fairly quickly.
For instance, do your upper chest exercises on a 30-45% incline bench. Incline barbell and incline dumbbell flyes are excellent for working upper chest muscles. On the other hand, the lower chest muscles are best exercised using a 30-45% decline bench. You would use decline barbell and decline dumbbell flyes to build these muscles. A flat bench works best for the middle chest muscles. So you’d do flat barbell and flat dumbbell flyes on a flat bench.
Moving Onto Shoulder Training
The shoulders are made up of 3 main muscles – the lateral, anterior and posterior deltoids. Effective shoulder training to get big shoulders requires working all 3. The anterior deltoid usually gets some work in chest workouts. To build up the lateral and posterior deltoids requires additional exercises targeting these two muscles. Generally the best way to do this is with heavy barbell and dumbbell pressing in short reps as opposed to a lot of rep work with lighter weights. You should also focus on shoulder exercises that work effectively with progressive overload, a technique used to progressively add more weight to what is being lifted.
Matching Up The Back With Back Exercises
The back is one area many body builders overlook. But if you want your back to match up with those impressive chest, shoulder and bicep muscles, you will need to include back exercises in your bodybuilding routine.
Good workouts for the Lower Trapezius or lower back muscles include stiff-legged good mornings and hyper-extensions. For the middle back muscles or Rhomboids, you can do a seated cable row and bent-over barbell rows. Your Latissimus Dorsi will benefit from wide-grip lat pull-downs and pull-ups. And last but not least, try upright rows and barbell shrugs for your Trapezius.
But before starting any body-building workout, be sure to warm up properly. This will reduce the risk of damaging muscles and tendons. Stretch the muscles you’re going to be working. Also avoid lifting more weight than your body can capably handle to avoid serious injury.