For protein - I don't like meal replacements cause they fill me up. but if you do, myoplex tastes good to me. I love isopure the most for no-carb protein, but very expensive.
For diet and timing do this:
oatmeal in morning, egg whites, cranberry juice/water, maybe a small protein shake. Later on do cardio if you want to cut up. Eat 6-8 smaller meals spaced evenly through day rather than 3-4 huge meals. This will help speed up your metabolism and help digest the nutrients better for more effective use.
DO NOT EAT ANY SUGARS OR SIMPLE CARBS WITHIN AN HOUR OF WORKING OUT!!!
If you do, your pancreas will release insulin to break it down, the insulin tells the ATP to stop converting to ADP releasing
energy, and if you work out, you won't get as effective training and results. When ATP converts to ADP, a phosphate molecule is released providing energy to flex your muscle - this happens millions of times at once when flexing. Then the phosphate molecules reattach to ADP to form ATP again. Insulin counteracts that.
DO EAT SUGARS AND SIMPLE CARBS IMMEDIATELY AFTER WORKING OUT!!!
This will release the insulin, stop the ATP ADP cycle, and allow your body to get energy from the sugars rather than from burning protein (which is needed to rebuild muscle). Also, you want to replace your glycogen stores for your next day's workout. Add L-Glutamine to your Gatorade or Cranberry Juice to help aid in muscle recovery.
DO DRINK A LIQUID PROTEIN SHAKE WITHIN 30 MINUTES OF WORKING OUT!!!
This is when your body is starving for protein. Try to get 50g of liquid protein.
If you eat solid instead, it won't get absorbed as quickly or easily.
DO EAT A GOOD MEAL WITHIN AN HOUR OF WORKING OUT.
You may be full from drinking the cranberry juice after the workout, then the protein shake, but now you should add in your complex carbs such as brown rice, oatmeal, possibly pasta.
There are different needs for different athletes, but a good balance of nutrition is always a must. Weightlifters will often seek protein while endurance athletes often take it for granted in search of more carbohydrates, but without a balance, neither will succeed in their goals. We have yet to reach a definition of exact protein needs, but we do know that for an athlete, the need is more than the RDA states, which is 0.4 grams per pound of body weight. In fact, you could double that to arrive at a decent intake of protein.
Just because you get plenty of protein doesn’t necessarily mean that your body has a good environment for adding new muscle. If you don’t have the right balance of protein and carbohydrates, then you could be hindering your gains. Those who do intense exercise or endurance training, with a diet consisting of an insufficient amount of carbohydrates would derive much of their energy from burning protein (there isn’t much energy in protein) thus, that protein that is allocated as an energy source would not be used for muscle repair and growth (which is why protein is so important to bodybuilders). You must have carbohydrates available to your body for use as energy so that your body will not have to resort to using its protein as an energy source. Carbohydrates keep protein available for repair.
Protein is composed of smaller molecules called amino acids. The body first breaks a protein down into its amino acids in order to build various structures such as muscle. Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid that composes muscle. That’s why we call carbohydrates “glutamine sparing,” because your body will burn the carbs as fuel instead of using the muscle’s glutamine as fuel for muscular contractions. If not provided sufficient carbohydrates to be used as the energy source in fueling muscular contractions, the muscle will actually “eat” its glutamine (and therefore its muscle mass), as energy. It’s very easy to work the muscle right off of your body. Over training doesn’t always result in muscle soreness. Over training could simply mean that energy to fuel workouts is coming from existing muscle tissue rather than from your food. The biggest mistake in amateur bodybuilding is working out too hard and/or too long. Stored energy (glycogen) can only fuel a workout for about an hour. After that, workouts are being fueled mostly by the break down of muscle glutamine for that energy. Of course, you will burn fat too, but you don’t want to loose muscle in the process.
Why would someone who just wanted to loose fat care if he looses a little muscle in the process?
Muscle is the only thing you have in your body to burn stored fat. It takes a lot of energy just to sustain muscle. At a resting state, the more muscle you have, the more fat you are burning. One of the dumbest things that people will say when they see an extremely muscular person is “yea, one day that will all turn to fat.” If you have enough muscle it will be almost impossible to get fat! Because the more muscle on your body, the more fat you will be burning at any given second of the day. If you have enough muscle, you can eat almost anything you want and hardly ever have any of that food’s energy transferred into adipose, the storage place for bodyfat.
Gaining strength will also increase the amount of bodyfat that is burned. The more muscle weight you gain, the more fat you will burn, and the more muscle strength you gain, the more efficient your muscles are at burning fat. It is possible to be very strong and not have a lot of muscle. That’s why you may see some skinny guy that is extremely strong out bench press someone a lot bigger than he. He doesn’t have any fat because his muscles are strong and therefore efficient at fat burning. Calories have developed a negative connotation over the past couple of years mostly due to the bogus diet fads that get scammers rich while the uneducated that follow the plans get worse off than before and become unhealthy. A calorie is only a measure of the amount of energy stored in food. But, that energy may or may not be stored as fat (discussed later in detail). Muscle taxes the body for calories. If someone doesn’t get the energy required to fuel their muscles from that, they will loose muscle mass. If someone starts to lower his/her calories, he will reach a certain point where there aren’t enough calories to support his body’s muscle mass. At that point one is considered to be in a “catabolic” state. That means the muscles will revert to using their glutamine as energy, especially during a workout. If you are working out, you will have to consume way more calories to sustain your muscle than if you were sedentary. Muscle burns more calories when it is being used than when it is in a resting state. That’s why working out is the best weight loss plan. Those muscles are craving energy when you work them, and a certain percentage of that energy will come from stored bodyfat. So while working out a your body burns way more bodyfat due to the muscle’s need for energy. When you loose muscle, you loose the only tool you have to burn fat. So why go on a low calorie diet? Low Calorie diet plans are simply counter-productive. Muscles will burn bodyfat for their energy source, but they are also going to use a sufficient amount of muscle glutamine due to the limited influx of calories from your food. So yea, you loose weight, but you loose muscle, then what? You’re suddenly more overweight than you were before you first started this “diet” because you no longer have the means by which to burn the fat. These diets are like giving someone five five-dollar bills for their twenty-dollar bill. Calorie constriction is an extremely counter-productive theory solely designed to sound good so someone can sell a book and get rich.
“Well, you have to consume less calories than you burn to loose weight, right?” To those uneducated in this area it would make sense that to loose weight you would have to take in less calories than you burn. In other words, people think that if you burn 2500 calories per day, you must consume 2499 calories or less in order to loose weight. Well, that seems simple. But this is the worst thing that you can do unless you want to wreck your body. You must take in way more calories than you burn! If you hear someone claiming this as the backbone for his or her diet plan, run from it! After reading this you can see why some people can eat anything and never put on a pound and why other people can’t. Applying what you’ve learned about catabolism will help you to understand that you can destroy any chance of becoming physically fit.
Herein lies the key to deciphering this fairy tale about eating less than you burn: digestion. Almost all of our nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine.The walls of the small intestine consist of an array of blood vessels that continuously absorb nutrients from your food. There are also muscles that line the walls that involuntarily constrict to move food along the intestine till it enters the colon where absorption of nutrients nearly ceases. The rate at which the food is moved along depends on the body’s demand for nutrients. If the body feels the need, it may have the muscles of the intestine hold the food longer to achieve maximum absorption of its load. Or perhaps it will not see the need to absorb all of the food and will readily pass unabsorbed food over into the colon. One key to bodyfat prevention is to prevent the body from thinking that it must absorb all ingested food and to cause it to only take what it needs. This would limit the storage of energy as fat. If you stay on a low calorie diet, everything that you consume past your 2500 calories may be absorbed by the small intestine as fat with 0% passing out of your digestive system as waste and your energy coming from the breakdown of muscle. From this you can see the detrimental flaw in the eat-less-calories-than-you-burn theory. Your body will not store all of those left over calories! A high percentage of calories will not be stored but will pass out of your body as excrement. The purpose of the excretory system is to let all food that your body doesn’t need pass right out of the system. What do the geniuses behind ELCTYB (Eat-Less-Calories-Than-You-Burn) think that the excrement system is for?
Many uneducated people obviously think that there are no calories contained in human waste. People think that if a calorie isn’t burned as energy, it is stored. Well, I’ve got news for ya; human waste is often calorie dense. When faced with calories, the body has a decision to make: “Will I burn this as energy, will I store this as energy for later use (just in case), or will I let this food pass out of the intestines as waste because I don’t need it right now?” Your body is a lot smarter than you think.
You may be surprised at how “smart” a person’s body really is. For example, let’s say that you are burning 2500 calories total a day. The amount of calories that a person will burn while at rest varies directly with the person’s metabolism and body composition. Lets look at a person who weighs 240lbs, 5’11”, has around 12% bodyfat, and an endomorphic metabolism and his body is requiring 2500 calories per day at rest just to sustain his muscle mass. Taking in 2500 calories from meals is not enough to sustain the muscles’ calorie demands because some of those calories will pass out of the body and not be extracted from the food. He will become catabolic without sufficient calories, and his muscles will use themselves as fuel to enable him to carry out his daily tasks (glutamine as energy). One must take in more calories than he burns in order to sustain muscle. I must repeat, this is just to sustain the muscle you already have.
Think about this: When muscle is damaged (considering one is consuming adequate protein), the muscle grows back stronger and larger than it was before. In order for the muscle to become more massive, microscopic holes must be torn in the muscle fiber during a workout; breaking down the muscle (during a workout) takes energy (calories) to fuel muscular contractions during exhausting workouts. To add muscle you must have sufficient calories to fuel your way through the strong contractions that must be made in order to tear the microscopic holes, this is calories from carbohydrates. Also to add muscle, you must ingest sufficient calories in order to build the additional tissue, calories from protein. So, you must consume way more than 2500 calories in order to actually add more muscle. But how many calories do you actually “need” to complete this feat?
Well, asking what your body “needs” isn’t the right approach. Look at it like this, lets just say (only hypothetically speaking) that your body burns 2500 calories sitting around and 20% of those calories pass out of the body unabsorbed by your small intestine. If you do the math, that means that you needed 3000 calories daily to keep from becoming catabolic (20% of 2500 is 500 calories unused + 2500 calories to support sedentary muscle weight = 3000 calories). Additional calories would enable you to become “anabolic,” meaning you would be adding muscle. A good question would be how many extra calories do I need to consume in order to be anabolic without having my body store the rest as fat? This is a good question because what doesn’t pass out of the excretory system or used as energy will assist addition of muscle, or be stored as glycogen or fat for future energy use, and a great deal of those calories may be stored as fat (depending on the meal composition). So if you take in 3000 calories to keep from becoming catabolic and I take in additional calories to become anabolic will any calories after that point be stored as fat? Well, yes and no. Remember this general rule: calories not passed out of the body or burned are stored as fat. This is true to some extent but gets a little more complicated.
Remember how I said that the body was smarter than you think? It stores fat for a reason. Your body is designed for survival. Today, in our modern society, we don’t need the survival skills that our bodies have been programmed with. In other parts of the world, the human survival system is needed in order to sustain life. Here in the land of the free, this system often is detrimental to our health due to people’s lack of understanding and appreciation for it.
Your body stores fat to protect itself. It knows that if you are deprived of food for a period of time that you will die. Your bodily functions such as heart beating, breathing, thinking, digesting, etc… all require energy. If you are deprived of that energy, those functions detrimental to life are unable to perform; therefore, you die. Your body is always in preparation for such an event. That is the sole purpose for adipose cells in the body (these are the cells that store fat). Your body gets very nervous when it comes to starvation. It’s your body’s idea of the worst way to die. It knows that in a time of extreme low calorie (or no calorie) intake, such as during a famine, that it can live on its fat. That’s why animals that hibernate store up fat before they go into hibernation, they will use their bodyfat for energy to sustain life until they can go outside and eat. If you are ingesting close to the same amount of calories that you are burning, your body gets nervous and tends to store as many of those calories as possible as fat. We’re talking percentages here. If your body normally stores 10you’re your food as fat on a normal diet and the rest is available for energy, your body may store 90% of your food as fat leaving virtually none as energy. The more you reduce the calories in the diet, the greater percentage of those calories will be allocated into bodyfat because your body begins revert to its survival instincts. The body will slow down its metabolism in order to conserve energy. You will fight a loosing battle if you set out to restrict your calories. You won’t have the energy and you will feel drained as your body stores what you eat instead of burning that food for energy.
Manipulation of the survival system is the backbone of the bodybuilder or fitness competitor’s success. This is the key to loosing fat (aside from added muscle of course). You must stop your body from wanting to store calories. There is one way to do this. Get as many calories as you can! Yes, to loose fat, you have to eat more! This seems a paradox but for those who are in the know, it’s what to live by. Before you write this off as some crazy diet fad, ponder the following concepts closely; this is science not ignorance and is the instruction that I give to all of my clients because I, as a personal trainer, want to see all of my clients achieve their goals.
If you ingest a steady supply of food over an extended period of time, your body will not doubt that another meal is soon on the way. Therefore, it will not feel a need to store ingested calories as fat. To achieve results, this must be done on schedule! The same way that an animal fed at a certain time every day gets ancie when it gets feeding time, your body will begin to develop its metabolic functions around those meals. The most important element is to consume a meal every two hours. Bodybuilders have found this to be the most beneficial time period for maximum anabolic benefits while inhibiting fat storage. This can be extremely difficult at first. People that don’t eat a lot don’t get hungry. This is because the body is used to not having adequate nourishment. The body adapts to a diet higher in calories by burning more as energy, adding more muscle, and passing more out of the system as excrement. After the food is used up, bam, you’re hungry again. If you eat every two hours, I guarantee that your body will begin to let you know that you missed your meal. This is a sure sign that your body is adapting. You begin to get hungry every two hours because your body is running out of nourishment quicker because a) the body increases the metabolism and therefore more of that food is being burned as energy (thanks to the adaptive qualities of the thyroid gland and its release of T3) and b) because your intestinal muscles are allowing less time for foods to be absorbed. With nourishment like this you will turn into a walking anabolic inferno!
By a meal, I don’t mean a big six course meal, only a little snack or something just to say to your body, “here you go, here’s you some food.” Over time, your body will begin to cease fat storage. Your body will know that it has a steady feed of energy coming so what it doesn’t need, it will allow to pass out of the body as waste. You could actually have maybe 75% of your calories simply pass out of your body! In other words if you are burning 2500 calories a day, you could take in 10,000 calories and a lot of what your body doesn’t need for anabolism would simply pass out of your body!
This sounds too good to be true to most people but its what many physically fit people live by whether they consciously realize it or if they are just going along with what their bodies are telling them to do. Bodybuilders have to consume a gruesome amount of calories in order to obtain more muscle and in the process they actually signal to their bodies that food will always be there. Their bodies adapt to this eating style by storing a smaller percentage of that food as bodyfat. If your body doesn’t feel a need for body fat, it will not store it. You must remember that calorie intakes in extreme excess are not possible for everyone. This is due to a number of reasons.
1) Most people aren’t capable of eating frequently enough to make this program work or they may simply forget to eat. It isn’t possible for everyone to eat enough to achieve this benefit mostly due to the time it takes to eat every two hours. If you break the schedule, you start to make your body “nervous.”
2) There are three main body types. These body types reflect the degree by which their bodies allow those calories to pass as waste and individual metabolic rates. It may take longer to convince the bodies of some that they don’t need to store anything up. It may take some weeks of eating meals every two hours to convince their bodies that fat storage isn’t necessary. An ectomorph is generally skinny. They don’t gain weight (muscle or fat) very easily because most of the calories are burned as energy or pass out of the system unabsorbed. Their bodies don’t allocate calories into adipose but generally lack muscle mass due to the same reason, high metabolism. These people would be the ones who would die first if faced with life threatening circumstances such as a drought or famine. A mesomorph is just opposite. They tend to be extremely anabolic and store up energy. They are best equipped for survival. These people are blessed in that they are extremely anabolic meaning that a lot of calories go toward muscle gains which means, in turn, that their bodies are harder to over train and less likely to become catabolic. The downfall is their ability to store fat. But this can be overcome in time by letting the body know that a steady supply of food is on its way. Their metabolism will be boosted and they will retain their muscle building capabilities. An endomorph is in the middle of the two. Most people are endomorphs demonstrating properties of both body types.
3) The quantity of food consumed during each meal can affect how much is stored as fat. As part of your survival system, eating a big meal may be signal that it’s the last meal for a while. Therefore your body may store a greater percentage of those calories as fat. Meals need to be kept small and divided up into no less than 6 meals a day. The more meals, the better off you are. The digestive system burns calories. When you have food in your digestive system, you are burning many more calories (a relatively high percentage of those calories is from bodyfat) than if the digestive tract was sitting empty waiting a meal. Divide those meals up.
4) The quality of a meal may affect how its calories are used. Fats are more likely to be stored as fat. Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen, and storage for protein is new muscle. The body hates to allow fats to pass freely out of the system as waste. But one should not totally avoid fat. Some fat is necessary in the diet. With fats kept as low as possible in a meal, the quality of the food that you eat is said to be high. It is imperative that excess fat be avoided like the plague. One must also remember not to avoid carbohydrates in their diets.
5) Getting enough complex carbohydrates is imperative. Carbohydrates are burned as energy so protein won’t have to be. Carbohydrates give up their energy and spare your hard earned muscle from waste like a soldier who gives his life for his country. Complex carbs are only “complex” molecules of simple carbs. In other words you can think of a sugar as a monosaccharide (“mono” –one sugar) or a disaccharide (“di” –two sugars). Glucose and fructose are two examples of monosaccharides. Sucrose, table sugar, is a disaccharide composed of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose. If you chemically bonded two glucose (monsaccharide) molecules you would have a disaccharide, maltose, used to flavor malt liquor. A “complex” molecule is a polysaccharide (“poly” –many sugars). There may be anywhere from three to one hundred thousand sucrose sugars bonded together (sucrose-sucrosesucrose…). An example of a polysaccharide in animals is glycogen (for food storage). Plants use two forms of polysaccharides starch (for food storage) and cellulose (structural material). It’s interesting to note that cellulose is so complicated that animals cannot digest it. Not even a termite can digest cellulose. The only creatures on this earth that can digest cellulose are the bacteria in the intestines of animals that eat it. This is actually how fiber benefits us. We cannot digest fiber, its too complicated of a carbohydrate, but in an effort to break it down, our intestines are flooded with water. This keeps the digestive tract hydrated with a lubracative material called chime and helps to keep the system clean and regulated. Complex carbs are just many simple sugars bonded together. Your body has a hard time separating the complex carbs into simple sugars. It takes a while to break down a complex carbohydrate molecule. By the time the body can break down, say, ten grams of carbs, 2 grams have already been passed through the intestines and are no longer available for absorption. Breaking down carbohydrates into simple sugars requires energy. A portion of complex carbohydrates may require 50 calories to break down, but after the process of digestion, the body only reaps 25 calories in return. This form of dieting (eating huge amounts of foods every two hours) could actually help you to loose weight (fat) twice as fast as starvation alone. Many calories such as those composed in complex carbohydrates pass out of the system before they can be broken down into their usable forms and are; therefore, unabsorbed and unused. Simple sugars on the other hand, should be avoided (except after workouts). They are easily absorbed, because they are “simple,” and must be either immediately used as energy or stored, and they require no energy for their break down like complex carbohydrates do. Sugars can be stored as fat but not the same way fat is. It takes fatty acids to make bodyfat. The fats that you consume can provide the fatty acids as a waste product after the fat is burned as energy. Simple sugars help to compose glycerol which combines with three fatty acids to form an energy dense molecule of bodyfat.
6)The composition of the meal can affect how it is stored (as well as providing an anabolic environment). It is important to eat the right balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. “One can not live by bread alone” –Jesus. Nor can one live by protein alone. It is imperative that one consumes enough protein to enable the muscles to repair and grow. Keep in mind that it is still not known how much protein each individual must consume to attain anabolism. Individual protein needs may differ in part by the efficiency of an individual’s body. The mesomorph may not need as much protein as an ectomorph because an ectomorph’s body is probably burning more protein as energy than the mesomprph. Some people may more readily absorb the protein from foods than others. More protein is always good as long as you don’t neglect your carbs.
7) The digestive tract burns lots of calories, and a great deal of those calories are derived from stored fats. That is one of the functions of fat storage, to ensure that fuel will be provided for the digestive process. Your body knows that the digestive process is of extreme importance. It knows that its life sustaining energy comes from the digestive system’s process of breaking down food into its usable form. That’s why a higher percentage of energy comes from energy that is already stored (bodyfat) rather than from ingestion. Having the digestive system depend on bodyfat for energy keeps the body able to absorb food once it is presented while the other body functions have already already shut down. Having your digestive system full and working to digest those meals every 2 hours will definitely be an advantage in burning stored bodyfat.
There was a study by a Dr. Lemon where 22-year-old men trained in the gym for an hour and a half, six days per week. These men required about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight to keep from becoming catabolic. This would mean a 150 lb male would need 102 grams of protein per day.
This did not mean that they gained anything as far as muscle mass was concerned. To have gained muscle from their workouts the study showed that they would have had to consume over .7g/lb of bodyweight. There are experts who say to take in 2 - 4 grams per pound of body weight! Now just imagine how many carbs that you’ll have to ingest to go with that for a balance. A 200 lb person would need 400g of protein and 1000g of carbs. That’s like 5600 calories a day not including the fat calories! The World Anabolic Review will tell you just that. This is an understandable intake if you are a hardcore bodybuilder or using anabolic steroids, as you would certainly allocate a higher percentage of protein toward anabolism. Remember not to neglect the carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, if you will remember, are burned in place of protein. The greater environment for anabolism you have, the more you’ll benefit from additional protein. Someone on Deca-Durabolin (an anabolic steroid) for instance, would need significantly higher amounts of protein due to the increased protein synthesis caused by the steroid. Bodybuilders have trained their muscles, and therefore store more protein than they burn, thus the growth response is better.
Carbohydrates are necessary for both the runner (endurance athlete) and the bodybuilder, because they are stored in your muscles as energy or fuel when needed. One third of a person’s dinner should consist of protein rich foods. The rest should be carbohydrate rich foods. For instance, eat a carbohydrate rich breakfast, then a lunch, which is 1/3 protein and 2/3 carbs, then a dinner of the same proportions. Fish, chicken, lean meats, etc… can be added to a meal, but should not be the bulk of the meal.
Carbohydrates are important to maintain energy and to train at your best. Proteins will build and recover your muscle tissue, but only if you eat the right balance. A high protein/low carbohydrate diet will lead to fatigue, glycogen stores being depleted, and frustration because you are training hard and not gaining the muscle mass that you crave. It can also wreak havoc on your kidneys due to ammonia build up with the release of nitrogen which helps to compose amino acids, especially if you don’t drink enough water.
It is a common thought and concern that carbohydrates are fattening. They are not. Too much fat is fattening. In one teaspoon of fat you will find 36 calories. In one teaspoon of carbohydrates you will find 16 calories. The amount that is converted into fat is very limited because you burn carbs for energy during any activity.
For even one gram of carbohydrate to reach adipose storage, it must first not be able to be burned as energy. If there is an overabundance of carbs and some aren’t used for energy, they are stored as glycogen. If by some chance, the glycogen stores are full and that carbohydrate can’t be used as energy, there is a chance that that it may be stored as bodyfat. One’s metabolism will affect the amount of carbs left over for fat storage by causing more or less to be burned. With a decent metabolism and healthy diet, carbohydrates should not be allocated to fat storage. Fats are readily stored as bodyfat. There are four calories in one gram of carbohydrate; four calories in one gram of protein; nine calories in one gram of fat; and seven calories in one gram of alcohol (hence the beer gut).
What you burn and when: There are several sources of energy. When a person is doing low-level exercise, such as walking, or maybe performing various tasks at work (if work is not just sitting in a chair), he burns primarily fats for energy. When doing light to moderate exercise, jogging and brisk walking for instance, stored fat provides 10% - 30% of your body’s fuel. When you exercise hard, sprinting, running, swimming, you rely mostly on the glycogen stores in your muscles for the energy. Remember, these are percentages, not amounts. You will burn way more fat if you are active than if you were sitting in a chair.
There is a difference in how the trained and untrained body stores glycogen (glycogen in animals is the same as starch in plants, its one way an animal stores energy). There is a biochemical change that occurs when a person trains consistently for prolonged periods of time. Well-trained muscles will acquire the ability to store more glycogen than untrained muscles, about 20% - 50% more. For example, an untrained muscle has about 13 grams of glycogen per 100 grams of muscle. A trained muscle stores about 35 grams of glycogen per 100 grams of muscle. When carbo-loaded (eating a super heavy load of carbs for a day or so –usually in prep for some event such as a powerlifting meet), a muscle has about 35 - 40 grams of glycogen which is considerably more than normal of 13 grams. When you have a depleted supply or store of glycogen, you will “crash” and not be able to complete a workout or to train at your best. Depleted glycogen stores can affect someone mentally and physically due to the fact that the brain uses glycogen too yet it doesn’t have any glycogen stores. You naturally have about 1,800 calories stored in your body at any given moment as glycogen ready to be converted for energy (not including calories from fat) in the following breakdown: Muscle glycogen, 1,400 calories - liver glycogen, 320 calories - and Blood glucose, 80 calories. The body doesn’t use the actual glycogen for energy. Glycogen is broken down into glucose. Glucose is the actual useful form of energy; glycogen is just a storage molecule; it’s glucose in storage. Glycogen is a polysaccharide consisting of glucose molecules (glucose-glucose-glucose…). These natural stores determine how long you can enjoy your workout before getting fatigued. Liver glycogen is transported into your blood stream, maintaining blood sugar (glucose) levels needed for brain food. Foods must be consumed close enough to your workout to supply sugar (energy) to your brain, since unlike the muscles, the brain does not store its own energy.
So what is the importance of eating complex carbs if they are just converted to sugar? Why not just eat sugar? Well, there is one problem w/ sugar consumption.
It’s quick energy. In other words it’s carbohydrates that are already broken down into their simplest form. Therefore they must be either used then or stored. Your body will try to use them before it will store them. That’s why you get a “sugar rush.” And that’s also why little kids don’t get candy at night; they’ll never go to bed. But not long after a “sugar rush,” there will be fatigue due to the role that insulin plays in sugar degradation.
Starting to see how it works? Glycogen in the liver will release sugar during a workout. The presence of these sugars causes the pancreas to release insulin. Therefore, glycogen is “stored energy.” Glycogen, a complex carb, provides energy after being broken down into sugars without the pancreas having to release a lot of insulin. There is no sugar rush with the release of glycogen because it is gradual (complex carbohydrates break down slower).
It’s ok to have some sugar during a workout. This is because the work of insulin is virtually a slow process. Another reason one doesn’t want too much sugar in the body during the workout is osmosis. Water moves from places of lower concentration of solute to a place of higher concentration of solute. In other words, high concentrations of sugars in your digestive system can pull needed water out of the muscles where the oxygen molecule pulls down a hydrogen electron down the electron transport chain to make ATP (discussed in detail later) and relocates it into the digestive tract.
Your body releases insulin to dispose of unneeded sugar. While insulin is an extremely anabolic hormone (actually the most anabolic hormone known to man), there is a definite disadvantage with insulin spikes caused by too much sugar. Insulin triggers energy stores to open up and helps to shuttle nutrients into storage areas. Adipose cells readily accept nutrients to be stored as bodyfat shortly after the introduction of insulin. Insulin opens the “doors” in adipose for bodyfat storage for a very short period of time. It takes a high level of insulin to force open the adipose doors. Insulin doesn’t affect bodyfat storage as long as the insulin levels rise slowly and remain fairly consistent. Throughout the day, sugar consumption can spike insulin levels and induce bodyfat storage. Eating a high carb diet without sugars will cause a steady release of sugar into the system causing a high level of insulin release, but since the rate of release is steady, it does not trigger an “open door” in adipose for bodyfat storage but provides an extremelyanabolic environment as the benefits of insulin are realized. Complex carbs are a much bigger molecule than simple sugars. They have many sugars bonded together. To turn complex carbs into glucose, they must be broken down. There is a series of steps that they must undergo to be broken down. Enzymes must be present to break each molecular bond of these polymers. All this takes a while to complete. By the time some of it is broken down into glucose, in the small intestines, some of it has already passed into the large intestine where absorption is almost completely ceased. This process allows for a slow and steady rate of glucose production that fuels the brain and muscles throughout the day without causing a release of insulin. This is very important because, as previously stated, you don’t want insulin in your body during a workout; you need its recipicle, blood sugars.
Animals release natural sugar stores, glycogen, for energy. The body will regulate itself with insulin when it no longer needs the sugar in its system. It doesn’t matter whether the sugar comes from internal (from glycogen) or ingested sources (table sugar), insulin is released to counteract it. There will be rushes and fatigue with high consumption of sugars as your body tries to regulate itself. It can be almost impossible to workout when one’s blood sugar levels are low due to sugar consumption beforehand.
What you burn and when: There are several sources of energy. When a person is doing low-level exercise, such as walking, or maybe performing various tasks at work (if work is not just sitting in a chair), he burns primarily fats for energy. When doing light to moderate exercise, jogging and brisk walking for instance, stored fat provides 10% - 30% of your body’s fuel. When you exercise hard, sprinting, running, swimming, you rely mostly on the glycogen stores in your muscles for the energy. Remember, these are percentages, not amounts. You will burn way more fat if you are active than if you were sitting in a chair.
Insulin signals the body to begin repair after a workout. Your body thinks that glycogen has been released when sugar is present in the bloodstream.
Why? Glycogen (blood sugar) is released when your body meets high output demands. After strenuous activity, the body has to repair. When one is undergoing activity such as weightlifting, he needs energy, glucose from broken down glycogen. Insulin is released after the workout to counter the now not needed glucose level. When muscles sense the presence of insulin, they see that its time to begin healing and recuperation. Insulin “opens doors” in the muscles to accept nourishment and helps to shuttle in vital nutrients such as amino acids.
Just imagine your muscle cells as having an irresistible attraction to insulin, a chemical attraction. The insulin wants to get into the muscle. What is so significant about insulin is its chemical make up. Its structure causes it to bond to nutrients. Nutrients include creatine, prohormones, anabolic hormones, some vitamins, minerals, glutamine, and other amino acids. This is the cause of the 45-minute window for taking supplements and refueling your body for the next workout. The body sucks up needed amino acids during this period. Remember, muscle tissue is made from the assimilation of various amino acids. So, to have protein synthesis within the muscles, your cells must have sufficient amounts of various amino acids. Glutamine is the biggest component of muscle fiber.
Adequate glutamine is essential for the addition of new muscle. All of these nutrients are sucked into the cell for 45 minutes due to the increased amount of insulin in the body after a workout, and because the muscles themselves are “starving” for them, a phenomenon called intercellular thirst.
With this in mind, you can see how ingestion of huge amounts of sugars after a workout is beneficial. Your body will have some insulin naturally released after the workout but the more, the better in causing a hormonal environment that’s good for forming new muscle. IGF-1 (insulin like growth factor), a Growth Hormone, is also released in the presence of insulin. Growth Hormone is what causes gigantism. That’s one factor in determining why some people are mesomorphs and others are ectomorphs. It’s why people like Andre “the Giant” don’t even have to work out to be huge, but if they do, they gain much more muscle than the normal person. The growth hormone is released by the pituitary gland. Think about this, what if you could have a spiked insulin level all throughout the day? You’ve already learned that you don’t want extra insulin just before a workout because it will hinder the breakdown of the muscle fibers. But imagine a 24-hour insulin spike. That would be the most anabolic environment one could ever hope to achieve. So how do you achieve that? Well that’s one of the biggest dilemmas faced in the underground world of competitive bodybuilding today. And in fact it’s one of the biggest reasons that bodybuilders are bigger, stronger, and more defined than bodybuilders ten years ago. They have employed the injection of artificial insulin. Imagine, all day long, almost everything that is consumed is converted into anabolic fuel. Insulin is more powerful than any steroid ever formulated. But it’s also the most dangerous. Bodybuilders inject incredible amounts daily. The pancreas may soon stop its own production of insulin and the body can become solely dependent upon the exogenous injections. One could cause himself to become a life long diabetic. They sell their health to the sport of bodybuilding.
Well, this should show you the importance of insulin in the bodybuilding world. The main theme of insulin is: complex carbohydrates inadvertently cause a slow but steady release of insulin all day long. So, if you up your consumption of complex carbohydrates, you put your body into a more anabolic state without artificial insulin. Never drop carbohydrates from your diet no matter what you hear unless you want to end up fatter with more flab and less muscle than you did before you started your “diet.” People have made millions because they get a degree and come up with a new “diet” plan and sucker people into following it and inadvertently wreck their bodies in the long run. If you drop carbs, even though you consume vast amounts of protein, your body will not be as anabolic, and you will loose muscle. Cut back the fat from your diet and increase the complex carbs as high as you can. EAT EAT EAT. That’s how you loose weight. Not that everyone is looking to loose weight per se, but gaining muscle = loosing bodyfat. Muscle is the only mechanism by which to burn fat (except from heat that is produced through various means).
I’ll reiterate upon one of the advantages of this 45-minute window. After strenuous activity, your body is more receptive for storing up energy as glycogen than any other time. Glycogen is not stored as fat. It’s stored in the glycogen stores. Ingestion of sugar at this time will allow it to be stored as energy to be consumed during the healing process as well as your fuel for the next day and the next workout.
The body is most receptive within 30 minutes of a workout. After 45 minutes, it begins to taper off drastically. The protein and carbs that you consume after a workout would be more beneficial for you if they were in a liquid form, such as a whey protein drink or meal replacement shake. Solid food must sit in the stomach and wait on digestion before it will be sent to the small intestine where the needed nutrients will be absorbed. It’s a race against the clock. This is your critical time. About an hour to an hour and a half after a workout you can eat a good meal. To eat it before then will cause your sugars and proteins to have to sit in the stomach until the rest of the solid food can be broken down before it is absorbed. You don’t want to hinder the absorption of liquid proteins and sugars. Also, casienate (a protein supplement) should be avoided at this time due to the fact that stomach acids cause this protein to gel and it takes considerably longer for your stomach to digest it. Be careful not to ingest any sugars before your workout. You don’t want insulin in your system during a workout. This is for obvious reasons. Insulin depletes blood sugar. With low blood sugar, you can’t make strong muscular contractions. You will be holding down your gas pedal for growth while youare holding down your brake for muscle breakdown. The only reason a muscle gets bigger is through the body adapting to stress by not only repairing the muscle from this breakdown, but repairing it to be MORE powerful than it was before.
| Food type | Unit | Kalories | Protein | Carbs | Fats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple, raw, with skin | 100g | 59 | 0.2 | 15.3 | 0.4 |
| Banana | 100g | 92 | 1 | 23.4 | 0.5 |
| Beef, liver, cooked | 100g | 161 | 24.4 | 3.4 | 4.9 |
| Beef, chuck, arm pot, cooked, braised | 100g | 225 | 33 | 0 | 9.3 |
| Beef, top sirloin, cooked, broiled | 100g | 202 | 30.4 | 0 | 8 |
| Beef, eye of round, cooked, roasted | 100g | 186 | 28.1 | 0 | 7.3 |
| Beef, bottom round, cooked, braised | 100g | 209 | 31.6 | 0 | 8.2 |
| Bran Flakes, kellogg's | 100g | 317 | 10 | 79 | 2.1 |
| Bread - oat bran | 100g | 236 | 10.4 | 39.8 | 4.4 |
| Bread - whole wheat | 100g | 246 | 9.7 | 46.1 | 4.2 |
| Carrot | 100g | 43 | 1 | 10.1 | 0.2 |
| Chicken, breast, cooked | 100g | 165 | 31 | 0 | 3.6 |
| Cod, cooked, dry heat | 100g | 105 | 23 | 0 | 0.8 |
| Corn, sweet, yellow, raw | 100g | 98 | 3.2 | 19 | 1.2 |
| Cabbage | 100g | 25 | 1.4 | 5.4 | 0.3 |
| Egg whole, raw, fresh | 100g | 149 | 12.5 | 1.2 | 10 |
| Egg white | 100g | 48 | 11 | 0 | 0 |
| Ham slices, extra lean 5% | 100g | 131 | 19.4 | 1 | 5 |
| Juice Orange | 100g | 45 | 0.7 | 10.4 | 0.2 |
| Just Right Kellogg's | 100g | 377 | 7.5 | 81 | 3.8 |
| Milk non-fat, fluid | 100ml | 35 | 3.4 | 4.9 | 0.2 |
| Mushrooms, raw | 100g | 25 | 2.9 | 4.1 | 0.3 |
| Oats, instant, plain, dry | 100g | 369 | 15.5 | 64 | 6.1 |
| Onions | 100g | 38 | 1.2 | 8.6 | 0.2 |
| Potato, baked, flesh | 100g | 93 | 2 | 21.6 | 0.1 |
| Pasta, penne, uncooked | 100g | 352 | 12.4 | 71.3 | 1.9 |
| Peanut Butter, smooth, no salt added | 100g | 593 | 25.2 | 19.3 | 51 |
| Pork, liver, cooked,braised | 100g | 165 | 26 | 3.8 | 4.4 |
| Rice, white, long-grain, regular, raw | 100g | 355 | 7.1 | 80 | 0.7 |
| Rabbit, composite of cuts, roasted | 100g | 196 | 29.1 | 0 | 8.1 |
| Raisins, seedless | 100g | 300 | 3.2 | 79.1 | 0.5 |
| rice cakes, brown rice, plain | 100g | 387 | 8.2 | 81.5 | 2.8 |
| salmon, pink, cooked, dry heat | 100g | 149 | 25.6 | 0 | 4.4 |
| Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw | 100g | 21 | 0.9 | 4.6 | 0.3 |
| Tuna, canned, in brine | 100g | 115 | 27 | 0 | 0.5 |
| Turkey breast, cooked, meat only | 100g | 135 | 30.1 | 0 | 0.7 |
| Veal, sirloin, separable lean only, cooked | 100g | 168 | 26.3 | 0 | 6.2 |
| Vitargo-Pure | 100g | 370 | 0 | 92 | 0 |
| Time | Description | Cal | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7am | 85g Fruit & Fiber, 70g Isopure | 563 | 60 | 61 | 8.5 |
| 10am | 200g Meat, 85g rice | 701 | 70 | 68 | 21 |
| 1pm | 200g Chicken breast, 85g Rice | 601 | 66 | 68 | 8 |
| 4pm | 200g Chicken breast, 85g Rice | 601 | 66 | 68 | 8 |
| Pre-W | 20g Bcaa | 80 | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| P.WO-2 | 85g Vitargo, 80g Isopure | 586 | 64 | 78 | 1 |
| Po-W | 20g Bcaa | 80 | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| 8.30pm | 200g Chicken breast, 85g Rice | 601 | 66 | 68 | 8 |
| 10pm | 200g Chicken | 316 | 60 | 0 | 7.4 |
| 4129 | 492 | 411 | 61.9 | ||
Based on a Bodyweight of 220lbs
| Time | Description | Cal | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7am | 5 whole eggs | 355 | 30 | 0 | 5 |
| 10am | 50g Whey Protein, 1 Tablespoon all natural PB | 288 | 42.5 | 8 | 9.5 |
| 1pm | 8oz Chicken 1/3-cup cashew nuts (almonds) | 485 | 65 | 9 | 19.2 |
| 4pm | 50g Whey Protein, 1 Tablespoon all natural PB | 288 | 42.5 | 8 | 9.5 |
| 8.30pm | 200g Salmon, 1 tablespoon olive oil | 417 | 51.2 | 0 | 22.8 |
| 10pm | 50g Whey Protein, 1 Tablespoon all natural PB | 288 | 42.5 | 8 | 9.5 |
| 2121 | 273.7 | 33 | 75.5 | ||
| Time | Description | Cal | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7am | 6 whole eggs | 426 | 36 | 0 | 30 |
| 10am | 200g Chicken, 1/2cup raw almonds | 619 | 71 | 10.5 | 32.5 |
| 1pm | 50g Whey, 2 tablespoons all natural PB | 382 | 46.5 | 11 | 17.5 |
| 4pm | 200g Salmon, 1 cup asparagus, 1 tablespoon | 445 | 54.2 | 5 | 22.3 |
| macadamia nut oil | |||||
| 7.30pm | 50g Whey, 2 tablespoons all natural PB | 382 | 46.5 | 11 | 17.5 |
| 10pm | 6 whole eggs | 426 | 36 | 0 | 30 |
| 2680 | 290.2 | 37.5 | 149.8 | ||
