What to Buy at the Supermarket

Many people know that nutrition is very important when bodybuilding and transforming your body. Many people know that there are macronutrients that need to be met on a daily basis to help achieve those goals. But some people starting out in the bodybuilding / body transformation game may not know what kinds of foods are important to always have in stock. So for today's blog post, I'll discuss some of the foods that I'm always looking for in the grocery store, and make sure that I have a constant supply of to meet my daily macros and achieve my nutritional goals.

The foods I'm including here are foods that have always been a core facet in my meal plans or consistently find themselves being part of my meal plan. These are foods that you should heavily consider making consistent players on your meal plan team when shopping at the supermarket.

Foods to look for

Protein

Chicken Breast / Meat Source

• I group chicken breast different from "other meat sources" like beef, turkey, fish, etc because it's usually THE meat source when talking about bodybuilding. It's not specifically eaten during a bulk or specifically eaten during a cut. It's your standard protein meat source. But other sources like turkey, beef, fish, etc, are also good to have. I understand that things might be different if you're a vegeatarian (and other sources like bens and / or tofu should be considered), but it's always good to constantly have your fridge stocked with your main whole food meat source of protein. Buy it in bulk, and cook it in bulk so that you don't have to cook every single day.

Source: Flickr.com. User: megan.chromik. No changes made.

Egg Whites

• I eat a lot of egg whites every day. Buy the cartons. If you want to crack and separate the amount of eggs you'll need to adequately meet your protein needs, then go nuts. Personally though, I like having a fridge stocked with a bunch of egg white cartons I can just open up, pour into a container, and microwave. In my opinion, any aspiring bodybuilder should not have a fridge without these in them. They're cheap, efficient, and macro / calorie friendly.

Source: Flickr.com. User: John Morgan. No changes made.

Milk

• I understand that there are differing opinions on milk in a bodybuilder's diet. Personally, I always keep a gallon of skim milk stocked in my fridge because I enjoy drinking it in my smoothies and before I go to bed. It's liquid protein with some carbs added on the side if you're having trouble hitting that macronutrient. It's fairly inexpensive for the amount of you get, and it's loaded with beneficial nutrients for someone looking to bodybuild. Keep that moo-juice on tap!

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Milk_glass.jpg

Cottage Cheese

• Many of you just went "ewww!" when you saw this. And honestly, the first day I ate cottage cheese my mind did a nice big "NOPE" and I questioned if this stuff was even edible. But then I looked at the nutrition facts and found out there was like 20 grams of protein in half a cup in only 80 calories (fat free cottage cheese. Nutrition facts based on memory...so I could be wrong or off by a little), and realized that this was just going to be a fact of life for me. I add peanut butter to mine, but honestly after eating it for so long I've developed a taste for it and could eat it raw. I think you should always have a tub of this stuff on hand, but a lot of people can't stomach it. If that's the case, you have to ask yourself if taste or your body aesthetic is more important to you. Cottage cheese can also help you meet your carbohydrate needs.

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Cottage_Cheese.jpg

Whey Protein

• You probably can't find this in your supermarket, but it's still important to note it here. The fitness industry does a great job making you think you need whey protein. But you don't. However, I always make sure I have it stocked in my apartment. It's super efficient, it has an amino acid profile that's near impossible to beat, and actually is one of the most inexpensive forms of protein per serving. Some supermarkets DO sell it, but maybe not in the same quality as in say a specialty store. Just make sure you're getting pure whey protein isolate.

Source: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5164/5373438313_8edbe88110_z.jpg

Carbs

Brown Rice

• I think this is the only carb source that I'm going to put down. But only because I'm talking about foods that you NEED to have stocked. There are certainly other carb sources you can consider like pastas, potatoes, breads, and rice cakes for example.

Source: Flickr.com. User: Rob and Dani. No modifications made.

• I always have a pack of microwavable whole brown rice in my freezer for when I'm carbing up. Each bag contains about two cups of brown rice and is a very VERY helpful tool in helping you on your bodybuilding / fitness journey. It's a staple food in many bodybuilders' diets and something you should always stock up on when you visit your local grocery store.

Fats

Olive Oil

• Every time I'm cooking a protein source, I'm using olive oil. It's a very important fat source to have on deck and is very helpful in hitting your macro goals for fats. Remember that with this and ALL fat sources, a little goes a long way calorically.

Source: Flickr.com. User: Maya83. No changes made.

Peanut Butter

• Much like milk, peanut butter and other nut butters are very controversial when it comes to the opinions of bodybuilders and whether or not to incorporate them into your diet. A serving the size of your thumbnail can literally start skyrocketing your calories and wreak havoc on your macros. Use sparingly, and be smart with your serving sizes. I keep a jar on handy but don't always eat peanut butter. If you get yourself some, make sure you get the all natural kind where the ingredients are practically just peanuts + very few other ingredients.



Source: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5345/7091536099_2f84345247_o.jpg




And those are some essential food items you'll want to always be searching for at your local supermarket. Of course there are other food items you might want to buy and incorporate into your diet (like vegetables), but those are some of the staple foods that I personally always have on hand. Never have your kitchen absent of most of these items. You don't want to want to miss your macronutrient targets or, even worse, start winging your diet day to day and potentially destroying all of your hard work and discipline.


-Jtrain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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Should You Use Machines?

As I may have highlighted in earlier posts, the gym is a place where many different philosophies on bodybuilding, fitness, and nutrition (as well as ways to approach them) mix. One person may swear by some way of lifting / eating as the only means to get a certain body type, while someone else could say that doing the complete opposite is optimal. It truly is a melting pot of muscle-building and physique-sculpting theory.

One such concept that appears to divide some gym-goers is whether or not to incorporate machines into a workout, and to what degree. Some people will forever swear by free-weights and raw lifting of weight, while others believe that using machines are necessary to hit different angles and stimulate optimal muscle growth.

 

 

Source: Flickr.com / Brisbane City Council. No Changes made.

Personally, I have absolutely no problem incorporating machines into my workout. While I'm a huge fan of using dumbbells and free weights when I can, I'm also a huge fan of many different machines in the gym.

For one thing, a lot of machines are highly specialized to target specific parts of your muscle and muscle groups. They accomplish this by making you position your body in a way that highly isolates different parts of your target muscle. This is a very important concept if you're bodybuilding, since isolating and stimulating very specific parts of your muscle groups is a key objective for optimal growth.

Machines can also offer a level of safety that using free-weights may not. For someone just starting out in the bodybuilding game, whose form and understanding of body movement, safety, and control is not yet fully developed, using machines that offer ways of adjustment and built-in safeguards may be a better option. Certain exercises may also have a greater odds of facilitating injury when done with free-weights as opposed to the same exercise and range of motion being done on a machine. Furthermore, machines can serve as a means to lift heavier amounts of weight without having to worry about taking the necessary precautions to prevent injury that would have to be accounted for with free-weights.

Source: Flickr.com / CherryPoint / No Changes Made

 But there are also things you need to look for and keep in mind when using weightlifting machines. While some machines offer fantastic stimulation for muscle growth, others can, for lack of a better phrase, be a complete waste of time.

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when trying to find out if the machine you're using is worth it:

"Will this machine give me an optimal line of drive during my exercise repetitions?"

"Will this machine offer me an optimal full range of motion during my exercise repetitions?"

"Does this machine fully stimulate and pump my target muscle(s) at the end range of motion?"

"Does this machine fully stretch my target musle(s) at the negative end range of motion?"

"Will there be minimal to no recruitment of my non-target muscles when using this machine?"

Source: Flickr.com / alantankenghoe / No Changes Made

If the answer to most or all of these questions is yes, you're probably using a pretty good machine. Some of my favorite machines include the fly machine (pec deck), cables, triceps pushdown apparatus, certain plate loaded chest exercise machines, and (recently) the dip machine. Said machines are very good for optimal stimulation of many different muscle groups with proper form.

If the machine you are using requires more effort than is needed, and subsequently results in poor range of motion and pump / stimulation of your target muscle, it's not worth it. If there is not enough stress or tension put on your target muscle it's also not worth it. Also, and perhaps most importantly, if the machine you are using causes you to feel unwanted pain or makes you feel like you could potentially injure yourself, do not use that machine.

During my workouts, I like to incoporate a lot of free-weight exercises when I can. But machines have always had a place in all of my workouts, on every day I choose to workout. Machines can be a fantastic ally for pushing maxes and growing bigger when done right, and offer a level of safety and understanding of movements for those just starting out in the bodybuilding game. See if incorporating machines into your workout works for you or brings you any success, and don't worry about those who swear by and try to get you to use free-weights exclusively.

-Jtrain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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How Many Reps?

Before I start off this new blog post, I'd like to thank everyone who has read this blog or continues to read this blog. Recently, I had a goal of hitting 5000 all-time views, and have recently surpassed that goal. So, to all of you from all around the world who read this blog for bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition advice, thank you so very much! Here's to 5000 more views!

So now for today's post.

When working out with people, I often get the question on how many repetitions you should be doing per set for any given exercise. And there are many philosophies on this. Some believe that lower rep ranges with heavy weight is ideal for packing on slabs of muscle, while higher rep ranges with lower weight is ideal for muscle definition and hypertrophy. There are those who also caution against "overtraining" and, of course, there are proponents for incorporating or cycling all of these various approaches into your workouts.

Source: flickr.com. User: Pascal

So what do I think? I actually DO have an opinion on this, and promise that my viewpoint on this topic won't be as non-conclusive as a bunch of my other blog posts.

I like to think of my muscle as a student in a classroom. If you, as a student, were able to get an A in a class without ever doing any of the homework or study.........would you ever do any of the homework or study? I feel the same thing applies to muscle growth.

In my opinion, if your muscle has absolutely no reason to grow, it won't. If there is no stimulus powerful enough for it to send whatever biological signals it sends throughout the body to indicate that there is a stress on them greater than they can handle, they will have no reason to want to grow / produce more muscle tissue. If you don't have your muscle tissue screaming at you and / or wondering WHAT the heck was just unleashed on them, they won't try to prepare for the next session of absolute chaos.

Source: farm9.staticflickr.com

 
Muscle takes a lot of effort and resources for your body to build and maintain. It doesn't just store muscle from the food you eat. It's a biological process of breakdown, repair, and strengthening. In other words, it's not really a process that your body wants to go through unless it really feels it needs to. In a lot of biological systems, the path of least resistance is almost always the chosen one, and thus your body doesn't just start magically producing muscle without enough stress and stimulus.

That's why I'm an advocate of not focusing on the repetitions at all. What I mean by that is, go until failure on ever single set you ever do in the gym. Some of you are HIGHLY against this, but from the very beginning until the very end I will be an advocate of training until failure. (To review, lifting until failure means you are trying as hard as you can to lift the weight during your repetitions, but your body is making you unable to continue lifting it).

Now, the weight you choose is the non-constant variable here. I do think that the weight you choose is important, and that there IS in fact a rep range you should shoot for. But don't take that as me saying you should stop once you hit that range.

When I started bodybuilding, I would make sure that I hit at least 8-12 repetitions on every single set I did. And if I couldn't hit that with the weight I was using, I'd immediately drop-set to a weight I could keep lifting with until I was in that range of repetitions and continue until failure. If I went over that rep range, perhaps I would increase the weight until I failed within that range. If I kept having trouble hitting that range, perhaps I'd consider lowering the weight on the next set.

Source: blog.csharplearners.com

And I do think that certain weights do offer different types of stimulus to your muscles. Heavier weights (relative to YOUR size and strength), where form is somewhat sacrificed (but should never be fully sacrificed) are good for overall increases in size, while semi-heavy (NOT LIGHT) weight with extreme focus on form helps with muscle separation and changes in definition (though, leanness and definition will always be more of a nutrition thing in my book).

There is also a time-under-tension and consistency of lifting discussion that could and probably should take place here, but that's for another blog post. But the next time you find yourself in the gym, wondering how many repetitions you should do in the gym, immediately yell at yourself for thinking that there's a set number for you to stop at. Aim for a rep range of 8-12 repetitions, and use a weight that makes you fail around that range. If you can keep lifting past that, keep going until failure and consider increasing your weight on the next set. If you fail before that range, consider lowering the weight a bit.

I hope that helps! Have fun using what was discussed here during your next gym session!

-Jtrain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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Nutrition Hacks - High Fiber and Water

Hello! And welcome to another edition of "Nutrition Hacks"!

I've gotten some good feedback from this ongoing "Nutrition Hacks" series, and thought I'd continue with another one in today's post. For this hack, I'd like to discuss ways in which you can manipulate your nutrition by ingesting foods that make you feel fulller quicker / longer and curb your appetite so that you do not feel the urge to overeat.

What you eat is important to your bodily aesthetic (surprise!), and most of us looking to alter our aesthetics are in tune with this. While bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts alike are all still pretty much on the same page as to what kind of foods they need to eat to stimulate and / or alter their bodies, a lot of them fall short on figuring out ways to make the grind and mental struggle a little easier to deal with on a day to day basis.

Source: withamymac.com

This is why I suggest to those of you looking to alter your bodies, but find it hard to eat strictly and cleanly most of the time due to your love of food and propensity for snacking, to incoprorate more high fiber foods into your diet and to constantly drink water. 

Source: algaeindustrymagazine.com

 

The reason for this is that high fiber foods (beans, vegetables, nuts, etc) and water make you feel full very quickly, and suppress your appetite and increase satiety. Water and high fiber vegetables are also very low on calories and thus can be incorporated in every meal in very generous amounts without obliterating your dietary macros.

In searching for systematic reviews to back up the claim that fiber, water, and fats do in fact make you feel fuller, I was actually unable to find any significant studies that support this claim. However, it's always good to take nutritional research with a grain of salt, as monitoring peoples' diets and making all things equal in said diets is an extremely difficult undertaking. So if you're disappointed by my lack of scientific backing or evidence, and think I'm being way too anecdotal, please forgive me. There might be a lot of personal experience and bro-science involved with the claims and suggestions you are about to read.


FIBER

I think that many of us will agree that foods high in fiber make us feel really full. If you're not sure about this, try eating through a can of beans right now and tell me how successful you are without hitting a food wall at full speed.

Fiber can be broken up into soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and can help lower blood cholesterol and regulate blood sugar. Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water and promotes movement of food through the intestines and regularity.

Source: khoemoingay.edu

Fiber aids in early and prolonged signals of satiation (fullness) due to its unique physical and chemical structures, which can help those trying to lower body fat percentage through a decrease in food intake or those who find it difficult to stay full throughout the day.

Fiber has also been linked to the prevention of such diseases as heart disease, type II diabetes, and colon cancer. Fiber also helps with overall colon health.

I highly recommend adding vegetables to every meal. They are low in calories, and provide a massive amount of fiber. They also provide beneficial vitamins to your diet.

Source: sproutnewroots.files.wordpress.com

 

You can almost eat all of the vegetables you want in a day and feel nice and full afterwards. High fiber foods you could also use in your diet include nuts, oats, brown rice, and whole wheats. Fruits are also a nice source of fiber (when eaten whole) when eaten sparingly.


WATER

As I'm sure you are well aware, water is important to your body. It's really unbelievable how vital water is to producing the right type of environment inside your body, whilst also aiding in many important biological processes. I've briefly gone over water in one of my blog posts, which you can find here.

Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com

If you're bodybuilding, or doing anything fitness oriented, you should always be drinking lots of water and staying hydrated. But water can also be a useful tool in making yourself feel full. I believe that this is simply because of the space that the water fills up within your stomach, and if you're drinking lots of water throughout the day, you can constantly be filling up your stomach and stay fuller longer. Water also has no calories, so you can fill yourself up without harming your diet!


OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Other considerations you can take to make yourself feel fuller include incorporating more whole-foods into your diet. Eating more whole-food protein and getting the majority of your calories from solid food will fill up more space in your stomach and take longer to digest than say liquid forms of calories (I believe). It has been argued back and forth that incorporating more fats into your diet also slows down the digestion process of foods and in turn keeps you feeling more satisfied longer (allegedly). Furthermore, consider lowering your carb intake to regulate insulin and blood sugar so that you do not become accustomed to sugar cravings.


Food hacks like this can really help aid in making the experience of dieting and meal planning easier to deal with during the times of the day where you crave foods or are tempted to eat things that will throw you off of your dietary plans. Try using this food hack and see if it helps keep your mind off of food cravings and achieve dietary success!

-Jtrain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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