Nutrition

Ah yes. Here you are. You didn't want to click on this page tab.....but you knew you had to. And that's what nutrition is. It's that thing that is always present. That thing you know you need to do. That unsexy part of the hype you feel about getting into a fitness routine and powering through your goals. It's THE definition of grinding when it comes to fitness, and will test you like you've never been tested before. While lifting weights and cardio will suck in the physical realm, nutrition lurks in the shadows of your mind, creating realities that may not even exist, and brings in the mental aspect of things as it tries to tear you apart and shatter your will.

But that's ok! I'm sure you also knew that a fitness journey wasn't going to be easy. But I also want to let you know that to whatever degree you thought the nutrition would be difficult, it will be (or atleast feel) 10 times harder than that. You see, your body is BUILT to store fat and make sure you do absolutely nothing to get in the way of that. It's going to do whatever it can to shut you down from doing things that require lots of energy, and ESPECIALLY make you think that you are going to die in the next 3 seconds if you don't eat the next calorie dense piece of junk food you see. It's just how our minds are programmed biologically. But it's this biological programming that has helped the human species survive for hundreds of thousands of years. 

Your job will be to try and overcome this biological programming. You need to train not only your body, but your mind as well (which I think is 90+% of bodybuilding actually). You need to remove yourself from biological lizard-brain instincts and moments where instant gratification needs start taking hold, and remind yourself why you went on this journey in the first place. You absolutely....positively....need to place your fitness goals as your #1 priority above all moments of instant gratification that would contradict progress in that department. That beer / candy bar / donut / piece of junk food might seem more important in the short term, but then what? What was the point? You caved. You gave in to instant gratification and made that kind of garbage a higher priority than a better, sexier, probably healthier version of yourself. And you have to live with that now.

I talk in terms of the mental aspect of nutrition before even getting into it because, really, that's the most important part of the the most important part of all fitness goals. You can't just think and act like you normally do with food. You can't look at it as a means of enjoyment, escape, and instant gratification, but rather as fuel and stepping stones towards your fitness goal. And that's the stone cold truth. You can't even think of it in terms of "everything in moderation"....well...maybe you can..... If you want a moderate-looking body, with only moderate looking results, from your moderate amount of give a crap.

For this page, I'm not going to really get into fitness meal plans, but rather highlight the important macronutrients and maybe a few other things. I'll include good examples of foods that contain these macros, and you can tailor them to fit them in with whatever your fitness goals may be.

BODY TYPES

It's important that you  understand what kind of bodytype you have. There are three main categories of bodytype that one should familiarize themselves with to accurately judge what kind of body they have naturally, and design an workout plan and eat the necessary amount of calories that correspond to that body type. The three types of body type are:

Ectomorph: Ectomorphs are hard gainers. They lose fat VERY easily, but find it very hard to put on mass and size / muscle. Ectomorphs tend to have crazy definition, and in my opinion should eat a very high amount of calories if wanting to bodybuid (like somewhere in the 3500-4500 calorie range). Ectomorphs I think should bulk hard so that they can gain size, and then cut down when necessary and take advantage of the short amount of time it will take their natural genetic predisposition to give them the definition they seek.

Mesomorph: Mesomorphs have body types that are in between ectomorphs and endomorphs. They do not lose fat easily, but they don't have a hard time putting on size and muscle either. They tend to have nicely shaped bodies with room for more definition, and need to still watch their calories and macros for optimal muscular aesthetics. They do not need to ingest as many calories as a mesomorph, and can afford to eat a little more calories than an endomorph. I would recommend that those with mesomorphic bodies eat the calories and macros associated with a standard bodybuilding / weight loss nutritional plan and see how it affects them, and then alter those calories and macros accordingly to see what works best for them.

Endomorph: Endomorphs gain very easily, and have a very hard time losing weight. It's easy for them to go on bulks, but special attention is needed to go on a cut. My advice for endomorphs is to go onto a cut / weight lose program before trying to bulk up or ingest a lot of calories in the attempt to gain mass. It's already apparent that gaining size is easy for them, so dedicating to a cut will let them know what kind of starting point they are at and will give them a better looking body aesthetic.

Figure out which category you think you fall into, and develop a nutritional program accordingly.

Source: Muscleandstrength.com

PROTEIN

Proteins are large biological molecules made up of chains of amino acids (structures made from an amine group and a carboxylic acid group with a corresponding functional group and side chains specific to each different kind of amino acid). Many different kinds of proteins perform many different kinds of activities, but they are also considered the building blocks of the body. We are made from protein from our skeletal tissue, to our muscle tissue, to our nails, skin, hair, and fingernails. The structure of a protein molecule includes its primary structure (its amino acid sequence), secondary structure (repeating local structures of alpha-helices, hydrogen bonds, turns, and beta-pleated sheets), and the teritary structure (spatial relation of the secondary structures to one another. Several proteins may get together and form quaternary structures which in turn may lead to protein complexes.

Source: Turbosquid.com

So why is it important to you and your fitness routine? Protein helps build muscle, repair muscle, and aid in the recovery process for damage (minor and major) caused to the body during intense workout sessions (for instance, when you feel sore, you've damaged your body and protein comes to repair that area of damage). Constantly inducing tears in your muscle causes the body to use protein to repair and eventually enlarge muscle fibers over time from constant repairing and overlap of repaired areas on the muscle tissue. For a bodybuilder, and even a powerlifter this is obviously a very important process. Since your body does not create all of the amino acids necessary for certain processes, it is important to eat the right kinds of protein sources in the right quantities after stiumulating muscle growth from a weightlifting routine. Your body can break down the protein sources you ingest into the amino acids necessary to build the proteins required for repair and muscle growth.

If you're trying to put on muscle, my recommendation is to try and eat at least your bodyweight in grams of protein a day. A general rule of thumb is 1-1.5g of protein for every pound of bodyweight. When I first started working out and bodybuilding, the ONLY macronutrient I tried to keep track of and hit every day was protein.

Good high protein, low carb, low fat sources: Whey protein, eggs, lean meats like fish and turkey
Good high protein, high carb, low fat sources: Nonfat cottage cheese, skim milk, beans (high fiber too)
Good high protein, low carb, high fat sources: Nuts, peanut butter

For every 1 gram of protein, there are 4 calories

CARBOHYDRATES

Carbohydrates provide your body with energy. While carbs aren't the only macronutrient your body can use for energy, it is its preferred source. Types of carbs include monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, and nucleotides. Carbs can be considered simple, complex, or fibrous (at least in the world of bodybuilding). Simple carbs are comprised of short-chained sugar molecules. They are easily broken down for energy and tend to have a sweet taste to them. Complex carbohydrates are comprised of longer chains of sugar molecules and have a starchy flavor and are not as easily broken down for readily available energy. Fibrous carbs offer rich sources of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients and are typically found in green vegetables.

Source: http://diabetes-support.com

Carbohydrates are the most intricate macronutrient to try and manipulate in my opinion. Some people react differently to carbohydrates, so you'll have to figure out what works best for you. Typically, you'll want to eat more complex carbohydrates (I'll make a list in a second) than you would simple carbohydrates. Your body stores carbohydrates as glycogen, and you can store liver or muscle glycogen. Some simple carbs like fructose can only be stored as liver glycogen (or so I'm told). Whatever you body cannot store as glycogen, it will start storing as fat (or, again, so I'm told). That means that foods high in fructose or other simple sugars that cannot be stored as muscle glycogen, like fruits, will be stored only as liver glycogen. If you overeat on foods with simple sugars that can only be stored as liver glycogen, you will start to store fat. So you want to be careful with your simple carbs, and definitely eat them sparingly!

Many bodybuilders will play around with their carbs to manipulate their body aesthetic at different times. Since your body will look for carbs as its first source of energy, bodybuilders will often times deplete their bodies of carbohydrates so that the body needs to turn to fat for energy instead. Bodybuilders will also deplete their bodies of carbs for like 1-2 weeks so that they become insulin sensitive, and then load up on carb-rich foods before a show or competition so that their bodies start frantically absorbing the carbs into their body. I've been told that these sugar molecules are quite dense, and so the resulting effect is is that you suddenly start to look super vascular and water starts to get pulled into muscle cells by the stored carb molecules for a fuller muscle. The end product of such a routine is a very full, vascular looking physique. It's these kinds of effects that make carb manipulation such an important and powerful tool in bodybuilding and other possible fitness goals.

Also, simple carbs a lot of times are consumed post-workout by people who are bodybuilding. Do you HAVE to have simple carbs before and after a workout? I say no, it's not that important. There are a lot of bro-science bodybuilding ideas out there, and that's one of them. However, if I were to pick a time during the day to ingest simple carbs it would probably be either very early on in the day, or pre and post working out. Again though, not necessary.

You can use a wide array of caloric and macronutrient calculators (skip to near the bottom of this post for more information) to figure out how many carbohydrates (hopefully mostly from complex carb sources) you should ingest during the day. As a general rule of thumb though, for those who are bodybuilding, a good number to use is 1.5-2g per pound of bodyweight. But that differs if you are on a bulk or a cut (if you are on those kinds of cycles), and someone trying to lose weight would eat a lot less carbs than that number while someone trying to bulk would eat about that number or more. For cutting, I've personally seen good results when I ingested 100-150 carbs.

Simple carb sources: Table sugar, honey, molasses, brown sugar, fruit, fruit juice, soda, candies, maple syrup, brown sugar.

Complex carb sources: Oatmeal, whole-grain pasta, brown rice, sweet potato, green vegetables, pumpkin, beans, lentils, peas

For every 1 gram of carbohydrate, there are 4 calories

FATS

Fats are molecules comprised of three fatty acids (each fatty acid being one of several possible fatty acids) and glycerol (a sugar alcohol compound), and are therefore considered triglycerides. They are part of a group of molecules called lipids (which also includes phospholipids and steroids / waxes). Fats can be solid or liquid at room temperature, and are insoluble in water. Major fat groups include saturated and unsaturated fats. Aside from being used as energy, fats also make up structural components for cell membranes, and play a role in the generation of hormones pertinent to such things as bodybuilding, as well as many other uses for the body.

Source: telstar.ote.cmu.edu

Saturated Fats: Saturated fats are fats that consist of triglycerides that contain only saturated fatty acids. They have no double-bonded carbon molecules on their fatty acid chains, so there is no "bend" or "kink" in the fatty acid chains like in unsaturated fats. Since saturated fat molecules do not have this bending of the fatty acid tails, they can pack tightly with one another and therefore cause saturated fats to be solid at room temperature. The chemical makeup of saturated fat carbon atoms is that they are saturated with hydrogen molecules.

Source: greenerpro.com

Foods high in saturated fats include cream, cheese, butter, lard, fatty meats, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, palm kernal oil, and chocolate.

A diet rich in saturated fats have been linked to cardiovascular disease (systematic reviews data available upon request) as well as other diseases such as cancer.

One should limit there saturated fat intake if possible, and opt for healthier fat choices.

Unsaturated Fats:  Unsaturated fats are fats that contain atleast one double bond in one of the fatty acid chains of the fat molecule (those "bends" and "kinks" you see). If there is only one double bond along one of the fatty acid chains, the fat is considered monounsaturated. If there are more than one fatty acid chain that contains a double bond (multiple bends), then the unsaturated fat is considered polyunsaturated (and can be further broken down into Omega-3 and Omega-6 groupings).

Source: jugalbandi.info

Some foods that are  high in unsaturated fats include peanut butter, olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocados, and fish.

Unsaturated fats have been linked to controlling cholesterol levels.

 

For every 1 gram of fat, there are 9 calories. Fats do not make you fat. You want them in your diet for many reasons. It's just that fat is more calorie dense per gram than when compared to protein and carbohydrates. 100g of protein and carbohydrates is not the same as 100g of fat. People tend to overeat on fat and, due to its high calorie density, get fat. But the conclusion that fat molecules cause or stimulate fat production is an incorrect association. Do not be afraid of fat. It is an essential macronutrient to bodybuilding and fitness success.

As a standard, a good place to start for calculating how many grams of fat you need (if you're bodybuilding) is to take 0.25 and multiply it by your bodyweight. But a lot of people use around 30g of fat when they're seriously following their macros. I'll give an example macro calculation at the end of this page. Feel free to scroll down!

WATER

You already know that water is super important to every exercise plan, and to general health overall. So I won't get too in-depth with it. I will say that one thing that I tell a lot of people is to never drink their calories. Some reasoning for this is 1) liquid calories will not make you feel full, and 2) It's easy to blow an outrageous amount of calories in a very small amount of many kinds of drinks. For example, drinking a cup of orange juice (112 calories) would be the equivalent of eating about two oranges. But can you really only drink one cup of orange juice?.....no you can't.....stop it....no you can't. And so before you know it you've had probably close to 300-400+ calories of a drink that would be the equivalent of 6-8 oranges. Why not just eat 6-8 oranges? And by the time you got to your 2nd to 3rd orange you would have either been fed up with all of the peeling or completely full from all of the fiber contained in the orange. Either way, you get the point I'm trying to make.

Water should be your #1 drink, and like 80-90% of what you drink in a day. I drink close to or over a gallon of water a day. Along with water, I think that acceptable drinks would be black coffee, lightly sweetened or unsweetened tea, and skim milk (sparingly). That's it. But water is your go-to.

Also, if you find that you're dieting hard and your muscles and body still look a little soft and bloated, maybe you're drinking a little TOO much water, and need to maybe scale it down a bit. This is why you always look shredded in the morning, because you're fairly dehydrated from not drinking throughout the night. One piece of advice I'd give is to maybe start the week with a large amount of water intake, and then drink less and less throughout the week. That way you stimulate anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), and then immediately go to lower water intake to have the excess water pulled from your muscles to give you that nice vascular / shredded look (that may have been a lot of bro-science...I'm sorry).  Also, carbs and water seem to have somewhat of an interplay between one another, and a lot of carbs plus a lot of water could have an effect on your physique by giving it a softer look. Consider tweaking the two to adjust your physique accordingly based on what you're looking for.

Source: mindbodygreen.com

VEGETABLES

Vegetables are a very important part of your fitness routine, but for healthy diets as well. They provide your body with vitamins and minerals, along with other essential nutriets. From a dieting standpoint, vegetables are powerful in that they provide a LOT of fiber in a very small amount of calories. that means you can snack on them without really worrying about the caloric drawbacks and use them to fill you up between meals. If you're on a cut or trying to lose weight, make vegetables a big part of each of your meals so that you are not tempted to snack and shatter all of your fitness goals.

Source: davidcantwellphotography.com

As a personal note, I've found that I feel a massive pump in my muscles when I go heavy on veggies along with my diet. I feel there is some interplay between the nutrients in vegetables and my workout routine coupled with my diet. It may be bro-science. But that's just what I've observed. Maybe you could try it and see how you feel!


NUTRITIONAL CALCULATORS AND RESOURCES

There are many nutritonal calculators availabe on the web from a simple Google search. One of my favorites is the calorie calculator on www.freedieting.com. Just type that into you prefered search engine, and it will bring you right the site. From there, you type in things about yourself like age, weight, height, gender, etc, and you will be given maintenance, fat loss, and I believe weight gain calories that you should eat on a daily basis to achieve your fitness goals. Maintenance calories are what you will burn in a day with your current lifestyle and demographics by doing absolutely nothing (and having the same activity level) and is also known as your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Theoretically, if you ate at those calories every day you would neither gain or lose weight. If you wish to lose weight, you would eat less calories than your maintenance calories, and if you wanted to gain weight and mass you would eat above those calories. Try it out for a couple of weeks and see what kind of progress (or lack thereof) you make and then adjust accordingly. I will discuss how to figure out your macros based on those calories below.

Another way to ballpark...and I do mean ballpark your calories is to multiply your bodyweight by 10-15 to get how many calories you need to cut and lose weight, and times your bodyweight by 20 to figure out how many calories you need to gain weight and size. This method could be a good method for eyeballing where you stand and what calories work for you in acheiving your goals.

Another FANTASTIC resource to use is My Fitness Pal. You can visit their website at www.myfitnesspal.com, or use their free application that you can download to your phone. It can even determine how many calories it thinks you should be eatng in a day based on the information you provide it. But the power of this application lies in its ability to track for you the calories you eat throughout the day. Whatever you eat, or whatever excerice you do during the day, you just log into My Fitness Pal, and it will add or deduct calories and tell you how much more you need to eat, or that you should stop eating. It's the best way to track calories for people who don't like to in my opinion!

CALCULATING MACROS (Example)

Let's use an example of how we would determine macros based on the information provided above.

Let's say that I find out using an online TDEE / calorie calculator that my maintenance calories are 2600. Let's also say that I'm trying to put on size. So I'll just use an arbitrary number of 500 more calories to see how well I gain, bringing my calories for every day up to 3100 calories.

I know that I need to get my bodyweight in grams of protein, so let's say I'm 180 pounds. I need 180g of protein a day.

for every 1 gram of protein, there are 4 calories. So, I will use 180*4 = 720 calories from protein a day.

That leaves me with 3100-720 = 2380 calories to consume for the day.

I also know that I want to eat about .25 grams of fat per pound of bodyweight, or .25*my bodyweight in grams of fat a day. So that gives me 180*.25 = 45g of fat a day.

I also know that there are 9 calories in 1 gram of fat, so I will consume 45*9 = 405 calories in fat.

Subtract that from what I got from my calorie needs after I subtracted protein and you get:
2380-405=1975 calories to consume in carbs.

I know that there are 4 calories in 1 gram of carbohydrates, so I nee 1975/4=493.75g of carbs a day.

So, that means that my macros for my 3100 calorie goal for the day will include:

180 grams of protein
494 grams of carbs
45 grams of fat

Based on the example foods provided in each macronutrient section of this article, you can fill in the categories as you will!

QUICK TIPS

Finally, here are some quick pro tips for helping you stay on your nutritional goals:

• NEVER buy snack food. If you are around snack food during a diet in your house / apartment / whatever, you WILL snack on it. Eliminate that desire by only buying the foods that are required in your meal plan.
• Every day eat ONE thing that you like and don't worry about its caloric or macronutrient content. Something small that won't kill your diet, but will keep your cravings in check day to day. For me, that was a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter and a large half and half tea from Dunkin Donuts every day.
• Every week, have 1-2 days where you eat whatever you want for a meal. Plan it out so that it isn't spontaneous to reward yourself for the great nutritional plan you've followed all week. These are called cheat days and they are perfectly acceptable and will keep you on your meal plan week in and week out.
• If you start your meal plan as a guy / girl who drinks 5 sodas a day or eats fast food 5 times a day, do not immediately stop doing that and go on a hardcore dedicated meal plan. The enthusiasm is great, but if you suddenly change your dieting your body is going to freak out and you will crash and want to give up a lot harder and faster than you would if you weened yourself into it. I equate it to a metaphor of someone pulling a wagon down a hill really fast and then suddenly making a sharp right turn as opposed to slowly turning out at the the bottom. what happens is that everyone in the wagon will fly out during a sharp turn as opposed to slowly getting into the turn. The same is true with nutrition. You need to ween yourself into things.
• Prepare foods in advance and plan what you are going to eat tomorrow. If you wing your nutrition, you will fail miserably.