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| Characteristics Of A Good Nutrition Program |
By:
Hugo A Rivera |
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Nutrition is what gives us the raw materials for recuperation, energy, and growth. Without a good diet, your dreams of achieving your ideal body will never be reached.
We'll now discuss the characteristics of a good nutrition program and we'll also go over nutrition basics.
What Should A Good Nutrition Program Consist Of?
1) It should favor smaller and frequent feedings throughout the day instead of smaller ones.
Why? Because when you feed your body several times a day, your metabolism increases. Therefore, you burn more fat. Frequent feedings are of particular importance since after three to four hours of no food your body switches to a catabolic state (a state in which you lose muscle and gain fat!). The body believes that it is starving and it starts feeding itself on lean muscle tissue and it prepares to store calories as fat. Bad scenario!
Therefore, in order for your program to work, you will eat between four to six meals (depending gender and goals) a day spaced out at 2-1/2 to 3 hour intervals.
2) Every meal should have carbohydrates, protein and fat in the correct ratios.
Having a meal that is not balanced (for example is all carbohydrates) won't yield the desired results. Every macronutrient has to be present in order for the body to absorb them and use them properly. Without boring you with the effect of food on the body's biochemistry, let's just say that if you only eat carbohydrates in one meal without anything else, your energy levels will crash in about 30 minutes and your body will be storing any carbohydrates that were not used into fat.
Conversely, if you only eat protein, you will lack energy and your body will not be able to turn the protein into muscle because it is difficult for the body to absorb protein in the absence of carbohydrates. In addition, the ratios for each particular macronutrient have to be correct in order to get the results that you want.
The ratio of our diet will look like the following:
40% Carbohydrates
40% Protein
20% Fats
(Note that for every serving of carbohydrates, you get a serving of Protein. You can use Bill Phillips Method of creating meals which is to count a portion of carbohydrates as the amount of food the size of your clenched fist and a portion of protein as the amount of food the size of your open palms.)
3) The calories should be cycled.
I strongly believe in caloric cycling as this will not allow the metabolism to get used to a certain caloric level; something that leads to stagnant results.
Therefore, bodybuilders in search of just muscle mass should follow 5 days of high calories (lean body mass x 15) with two days of lower caloric intake (lean body mass x12). Bodybuilders in search of losing fat while building muscle at the same time should follow 5 days of lower caloric intake (lean body mass x12) with 2 days of higher calories (lean body mass x 15). (Note: If you build muscle and lose fat at the same time you will not gain muscle as fast as you would if you just concentrated in muscle mass. However, you get to get both goals accomplished at the same time).
People interested in bodysculpting should alternate between two weeks of lower calories (around 2000 for men and 1000 for women) and two weeks of higher calories (around 2700 for men and 1700 for women).
Nutrition Basics
There are 3 macronutrients that the human body needs in order to function properly.
A) Carbohydrates:
Carbohydrates are your body's main source of energy. When you ingest carbohydrates your pancreas releases a hormone called insulin.
Insulin is very important because:
It grabs the carbohydrates and either stores them in the muscle or stores them as fat.
It grabs the amino acids (protein) and shelters them inside the muscle cell for recovery and repair. Most people that are overweight and are in low fat/high carbohydrate diets got into that condition because they are eating an overabundance of carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates cause a huge release of insulin. When there is too much insulin in the body, your body turns into a fat storing machine. Therefore, it is important that we eat no more carbohydrates than necessary and that we eat the right amount of carbohydrates.
Now that we have talked about the importance of having just the right amount of carbohydrates, let's talk about which are the best sources of carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are divided into complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates. The complex carbohydrates give you sustained energy (
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About the Author:
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Hugo Rivera CFT, ISSN, SPN, BSCE. is a lifetime natural
bodybuilder, a multi certified personal trainer, and a
best selling author with a successful franchise of books
called "The Body Sculpting Bibles" which collectively have
sold over a million copies worldwide. Hugo is also the author
of the "Body Re-Engineering" system which teaches you how to
gain lean muscle mass and get lean without drugs, or expensive
supplements. For more information visit http://www.losefatandgainmuscle.com
or his personal website at http://www.hugorivera.net
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