THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD NUTRITION
If you want to produce high-quality muscle maintain lower body fat levels from time and effort you invest in training, you must feed yourself properly. Your nutritional habits—not how you train in the gym—has the greatest impact on the development of your physique. Many experts feel the way you eat accounts for as much as 80 percent of the way you look. If you want an impressive muscular body, you are going to have to pay close attention to what you are eating.
In fact, if I was faced with the dilemma of choosing between training or eating properly as my only vehicle to look and feel my very best, I would choose to eat properly. Sound nutrition is that important to your bodybuilding efforts. A heavy emphasis needs to be placed on studying winning nutritional strategies and executing those strategies on a consistent basis.
Bodybuilding is a lifestyle. Doing it correctly does not stop after you are done in the gym. You must constantly feed your body the right foods if you want to enjoy a great physique.
The biggest obstacle you may face when trying to implement a bodybuilding nutritional program is to do so despite your busy schedule at work and at play. Oftentimes, it seems that everything else takes priority over eating correctly. In the short run, it’s easier to just skip an important meal like breakfast rather than getting yourself out of bed just 10 minutes earlier to eat. It’s convenient to stop at Burger King for a Whopper and fries rather than going home, cooking a chicken breast, rice, and vegetables, and cleaning up the mess afterwards.
And you know what? You’re right! It is much easier to skip meals or stop for fast food. But, if you want to build a physique that you can be proud of, you must make the decision to eat correctly.
’ll be perfectly honest with you. There are no “secrets.” The bottom line is you have to make the commitment to change. Eating right can’t be something you "should" do, it has to be something you "must" do if you want to have the body you desire. Everything worth having taken extra effort. Your body is no exception. Let's face it, if it were easy, everybody would have a fantastic physique!
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis
When you want to lose body fat, do you always increase your gym time and further cut your calories down? Well, what if I told you there is something else you can do too...
I'd explain what Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, describes the calories burned by the movements we make when we go about our daily business. NEAT includes the physical movement in our lives that isn't planned exercise or sports (or sleeping, breathing, and eating)
Now, to lose body fat you need to make sure you are in a calorie deficit. Taking time to learn about energy balance (calories in vs calories out) and how it changes your body is crucial, I can help educate you on this too.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is everything we do when we aren't either asleep or exercising.
So, walking to work, fidgeting at your desk or using the stairs instead of taking the lift are all good-examples:
When we are moving, we are burning calories, more calories than you'd expect over the course of a 24-hour period! The problem is that our lifestyles have massively changed over the years and our environments have a big impact on how much NEAT we do each day. Life has become far more sedentary than just a few years ago! We drive to the local shops rather than walk, we use lifts for convenience (obviously I'm talking about people who are physically able to use stairs...) and we watch far more TV than ever before.
NEARLY 1/3 OF THE POPULATION IS CONSIDERED TO BE OBESE OR SEVERELY OBESE!
4 TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR NEAT:
1) If you are physically able to... take the stairs.
2) Break up your day sitting at the desk - talk a walk around the office each hour.
3) Park further away from the train station, office or the shops.
4) Crack on with your household chores - inside or in the garden it all adds up.
If you ever wonder why, you’ve gained fat while eating and exercising well for most of the week then it it’s not your metabolism that is broken or damaged, it could be the binge eating on weekend or any other day of the week.
Binge eating on any day of the week can not only destroy your fat loss efforts but even make you gain fat!
Generally, if you can only stick to your diet during the week then you need to re-think your strategy. Success in weight loss is due to healthy diet habits which can take a while to form but if done often enough will suddenly become an unconscious effort as opposed to conscious.
To lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories than you consume each day. The theory is simple, but practice teaches us otherwise. Many people pay close attention to what they eat during the week. Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware that if you want to lose weight or fat, you need to consume fewer calories each day than you consume. That's the basic rule of gaining and losing weight
If you don’t know about this then see in the graphic what happened to Bob (name changed)! Bob maintains his weight on 2300 calories a day. He decides on a 500 calories daily deficit to lose fat. During the week, he looks to be on target for losing fat. However, his calorie intake on Friday and Saturday increases drastically due to binge eating in just a couple of meals. Instead of reducing his average weekly calorie intake, he ends up increasing it. He not only destroys his fat loss efforts but also ends up gaining fat. If he does this for several weekends in a year then he can add significant amount of fat in a year. Controlling what you eat on the weekend can make or break your fat loss journey.
This is probably a true reflection of a lot of people’s weeks unfortunately.... balance and moderation is key. Ever thought to yourself... I’ve done well this week; I’m going to let my hair down and enjoy my weekend then Monday comes and the measurements or scales show no change?!?! Consistency will show progression ladies and gents.
If this is a good reflection of what your week looks like. Here are a few things you could try:
1. Simple one, lower your weekend calories and step away from the alcohol and the biscuit tin.
2. Lower your weekday calories to account for higher weekend calories.
3. Replace your wine and beer with spirits and diet mixers.
4. Burn more calories through exercise, which will create a bigger deficit and allow you to have a higher weekend intake, while still getting results.
CONCLUSION : So, after an entire week of discipline with diet and training, it’s so easy to still end up gaining fat.
THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL
Effects of Alcohol
If you are curious as to the effects of alcohol on the body, this could be the most eye-opening article you will ever read.
Many of us associate the effects of alcohol on the body with the heart, lungs, liver, brain, memory, etc. Furthermore, if asked about effects of drinking alcohol in terms of our fitness goals, most people will let you know about the infamous beer belly.
You know what I'm talking about right?
Drink too much and you end up storing too many calories as fat.
Many people will choose low calorie alcohol drinks or low carb alcoholic beverages in an attempt to avoid the fat storage issue. They feel that by making this choice the only bad effects of alcohol - increased fat storage - will be minimized.
But what you didn't know is that only about 5% of the calories from alcohol are stored as fat!
Then it hit me as it should hit you right about now...
The effects of alcohol on the body are far more damaging than can be predicted by the number of empty calories in some alcoholic beverage.
The truth is...
1- Alcohol really affects the amount of fat your body can and will burn for energy!
In a study done by the American Journal of Clinical Research they concluded that just a mere 24g of alcohol consumption showed whole-body lipid oxidation (the rate at which your body burns fat) decreased by a whopping 73%!
When alcohol goes thru the liver, the by-product is called Acetate. It would appear that acetate puts the proverbial brakes on fat burning.
Your body can use many types of fuel. Protein, carbohydrates and fat. In many cases, the fuel used is dictated by its availability
Trouble is...
Your body tends to use whatever you feed it for fuel right? As your acetate levels increase, your body burns more acetate as fuel.
What this means is...
Fat burning takes a back seat!
What it all boils down to is this...
a) You consume a couple of alcoholic drinks or more.
b) Your liver metabolizes that into acetate.
c) Your body uses the acetate for fat as fuel.
2- It Leads to an Increase in Your Appetite In another American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study, there was evidence to suggest that consumption of alcohol lead to an increase in appetite over that of any other carbohydrate type drink. Researchers over in the Research Department of Human Nutrition and Center for Advanced Food Studies in Denmark concluded that consumption of alcoholic beverages, and wine in particular, may enhance total energy intake at a meal relative to a soft drink, when served with no restriction.
3- Decreases Testosterone and Increases Cortisol
A study of 8 healthy male volunteers observed that after drinking alcohol, the effects of a significant decrease in testosterone and an increase in cortisol (a muscle destroying hormone) lasted up to 24 hours!
The only real question to ask yourself is this...
If you are serious about building muscle and burning fat, you want all the free testosterone levels you can get and you want to reduce cortisol in any way you can. That means go lite on the drinking because it does affect your hormones.
What more...
Is that the effects were even worse if you exercise before drinking. This means that if you are going out and will be drinking more than a small amount of alcohol, you might as well skip the gym.
Not shocking is a study done by the Department of Radiology, Sahlgrenska Hospital, Goteborg, Sweden that determined increased waist to hip ratio of alcoholics may include not only changes in adipose tissue, but also in muscle tissue distribution.
In layman's terms... that means fatter around the waist and less overall muscle mass.
4- Decreases Vitamin and Mineral Absorption
When you consume large quantities of alcohol, your liver is busy converting the alcohol to acetate and any vitamins
and minerals that it might process are taken up by the detoxification process.
Alcohol interferes with the metabolism of most vitamins, and with the absorption of many nutrients. Alcohol stimulates both urinary calcium and magnesium excretion.
This just means that you'll get less of a benefit from the "healthy" meal you may be consuming.
Food in the stomach will compete with ethanol for absorption into the blood stream. It is well known that alcohol competes and influences the processing of nutrients in the body.
5- Decreases Protein Synthesis of Type II Fibers
This means the actual building of muscle is slowed down by 20%+ or more. This included a 35% decrease in muscle insulin-like growth factor-I (GF-I).
6- It Increases Dehydration
A common side effect of alcohol is dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic. Drinks containing 4% alcohol tend to delay the recovery process.
Considering how important water is to muscle building and general health, it's clear that dehydration can put a damper on your progress. After alcohol consumption the first thing you might want to do is drink coffee. But that's a diuretic as well. How to avoid dehydration? Drink more water.
7- It Reduces Sleep
Alcohol consumption, especially at the times when you would normally sleep, can have effects on the quality of sleep.
Clearly high-quality sleep is extremely important to the rebuilding and growth process of muscle. Without proper rest and recovery, your gains will be affected.
Alcohol consumption can induce sleep disorders by disrupting the sequence and duration of sleep states and by altering total sleep time as well as the time required to fall asleep.
8- Makes the Next Day Not the Best Workout Day
A rather obvious conclusion but if you plan on drinking on a Friday night in excess then the leg workout you thought of doing on Saturday morning won't be top notch. It takes a bit to recover, your body to detoxify and for you mentally to be prepared to workout.
Not to mention you need energy for the workout ahead.
Sure, you can hit the weights but my point is...
It's not going to be the best workout you've ever experienced.
At this point you might be totally discouraged to ever drink any alcohol again
WHY ARE WE SICK OVERALL
We spend more money on health care than ever before. We take more drugs than ever before, yet we are sicker than ever before. More people are getting sick than ever before in history.
Over the years, the pharmaceutical industry has come up with different theories about why people get sick. First it was bacteria and germs. The super wonder drug of the day was antibiotics, which were touted as the method that would eliminate disease forever and cure all illness, sickness and diseases. The theory was that all disease was caused by germs, primarily bacteria. This theory has proved to be wrong. Stronger and stronger antibiotics are continually developed, yet people continue to get sicker, and sicker, and sicker. More people are getting more diseases than ever before.
First of all, you have to realize that being sick is not normal and it is not the natural state of the body. Your body is not supposed to get sick.
There are only two reasons why a person becomes ill:
1. They "catch" something. This means your body picked up a "germ," generally a virus or bacteria.
2. You "develop" an illness or disease. This means there is some imbalance in the body, something is not working right, and an illness or disease develops. Common diseases in this category include heart disease, cancer, diabetes, acid reflux, arthritis, etc.
Remember, you get sick because you either "catch something" or something develops in the body on its own. You "catch something" because your body is out of balance and your immune system is weak. You develop something in the body either because your body is out of balance, or a "toxin" is getting into your body and causing the problem to develop. So, let's walk through this nice and slow. The reasons you get sick are:
1. You catch something and your body cannot fight it off, therefore you succumb to the "germs." 2. Your body develops something in the genetically weak areas
In both of the above cases the causes are the same.
A. Your immune system is weak.
B. Toxins are attacking your body.
If we keep asking the question, "What caused that...", we can then conclude that all illness comes from one or a combination of four things.
1. You have too many toxins in your body.
2. You have nutritional deficiencies.
3. You are exposed and negatively affected by electromagnetic chaos.
4. You have trapped mental and emotional stress.
These are the only four reasons why your immune system could be weak or why genetically weak areas in the body can break down thus allowing illness and disease to develop. These four things cause the body to be "out of balance
The food industry puts tens of thousands of chemical ingredients into the food and, in many cases, they do not have to list those ingredients on the label. When you eat anything, you are getting the energy from that thing. Ideally you want to eat all natural things, fruits and vegetables.
The point is we need to be aware that what we put in our bodies is actually giving us and causing us disease. It is important to understand why we have disease and illness, why we are sick, and what the causes are for us to totally understand how to cure these diseases. Most people are brainwashed into wanting a magic pill that will cure their disease. If you totally understand and comprehend why you are sick and why you get disease and why you develop illness, then you will understand the "natural cures" much more easily.