It’s important to remember that not everyone wants to lose weight, it’s an equally valid goal to want to gain weight.
If adding some lean muscle or simply putting in some weight is your goal, it’s extremely important to create the correct stimulus through your training. However, this is only part of the equation. Getting the nutrition side of things right will be just as crucial.
One of the key component is ensuring you have enough protein in your system through out the day (and night). When trying to create new muscle tissue, you need the building blocks in place to do so.
Meals throughout the day including breakfast should incorporate a minimum of 25grams of protein. Examples of 25g protein would be:
- 85g chicken breast
- 85g turkey breast
- 85g pork
- 95g ground beef
- 90g steak/beef
- 2/3 can of tuna
- 125g salmon
- 1 cup of cottage cheese
- 2 cups of natural/greek yoghurt
- 3 cups of milk
- 4 hard boiled eggs (white)
- 1 large scoop of whey protein powder
- 3 cups of cooked quinoa
Most of your meals should be based around these foods.
If you are frying food, use normal butter or coconut oil. Try and oven cook, steam or grill most things.
How to Include these foods…
Eggs–scramble, hard boil, poach, omelette, fry. These are some examples of how to vary how you use eggs in a meal.
Chicken–use it in a salad, with veg, with few potatoes/rice/pasta, use different seasonings to add variety to the chicken and change the flavour such as nandos seasoning or just try a few until you get one you like.
Snacks
–handful of nuts (plain peanuts, almonds, brazil nuts)
-fruit such as apples/blueberries/strawberries/blackberries/bananas add to natural/greek yoghurt with whey protein.
-whey protein shake
– beef jerky
-packets of cooked ham/chicken/turkey/beef
Don’t forget to drink plenty of water! If you have sweated a lot then a good drink is diluting juice with some salt to replace lost electrolytes.
Supplements
This is a cost factor as much as anything, they can improve performance in the gym and health slightly but if money is in short supply you’d be better spending it on better quality food.
Supplements we recommend you take are:
- Vitamin D3 (capsule)
- Fish oil (capsule)
- Whey protein (powder to add to food or milk/water)
You can get these cheapest on myprotein.com and they will do a good job. The most important one is fish oil/cod liver oil. This reduces muscle soreness post workout and is generally good for you. Vitamin D3 is pretty cheap and is a vitamin most people are deficient in so can be a good idea to take! The whey protein can be taken post workout or also as a snack.
More exercise means more carbs. If you are wanting to gain muscle mass or size, eat more carbs in and around your training. Eat more food generally, bigger meals and more snacks to increase your daily calorie intake.
To summarise…
>> Get the calories in.
>> Make sure food quality is good.
>> Eat regular meals and snacks.
>> Ensure sufficient protein intake.