Physician, Heal Thyself: Nutrition 101 for Bodybuilders

[The Real Raver]

Physician, Heal Thyself; or Nutrition for Bodybuilders 101

By The Raver, August 30, 2011

I had an epiphany while writing this article that delayed it a couple of days…one of those moments that make you sit back and have to decide whether it is time to marvel at one’s own hypocrisy, or time to realize that what’s been bothering you isn’t really that hard to fix, once you’ve accepted the truth that’s been nudging you for a couple of weeks. You know, the truth you were fully aware of, but ignored because you really didn’t want to acknowledge its existence. Maybe this time if you just ignore it long enough, it will fix itself.

As is usual for me, it was the latter case – But I always want to grant the benefit of the doubt to the sneering little fellow on the other shoulder who is slapping his knee and laughing so hard he’s fit to bust that Raver, of all people, is finally sitting down and writing that nutrition paper. That little fellow has, after all, been right more than once…Pride does come before a fall, and I have been eating improperly for the goal I’m working towards (I need to gain roughly 8-10 pounds of muscle by next April, without going over 9% bodyfat while doing it, because this last pre-contest diet was pure hell, and I’m never doing that again), so before slapping FINISHED on this work and moving on, I had to write myself a new nutrition prescription and start working on getting it filled.

You see, I’ve been here before – I’ve just never had enough faith in myself to write my own prescriptions until now, and I wasted a lot (no really, a LOT) of time trying prescriptions written in magazines whose motives are purely profit and growth, not the perfection of the machine that is Raver. So this article required a lot of revision right when I thought it was ready.

Here’s the truth that’s been nudging me for two weeks now: I’m not eating enough. I can even tell you why] I’m not eating enough, it is because my mind, until I let the truth in, was still in pre-contest mode, and I was afraid of putting on any fat whatsoever. So here I’ve been, for 8 workouts, increasing the poundage I use slowly but surely each week so that I have to really work to get 8 repetitions per set (rather than the 12 repetitions with lighter weight that I use in pre-contest workouts), and wondering the whole time why I’m not regaining my pre-contest strength as quickly as I have before, and why I’m feeling I have no energy whatsoever left before I am ¾ finished with that day’s session. Well, that was two weeks wasted, because I have known the entire time that I’m not eating to grow, I’m still eating to cut, but I tried to tell myself that this time it would be different, I’d be able to grow without losing that razor sharp condition. I just wasn’t willing to let go of it yet, even though it should be obvious to anyone who has read just one article on bodybuilding nutrition that you can’t grow new muscle fibers if you don’t give your body the fuel it needs to create them, and that it simply isn’t possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.

Oh yes, if you’ve ever heard that before and dismissed it because so-and-so expert at such-and-such magazine or research institute insists he or she can tell you exactly how to do it, but you’re going to need the product he or she is selling for it to work…you’re not alone. This subject of nutrition is one that has defeated harder men than me for decades of bodybuilding research, because no one is really willing to admit that it requires just as much focus and effort of the mind as training does. It is eating, for God’s sake, how hard can it be?

Well, it is a lot harder than stabbing something with a fork and depositing it into your mouth. Everyone, whether they are trying to improve their physiques or not, eats daily (OK, anorexics don’t, but I’ll exclude them, because they aren’t around for long), but how many of them put any thought whatsoever into what they are eating and how much of it? Come on. We all know that at its root, this issue is as simple as anything could be: When you want to gain weight, you have to eat more calories than you expend daily, and when you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than your body requires daily. There isn’t any way around that; it is a fact that no one at the AMA or any of the various nutrition institutes will argue over, because that argument can never be won.

It is Ironclad. You can’t defeat it, you can’t ignore it, and you have to accept it before you can make any progress at all: When you want to gain weight, you have to eat more calories than you expend daily, and when you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than your body requires daily.

The desire for a quick fix, though…a way to defeat what is really a law, not a theory, is so strong that even the guys you see on the cover of men’s fitness magazines fall prey to it now and again, before realizing they already knew it wasn’t going to work before they tried it.

The true secret to mastering your body, as martial arts experts have known for thousands of years, but the rest of us have to continuously beat into our skulls, over and over again, is that you’ve always been the master of it – You’ve just never exercised your power over it. To put it differently, and more along the lines of what no one wants to hear, but successful bodybuilders have been trumpeting for decades, is that bodybuilding is much more about mastering your mind than mastering your body. Your body will do exactly as you tell it; it rises every day waiting on instructions. If it doesn’t get any, it will send your mind signals when necessary telling *you* that it needs to eat, or get rid of waste, but that is the extent of what it can do on its own. That’s surviving, it isn’t living, and before you can master your body to the extent you have to in order to make big changes in your appearance, you have to first accept the fact that you are its master, and start acting accordingly.

Bodybuilding’s dirty little secret is that going to the gym and performing progressive resistance training has never been enough to be a champion…bodybuilding is *easy* once you accept that you’re going to have to learn about every single major muscle group in your body, and study it to the extent that you can, whenever you want to, make it grow, or shrink, as long as when you eat, train, rest, and supplement, you focus 100% on the muscle or muscle group you are working at that time, and literally put your mind INTO that muscle or muscle group as you work it, not allowing bad form or anything else to help move the weight, but forcing that muscle or muscle group, and that muscle or muscle group alone to do it.

To summarize everything I’ve written so far: Bodybuilding is a lot more about your mind than it is about your body. And of the four critical areas of the sport: Eating, supplementing, training, and resting, eating is by far the most difficult of them to master, because everyone is different, and while there are general guidelines I’m going to give you here that will be of great use to you, you are, in the end, going to have to modify them and make them your own, so that they suit your body’s needs. So let’s finally get to those, shall we?

First of all, when you’re putting together a nutrition program (and you’ll do this several times a year in response to what you see in the mirror or on film), you have to have a goal. Remember: When you want to gain weight, you have to eat more calories than you expend daily, and when you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than your body requires daily. Once you’ve decided which you want to do, you’re going to build your menus on these guidelines.

Nutrition 101 for Bodybuilders

You have probably heard people talk about eating “clean”, and might have wondered what they meant by it. Clean eating, for bodybuilders, is eating the foods that contain the nutrients necessary to fuel the body for the training mode you are using to attain your goals, and keeping and other foods to the minimum possible (you’ll never be able to eliminate them completely). If your goal is to make your muscles grow, then you need to provide your body with the right proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals, in the right amounts necessary, and at the right times necessary to not only fuel the grueling training you’re going to do, but to fuel your muscles recovery from that training. You don’t grow while you’re training, you grow while you are recovering from training.

Proteins

We know so much more today about protein, and have so many more types of protein available to use that it is sometimes useful to remember that even our icon, the King himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, built a physique that has served him as no one elses in history has back when all we knew was the rough hewn equation that one needs about 1 gram per pound of bodyweight at a minimum to grow, and the more you can take in without it being stored as fat, the better. While knowing a bit about which proteins are quickly absorbed and which more slowly, so that you can plan the timing of your protein intake is useful, almost every other “advance” you see shouted from the pages of glossy magazines isn’t an “advance”, it is simply a repackaging with claims that can’t be backed by any scientifically valid study. With that in mind, here are the important things to consider when planning your protein intake:

1. You should always consume some fast acting protein with your breakfast, as your body has been operating overnight on the last meal you ate, which was hopefully at least 10 hours ago (yeah, we will talk about what time you should go to bed, and how long you should sleep later too, but there’s no quiz at the end). Any brand of whey protein will do, really…Whey’s principal advantage over other proteins is that it gets to work quickly once consumed. The disadvantage to Whey is that it only works for 4 hours or so, which is why…
2. You should have some protein with your mid-morning snack. It doesn’t have to be a full 25 gram meal replacement shake, but a snack of cheese and an apple, or cheese and almonds, or cheese and whole wheat crackers is great, as long as you buy 2% milkfat cheese. It has just as much protein as cheese made from whole milk, with about 30% fewer calories and a lot less fat.
3. Obviously lunch should contain some protein as well; ideally all from real food, not a “meal replacement” product or whey isolate shot. Whenever possible, it is always best to get your nutrients from real foods rather than supplements or powders…who really knows what’s in that stuff? With real food, you know what you’re getting.
4. Over the past couple of years, it has been “rediscovered” that some pre-workout protein is beneficial, and of course a few supplement companies are already claiming that their blend is somehow better than any old whey isolate. You want your body to burn carbs to the extent possible during exercise, because you want your protein available to build your muscles after training, so here’s where a quick 25 grams of whey about an hour before you work out is perfect. It won’t bloat you and slow you down, but it will keep the right chemical reactions occurring in your system to use the right fuels for the right purposes.
5. The all-important post-workout shake. If you’re training to put on mass, you want 50 grams of whey.
6. Some protein again for dinner, again preferably from real foods like chicken, turkey, fish, lean cuts of beef, or low fat cheeses. 25 grams should be easy to get, even in a light dinner. I don’t mention pork because I’ve yet to see a recipe using it that is of any use to a bodybuilder…pork is not a lean meat to start with.
7. At bedtime, you’re going to want 20-25 grams of pure casein derived protein. This type of protein takes a bit longer to start working after it is ingested, but it also works for a much longer period than whey, about twelve hours. Perfect fuel for your body to work with as you sleep.

As you can see, that’s seven times a day you’ll be eating some type of protein, and I can already see some of you shaking your heads and proclaiming “nobody can eat that much”. Rest assured that these are not seven full meals, at least three of them should be some sort of protein powder or bar. Given seven meals, even a 300 pound man would only have to get 42 grams of protein per meal in order to meet the 1 gram per pound of body weight requirement.

Carbohydrates

Carbs are not, counter Doctor Atkins and Doctor Agatson, relatives of the devil himself. They are important components of a full nutrition plan whose role is to provide your body with the energy it needs to perform all the tasks you are asking of it, which, if you are a bodybuilder, is a heavy load indeed. Carbs are often confusing to people who have not researched nutrition or had it presented to them as course material, because what are really two different forms of energy, simple Carbs and complex Carbs, are lumped into one dietary label that has been demonized beyond belief by people who knew better than to do so, but did it anyway because it kept the dollar spout open. The way to think about Carbs is as energy sources -- All food is some sort of energy, but Carbs are the most quickly available for use after consumption, and eating too many of the wrong kind, at the wrong time, can result in excess calories, which will be stored as fat if they are not immediately expended. This is the real reason Carbs should be monitored...not because they are simply demon-fodder that under any and all circumstances are bad for you.

Let’s look at the two types of Carbs available from food sources and supplements, Simple and Complex Carbs:

Simple Carbohydrates

These Carbs are available for use as energy much more quickly than the energy stores in Complex Carbohydrates, but that energy must be stored as glycogen in the muscles and used for training and recovery, or they will be stored as fat. Simple Carbs are found in sugars (preferably naturally occuring sugars such as fructose), and the ones most useful to us are found in fruit, fruit juices, and milk. There are, of course, other sources of Simple Carbs such as candies, table sugar, alcoholic beverages, and sweetened soft drinks, but these contain little or no nutrients, and should be eschewed whenever possible.
Simple Carbs should only be consumed immediately before and immediately after training. The pre-training serving should be 25-50 grams consumed 45-60 minutes before commencing a workout, and the post-training serving should be 25-50 grams included in your post-workout protein shake. Pre-training carbs provide the fuel for your workout (if the body has carbs on hand, it will burn them first, preserving proteins for use in recovery), and post-training carbs serve as vehicles to carry protein and other nutrients to your blood engorged muscles, and are then stored there as glycogen reserves for use in recovery.

Complex Carbohydrates

These Carbs are found in grains, some vegetables, and legumes. They are starches and require more digestive activity than Simple Carbs do in order to make their energy available to the body. Overall, these Carbs are the best choice for athletes, because they provide a slow burning, sustained energy source that also helps to keep blood sugar at manageable levels and prevent insulin spikes that can throw the chemical reactions we want out of whack.
Complex Carbs should be consumed with breakfast and lunch daily, in serving sizes that keep your total carbohydrate intake below 50 grams a day on non-training days, and below 100 grams a day on training days.

Fats

For bodybuilders, it is often difficult to accept that some fats are absolutely necessary to the nutritional foundations of the sport...we hate and fear fat in general, as it covers the muscle we work so hard to develop and display at even relatively low percentages of total body composition, and the easiest way not to get fat is to limit consumption of fats. While this is 100% true for animal fats and dairy fats, or even vegetable oil based fats, there is one crucial type of fat that must be consumed in the right amount, at the right time in order to provide fuel and sustenance for the central nervous system and energy for recovery: The Omega III fatty acids most often available in Fish Oil or Flax Seed Oil supplements. These should be consumed with your evening meal every day.

Vitamins and Minerals

A nutritionist could walk you through every major vitamin and mineral, and explain how much of each you need daily for which desired result, but I’ve found that these theories change so often that it is just common sense to purchase vitamin and mineral supplements that have been formulated for athletes, and let the folks who research vitamins and minerals work on these formulations and update them as necessary. The best pre-formulated product I’ve found in terms of bang for the buck is GNC’s Mega-Men Sport. This blend is formulated for both strength and endurance athletes, and contains more vitamins and minerals than I probably need, but in amounts that aren’t going to harm me even if that particular vitamin or mineral isn’t one I necessarily need. One suggestion here -- Never buy GNC products FROM GNC...Get them from an online vendor who carries their product line, you’ll find the prices sometimes half of what you’d pay at a GNC store.

Now, I mentioned earlier in this piece that you will be using these guidelines to build your menu plans once you’ve digested the material and understand the basic principles of eating for a purpose, rather than eating simply to exist. What I usually get next is a plaintive “But why can’t *you* just put a meal plan together for me, and I’ll follow it to the letter? I’ll even pay you!”

I could do that, and I could take your money for doing so without feeling any guilt, because to an extent, every human body is the same, and any nutrition plan designed with a goal in mind is better than no plan, hands down. The reason I’ve always declined these offers, though, is that I have discovered over the years that remaining actively engaged with each critical leg of the bodybuilding stool keeps me aware of new and better methods, and for the nutrition and training legs, those methods are improved surprisingly often. I’ve also found that planning my own nutritional requirements and building menus to fit them is the best way to gauge how well my meal plan is working, and fixing a broken plan is more fun than chore if you have the foundational knowledge you need -- When every meal and snack is crucial to attaining your goals, you’ll put a lot more thought into every meal and snack, and that will keep you interested and engaged, and constantly in search of new information. Searching for new information is always a healthy activity, and you’ll meet very smart people along the way who will often leave you slack-jawed at the extent of their mastery of the subject, and remind you how very much you still don’t know, and may never know about it.

Just last year, for example, I was introduced to off-season Carb cycling (a method I’ve used countless times for contest preparation, but never during bulking seasons), and I was blown away by the results. Just as guys who think they are pretty damned good fighters are always cognizant of the fact that there are guys out there who are, and always will be better fighters than they are, a bodybuilder (and here again I emphasize: If you are trying to lose fat and build muscle, you are a bodybuilder, whether or not you ever set foot on a stage) must always remind him or herself that there are guys or gals out there who know more now, and will always know more than him or herself. This short piece should in no way be considered the be all and end all of your education in the principles of nutrition for bodybuilding as of today, but only as an introduction to the subject that will hopefully serve as a jumping off point for the research and experimentation you will do, and revise for the rest of your life.

Thanks for reading,

Rave