Beginner Bodybuilding


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Beginner Bodybuilding Nutrition


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Bodybuilding Nutrition for Beginners

By Beginner Bodybuilding Guide

There was once a famous professional bodybuilder who said that muscles are made in the kitchen and not the gym or on the squat rack. Maybe he was exaggerating a little but you get the point. You simply cannot aquire and maintain muscles on your body without eating correctly.

We are all different and we all have different nutritional requirements but finding the basics of what you are dealing with is a very good start. You can speed up this process by identifying what your somatotype is of your body and there are only three possible options.

Ectomorph - Extremely thin with a very fast metabolism.

Mesomorph - Athletically built and usually classified as an easy gainer.

Endomorph - Usually overweight, with a very slow metabolism.

Once you know what body-type you have you then need to work out what your BMR (basal metabolic rate) is. You will find some easy BMR calculators online which is a figure that will tell you how many calories a day you need to survive without doing any activity.

When you have this figure you then need to add the calories that we use up in our physical activity, then we add 10% for the TEF (thermic effect of food) So your calculation looks like this BMR + calories used in activity = ? + 10% = Total calories required in the day.

Once we have this calculation then you can then can split this up into various foods, the basic percentages of protein, carbohydrates and fats (PCF ratio) are for weight and strength training 30% protein, 50% carbohydrates and 20% fats. When you have your total calories required and know what percentages of each food group that are needed.

Protein foods contain 4 calories per gram, carbohydrate foods contain 4 calories per gram, and fat in food contains 9 calories per gram. Let's take an example for demonstration purposes and say that after working out your percentages you see that 30% of the 2600 calories you need every day is 780 calories for Protein only.

This would mean 50% of 2600 = 1300 calories from Carbohydrates and 20% of 2600 = 520 calories from total Fat. Using the formula above to work out grams 780 calories from protein, divide by 4 = 195 grams of protein per day and 1300 calories from carbohydrates, divide by 4 = 325 grams of Carbohydrates per day and lastly 520 calories from fat, divide by 9 = 58 grams of total fat per day.

So now we know that we need 195g protein, 325g carbohydrates, 58g total fat. Nutrients can be used more efficiently if a moderate amount of food is ingested on a frequent basis. If we only eat three meals a day and if you have a look at the food we need above per day then we would have to eat very large meals to get the required amount of calories needed in the day.

But if the meal is too big then there is more chance that some of the food may be stored as fat due to the large rise in blood sugar and the body then will release the enzyme insulin to try to lower blood sugar back to a near normal range.

Any sugars not used up in training, the insulin will push the sugar out of the blood and push it right into your fat storage area, the fat cells mostly in the stomach area. So we are better to eat smaller frequent meals, so we need to aim for 6 feedings per day. Try not to go longer than 3 hours without food.

We can split the meals anyway that we want but for weight training and building mass, try and get each one as near as you can to the same calorie content in each. This all sounds very complicated and can often be completely intimidating for any beginner to start out with.

It is therefore highly recommended that you start off as a beginner very slowly and work yourself up to adjusting your specific nutritional needs slowly to suit your specific body-type requirements. It just takes a bit of forward planning and preparation which takes a bit of time that is all.

For more great bodybuilding tips and information go to Beginner Bodybuilding Guide


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