Use foods, not drugs for sports success

BY PATRICIA THOMPSON

ALL athletes who compete wish to win, and many athletes are prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Despite the wide publicity of the negative effects of drugs, many athletes still risk the chance for that one moment of glory. More often than not, what is needed is appropriate eating strategies and not wanton use of nutrient supplements. The registered nutritionist, especially one that is suitably experienced in sports nutrition, is the best source of information and guidance on eating for success without the use of unwarranted supplements. A sports nutritionist can help in selecting foods in the right combinations and quantities to meet the special needs of each athlete.

Athletes can get that competitive edge while staying drug free by eating right. Good nutrition legitimately and effectively improves athletic performance as attested by many top athletes. Studies have confirmed that the better the nutritional status of the athlete, the better he/she will perform. While training alone can enhance strength, skill, speed and agility, nutrition is necessary to boost endurance, help avoid injury, speed up repair of tissues, to build resistance to disease and avoid burn-out.

Eat for psychological fitness

All physical activity requires the energy provided by food. The muscles store the energy that will be needed for competitive events. As this store is used up during training and competition, it must be replenished daily and in a timely fashion by eating regular, well-spaced meals to ensure proper fuelling of the brain. Athletes need to understand how to eat relative to their personal requirements, type of sport and level of exertion such as for repetitive events. If the athlete does not eat appropriately, the activity cannot be sustained at the desired intensity, especially for repetitive activity. This results in underperformance from central fatigue that can be misinterpreted as psychological weakness during competition.

Enhance endurance without supplements

The storage form of energy in the muscle is carbohydrate, so foods high in carbohydrate (those from plant sources) must be adequate. Athletes who eat irregular meals and especially of foods too high in fat, will lack the energy needed for sustained training and competition. On the other hand, some athletes eat carelessly and gain weight from eating too much and this also hinders performance because of inappropriate body composition. Turning to supplements without appropriate fuelling strategies will not eliminate early fatigue. Athletes need to be professionally advised by a registered sports nutritionist on how to fuel up for competition and be individually guided through the process.

Avoid injury and speed recovery

The parts of the body involved directly in physical activity are bones and muscle. Food provides a range of natural anti-inflammatory substances along with the building blocks for strengthening bones and muscle in the form of protein and the minerals along with essential vitamins. Blood carries nourishment to all parts of the body and especially oxygen to the exercising muscle which requires good nutrition. The athlete needs to understand how to eat for quick recovery, not just providing the nutrients, but in the correct combinations and ratio for optimal uptake by the muscles. Timing of this nourishment is critical for success, especially for repetitive events.

Build infection resistance and consistency of performance

Any bout of infection will prevent the athlete from undertaking adequate training and frequent nuisances are colds and flu. Generally, a well-balanced diet will help build resistance, but some nutrients are noted for their anti-oxidant properties, that is, they clear the body of toxic substances which are produced during strenuous exercise.

Also critical to optimum performance is proper hydration. Water should be taken before, during and after training and competition. Again, proper timing, correct volume and temperature are needed to promote water retention and to avoid adverse effects when taken too close to the time of competition. If sweetened drinks with electrolytes, such as commercial drinks are used, they should be at the correct concentration and volume.

Original Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sport/Use-foods--not-drugs-for-sports-success_14768898

The Importance of Muscle

From the very beginning of the ancestral health movement, Paleo-inspired exercise plans have focused on strength training over cardio, with the rationale that lifting heavy weights effectively builds and maintains muscle mass, while jogging for hours actually destroys it. But this begs the question: what’s so special about muscle mass? Why would you want to have more of it?

The first obvious answer is “because it looks good:” especially for men, but increasingly also for women, the athletic look is in. Muscles make for a nice beach body, and they’re also attractive as an outer sign of positive personal qualities like self-control, discipline, and drive.

On top of their aesthetic appeal, muscles are useful. Even in a society saturated with every form of mechanical convenience we can dream up, we still occasionally have to move a couch, push a car, or carry a bike up a flight of stairs.

But most importantly, muscles play a vital role in supporting overall health and wellness, especially into old age. They aren’t just about looking good (although that’s a nice bonus), and they aren’t just about the occasional need to help your friends move; they’re a critical factor in metabolic health, body weight control, bone strength, and resilience to stress and disease.

Muscles Promote Insulin Sensitivity 

One of the most important functions of muscles in metabolic health is their ability to store glucose (carbohydrates) as glycogen. They then use this stored glycogen as fuel every time you need to move. Muscle mass essentially acts as a glycogen reserve that you top up by eating carbohydrates, and deplete when you exercise.

This makes muscle a critical player in an overall healthy metabolism, because it allows you to use carbohydrate calories for what you want (energy and activity), and not what you want to avoid (storage as fat). In more scientific terms, it increases insulin sensitivity and protects against insulin resistance. In helping your body use carbohydrates this way, muscle mass is ultimately protective against metabolic syndrome and diabetes, which are really just diseases of inadequate carbohydrate metabolism (for more on this, see the full explanation here).

On the flip side of this, sarcopenia (the technical term for inadequate muscle mass or quality) is strongly associated with diabetes. So far studies have only established a correlation, not a causation, but the strength of the relationship is telling. One group of researchers studied 810 subjects in Korea, and divided them into two groups: diabetics and non-diabetics. 15.7% of the diabetics, but only 6.9% of the non-diabetics, were sarcopenic. And in American subjects, another group of researchers found a strong correlation between sarcopenia and impaired glucose metabolism independent of body fat. In other words, the less muscle you have, the more likely you are to develop insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and ultimately diabetes.

Muscles Protect Against Obesity 

Diabetes, of course, usually comes along with an unwelcome co-morbidity: obesity. Diabetes and obesity are really just two sides of the same coin – diabetes is the inability to use carbohydrates productively, and obesity is the natural result when your body stores them as fat instead. Both are inflammatory; both are mediated by imbalances in the gut flora; both are closely connected to autoimmunity. Unsurprisingly, the muscle wasting of sarcopenia is also strongly associated with obesity, and the two problems react on each other in a vicious cycle.

This diagram (taken from this study) perfectly illustrates the vicious cycle of sarcopenic obesity:

To explain the relationship very simply, obesity is inflammatory, and inflammation causes muscle breakdown throughout the whole body. Muscle loss makes it harder to move around, contributing to a sedentary lifestyle. Sitting all day accelerates weight gain and muscle loss, and the cycle continues.

Sarcopenic Obesity and Aging 

The dangerous consequences of muscle loss and fat gain most obvious among the elderly, making muscle health especially important after middle age. Aging presents a perfect storm that greatly accelerates the rate of sarcopenia. As people get older, they generally stop exercising (if they ever did), and spend more time sitting still. But muscle, unfortunately, is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of tissue. For one thing, it takes a lot of energy to maintain, so if you want to keep it around, you have to use it regularly to show your body that it’s still worth the effort. Since an elderly person’s body already has enough to do without maintaining muscles for no reason, it breaks down the muscle proteins to spare energy and keep the heart and other organs functioning.

The elderly also don’t metabolize protein as efficiently as the young, so their protein requirements for maintaining muscle mass are higher at the time in their life when their actual protein intake is most likely to drop.

The result is a steady decrease in muscle size that really takes off around age 50 and accelerates with time. And it’s not only the amount of muscle tissue that’s affected; muscle quality also declines. Scans of elderly people’s muscles reveal much more intramuscular fat, or fat tissue that has penetrated into the muscle. Basically, the elderly are at a much greater risk of being “skinny-fat:” they aren’t noticeably underweight or under-muscled to the naked eye, but look a little closer and that “muscle mass” isn’t all muscle.

This diagram (from this study) summarizes the relationship between aging, weight gain, and muscle loss:

As you can see, it’s essentially an even more dangerous version of the sarcopenia/obesity cycle that occurs in non-elderly people.

All of these factors make old age an enormous risk factor for losing fat and gaining muscle, and as you might expect, the vast majority of sarcopenic obese patients are over 60. The consequences are severe. Sarcopenic elderly patients are more vulnerable to falls, and less able to recover from illness or hospitalization. Add obesity, and the story gets even worse; in one study, sarcopenic obese elderly patients fared dramatically worse than sarcopenic nonobese or obese nonsarcopenic patients in a test of their ability to carry out everyday activities (for example, bathing, dressing themselves, and cleaning the house). The extreme consequences of sarcopenic obesity in the elderly really highlight the crucial importance of muscle mass for maintaining a healthy spectrum of human activity

Muscles, Diabetes, and Sarcopenic Obesity: Summing it Up

To summarize the previous three sections, muscle loss is a key player in the cycle of obesity and diabetes. Gain muscle, and you improve your metabolic function and reduce your risk of fat gain. (Although it’s not a magic bullet, it’s also worth mentioning that muscle in the resting state burns more calories than fat, so it does raise your metabolism slightly).

On the other hand, if you lose muscle, your body has a harder time maintaining a healthy weight and a normal degree of insulin sensitivity. And worse still, the cumulative effect of sarcopenia, diabetes, and obesity is far greater than the sum of their individual problems. All three of these conditions magnify each other and keep you trapped in a vicious cycle of poor health.

This all goes double if you’re over 60. The elderly, as the population most at risk for muscle loss and fat gain, are especially prone to sarcopenic obesity, and have the most to gain from taking care of their muscles. But it doesn’t just affect the retiree crowd: in people who don’t regularly exercise, muscle loss starts around age 20. Preventing insulin resistance and weight gain in middle age, and heading off sarcopenic obesity in old age, start in the gym when you’re young.

Muscles And Bone Density 

Moving on from the metabolic advantages of having a healthy amount of muscle mass, strong muscles also help preserve and maintain healthy bone density. Especially for women and the elderly, bone density is important for preventing osteoporosis – and it’s not just about eating your calcium chews.

The connection might not seem obvious (how does more muscle mass make your bones stronger?), but the hidden link is in the concept of loading. The best way to build strong bones is to put them under a heavy load: lift, carry, drag, or otherwise move something with a substantial weight. And all the ways of doing this also result in stronger muscles. So it’s not the muscles themselves that make your bones stronger; it’s the exercise you use to build those muscles that also builds your bones.

Specifically, weight training with heavy weights has been proven again and again to increase bone density, even in the elderly. The literature on this subject is enormous; one comprehensive review found that the benefits of walking or light aerobics were debatable, but that strength training was both safe and effective for preventing bone density decay in older adults, especially when continued consistently for at least a year.

Just like building muscle to prevent sarcopenic obesity later in life, improving bone density through strength training is another benefit that it’s best to start working on while you’re young. If nothing else, it’s much easier to maintain a habit you already have than to take up deadlifting at 65. This review even found that exercise increased bone density in preadolescent children: as long as the exercise is done at an age-appropriate intensity, there really is no age limit on the benefits.

Muscles Improve Disease Recovery 

Another health benefit of muscles is their ability to create a “safety net” of protein that your body can draw on at times of increased need. Protein is one of the most important structural components in your entire body, and muscles play a key role in regulating protein availability. They absorb protein from the diet, store it, and distribute it to the heart, liver, and other organs as needed. In the absence of dietary protein, your body will break down your muscles to keep feeding your organs.

In healthy people under normal lifestyle conditions, the intake of protein from food balances out the demands from the organs, and muscle mass is preserved. In bodybuilders, the intake of protein from food exceeds the demands from the organs, and muscle mass is increased. Under the stress of any kind of illness or injury, though, your body’s protein needs increase significantly because all your organs need more support to help them fight the stressor. Patients with severe burns, for example, can require up to 3-4 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight (compare that to .8-1 grams/kg in healthy people).

Diet can rarely deliver this level of protein, especially diets of the hospital food that you’re likely to be stuck with if you have such a severe injury. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s also unlikely that humans could regularly get that much protein while severely injured and unable to hunt. Fortunately, your muscles can take up the slack – if you have an adequate reserve of muscle to start with. Muscle is your body’s “safety net” against the increased protein demands of illness.

If you don’t have that safety net, you’re in trouble. For example, muscle mass is an independent predictor of survival rates for patients with all kinds of cancers, even after accounting for sex, age, and stage of cancer. Compared to patients with normal muscle mass, patients with sarcopenia find chemotherapy harder to endure. They experience symptoms of overdose at lower levels of drugs, they require more rehabilitative care, they suffer from infections and complications more frequently, and they simply die more often.

From the numerous disadvantages of people who don’t have adequate muscle mass, it’s clear that skeletal muscle is an important stockpile that the body can draw on for extra nutrients when it needs them. So building up a healthy reserve of muscle is an excellent form of health insurance just in case life happens and you find yourself in the hospital with a serious problem.

Building Healthy Muscles 

After all that description of the benefits of muscle mass, it’s time to get down to the details: how can you increase the size and quality of your own muscle tissue?

First of all, it’s important to note that not everyone has to be a bodybuilder in order to get these benefits. The studies linked above, that resistance training substantially improves bone density in elderly women, weren’t turning little old ladies into she-hulks with a steady diet of whey powder and creatine. To get the benefits of healthy muscle mass, you don’t have to go anywhere above the musculature that most people find attractive (unless, of course, you want to).

That said, the nitty-gritty of building muscles is actually fairly simple. First, eat adequate protein (20-25% of calories is a good ballpark number for putting on muscle) and adequate calories. If you’re losing fat, your body can build muscle mass on a slight calorie deficit because it will just take energy from body fat to make up for what you’re not putting in your mouth. On the other hand, an extreme calorie deficit is completely counterproductive and will actually destroy muscle mass you already have, since starvation produces the same kind of muscle-wasting stress response as injury or illness. 1,200 calories a day is not enough for an adult human of any size, especially if she’s also working out.

If you aren’t losing fat, you’ll need to eat a slight surplus in order to gain muscle: you can’t build any kind of mass without raw materials over and above what your body needs just to function. The bigger your surplus, the faster you’ll put on muscle, but many people prefer the “slow and steady” route since very fast muscle gain is usually accompanied by a significant amount of fat.

On the exercise front, easily the best muscle-builder around is strength training. This can be bodyweight exercises (push-ups, pull-ups, and planks, for example), or free weight training (squats, deadlifts, and presses). This article goes into a little more detail on your strength-building options, but for beginners almost any kind of exercise program will get results so don’t spend too long agonizing over which to choose.

Of course, if it were all that simple, there wouldn’t be entire forums full of amateur bodybuilders and powerlifters eagerly debating the best timing of their post-workout meals and the most effective protein powder. There’s an infinite amount of complexity out there if you’re willing to take the time to get into it. But starting off with a solid diet and a basic strength training routine will already get you a lot further than almost everyone around you. And by the time a beginner program stops giving you results, you’ll have the background knowledge to make a more informed decision about plunging into the details.

Women and Muscles 

Strength training and building strong muscles are especially important for women, who tend to have less muscle to start with, and who are also more prone to osteoporosis and bone density problems. But when it comes to building muscles, women are often skeptical. Even though the benefits are significant, they’re afraid of getting “bulky,” and shy away from heavy weights in favor of extremely light dumbbells.

CrossFit has started to make a dent in this attitude, but it’s still very prevalent, and it’s time to put it to rest: lifting weights will not make you look like a bodybuilder unless you also take massive amounts of steroids, eat thousands of calories at every meal, and devote endless hours to your biceps. Figure competitors and female bodybuilders dedicate an unbelievable amount of time and effort to looking that way; unless you’re willing to imitate their regimen, it’s not going to happen to you.

That isn’t to say that weightlifting won’t change your body. But for the vast majority of women, those changes are positive: a leaner physique, arms they love showing off in T-shirts, and toned, shapely legs. So there’s absolutely no need to fear the free weights, and plenty of reasons to embrace them.

Muscles and Human Health: Conclusion 

Muscles aren’t just for bodybuilders. They’re for everyone. Human beings are physiologically designed to have a fair amount of muscle mass built through regular exercise, muscle mass that allows us to metabolize carbohydrates efficiently, recover from injury or illness, and maintain our resilience and health into old age.

As a consequence of the sedentary modern lifestyle, we’re seeing all the dangers of muscle atrophy: osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, fragile bones, and difficulty recovering from stress. These problems are not normal, and they don’t have to be inevitable parts of life. While muscle alone isn’t a miracle cure, building healthy muscle mass and maintaining it past middle age is one way to preserve good health and prevent the diseases of the modern environment.

Orignal Source: http://paleodietlifestyle.com/the-importance-of-muscle/

Eat a Proper Breakfast to Gain Lean Muscle Fast

by Sean Nalewanyj

Picture this: When the alarm clock wakes you up, you hit the snooze button and get back into bed, then you wake up late, dress in a hurry, and head to work. If time permits, you may pick up a cup of coffee en route.

Nowadays, more and more people are skipping breakfast, mostly because of late nights and hectic schedules. Of course, this is an unhealthy practice, but if you're also trying to build muscle and trying to gain lean muscle fast, this is a recipe for complete disaster.

It's with good reason that breakfast has been called the most important meal of the day. When you wake up in the morning, your body has gone through a prolonged period of starvation. Already in a catabolic state, your muscle is being rapidly wasted away.

If you want to continue to gain lean muscle fast, you need to switch your body back to an anabolic state as fast as possible. Eating a proper breakfast is the quickest way to do this. In fact, a proper breakfast will not only help you to gain muscle mass but also help you to lose fat throughout the day.

When you wake up in the morning, your protein levels are very low and your muscles are catabolizing rapidly. At this time, your blood sugar and glycogen levels are very low, along with your body being severely dehydrated.

You need to correct this nutritional and water deficit within 45 minutes of waking up if you want to be able to gain lean muscle fast. A good breakfast will allow you to do exactly that. It will restore your blood sugar and glycogen levels, jump start your fat burning metabolic rate, and reverse muscle catabolism.

With this, your entire body will also get rehydrated. For best results, you should eat as soon as possible after you wake up. If you don't feel hungry right away, wait a few minutes, but no longer than 45 minutes.

The foremost and main component of your breakfast must be high quality protein. I would recommend that you get about 30 to 40 grams of protein, which you can get from a whey protein shake, eggs, or lean meat. With this, your body will not catabolize protein in your muscle and you will be able to gain lean muscle fast.

Next, you need two portions of a moderate to high glycemic index carbohydrate. It's better if the carbs are higher on the glycemic index, so that your glycogen stores replenish quicker.

Along with your two portions of carbohydrates and one portion of protein, you should drink at least 8 to 16 ounces of pure water so that you can begin to rehydrate your body. This is also a good time to gain lean muscle fast by consuming a tablespoon of flax seed oil and/or extra virgin olive oil. Keep in mind that these fats are good for you and will help you build muscle.

Original Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Eat-a-Proper-Breakfast-to-Gain-Lean-Muscle-Fast/2409150/

How to gain muscle for skinny guys

By Ben Greenfield

I used to be skinny. Really skinny. In high school and up to my first year of college, I was a complete stick -- until I made the decision in my freshman year that I needed to put some muscle on.

Eventually, by my senior year of college, I went from just “putting on muscle” to actually becoming a bodybuilder – standing on stage and posing 35 pounds of muscle above my original starting point.

If you were born skinny, you may not have the potential to gain the bulk of an NFL lineman, but it’s completely possible for a skinny guy to put on muscle. The bonus for you is that your body fat levels are naturally low, so when you do gain muscle, you’ll be able to achieve a very ripped look, which bigger, bulky guys often envy!

Here are seven things I learned from my own journey.

Supplements

Normally, you can get from food all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals that you need. But if you’re trying to put on significant size and you’re exercising at a level that is constantly stripping your body of fuel, you’ll need help from supplements.

For calories and upping your protein intake, a protein powder is important. If you don’t want the typical gut distress that comes from eating protein powders, don’t just settle for any version of protein powder. Try to choose one without added soy and corn, with no artificial sweeteners, and with added digestive aids such as digestive enzymes and probiotics.

Other supplements that can effectively help a skinny guy gain muscle are:

• Creatine: 0.3 g/kg bodyweight for 5-7 days followed by 5 g/day.
• Carnitine: 750 mg, 2,000 mg/day, in 2 doses.
• Citrulline: 6-8 g, 30-60 minutes before exercise.
• Beta-Alanine: 2-5 g, 30-60 minutes before exercise.

None of these supplements are a substitute for lifting frequently and lifting heavy, but they will certainly help to enhance results.

Eat Frequently

Strength training is very glycolytic, which means it burns a high amount of carbohydrates. Because of this, you shouldn't go into any muscle building workout without having eaten about 300-600 calories of a carbohydrate-containing meal two to three hours prior. This meal can include sweet potatoes, yams, oatmeal, quinoa, brown rice or any other healthy carbohydrate source. If you eat another similar meal after your workout, you’ll be able to put on size more quickly, as your muscles will rapidly absorb the sugars more quickly after a workout.

In addition, timing your protein intake with several small 20-25-gram portions split up through the day will be far more effective for gaining muscle, compared to a giant protein shake at the beginning and end of the day.

Ultimately, a skinny guy trying to put on muscle should be aiming to consume a pre-workout meal, a post-workout meal and at least four to five additional meals. This may seem like a lot of eating and food, but this is what it takes to build significant muscle if you’re skinny.

Use Amino Acids

A big secret among bodybuilders and strength training enthusiasts is a type of supplement called “branched chain amino acids” (BCAAs). These are special protein-building blocks that are rapidly absorbed and easily used by muscles during exercise. They’re cheap, easy to find and can be consumed without stomach distress both before, during and immediately after your workout, and can significantly increase muscle gain.

You should not train for size without amino acids in your bloodstream, and since digesting a steak can be tough during a hard workout, BCAAs are a good way to go. To gain muscle more rapidly, you should aim for 10-20 grams of BCAAs, consumed before, and then every 60-90 minutes during, your weight-training workouts.

Eat Meat

Skinny guys who are vegans or vegetarians may cringe at this advice, but meat is muscle fiber, and it’s chock full of fats, proteins and hormonal precursors that help you to put on size more quickly. While you certainly can get adequate proteins from plants, it’s far more difficult to go the vegetarian route, and the volume of food you must eat is going to be very daunting and a bit distressing to your gut.

To maintain muscle, you need to eat about 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and to build muscle, you need about 0.7 grams per pound. In addition, you’ll need to eat an extra 500-1000 calories each day over and above your basal metabolic rate. This high volume of food and protein should include foods that naturally increase testosterone, including grass-fed beef, eggs and seafood (other lower-calorie testosterone-supporting foods include garlic and broccoli).

Mix It Up

The advice to mix it up should not be misinterpreted. I don’t mean you should change up your workout every day (which is actually good for fat loss but not very effective for gaining muscle). Instead, you should stick to the same workouts each week for three to five weeks, but you should use different types of strategies during your sets to challenge your muscles. These strategies can include bouncing, explosions, quarter reps, ladder reps, stripping, supersets, super slow reps, forced reps, negatives and cheating.

Lift Heavy

Most skinny guys do not lift adequately heavy weights to build significant muscle. This is one reason why having a personal trainer or workout buddy at the gym will help you put on muscle faster -- you can lift more weight when someone is there to help you if the weight gets too heavy for you to safely handle.

While lifting with slightly higher sets (like 4-6 sets) and higher repetitions (like 10-12 reps) will help you build muscle faster than using low sets and low repetitions (which are better for power or brute strength), you still need to use weights that completely exhaust your muscles by the end of a set. For example, if you’re going to be doing 5 sets of 10 repetitions of a barbell squat, you should barely be able to stand for the last 3 repetitions. That is the kind of tough stimulus a skinny guy needs to build muscle.

Lift Frequently

Once you put it on, muscle is much easier to maintain than big lungs or good endurance. A runner begins to lose oxygen capacity within about three days of laying off workouts. But muscle only requires one workout a week for maintenance.

However, muscle is hard to put on initially, and for skinny guys typically requires 4-6 workouts per muscle group to build (you can build even faster if you lift twice a day, but if you do that, you’ll need to take a full recovery day at least once a week, and allow at least four hours between workouts).

So what does it look like to lift frequently? One popular split that works very well is to exercise your chest and back on day one, your shoulders, biceps and triceps on day two, your legs and core on day three, then take one day of rest, and repeat.

Reference: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/05/20/how-to-gain-muscle-for-skinny-guys/

Weight Lifting Diet - Eat Right, Get Huge, Period

If the question is asked - what do you need in your diet to gain muscle and at the same time, lose fat, then the answer is almost always the same. Protein!

The fact is that protein consumption can add muscle bulk. Protein consumption also means you reduce your appetite, thus no need to stack up on the calories.

In reality however, protein is only one part of the puzzle. A diet for weight lifters and people in general begs a comprehensive intake of more than just a lot of protein.

According to scientific studies, the level of testosterone in men within the western world has dropped by 20% in the last 20 years.

Here are some nutritional basics you should understand in order to craft a hormonal balance that is worthy of a true alpha status male.

Carbohydrates

Carbs are very often the focus for diets, particularly the fat-loss diets. Ever since Doctor Atkins decided that we should not indulge in eating doughnuts any longer, carbs have taken a huge beating. Before Mr Atkins got involved, doughnuts were an accepted form of nutrition, but it had to be the reduced fat type. So, if we decided to partake in the lower fat version, we felt a lot better about ourselves.

Doughnuts aside, carbs tend to get a bad rap - much worse than they deserve. They come to us in a variety of forms - some are not so good, where others are much more beneficial.

The bad carbs come in the form of highly processed foods. In reality, they should not really be considered as foods, other than the fact that they are edible. For some people, they are delicious, but fact of the matter is that they've undergone some crazy scientific process.

Obviously, if you process the good stuff out of our food, then there's a point where it's not healthy any longer.

Getting down to basics, carbohydrates are merely a collection of sugar molecules. Once consumed, your body attempts to break this down into a source of fuel. Fiber, sugars, and starches are all basic forms of carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are made up from two main types: simple as well as complex. There is another type, and that is fibrous carbs. Fibrous carbs come from green vegetables such as cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cucumber, peppers, and more besides. Nevertheless, for this discussion, we will not focus on fibrous carbohydrates.

Simple Carbs

What are simple carbs? Well, simple carbs include foods such as syrup, sweetened soda, table sugar. In an ideal world, it's best to avoid these types of carbs, other than on the "cheat" days whereby some may indulge themselves.

This type of carb is the "bad" carb that the fitness pros talk about on a regular basis. Included on this list are things like beer, cookies, puppies, snuggles, cakes, candy...

So, for most people, the very idea of fun eating is now off-limits.

So what is allowed, you may be wondering?

Complex carbohydrates such as apples, peas, oatmeal.

A Slightly-More "Complex' Point of View

For a long while most people considered that complex carbs were far better, but now we've changed over to believing that simple carbs are often the ones to fit the bill.

But it's not so much about healthy hormones and healthy metabolism that matters. It is about how quickly the body breaks the carbs down and also about how much the carb intake will spike your blood's glucose levels.

A more sophisticated way to qualify carbohydrate quality is by using the glycemic index (GI).

What the GI does is that it attempts to classify foods in terms of how fast they break down and also by how high they boost sugar levels within the blood.

For some time, people would argue that you could maintain insulin levels at a lower rate even if you eat a lot of carbs.

Well, for sure, this in some ways is true, the fact remains that there will not be too much difference to the size of your waistline if you stick to eating French fries instead of potatoes.

Both low-carb diets as well as low-GI diets are not going to provide a magic pill in order to lose weight. The idea though is that you eat the right amount of the "right" foods, in order to fuel your metabolism.

What's more however, you do need to consume carbohydrates, regardless of what some dieting gurus will tell you. If you don't consume carbs then your body will turn to breaking down muscle tissue in order to fuel your energy needs.

As a general rule, the ideal is to avoid simple carbs and high-GI foods.

The worst thing to do is to eat carbs on their own. Eating carbs with protein will slow down the rate of digestion of the carbs, and also lowers the glycemic or insulin response, as well as off-setting a number of the negative connotations that comes with the consumption of too many carbohydrates.

Fats

For a very long time, fats have been blamed for every food-related health problem you can think of. For almost 20 years in recent times, low-fat was regarded as being healthy. It's how many people determine if food is safe or not - if it's low fat, then it surely has to be good for you. Or, if there's no saturated fat content, then that's about okay.

Oddly enough, within North America, as the word spread around about the "fact" that fats were bad for us, and as the consumption of fats decreased drastically, the rates of obesity increased.

There's no single reason to be piling the blame on here, but there are some reasons that do stand out. Higher frequency of snacks and meals. Larger food portions. Too much sugar consumption - regularly in the form of "low fat" foods and drinks.

What's the bottom line though?

Fat is a necessary part of our diet, and it's very possible that you are not consuming enough fats. Fat in general is good! It's good for the heart, it's good for testosterone production, and it's also good for building muscle.

But these things aside, fat also plays a very important role in your overall body functions. It coats the nerve tissues, thereby making them more "productive" and efficient. Fat also serves as a substrate for a group of hormones termed as "eicosanoids". Eicosanoids help to regulate functions such as blood pressure, blood clotting, and inflammation. Fat is a requirement for basic human physiology, so it's a most thoroughly necessary constituent of our daily dietary needs!

What's more however, not all fats are the same. So here's some info about the different types of fats, and why they should be a part of your diet, with the exception of one - the trans fats.

Good Fat - Monounsaturated Fat

Monounsaturated fats are to be found in nuts like almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, and also in high-fat fruits like avocados. It's also found in olive oil.

This type of fat helps to raise good cholesterol while lowering the levels of bad cholesterol. They're said to also be beneficial in helping to lessen weight gain.

Good Fat - Polyunsaturated Fat

Similar to monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated help to fight against bad cholesterol. They can be found in foods like sunflower oil, various seeds, fish oil, and salmon. Polyunsaturated fats include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are also termed as essential fatty acids, or EFA's.

EFA's have to be ingested because our bodies are unable to manufacture them. The body requires these nutrients in order to remain healthy and function optimally.

Good Fat - Saturated Fat

Saturated fats are one of the most misunderstood substances that we consume. And this is partly because a number of studies linked saturated fat to heart disease.

Nevertheless, in more recent times, it's been concluded that the findings of those early studies were in fact flawed and there is no link between heart disease and saturated fats.

There are several more recent studies conducted on hunter-gatherer tribes that gained 50-70 percent of their daily diets from saturated fats, but yet they did not suffer any health issues. Oddly enough, when the original studies were conducted, these tribes people were totally ignored.

After a 20-year review, the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard - Walter Willett, publicly claimed that saturated fats have no link to heart disease and are not responsible for the high rates of obesity currently seen in North America and beyond.

Saturated fats are one of the very best sources of energy that your body can get, and that is why carbohydrates are stored naturally in the form of saturated fats.

Research has shown that foods that are higher in saturated fats are often the ones that are actually lower in total calories. And what's more, saturated fats have the ability to boost testosterone levels.

So, assuming that you are not vegetarian or vegan, you should make sure you eat lots of red meat, dairy products, as well as eggs in order to get enough saturated fats in your diet.

Bad Fat -Trans Fats

Trans fats are the only bad fat available for consumption. They are in fact one of the worst types of food that can be consumed. They are found in foods such as potato chips, French fries, in addition to a variety of other fried foods.

You will find trace amounts of trans fats in meats and some other foods - they occur naturally. However, most trans fats to be found are not naturally occurring at all. They are man-made so to speak, and they are manufactured through a process called hydrogenation. What happens is that a good monounsaturated fat, in the form of liquid oil, is packed full with hydrogen atoms, and thus the original oil is converted to a solid fat.

It possesses a high melting point as well as a smooth texture, and may be reused over and over in the deep-fat frying process. And this is what makes it an ideal product for the food industry.

So, the main concept behind trans fats is that they are over-processed foods which offer the vendor and consumer an oil that has a long shelf-life. In reality, you should try to avoid these oils as much as you possibly can. The health risks far outweigh any benefits.

Nevertheless, if you must partake in consuming junk food, then so be it. After all, most of us like the occasional binge on our junk food. And in which case, it's best to also make sure that overall your diet is good, and that you also achieve a good amount of regular exercise.

Protein The Alpha-Macro

Both fats and carbohydrates have been rated as number one and number two in terms of the public enemy, whereas protein has enjoyed a slow and steady rise up the charts and now sits prominently right at the very top.

Definitely a favorite among bodybuilders, and pretty much everyone who is involved in fitness and health in some way, protein is used within the body to repair damaged tissue - muscle, hair, teeth, bone. It has other functions too of course - you can think of it as mortar for which to lay bricks upon - a foundation, in a sense. Without protein, your body will begin to break down.

Protein is also good in aiding fat loss and building muscle. It helps to create an anabolic hormonal environment, and provides "materials" in order to build muscle bulk.

Protein is made from amino acids. From the 22 standard amino acids, only nine can be obtained through the consumption of food, and the body manufactures the remaining 13. The ones that have to be ingested are called "essential amino acids", and these include:

• Threonin
• Methionine
• Valine
• Leucine
• Tryptophan
• Lysine
• Phenylalanine
• Isoleucine
• Histidine

A whole or complete protein will contain some amount of each of these essential amino acids, whereas an incomplete protein lacks one or perhaps more essential amino acids.

Amino acids play another role - they help with the creation of hormones within the body. These hormones aid in the regulation of blood pressure as well as blood sugar levels, which is, in turn, responsible for muscular growth and metabolic rate. Thus, proteins are immensely important, particularly those to be found in eggs, cheese, fish, red meat, and poultry.

In Conclusion

As something of a brief conclusion, do you, if you read through this article, sense some sort of trend going on here? Processed foods that are sold with the words "healthy" or "natural" printed on the side of the packaging - well, it's pretty much downright lies being told here!

Getting back to nature is the way that we should proceed, so it's far better to build your diet (and your health) around nature's own food - whole foods that are unprocessed. Although, the addition of something like whey-protein is not such a bad thing either.

Reference: http://ezinearticles.com/?Weight-Lifting-Diet---Eat-Right,-Get-Huge,-Period&id=7712481

The teenage guy’s guide to gaining muscle

The toned torsos, six-packs and rippling biceps of sports stars and celebrities can’t do much for the body image of the average teenage boy, but if you’re a guy in your teens, you have body-building advantages they would love to have.

During your teenage years, you’re in a phase of your life when your body wants to grow. You’re churning out hormones that are specially designed to help you get bigger. And, right now, you may be able to take in a huge amount of food and use it to build a strong body.

However, it's easy to make mistakes in your quest for muscle. Here's how to avoid those pitfalls:

• Get leaner, stronger and fitter with cross-training
• Do these five things now

Following these steps will help you give your muscles the exercise and the fuel they need for getting bigger.

1. Get a checkup

If you’re new to exercise or you have any health issues, especially heart problems or conditions that affect your muscles or joints, get a once-over by your GP before you start a muscle-building programme.

2. Skip the shortcuts

As you’re starting on your path to bigger muscles, focus on the basics.

Don’t even think about taking anabolic steroids. They are a Class C drug, and are illegal to own unless with a medical prescription. They make the body over-produce testosterone, so increasing muscle size and strength. Not only are they illegal, they can give you mood swings, moobs and small testicles and, according to the NHS, could make you infertile.

During puberty, your body naturally pumps out testosterone. This hormone encourages your muscles to grow.

Personal trainer and ex-professional footballer, Ian McCaldon says: "When building muscle, there are no shortcuts. Just long, hard consistent hours in the gym. It's like learning a language. You don't just build a vocabulary in one week; it takes months and years to really build and understand the language.

"Building muscle is the same; it takes time for that muscle to build and, along the way, you'll start to understand your body and your character."

3. Build a solid programme

When you're starting out, avoid just trying out bits and pieces from different weight-lifting programmes you see in magazines.

Ian says: "Working to a well thought out programme is vital.  You need to know you're working all the right muscle groups proportionately.

"It’s no good having a big upper body and skinny legs - looking like a carrot!"

At first take it steadily. Build a basic core programme that includes bench presses (for your chest), squats (legs), deadlifts (legs and back) and shoulder presses (shoulders and upper arms).

Sports nutrionist Gavin Allinson says: "You can do resistance training from an early age. You can practice the movement patterns, like bench press, squat and deadlift.

"There’s a lot of supervision if it’s done correctly," he says, "so parents shouldn’t be over concerned about injury."

4. Eating well

You need calories for growth and performance!

Gavin says: "The main thing is to have a good diet. Teenage boys are still growing so they have to make sure they eat enough."

Edinburgh-based Ian, who is also a youth fitness coach agrees. "Eating right is the cornerstone when trying to build muscle. It's like a car: if you don't fuel it then it won't work!

"Muscles are the same. If you don't fuel them properly then they don't perform and grow."

His advice is to eat the right sort of food. It’s no good eating loads and loads of pasta and expecting it to give you endless supply of energy. The same goes for protein. The body will only process food and use it when it's needed.

If you load up with too much carbohydrate (like pasta) the body will store what is not used as fat. If you load up on protein (like meat or protein shakes) then the body will just get rid of it (pee it out!) or store it as fat.

There is a fine balance between what the body will use in relation to how you work out.  

Experts say have breakfast every day and eat a healthy diet, with protein from lean meat, chicken, eggs and fish and plenty of carbohydrates from foods like wholegrain cereals and wholemeal bread, fruit, vegetables, milk and low fat dairy products.

As you are exercising and building muscle you can have more calories, but don’t eat junk food. Make it the right type of calories from real, healthy foods.

5. Feed your muscles when they’re hungry

Another muscle-building hormone your body produces is insulin. Roberta Anding from the US Dietetic Association says: "It makes your muscles soak up sugar, proteins, and other components that make them bigger and stronger."

Insulin is extra-effective right after a workout. So within 30 minutes after a workout, eat a blend of carbs and protein. Some options:

•     Turkey sandwich
•     Peanut butter and jam sandwich
•     Nuts and seeds
•     Smoothie with yoghurt and fruit

Skip these five mistakes

Here are five things NOT to do when you're working on building strong muscles:

1. Don’t hurt yourself trying to look cool

You know those guys who always moan and strain in the gym until they’re red in the face? Don’t be one of them.

Ian says: "I see this all the time in the gym. Scrawny teenagers all pumped up on testosterone and a fuelled ego trying to look the hero to impress their friends or the girl on the cross trainer.

"Heavy weights + poor technique = injury and bad posture in teenagers. Not a good look boys."

The advice is, stay within your limits.

2. Don’t try to figure it out on your own

If you are just starting out, don’t assume you know how to do everything.

When you don’t get the technique right, for example, leaning back and jerking up the dumbbells while doing biceps curls, you’re not focusing the load on your target muscles.

Instead, you’re bringing in other muscles into play and making them do the work.

Find a qualified trainer with good credentials at your gym, or talk to coaches at your school who know what they’re doing in the weight room.

Ask for lessons on how to properly do all the common lifts.

Ian says: "Learn from the experts how to exercise with the correct posture and technique. You'll look good and look as if you know what you are doing."

3. Don’t overdo protein

Teenage guys read about high protein diets in the muscle magazines and go over the top.  If you train a lot you do need protein but not half a cow and protein shakes as well.

Ian, who used to play football for Livingston FC and Oxford United, says: "The body will only use a certain amount of protein depending on how hard you've trained the muscles. Protein is needed for muscle repair after a seriously hard workout but don't overdo it by necking gallons of protein shakes."

"I'm a great believer that unless you're a professional athlete and training 4-5 hours a day, then your protein should come from a natural source like red meat, chicken or fish." 

"I see it all the time in the gym: guys throwing back protein shakes and they can't see their toes for their big, fat bellies!" 

4. Don't skimp on rest and sleep

The experts we spoke to say don’t train every day. Your body needs to time to rest and recuperate. Your muscles will benefit from having a break.

Most kids like to stay up late but sleep is essential so you are energised and ready for your next training session.

"This is important because this is the time when the body is relaxed and has time repair itself," says Ian, who would also recommend yoga relaxation too.

5. Don’t rush it

"If you are eating right, doing the right training and accelerating muscle growth, you are making progress," says Oxford-based Gavin Allinson. "When the time is right, depending on your age and development, you will put on muscle."

Trainer Ian McCaldon is more philosophical. "If working out and building muscle makes you feel good and energised, then let that energy be the catalyst for your dreams and goals. After all, gold medals and world records were not achieved by sitting on the sofa watching others fulfil their dreams!

"Building muscle is for life, not just for looking cool on the beach!"

Reference: http://www.webmd.boots.com/fitness-exercise/guide/the-teenage-guys-guide-to-gaining-muscle