Building a Successful Diet Part 5: Bodybuilding Nutrition

Today’s post will be wrapping up my “Building a Successful Diet” series. Today’s topic of interest: Maximizing your nutrition in order to minimize your need for supplements. When doing research for this post I noticed there wasn’t very much information on this topic! In this post I will be going over some popularly used sports supplements and I will be letting you know what sources of food I found to be high in these supplements. If you haven’t read Part 4 click here:

Building a Successful Diet Part 4

The first supplement I immediately researched was glutamine! Glutamine is a very powerful amino acid that is used for recovery of the muscles. In my opinion glutamine is by far better than creatine! Glutamine allows for noticeably quicker recovery after your workouts, as well it will reduce soreness after your workouts. When I supplement with glutamine, I try to get about 15 grams of glutamine throughout the day in approximately 5 gram dosages. So what are some good natural sources of glutamine? Well of course any protein source is good for obtaining amino acids, but we can’t be eating meat ALL the time! Spinach, sunflower seeds, and parsley are all good sources of glutamine. Just be sure to note that heat will destroy the amino acid glutamine, so these foods are best when eaten raw. Yes, Popeye had it right kids, eat your spinach! One article I read from Spinachwords.com claimed that 1 cup or 7.5oz of spinach had approximately .75 grams of glutamine in it. Now this isn’t a whole lot, but this is a very good way to supplement your glutamine intake for the day.
Sunflower seeds are a great source of glutamine, but I also found they were a great source of arginine as well (a two for one!). One article I read recommended you eat a half cup of sunflower seeds throughout the day. A half cup of sunflower seeds will bring you 3 grams of glutamine!

Every website I looked at that gave suggestions for good sources of glutamine pointed me straight to parsley. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find out exactly how much glutamine parsley contained. However I did find out this, parsley contains a flavone called apigenin. According to Dr.’s Donald R. Buhler and Cristobal Miranda of Oregon State University a flavone is a type of flavonoid. In a nut shell flavonoids are natural occurring compounds found in fruits and vegetables that have diverse biochemical and antioxidant effects. So what is apigenin’s biochemical effect? Apigenin is supposed to help block bad estrogen from inhibiting the body’s use of testosterone. Apparently this has a strength-boosting effect. According to an article I read entitled: “14 Natural Anabolics: Power Foods that Act Like Supplements” apigenin can be found in 10mg dosages in supplements. So how much parsley do you have to chow down on to get the amount that is in supplements? Get this, one tablespoon of chopped parsley will suffice!

The next popular supplement that we all know and love is creatine. There are so many myths and misconceptions out there about creatine it isn’t even funny. Believe it or not your body actually needs creatine! In fact your body when it doesn’t have enough creatine from dietary needs, will actually synthesize its own creatine. When I supplement with creatine, I try to get about 5 grams before my workout and 5 grams after my workout. Creatine is a naturally formed substance and is pretty easy to find. In one pound of lean beef you will be able to find 5 grams of creatine. You can also find creatine in fish such as salmon and tuna, and any type sashimi is also a great source. In salmon you will find 4.5 grams of creatine in one pound. Fish is probably the better source, because it also contains a high amount of the amino acid methionine, which is used in the synthesis of creatine.

Next on the list is arginine. Arginine is used to increase the nitrogen levels in the body, which in turn vasodilates blood vessels allowing for greater blood flow within the body. This greater blood flow allows for more oxygen and nutrients to get to your muscles in order to provide energy during your workout. The increase blood flow also is beneficial to your muscles when they are recovering after your workout. When supplementing with arginine I try to get about 3.5 grams before my work out and about 3 grams before I go to bed at night. Again any protein source is great for getting amino acids, but what other foods can you eat that are high in arginine? The answer is nuts and seeds! The best sources would be pumpkin seeds, peanuts, and sesame seeds. Other good choices would be almonds, walnuts, and hazlenuts. I found in my research that a 100 gram serving of these seeds and nuts can contain anywhere from 2-4 grams of arginine. Unfortunately a 100 gram serving of nuts is going to contain a lot of fat, not to mention eating this amount of nuts everyday could get expensive. Still though a little bit is better than nothing! Plus you will be getting a great amount of arginine from all the protein you eat during the day. But don’t worry I have one more way you can get arginine.

Your body can produce arginine from another amino acid, citrulline! Citrulline is becoming a popular ingredient in most NO supplements, due to the body’s ability to produce arginine using it. The addition of citrulline will also make your NO supplement very expensive. But guess what? There is a food that is an incredible source of citrulline, watermelon! The article I mentioned before: “14 Natural Anabolics: Power Foods that Act Like Supplements” stated that you could eat 24 ounces of watermelon pre-workout. This would provide you with 20 ounces of water, 50 grams of carbohydrates, and most importantly 3 grams of citrulline! 3 grams of citrulline should be plenty for your workout, this amount can be found in a lot of supplements.

Continuing on with the topic of keeping your nitric oxide levels high, there is also a vitamin that will help with this. I’m talking about vitamin C! Vitamin C will keep nitric oxide levels high in the body, and is essential in protein synthesis. Vitamin C is also of course a great antioxidant, and when taken will reduce soreness in your muscles after your workout! When supplementing with vitamin C I try to get about 3,000 mg throughout the day in 500 to 1000mg dosages. Let’s think here where can we get vitamin C from? Hmmm… Were you going to say oranges and other citrus fruit? Well yes you are correct in thinking that, but you might be surprised to hear that yellow bell peppers have three times the amount of vitamin C per weight as an orange! In fact according to an article I found at HealthAliciousNess.com oranges ranked number 9 in foods with the highest concentration of Vitamin C. You can view the article

here.

Another supplement taken by bodybuilders, which is a staple in every supplementation program, is a multivitamin! Now I don’t suppose you could replace a good quality multivitamin, but there are some foods that are vitamin dense. As I was doing research for this post search after search for foods that were high in certain vitamins and minerals, I would always get dark leafy greens! Spinach, Swiss chard, turnip greens, kale, collard greens, and arugula are all LOADED with vitamins! Another vitamin dense food I came across was dried fruit. Basically the fruit maintains all the vitamins it had when it was fresh, but watch out because they are loaded with calories. Dried fruit might be a good addition to
your diet if you are trying to gain weight.

Now that you have all this knowledge of what to add to your diet to make it more balanced, you need to do one more thing. When you don’t take steroids and you don’t take supplements, every little BIT counts! You must not forget about digestive health! Eating all of these healthy foods will not do your body any good if your digestive system isn’t working efficiently. Not to worry, there are a few things you can add to your diet to improve digestion.

First off you will need to add digestive enzymes to your diet. Digestive enzymes will help break down your food in order for it to be used. Foods that contain digestive enzymes are pineapple, papaya, and figs. The second thing you will need to do is increase the good bacteria in your intestines. Promoting the growth of good bacteria keeps your intestines healthy, and when your intestines are healthy they break down and absorb more nutrients! Yogurt is a great source of probiotics as well as fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi. The third thing you will need for digestive health is plenty of fiber! As I went over in Part 2 fiber is very important because it keeps everything in your intestines moving. One source of fiber you might find of interest is grapefruit. Grapefruit contains a great amount of fiber called pectin. Pectin is particular great at slowing the digestion of carbohydrates (a characteristic of fiber I went over in Part 2). When trying to lose that stubborn stomach fat trying adding three glasses of grapefruit juice throughout your day! The fourth and final thing that is a must for digestion is probably one of the most anabolic substances! What’s this magical substance you’re wondering? It’s water, water, and more water! Sorry it isn’t some sort of special “super-food”, but yeah water will make or break your diet. Your body needs plenty of water in order to aid digestion. My suggestion is to drink 8 to 16 ounces with every meal!

With this arsenal of information you should be armed and ready to go to make a very successful diet. As you have read here, there are many foods to eat, from all different food groups. You really need to eat a variety of things every day to get everything your body needs. The best thing to know when trying to follow a strict diet is that you can’t possibly get everything you need to eat everyday so it’s always good to change your diet up from week to week so you are not deficient in any areas. Also any serious lifter could never completely throw out a supplementation program and substitute it by eating regular food. I really don’t think anyone on Earth could be capable of this. So get out there, diet hard, lift even harder, and get huge!

The Gym Maniac

Building a Successful Diet Part 4: Fat

Continuing on with my “Building a Successful Diet” series I will be blogging about the dreaded macronutrient FAT! Just hearing the word makes people cringe and slowly look down at the mass sitting on top of their stomach. Fat has built up quite the bad reputation over the years, with so many overweight Americans dropping dead from heart problems, it’s no wonder we fear fat so much. I’m not here to preach about the dangers of too much fat. I’m here to explain why fat is important in your diet, and how you can use fat properly and in a healthy way. If you haven’t read Part 3 yet click here:

Building a Successful Diet Part 3

A lot of diet advice you will hear is to cut fat and fat is horrible for you and blah blah blah etc. The truth is that fat is extremely important as well as CHOLESTEROL. I know this post is supposed to be about fat, but fat and CHOLESTEROL just go hand-in-hand. I have read up on fat a lot and there seems to be some conflicting information out there. Some say nuts are a good source of fat, some say they’re a bad source. Some say eat avocados others say avoid them. The best advice I can give you is to eat what you want and pay attention to how your body responds to what you eat. In my opinion fats from plants like nuts and avocados will do you good. As far as sources of fat from animals I think they are useful just not in large quantities.

With animal fats you have to worry about SATURATED fat. SATURATED fat will lower your GOOD CHOLESTEROL (HDL) and raise your BAD CHOLESTEROL (LDL). In addition to SATURATED fat, animal fat also contains CHOLESTEROL. Contrary to popular belief your body actually needs and will use cholesterol! Yeah it really will! Your body uses CHOLESTEROL in order to produce hormones such as TESTOSTERONE. Your body also uses fat to produce HORMONES as well, this is why fat is important in a diet, and should not be cut from the diet all together. If you keep fat out of your diet, many studies have shown your TESTOSTERONE levels will take a nose dive.

Another way to utilize fat in a beneficial manner is to slow the digestion of carbohydrates. Why would you want to do this? Well, when you slow the digestion of carbohydrates by consuming fat, your body won’t need to have a drastic insulin spike in response to the carbohydrates. So also contrary to popular belief, consuming a “reduced fat” food item is worse for you than eating the same food item with all the fat still in it! When you take fat out of food, making it “reduced fat” or “fat free” your body will end up having a greater insulin release when the food is consumed. Since fat slows the digestion of carbohydrates taking fat out of the food allows for the carbohydrates in that food to digest more quickly. With a quick spike in insulin comes a proportionate drop in insulin or "crash" causing your body to go into fat storage mode. Essentially you end will end up gaining more fat than if you had eaten the food with the regular amount of fat!

Already I have mentioned several sources of fat: nuts, avocados, and animal fat from meat. There is also plant based oils and dairy. So what is the difference between all of these fats? Well you can organize the different types of fats into three main groups: SATURATED fat, UNSATURATED fat, and TRANS-fat. As I said before you will want to avoid SATURATED fat, but a little bit won’t hurt you. You can identify SATURATED fats, because they are generally solid at room temperature. UNSATURATED fat can be divided into two categories: MONOUNSATURATED fat and POLYUNSATURATED fat. So what’s the difference? Basically the difference is on the molecular level having to do with carbon chains and how they’re bonded. UNSATURATED fats can be identified as being liquid at room temperature. TRANS-fats are chemically altered UNSATURATED fats. Your body will have no use for TRANS-fat and you should avoid consuming this type of fat altogether. TRANS-fat will not only raise your BAD CHOLESTEROL levels, but it will also lower your GOOD CHOLESTEROL as well. TRANS-fat can be identified on
many of your food labels as partially HYDROGENATED OIL.

So how should you plan fats into your diet? First off you should eat a small amount of fat in the first couple of meals of the day. As you progress later into the day you should be eating slightly more fat. Your last meal or two should have the majority of your daily fat in it. You should be eating a lot of fat and very little carbohydrates. You need fat at night to slow the digestion of carbohydrates and protein at night in order to gradually feed your muscles throughout the night. Another reason to consume fat at this time is that your body produces a lot of anabolic HORMONES at night and needs the fat in order to produce these HORMONES.

As you can see fat plays a vital role in your dietary needs. Remember fat is a calorie dense macronutrient and there is no reason to consume large amounts of it. SATURATED fat should be limited, TRANS-fat should be avoided altogether, and MONOUNSATURATED fat should make up the bulk of your dietary fat intake. This will conclude part 4 of my “Building a Successful Diet” series. Be sure to catch part 5 where I will be discussing the best ways to get the nutrients you need to build muscle!

Building a Successful Diet Part 3: Protein

Continuing on with my Building a Successful Diet series, my post today will be all about Protein! Yes protein, the building block of rock hard muscle! There are so many different sources of protein which one is the best? I will be able to answer these questions and much more in the following. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Part 2 of my “Building a Successful Diet on Carbohydrates click here:

Building a Successful Diet Part 2

So I’m not sure if you know this but not all proteins are created equal. Literally, comparing protein sources is like comparing apples to oranges! I’m sure you may have heard whey is the best protein, or is soy a far superior protein, maybe casein? The truth is there is no superior protein. Each protein has different qualities that are beneficial depending on your nutritional needs. For example: whey is a great source of protein, it is easily absorbed and digests relatively quickly. It has what is called a high biological value. Biological value is the amount or percentage of a protein source that is actually utilized by your body. Other proteins, such as protein from wheat, aren’t digested as well and have a low biological value. So going from the easiest usable protein to least usable source of protein would be: whey, milk, eggs, fish, chicken, beef, beans, grains. I know beef is low on the list but it is still a good source of protein, just not as good as chicken. So now that we know that not every source of protein absorbs the same, why not just eat the best absorbing one? Well that’s just one dimension of protein. Your body needs different sources of protein and can benefit from different protein sources at certain times during the day.

First thing when you wake up a good source of protein to take is whey. Your body just went about eight hours without food and needs protein now! Your body will start breaking down muscle to feed itself, if it doesn’t get a source of protein quickly. Since whey is a fast digesting protein this is a perfect source for this need.

A lot of people like to eat eggs for breakfast. Eggs are a solid source of quality protein and are great because it is one of the few sources of protein that has a complete essential amino acid profile that your body needs. Essential amino acids are amino acids your body can’t produce naturally and thus you need to get them from other sources. It’s important to get all the amino acids your body needs, because if you’re deficient in one area it can affect other processes in your body in a negative way.
Other sources of protein such as chicken, fish, beef, nuts, beans, and grains are good throughout the day. Your body needs some real food; you can’t just chug down protein shakes all day! These are great protein sources because they provide your body with plenty of vitamins and mineral it will need.

A great protein source to have pre and post workout again is whey. Your body needs the amino acids during your workout to feed the muscles and to keep them from going catabolic. You will also need more amino acids to keep your muscles from going catabolic again post workout. If you have the money an even better source of post workout protein is another version of standard whey isolate, hydrolyzed whey! Hydrolyzed whey is a more broken down version of whey making it quicker and easier to digest.

Finally at night you’re going to want protein that is going to help you recover and protein that is going to digest slowly. When you go to sleep at night, this is your body’s time to recover. You will need a slow digesting protein source at night, because your body is going without food for eight hours. During this time your body will start cannibalizing itself, to get the protein it needs to recover if it doesn’t get fed. So you need a protein for recovery and a protein to keep your body from cannibalizing itself. A great recovery protein source is soy isolate. Due to soy isolate’s high glutamic acid content, it is a great protein to have post workout or before bed time. Glutamic acid is the amino acid L-glutamine. L-glutamine is an extremely fantastic amino acid that has amazing recovery capabilities for your body! The protein you want to digest slowly while you sleep is casein. Although soy is a slow digesting protein, casein is definitely slower. Casein is something you will want to ingest right as you’re going to bed, some bodybuilders will even wake up in the middle of the night just to have a casein shake!

As you can see each and every protein has its own role in helping your body recover from working out. As I said before there is not one protein that is better than the other. You need to utilize each protein to your advantage to gain the maximum benefit each protein has to offer.

If you enjoyed this post please remember to follow me on Facebook and Twitter!

The Gym Maniac

Building a Successful Diet Part 2: Carbohydrates

So continuing with Part 2 of my “Building a Successful Diet” post, today’s post will be all about the proper utilization of carbohydrates. You will need to consume certain carbohydrates at different times of the day, and good understanding of glycemic index will be helpful in taking advantage of your body’s natural processes. If you haven’t read Part 1 click here:

Building a Successful Diet Part I

The first thing you will need to understand is how to utilize your body’s insulin spikes. There are different times of the day you want to take advantage of spiking your insulin. Why on Earth would I want to do that you say? Insulin is a powerful anabolic hormone that helps your body utilize testosterone and growth hormone that would otherwise go to waste if not taken advantage. So the name of the game is to spike your insulin when you have high hormone levels. So when are your hormone levels the highest?


When you go to sleep at night your body repairs itself by elevating your hormone levels. When you wake up your hormone levels start to fall again. So as soon as you get up in the morning it’s a race to get something in your stomach to spike your insulin in order to take advantage of your high hormone levels. Another great time to spike your insulin is right after your workout. Partly to return your glycogen levels back to normal before your muscles go catabolic, and partly because your hormones are again at high levels. This is where having a good knowledge of glycemic index comes in handy. You can always look up the glycemic index of foods online. Here is a link to a list of commonly consumed foods and their glycemic index ratings: http://www.diabetesnet.com/food-diabetes/glycemic-index

So what if you’re out and about and don’t have a chart to reference the glycemic index of foods when you’re grocery shopping? A good way to estimate how your insulin will be affected by different foods is to simply “eyeball it”. The more processed a carbohydrate source is, the higher in glycemic index that food will be. For example wheat bread vs. white bread.

With wheat bread you can actually see the grains, and see that it is a much less processed product than white bread. White bread is higher in glycemic index, because in order to make it, the wheat is ground down completely. Cereals like Cheerios you might think would be good for you because it’s made with oats, but if you ever crushed a Cheerio it turns into dust, there are no grains. So Cheerios have a high glycemic index rating. Basically the more your body has to work to digest a carbohydrate, the more slowly that carbohydrate will be turned into usable blood sugar, and the less of a response your insulin will react to the consumption of that food.

Other than the two exceptions where you eat high glycemic index carbohydrates, for the rest of your diet you are going to want to stick with lower glycemic carbohydrate sources. If you ate high glycemic carbohydrates all the time your insulin levels would constantly be up and down causing your body to store fat when the insulin is down. Eventually your body would lose its sensitivity to insulin releases causing your body to go pre-diabetic. So as you can see you want low glycemic carbs throughout the day. The low glycemic carbs will allow your body to store up glycogen (usable blood sugar) in your muscles which is what they use for energy during your workouts. The low glycemic carbs will also allow your insulin levels to keep steady so the carbs aren't stored as fat.

Another way to help control insulin is eat more fiber! There are two types of fiber soluble, and insoluble. The type that helps your body from having a higher insulin spike is soluble fiber. The soluble fiber slows the digestion of the food reducing the body’s need for releasing a greater amount of insulin. Insoluble fiber is great to add to your diet too. This is the type of fiber that adds “bulk” to your food and keeps things moving through your intestinal tract. Adding insoluble fiber to your diet will keep your digestive system healthy and happy, which is very important. Your digestive system is where your body gets all of its nutrients from, which in turns feeds your muscles! So you need to be sure and take very good care of your digestive system, and that my friends is a whole other post all together.

One little tip before I go: A great post workout drink when you can't get the protein and the carbs? Chocolate milk! No joke chocolate milk gets the job done! I read up on a study where cyclists were told to ride for a certain amount of time, maybe two hours or something. Then one was given water, another was given a sports drink, another chocolate milk, and another a protein and carbohydrate fortified recovery drink. Then they were told to get back on their bikes and ride till they “bonked” (a term used by endurance athletes describing when they completely run out of energy). The cyclist that drank water dropped almost instantly, the sports drink cyclist dropped out a little later, and the other two went a little while longer, ending up pretty much tying. So yeah chocolate milk is awesome. Apparently the combination of carbs and proteins found in chocolate milk are extremely conducive to recovery.