Body Building Meal Plan - Mistakes You Should Avoid
There are a lot of mistakes people tend to do when making their body building meal plans. Most individuals have a lot of misconceptions about the diet necessary when bulking up.
Some people have the wrong notion that a body building meal plan should be composed solely of protein and all other nutrients, namely fat and carbohydrates, should be eliminated. The truth is, when bulking up, you also have to increase your carbohydrate intake to give you the necessary energy to work out.
When you lower the carbohydrate component in your body building meal plan, your body in turn is forced to compensate. The body accomplishes this by lowering your metabolism. When your metabolism is lowered, the extra calories you eat build up as fat instead of getting broken down as energy.
On the other hand, losing all the fat in your body building meal plan can also result in adverse effects. Your organ systems will then be forced to rely on low fat products or fat free food to fill the necessary fat requirements of your body. This can likewise result in a decrease in your body's metabolism, specifically your fat metabolism. Instead of bulking you up, eating little to no fat than what the body needs can even retard your growth.
When making a body building meal plan, it is wrong to believe that taking protein products and body building supplements, can immediately bulk up your body. These supplements only enhance your body building meal plan, filling in some of the lacking nutrients in your body.
In a body building meal plan, the most important thing to remember is that you still have to eat right. Some body building supplements work by burning the fat in your body; however, supplements can only do so much. If you keep your calorie intake high, meaning you still eat more than you should, no amount of supplements can burn the excess calories you eat.
If you take protein products, such as protein bars, shakes or tablets, you may be eating more calories than your body needs. Eating too much of these protein products can also put undue stress on your body, making it harder for you to build up your body.
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Female Body Building Diet
The main difference between a man and a woman in terms of body building is their metabolism. A woman has a harder time metabolizing fat than a man. Women also have a harder time gaining muscle than men. This is important when choosing a female body building diet to enter into.
Another crucial difference between a man and a woman are the hormones they produce. Specifically, men produce testosterone while women cannot. Testosterone is an important hormone used to increase the size of your muscles. This is the reason why men have bigger muscles than women.
Women who undergo weight training thus cannot become bulky. What a lot of female body builders do is that they take steroids, which have synthetic testosterone, together with their female body building diet. This is what makes these women muscular.
To be able to keep yourself fit, you also have to engage in an effective female body building training program. Your training program should be suited to your body building goals.
Typically, a good training program combines cardiovascular exercises, such as running on a treadmill, alternating with weight training exercises. Cardiovascular exercises help you lose fat, while weight training exercises help you build muscle. Some women can also include additional stretching and flexibility exercises to their workout.
Of course, an effective body building training program has to be combined with specialized female body building diet program to produce the best results.
Just because you exercise does not mean you can eat anything you want. The amount of calories you burn depends on your metabolism. Thus, your metabolism also dictates how much you can eat. If you eat more calories than the amount your body can burn, the calories will become stored as body fat.
Since women store fat more readily than men, a general rule for women body builders is to lessen the amount of fat and cholesterol in their female body building diets. Healthier low-fat and low-cholesterol alternatives to most foods, such as milk and yogurt, are now available for you to include in your female body building diet.
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Cholesterol - Lower Bad Cholesterol With The Right Diet
Unless you've been living in a cave for the past 10 years, you've probably heard of bad cholesterol. As featured in many books, magazines, diet commercials and TV shows, bad cholesterol has been implicated as the leading cause of many heart-related illnesses. The best way to make sure bad cholesterol does not enter your system is to start with your diet.
1. Limit your intake of saturated fat
Use low-fat or non-fat milk and milk products including cheese and yogurt. They are great substitutes for other dairy products that contain bad cholesterol. Skim milk, for example, is a better choice than whole milk while low-fat yogurt is better than regular whipped cream.
2. Base your meals on fiber found in whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
Whole-grain breads, pastries, oatmeal and oat bran provide the right bulk to help you get rid of unnecessary fats and lower your bad cholesterol levels. They also help you lose weight. You can also keep bad cholesterol levels down by eating regular servings of fruits and vegetables. As little as 1 to 2g servings of fiber-rich foods daily can help lower your bad cholesterol by at least 1%.
3. Keep animal fat intake low
Good sources of animal protein include fish, chicken, turkey and lean cuts of red meat. These foods can be included in your diet and help lower your bad cholesterol, provided that you keep to the recommended serving amount. However, you can substitute the animal protein found in your diet using soy protein found in soy and soy products. As little as 25g of soy protein has been shown to lower bad cholesterol when used as part of your diet.
4. When cookies go bad
Another type of bad cholesterol you need to monitor in your diet is hydrogenated fat, often found in common foods as trans-fat. Trans-fat are known to disrupt metabolism and are toxic to the body. These include foods such as cookies, pastries, crackers and almost all processed foods. Also unsafe are foods that include white flour, MSG (monosodiumglutamate), aspartame and sodium nitrate, often found in food as additives.
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