Bodybuilding Series: Entry III; Meal Planning
You must learn to eat a healthy, balanced diet. You'll need to increase the quantity of food while you also improve the quality of your food. You need healthy carbs to fuel your workouts and more lean protein for repairing and building your muscles. A healthy, planned and well balanced diet will give your body the strength to workout and build muscle.
The Cornerstone
It is no secret... dieting is the biggest aspect of your fitness journey regardless of goals. You diet plan can literally make or break you entire program. Like in other series, we emphasize diet as the main aspect of an training regime. A great mind once told me, "You can't out exercise a bad diet." That is absolutely true. Don't just "play this by ear" and eat whatever you think is good and healthy. You will need to map out an entire program for this just as you do your workouts. If you do not do this, you are setting yourself up to ultimately fail in reaching your fitness goals. If you are serious about this, take the time before hand to evaluate your goals and plan you diet accordingly.
Caloric Intake and Macro Range
This is tricky and you will need to take note of your BMR. Once you know you daily calorie burn off you can plan you diet to fit around those needs. If your goal is to gain weight, plan to have a calorie surplus. If your goal is to lean out while keeping the most muscle mass possible, plan for a small deficit or an even ratio between burn off and intake. There are many different aspects to each plan, that why it is absolutely crucial to do a meal plan or diet program that fits your lifestyle and fitness goals. NOT your cousin's, brother's, sister's, professional's, etc.! To learn more on your BMR and macro range, refer to the "Weight Loss Series: Nutrition & Macros" article!
Eat MORE.. often
Hopefully by this point you have assessed your goals and roughly know the amount of calories your should intake on a daily basis to gain lean muscle mass, not fat weight. Now, you need to take you daily intake needs and break them down into 5-6 small meals. I would recommend you eat every 2-3 hours. These meals do not have to be huge and some may just be snacks, but for the sake of the argument, we call them meals. You meals should effectively break down your protein, carbs, and fat into small, manageable meals that you can consume throughout the day. By eating these small meals, you will keep you metabolism working in your favor all day. This will prevent your body's need to create fat storage and increase your body's ability to develop lean mass.
Drink WATER
You have assessed your goals, found a meal plan that works for you and fits you macro-nutrient needs. Now, you need to understand the importance of adequate and constant water consumption. Maybe you have seen the guys at the gym carrying the gallon jugs around from exercise to exercise. These guys have the right idea! When the goal is to gain lean mass, drinking water is equally as important as eating an enough calories. Adequate water intake provides many benefits! Water naturally boosts your metabolism. A raised metabolism results in less fatigue and more energy. This creates the best environment for your body to build muscle while keeping bodily fluids balanced and harmful toxins flushed. Drinking water cannot be stressed enough to all walks of life. After all, your muscles are made up of 75% water.
Plan Ahead
Maybe you are the kind of person that can wake up and cook all the food for the day, every day. Unfortunately, I cannot do that. This may be an easy task for the first few months, but too often do I see a snowball effect when a client misses a day of meal planning. One day turns to two, which turns to a week, and so on. It is a much easier routine to cook once or twice a week. This allows you to plan your exact meals ahead of time. I recommend cooking Meals 1-5/6, twice a week. I cook Sunday for Monday through Wednesday, and Wednesday for Thursday through Sunday. This helps me have my meals packed and ready to go a day in advance. This also keeps me accountable for eating all my meals and helps me stay on track.
DO NOT SKIP
Do not skip your meals. The number one excuse I get is "I do not have time to eat that much." This is why I have "food" alarms set for my busy clients. I task them to have an alarm set on their phone for every 2/3 hours on any given day. When their arm goes off, they then have up to 45 minutes to get their next meal in. This may seem like a hardcore or possibly crazy approach but it works! If you want to maximize your results, make this happen. It is expensive to have a gym membership, a coach, and all other accessories and equipment you need for exercise and dieting. You owe it to yourself to solidify this aspect of your program! No food equals no fuel which in turn means no muscle and no results.
Results do not come solely from the weights that you lift or the supplements you take. True gains come from a scale and some food. Make this your priority before starting an exercise program. Save your time and money. There is no way around proper dieting.
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