Wednesday 28 August 2013

Did you train at the bank holiday?

Just a very quick post today people.

With public holidays, bank holidays, special events, shops and gyms often see shortened opening hours. Sometimes gyms stay closed on bank holidays. My gym was open, and closed early however as I was off work I was able to workout in the morning.

Monday is a leg & shoulders workouts for me, so thats exactly what I trained. It was a bit of a shock training so early, only having 1 meal (so a limited amount of carbohydrates and protein in my system) however it was a good workout. I destroyed legs with heavy training, and then performed volume shoulders.

A couple of guys on the Tuesday said they couldn't workout in the gym on Monday due to the early closing time.

So i ask, do you make an effort to train on public holidays, or do you use this time to rest from training. Obviously rest is essential to helping muscles grow. Just wondering what you guys get upto in this time!

As always, let me know down below, and thanks for reading!

Thursday 22 August 2013

Planning your protein meals in a high protein diet

Hey guys so in this post im going to quickly cover how you should plan your meals if you follow a bodybuilding diet. In order to gain muscle, you need a lot of protein and a lot of calories. Protein shakes and protein powder will only take you so far to reaching your total amount of protein for the day, which we discussed in this post.

I personally prefer to eat every 2.5-3 hours. Now some time ago this was the common thing to do. Bodybuilders and health professionals would profess that eating a small meal every 2.5-3hours was the best way to gain muscle or lose weight. The belief of this was that eating regular, or mixing your protein powder with water or milk and drinking that, would fire up your metabolism.

Years later, people who say these same things not get shunned for sprouting "broscience". Whilst eating this regular may not effect your metabolic rate, it does have some benefits. ( this broscience nonsense is especially prevalent on the bodybuilding.com forums.

Eating a high protein, high carbohydrate diet for gaining muscle requires a huge amount of calories. This is why people use protein shakes, meal replacement shakes and a variety of other bodybuilding supplements. However if you had to consume 4000 calories a day in order to build muscle, then you're going to need a lot of protein supplements and weight gain shakes, otherwise your belly will be getting stuffed at each meal from over eating. Rather than tackling 4000 calories of high protein and high carbohydrates over 3 meals and maybe one protein shake in the form of a post workout shake, it is easier, at least for me, to eat 6 meals a day.

By breaking your meals down into smaller portions, it prevents that bloated feeling. It also prevents me from snacking on junk food. I also find myself becoming hungry after 3 hours or so, and need to down some protein. Rather than going hungry, i prefer to eat and add some clean, high quality calories from good protein sources and clean carbohydrate sources into my diet.

So I structure my meals as such.

A typical bodybuilding diet looks like this (at least for me and my schedule)

Breakfast - 8 am
Meal 2 - 11 pm
meal 3 - 2 pm
meal 4 - 5 pm
Workout - 6:15 pm
Post workout 7.45 pm
Final meal 9 pm

So if you're trying to gain muscle or lose weight i would urge you to give this ago. You could always take a picture to show your before and after weight loss transformation following this type of meal plan, and compare your results.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Protein I Ate Today

In this post today im going to talk about what food items have passed my mouth today. I eat typically every 2 - 3 hours. I woke up today at around 7.30.

Upon waking I had some bcaa. I used to have a shot of protein powder, but now i opt for just BCAA upon waking. Then about 30 minutes following this I atea some eggs with cornflakes.

Following this i didn't have any protein powder for the day. Instead I opted for real, whole foods. My next meal was around 12 o clock. This was later than what i usually eat. As already stated I typically eat every 2-3 hour cycles. I did not feel hungry until 12 o clock however.

I then ate a meal high in carbs and with a moderate amount of protein, and low fat. This meal was fish and rice. It was nice. I then waited until around 2.30 or so to eat. I once again ate the same meal of fish and rice. I will have another meal of fish and rice before I hit the gym.

Following the gym I will have protein powder post workout.

I will then eat fish and potato tonight.

Thanks for reading about my protein packed bodybuilding daily intake for the day guys.

Monday 5 August 2013

How much protein powder should you take per day?

Hi guys, thanks for clicking onto this post about how much protein powder you should take a day.

We have discussed in this blog about what protein powders are, so the question question is looking at how much you should take per day. The amount of protein powder you need to take on a daily basis varies from person to person, and on diet.

Its impossible to say how much protein supplement should be taken in 1 day. Why is this? This is because you need to know how much protein you need per day, NOT how much protein powder. A protein shake is just a convenient way to increase your protein take.

A bodybuilding, athlete or a gym goer will need a high level of protein in comparison to some one who does not work out. This is because someone who works out needs a high level of protein to stimulate protein synthesis, allowing protein to help rebuild the build. In the gym muscle is torn and damaged. When you rest, provided you have the right levels of nutrition, your muscles will then grow back bigger and stronger. It is protein that allows your muscle to grow back bigger and stronger.

A minimum of 1g of protein is required by athletes, bodybuilders or weight lifters.

So a 200 lb male would need at least 200g of protein. Aywhere between 1-1.5g of protein per lb of body weight is fine.

So taking the example again of a 200lb male, they should be eating anywhere between 200 and 300 lb of protein per day. So how much protein powder do you need.

If you consume 200 grams of protein from food, then you may want to consume upto 100g of protein powder.

I hope this has helped, thanks for reading.

Sunday 4 August 2013

What Is Protein Powder? A Basic Explanation.

What is protein powder?

Many gym noobies may jump straight to a protein powder, likely before they've even finished their first week of working out. Often these gym noobs will start looking at which protein powders they should buy, before actually finding out "what is protein powder". In this article we'll try and take a look at what a protein powder is, why you should (or shouldn't) use one, when you should use protein powder and what benefits you can get by taking a protein powder or protein shake. So without any further or due, what is protein powder?

Protein powder is supplement most commonly used amongst athletes and bodybuilders. The most common type of protein powder is whey protein, that is what we will be discussing in this article. A protein powder is a concentrated form of powder, whey protein is derived from cheese / milk through a complex engineering process. What is left is a powder. So this goes part way to answering the question of what is protein powder. This concentrated source of protein is most commonly mixed with water or milk and consumed as a drink. Bodybuilders and athletes can use these protein supplements in order help boost their protein intake. This is especially useful for a bodybuilder, athlete or anyone looking to build muscle. This is because a high level of protein is required for building muscle. Research has shown that protein powder if consumed daily, can help boost the immune system.

So any cleared to understanding what is protein powder yet?

Protein, not just protein powder, is crucial for building muscle. The body needs protein to promote muscle growth following an intense workout. When working out muscle is damaged through exercise. Protein helps this muscle grow back. Those exercising need a high protein diet perhaps this quantity is too much to consume from just food. So that is why athletes and bodybuilders turn to protein powder.

Ok so now that question of what is protein should have been answered. Lets take a look at how much protein powder you should consume. This is a bit of a trick question however, as the amount of protein needed, not protein powder needs to be established. For an individual looking to build muscle a minimum of 0.8g of protein should be consumed per lb of bodyweight. More commonly it is believed that 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight should be consumed. This can differ for women however. You can find out more information on which is the best protein powder for women at Shreddybrek.

So when you know how much protein you need for the day, you can figure out how much protein powder you need to consume. If you need 200g of protein a day, and can easily eat 150g from whole foods. Then you can consume 50g of protein from a protein powder.

That's it for today folks. I hope this article has answered your question about what is protein powder. Thank you for reading and keep checking back for more articles.
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!

The purpose of this blog is to share some of my thoughts on a variety of different protein powders, protein shakes, muscle building supplements and aids.

Expect to see top 5, top 10 lists that will rank protein powders and other various supplements in order of being the "best".

Some information will be anecdotal, some will be from experience.

Thanks for stopping by to read.