Nutrition for gaining muscle mass

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A wise proverb about “eat breakfast yourself, share lunch with a friend, etc.” has completely lost its relevance for modern athletes. It’s better to eat not one, but two breakfasts; it’s stupid to share lunch: you need to gain strength before training.

Giving dinner to the enemy smacks of absurdity: for 2 hours after intense exercise, you need to restore the spent carbohydrates and replenish the volume of fluid in the body.

The importance of morning nutrition for the human body

It is no coincidence that there is such a saying among bodybuilders - “breakfast is the head of everything.” First of all, you need to remember that before the morning meal, the body spends at least 7–8 hours without receiving any nutrients from the outside.

And although it seems that the body is resting at night, in fact, many of its systems are working in full: cells continue their restoration processes, the liver actively cleanses the body of toxins, the brain processes a huge amount of information, and the stomach digests food and releases nutrients into the blood, which are then carried to other organs.

Therefore, it is quite natural that in the morning the body requires to replenish those energy reserves that were used up during sleep, so the main task after waking up is to feed yourself a proper, healthy and nutritious breakfast.

Find out about the best vitamins for bodybuilding.

In addition to replenishing energy reserves, the body, with a morning meal, begins to launch those processes that were not active at night (in particular, the metabolic process is further enhanced). A morning meal (especially if it is oatmeal or any other food containing coarse fiber) helps cleanse the stomach of processed food residues and toxins.

In addition, the bodybuilder’s weight directly depends on how nutritious the breakfast was - if the body has received a sufficient amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, it will feel full and will not require a harmful snack after that. The morning meal is especially pleasant because at breakfast you can even allow yourself to eat baked goods or sweets without worrying that they will go into fat deposits.

Did you know? According to the Institute of Nutrition, an ideal breakfast should include grains to restore energy, seasonal fruits for an instant vitamin boost, and dairy to replenish protein and calcium. The closest thing to this definition is the English breakfast - as you know, in the morning hours of eating, the British prefer oatmeal, a boiled egg, strong tea and a glass of freshly squeezed juice.

Why don't you feel like eating in the morning?

An excellent appetite in the morning is rare: according to researchers, most often a person does not feel hungry within 40-60 minutes after waking up.

The reason lies, oddly enough, in violation of the rules of nutrition and daily routine. Namely:

• too much caffeine in the morning - if you drink a cup of coffee on an empty stomach at night or in the morning, it begins to have a strange effect on the nervous system: at first activity intensifies, energy is aroused, but after 10-15 minutes there is a dullness and inhibition of all processes in the body, in including the one responsible for the appearance of appetite. Eliminate coffee in the morning - we get a healthy appetite;
• violation of the daily routine, waking up too late. If a person went to bed late, did not get enough sleep and has difficulty getting up in the morning, then there is no appetite;
• too much dinner - if an excessive amount of food enters the body before going to bed, it simply does not have time to process it overnight, therefore, in the morning you will not get a feeling of hunger, but only a heaviness in the stomach (and on top of that, heartburn, an unpleasant aftertaste, and sometimes nausea);
• stress, haste, lack of order;
• excessive accumulation of intestinal mucus. During sleep, when food does not enter the stomach, it continues to produce mucus, which neutralizes the secretion of intestinal juices that promote digestion. If the last meal was taken more than 5 hours before bedtime, then the body simply has nothing to digest at night, and a special mucous substance forms on the intestinal walls, which dulls the feeling of hunger in the morning.

What are the consequences of skipping breakfast?

Skipping breakfast can have very serious consequences. Thus, according to researchers, people who eat a large breakfast experience fewer problems with excess weight - having correctly distributed the intake of nutrients into the body, in the evening a person will not experience an increased feeling of hunger and, accordingly, overeat at night (which is especially harmful for bodybuilders) .

In addition, the lack of a morning meal contributes to the appearance of clots in the blood, which then cause various diseases of the cardiovascular system. If you skip breakfast, your metabolism will begin to deteriorate, and, as a result, the level of cholesterol in the blood will increase, which can lead to atherosclerosis. All these problems can be avoided in a very simple way: simply provide yourself with a nutritious and healthy breakfast.

Important! Even if the body does not feel hungry in the morning, it is necessary to force it - at least drink a glass of clean water. After 20-30 minutes, eat some cottage cheese, porridge or cook scrambled eggs - if you gradually accustom your body to breakfast, you will notice that after 10-12 days your health will improve much, and the problem of lack of appetite in the morning will no longer appear.

What is useful for a bodybuilder

The human body is a self-regenerating system. After a full night's rest, the body is reborn. Morning is the moment of the greatest amount of energy in the body, so hunger is not a concern yet. Nevertheless, after doing your morning exercises and taking a shower, you need to have a snack for the first time.

The greatest digestive “fire” occurs in a person at 11 o’clock in the afternoon (the number varies slightly depending on the length of the day, i.e., the season). At this time there should be a second meal, higher in calories and denser. So a bodybuilder's breakfast on mass is very important.

To create a daily diet, you need to decide on your body type:

• prone to obesity - slow metabolism;
• conditionally normal - balanced metabolism;
• thin - accelerated metabolism: large volumes of food are absorbed, a fat layer is not formed, muscles grow slowly.

Each person is unique, he has his own food preferences since childhood, his diet depends on his physical condition, weather, time of year, place of residence, and the availability of certain types of products. And he also knows exactly why his weight increases.

What you can and cannot have for breakfast

The optimal balance in an ideal breakfast is 50% proteins and 50% carbohydrates, and the percentage of daily calories in the morning meal is up to 30% of the daily value.

Healthy foods

The most useful breakfast foods for any athlete, including bodybuilders, are:

• eggs (up to 3 pcs) - this product makes a tasty and nutritious omelette with vegetables;
• porridge - preferably buckwheat, oatmeal and wheat;
• dairy products - especially cottage cheese (not low-fat);
• boiled chicken meat;
• fresh vegetable salads seasoned with olive oil;
• some fruits - baked apples, pears, peaches, oranges. It is important to remember that citrus fruits should not be consumed on an empty stomach;
• nuts;
• honey.

Of course, one meal should not include all of the listed ingredients, but the main part of breakfast should be based on these products.
An excellent addition would also be herbal tea, toast with butter and cheese (a source of fat), coffee with milk and even some kind of sweet (only one unit, you shouldn’t get too carried away). We advise you to read about how to take Proviron for bodybuilding.

Not recommended

The list of foods that should not be consumed in the morning includes:

• potatoes and pasta are sources of fast carbohydrates that quickly fill you up, but do not benefit the body;
• cold carbonated drinks and freshly squeezed juices. It is strictly forbidden to drink citrus juice on an empty stomach: they greatly increase the acidity of the stomach. Cold carbonated drinks are not only a source of unnecessary sugar, but also impair the blood circulation in the stomach, which as a result will negatively affect digestion;
• spices. You should not heavily season your food at breakfast - spices can greatly irritate the walls of the gastric mucosa;
• cereals - contain a high amount of sugar and fast carbohydrates;
• baking - it is strictly not recommended to eat on an empty stomach;
• sandwiches with mayonnaise, sausage and smoked meats - such products do not bring any benefit to the body.

Of course, if at any morning meal you replace cottage cheese with a sandwich with cheese and sausage, the body will not experience any significant harm.
However, to maintain good physical shape and excellent health, it is still recommended to try to adhere to the principles of proper nutrition. Did you know? Eating breakfast not only helps saturate the body with nutrients, but also improves memory: American scientists came to this conclusion. According to their study, schoolchildren who did not skip breakfast performed on average 30% better on tests of attention and memory than those who skipped breakfast.

Why is breakfast important?

At night, athletes, especially bodybuilders, have nitrogen balance that ranges from positive to negative. Nitrogen balance occurs when a person's daily nitrogen intake from protein equals the daily nitrogen excretion.

Negative nitrogen balance occurs when nitrogen excretion exceeds daily intake and is often noticeable as muscle gradually disappears. On the other end of the spectrum, positive nitrogen balance is often associated with muscle growth.

In other words, our metabolism goes into a catabolic state during sleep (the breakdown of muscle tissue for energy metabolism), which is undesirable for a bodybuilder if, of course, he wants to build as much muscle as possible.

At night, hard-to-form muscle tissue is deprived of important amino acids that will be synthesized into glucose as fuel for the brain, nervous system and other organs and tissues.

Don't panic, this is a natural process that our body goes through to maintain life every day. Our goal is to reduce the state of negative nitrogen balance to a minimum, and move the balance to a positive state through diet and nutrition and a well-balanced breakfast.

This, however, should definitely make you think twice about skipping breakfast. Breakfast gives your body the fuel it needs, gives you a boost and speeds up your metabolism. A breakfast containing all three main components (protein, carbohydrates and fats) can speed up your metabolism by up to 60-100%.

So with that in mind, it would be foolish to even think about skipping the most important meal of the day.

This will allow you to move out of a negative nitrogen balance (catabolism, protein breakdown) and hopefully help you switch to a positive nitrogen balance (anabolism: the process of creating complex materials (proteins) from simple materials).

A positive nitrogen balance is the state you want to be in to promote muscle gain and accelerated fat loss.

So, now that we know the importance of breakfast for your health, metabolism and fitness achievements, we need to know what to make for breakfast.

Many people think that a bowl of cereal and fruit constitutes a nutritious breakfast. Try to guess again! Yes it is a healthy choice, but this meal is incomplete. Breakfast, along with other meals, should contain a balanced amount of protein, complex carbohydrates and fats (which are usually found in nature and should not be added on purpose).

Let's make an analogy. Your car needs water, gasoline and gas to run efficiently. If you exclude one of the substances, your car will not work. The same goes for our body. We must include all three types of nutrients, especially protein and high-fiber complex carbohydrates, to function at peak performance and reap the full benefits of strength training and aerobic training.

So if you just eat a bowl of oatmeal, you should also use a protein source. Here are some examples of protein sources you can prepare for breakfast.

Examples of protein sources for breakfast:

• Egg whites
• beaten eggs
• Protein powders (whey, egg, milk, soy)
• Meal replacement powders
• Tofu
• Cottage cheese
• Meat (if you can eat it in the morning)

Again, including a source of protein will bring you into a positive nitrogen balance, speed up your metabolism by digesting the proteins themselves, and increase the mobilization of fat for fuel.

Now that we've solved the problem of protein sources, what to do with complex carbohydrates? Try to stay away from grains that have a lot of sugar and are highly processed.

Popular myths

There are some judgments regarding the morning meal that turn out to be absolutely false. Let's look at the most common myths about breakfast:

1. Promotes weight gain. Remember - all food eaten in the morning will be digested and converted into energy that you will need during the day. The stomach will have time to process all the fats and carbohydrates received during the morning meal within 5–6 hours.

2. You can eat whatever you want for breakfast: This is an incorrect statement. If you have a very hearty and plentiful breakfast, then the calories received in the morning will not have time to be “used up” by the lunchtime meal. There are also foods that are best not to eat in the morning (list above).

3. A proper breakfast cancels out a proper lunch and dinner. To maintain physical health, you need to be aware of what and how you eat throughout the day, not just in the morning!

4. Coffee and muesli will provide a “charge” for the whole day. Coffee is a source of caffeine, which will indeed provide energy, but only for 15 minutes. The composition of instant muesli, as a rule, includes a large amount of sugar, so the effect of such food will be very short-term: sugar, entering the blood, will cause rapid saturation and produce energy, which will disappear in the next 30-40 minutes, and the body will again require next portion.

When should you have breakfast?

Jump up, quickly swallow your breakfast and run to work. Sound familiar? We all do this, although it is wrong, completely wrong. The morning routine looks like this:

• wake up;
• drink a glass of water;
• do exercises;
• take a shower.

And only after this you can start your morning meal.

If you make yourself breakfast every morning, get up 15-20 minutes earlier than usual so that you have time to eat properly.