Today, I am going to go over one of the most important nutritional sources for your fitness and body building goals. You can talk or read all you want about fatty acids, carbohydrates, water, etc., but protein is "where it is at" for you to keep on track in your workouts.
Protein is one of the main building blocks of muscle among other tissues. One thing people usually don't know is that when you weight lift you are literally tearing down your muscles and rebuilding them. Protein is essential in the building process but did you know it is also important in the healing of the tearing down of muscle.
Bodybuilders and fitness workout buffs need the protein. How much you ask? One simple formula for how much protein you need is that,as a rule of thumb, you should get 1 gram of protein every day for every pound you weigh. Example being if you weigh 180 pounds, take in 180 grams of protein a day. Or you can figure out you body fat percentage compared to muscle tissue and just eat a gram of protein for every pound of muscle. If you weigh 180 pounds of have 10% body fat, then you will have 162 pounds of muscle and 18 pounds of fat. Then you would eat 162 grams of protein per day. I stick with the total weight like in the 1st example. It is much easier.
Proteins are also called amino acids. Bet you didn't know that! Your body actually makes about 12 of the 20 amino acids you need. The rest you need to get from your diet. Most animal meats are a great source of protein and it is complete proteins which means they have all the necessary amino acids. vegetables have different amino acids or proteins and are called incomplete proteins. Therefore, if you are vegetarian, you need to eat a variety of vegetables to get all your amino acids that you need for body building.
You might notice that the protein requirements for fitness is much different than the daily dosage required that you see on food packages. That is because those are targeted for normal people that don't work out hard or very much.
The best meats for protein are chicken, turkey, duck, tuna, veal, venison, and fish. Red meat is fatty also so that is a bad thing. If you want to eat beef, get premium low fat cuts.
Bottom line is I have heard some people worry about taking in all that protein. As With anything new and depending on your age, you might want to consult with your doctor about your fitness program and the nutritional intake. Just a thought.
My next article I may continue on protein or move on to fatty acids or something. Stay tuned!
Thanks For Reading,
Scott
Scott
I love to work out and I love all the different foods you can eat that help the muscle building process. Fot a free 7 day ecourse on mens fitness, please visit http://www.mensfitness4life.com. This is my new mens fitness membership site front page. No obligation for the 7 day ecourse.
Thanks For Reading, Scott
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