If your noticing that your body isn’t changing like you want it to, you might be missing your nutrition as the culprit. If you are doing EVERYTHING right in the gym but not seeing the changes you want, it’s time to really look into your nutrition. You need to first understand your macros: Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats. Without the basic understanding of these three elements, you will not know how or when to eat the foods to fuel your body! Try not to over-complicate things and just follow the following tips.
Meal Spacing: To determine meal spacing, take the number of waking hours you have each day and divide that by two or three hours. You should learn to train your body to want to eat and if you follow this pattern your body will start to burn food quickly because it knows a meal is coming up soon.
Calorie Splits: Split your calories across each meal based on time of your workouts. Pre-training, intra-training, and post-training meals should be more caloric dense in carbohydrates and protein. The other three meals breakfast, lunch, and dinner can be more balanced in terms of macronutrient distributions. Add a few snacks throughout the day to increase caloric intake if need be, and stay consistent with your plan.
Eat a variety of foods, colors, and sources:
- Brightly colored fruits
- Vibrant vegetables
- Animals and fish
- Grains
- Nuts and seeds (butters too)
- Fats (MCTs, animal fats)
- Improved brain function and recovery
- Increased time to fatigue
- Improved muscle recovery
- Improved aerobic capacity (enable fat oxidation)
- Improved high-intensity training performance
- Improved muscular energy
Average gym goers often overlook the importance of carbs for performance. You should aim to consume 1-2g/lb of bodyweight each day. The more intense your training sessions are, the closer to 2g/lb you can eat. On rest days, you can stay closer to 1g/lb or slightly under to keep body fat at bay. Training more than one time per day increases these ranges, so adjust accordingly.
Fats act as energy reserves for long duration exercise:They are energy dense, which makes them key for athletes looking to build muscle while minimizing carbohydrate intolerance and maintaining healthy body fat. Fluctuate your fat intake to match your overall caloric goal once your specific protein and carbohydrate goals are met each day. If you want to gain mass, you can provide the body with enough raw material to promote growth by consuming more fats once your upper limit of carbohydrates is met.
Athletes have significantly different metabolic demands than non-athletes. As you develop better fitness, factors such as sleep, recovery, hydration, and nutrition play a determining role in our ability to withstand the increased physiological and psychological stressors of advanced training and life. Getting your nutrition down will give you the fuel you need to move from amateur to elite athlete and increase your performance along with increased training capacity.
Reference:
http://breakingmuscle.com/nutrition/the-intelligent-athletes-guide-to-fueling-performance