NUTRITION Q & A BY MILOS SARCEV LEARNING ABOUT NUTRITION MAY NOT BE AS GLAMOROUS AS LEARNING HOW TO BENCH A TON OF STEEL, BUT IT WILL PUT YOU WELL ON THE WAY TO A LEAN, MUSCULAR BODY. WHAT SHOULD I BE EATING? As a bodybuilder, are there any foods I should avoid other than junk foods? ANSWER: Yes and no. In all food categories, some foods are better than others in terms of nutrient profiles and macronutrient compositions. As a pro bodybuilder, I recommend a diet based on whole foods with the addition of supplements to help you achieve your desired physique goals. With that said, within each category of whole foods, some are better than others depending on your needs and how your body responds to them. Try to choose from among the better options most of the time. Here are a few food categories and some of my picks for Best Bets and Worst Choices. HOW CAN I EAT MORE? I know if I eat more calories, I’ll put on more mass, but I just can’t seem to get the food down. Is there any way to make eating big easier? ANSWER: Yes, by increasing your appetite. One way to do this is to use the ‘cafeteria effect’ and get a broader mix of flavours. You can ingest much more quality food if it’s different from what you just ate. As a result, your bulk-up diet will be much easier to get down if it’s varied. If a bodybuilder eats only chicken breasts, oatmeal, potatoes and cottage cheese, it is very difficult to put on size. Relying heavily on these foods is a better strategy for bodybuilders on diets than for anyone trying to add muscle mass. A second way to increase appetite and bulk up is to eat your favourite bodybuilding foods more often. Of course, it can’t be junk, or it’s more likely to increase the size of your midsection instead of your quads. If you love steak or seafood, build your diets around these bodybuilding staples instead of chicken breasts and canned tuna. Eat pasta instead of brown rice, if that’s what you prefer. And consume these foods frequently and in large portions. Another way to increase appetite is to add flavour to wholesome foods using spices, sauces and seasonings. For example, add teriyaki sauce to a chicken breast (you don’t need much), mustard and a sliced tomato to your steak sandwich, or have your favourite pasta dish with white sauce instead of tomato sauce (cream sauces are usually more calorifically dense than tomato ones). As long as you’re training hard and aren’t prone to excessive bodyfat gain, good food will be put to good use in building muscle mass. You can also try adding tarragon, which reportedly acts as an appetite stimulant. Don’t worry as much about fat and carbs. In order to get down enough calories, you need something that won’t fill you up with a lot of fibre and water. A good way to do that is to go with foods that would normally be off-limits on a fat-loss regime. These include dry starch items such as breads and cereals. In fact, a vital part of bulking up is to lose your fear of carbs and to eat more starches — rice and grains included — especially after or around the time of your workout. Eat more fat — it’s tough to reduce fat consumption and still bulk up, especially if you’re working out and have a high metabolism; it’s just too much food to take down in one day. In fact, we recommend including more healthy fats in your eating plan (good examples are peanut butter and olive oil), especially if you tend to be too restrictive with fats and oils. SHOULD I TAKE GLUTAMINE? I’ve been recommended glutamine as a top bodybuilding supplement, but most of the guys at the gym I go to don’t take it. Why is this? ANSWER: That’s a very good question, and one I often address individually with young bodybuilders. Your question gives me the opportunity to reach many young bodybuilders at once. Glutamine is one of the best supplements — if not the best — in a bodybuilder’s arsenal. In my opinion, many trainers don’t take it because the results are not immediately apparent, as they can be with many other supplements. With creatine, muscles engorge with fluids (although this is not the most important benefit of creatine). With fat burners, there’s often a stimulant effect. Bodybuilders may associate these short-term noticeable results with successful supplementation. Glutamine doesn’t offer any immediately noticeable effects, but its long-term benefits are dramatic. Here are some of them. >> Glutamine aids in recovery and growth. Training causes muscle breakdown, and resting allows for rebuilding and growth. By taking glutamine, which is an amino acid, you provide your body with more of the building blocks necessary for growth. When these aminos are available, your body can recover more quickly, allowing you to train more and harder and thus grow more effectively. >> Glutamine increases muscle-cell volume. This supplement helps your muscle cells fill with water. Increasing the volume of muscle cells provides a strong stimulus for growth; that is, cell volumisation enhances the potential for growth. >> Glutamine enhances digestion. Glutamine is essential for a smooth-running digestive system. When you take glutamine regularly, you’ll become more regular. Glutamine helps your body process and absorb nutrients. Taken over time, glutamine will help you get more bang from your nutrition buck. You’ll also have fewer digestive problems. >> Glutamine boosts immunity. Your immune system is a key component in health. When you overtrain, you overtax your immune system, and you’re much more likely to catch a cold or get the flu. Glutamine supports your immune system, keeping you on track for muscle gains. Those are just some of the most important benefits. To make sure you’re getting all you can from your training and nutrition, take glutamine one to four times a day in 5- to 10-gram dosages. For best results, I recommend supplementing with it at least three times a day. ARE VITAMINS AND MINERALS THAT IMPORTANT? I’m a bodybuilder who eats a healthy diet. Do you think it’s important for me to take vitamin and mineral supplements? ANSWER: In a word, yes. One of the best ways to ensure that you don’t have vitamin or mineral deficiencies is to eat a broad range of foods. Over the course of a week, seek to include dozens of different foods. Many bodybuilders, to their detriment, focus on a few favourite veggies, such as spinach, broccoli or asparagus. These are all good choices, but you need a variety of fruits and vegetables, so add carrots, squash, beets, peas and a host of others. In addition, eat a variety of meats and fish, dairy products and complex carbs. Not only do these foods provide you with the protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats you need for growth, but they also give you a fuller range of nutrients. Even with an excellent diet, however, I’m a firm believer in vitamin and mineral supplementation. A few years ago, many bodybuilders had their blood examined, and almost all were found to have a deficit of magnesium — a mineral that’s often low in athletes. That’s a sign, to me, that all bodybuilders are potentially deficient in some essential vitamin or mineral. Take a multivitamin/ multimineral every day with breakfast to protect against such deficiencies. It is possible that you have no nutritional inadequacies, but even if that’s the case, there’s no downside to taking a multi. First, they’re inexpensive for the range of nutrients they provide. Second, they will boost the amount of nutrients you’re already getting from your diet so that you have additional protection. Third, you run almost no risk of taking in too much of any vitamin or mineral by taking a multi. In other words, you can’t lose, and you can only gain. Look for a well-known brand that provides 100% of the Daily Value (DV) of C, D, E and most of the B-complex vitamins, as well as 100% DV of zinc, iron, copper and chromium. It’s better to spend a little more for betterquality than to cheat yourself and your muscle-building potential. WHAT IS MALTODEXTRIN? I’ve read that it is best to use a protein powder with maltodextrin. Why is this? ANSWER: It’s my belief that no single protein powder is ideal for all bodybuilding situations, just as there isn’t one food you should eat to the exclusion of all others. The best way to make ideal bodybuilding gains is to include a range of food and nutrients and, similarly, the best type of protein product is the one that best suits your needs at a particular time. Maltodextrin is included in many protein powders, and I believe it can be beneficial for bodybuilders in certain situations. Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide, a slow-burning carbohydrate. It slows digestion, which has advantages at certain times. For example, this type of product works well in the offseason when you are less concerned with limiting the amount of total calories you take in. Protein powders with maltodextrin also make better meal replacements than protein powders that contain sugar or that are free of carbs. The maltodextrin carbs function more like a meal of solid food because they are digested more slowly. Protein powders with sugar are ideal postworkout, because they help spike blood sugar and drive protein into freshly trained depleted muscles. Protein powders often contain both maltodextrin and sugar, which is OK for postworkout, but not ideal. Protein powders with sugar substitutes and low to no carbs are best for a bodybuilding diet. These types of powders are also excellent as late-night snacks, because they help provide a steady stream of amino acids without the unwanted carb calories. As you can see, the ideal protein powder depends on your calorific and macronutrient needs, the time of day and the function of that protein drink meal. Regarding maltodextrin, look for a protein powder with a ratio of one gram of protein to between one-half gram and one gram of carbs, primarily from maltodextrin, which may also be identified on protein- powder labels as oat complex, white rice fractions or brown rice fractions. SOMETHING FISHY? What do you think of fish as a protein source for bodybuilders? ANSWER: I definitely recommend fish for bodybuilders. Although sometimes pricier than other protein sources, one advantage of fish is its leanness. For example, you get more protein per calorie from fish than you do from most other protein foods. Most of the fat you get from fish is healthy omega-3, especially if the fish is wild as opposed to farmed. Eating more fish offers bodybuilding and health benefits. It helps protect against strokes and various joint maladies, including arthritis and the grinding inflammatory joint damage that sometimes results from training too heavy for too long. Fish protein is also of unusually high quality, as it has all nine essential amino acids in near-optimal amounts. Fish beats out most other proteins, including those from animal sources such as beef. Although protein quality is often overemphasised, it becomes more relevant for dieting bodybuilders. Vegetarians who eat fish (called pesco-vegetarians) can rely on fish to greatly improve the protein quality of their diets. One way to make fish more cost-effective is to purchase it when it’s on special or to buy from a wholesale discount chain and then freeze it for individual usage. Because carbohydrates help spare protein, you can mix fish with a higher-quality carb source such as brown rice or a yam with chives and low-fat cottage cheese to give you even more protein benefits. HOW SHOULD I TAKE MY AMINO ACIDS? Should I be taking my amino acids together or individually? ANSWER: Spacing out your amino supplementation is preferred, but it’s not practical for bodybuilders who take several supplements on a daily basis. If convenience is an issue, take amino acids together on an empty stomach with plenty of water. To get the most out of them, though, many bodybuilders take individually any aminos that might compete with each other or with other supplements. A good example of this is tyrosine, which is useful for boosting energy and curbing appetite. Tyrosine should be taken by itself or with other thermogenics, but not with other amino acids. The same is true for leucine. It’s the most anabolic of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), so optimise its absorption by taking it by itself or only with other BCAAs. Carnosine, a high-tech dipeptide that may improve strength, is another amino that’s best taken alone. Carnosine gets into your bloodstream in the same way as dipeptides from whey, so the two supplements compete for absorption. To avoid squandering this valuable supplement, take carnosine and whey hydrolysates an hour or more apart. Supplements that compete at the same site should also be taken separately. For example, BCAAs compete with tyrosine and dl-phenylalanine (another amino acid) for entry into the brain’s circulation. Too many BCAAs from capsules or from whey protein and you lose most of the desired effects of the amino acids. Processed carbs do the same thing by raising insulin. Avoid taking BCAAs, tyrosine and dl-phenylalanine together or with carbohydrates, if increasing energy is your main goal. Similar amino acids often compete for entry into muscle cells. For this reason, some bodybuilders prefer taking glutamine by itself instead of with whey protein at particular times of the day, especially in the morning or between meals. Otherwise, glutamine supports gut cells more than muscle cells — this is still beneficial, but less direct. DO I KNOW WHAT I’M REALLY GETTING? Food labels have a lot of information, but the numbers don’t always add up. How do I use them to calculate my macronutrient ratios? ANSWER: You’re right, the numbers don’t always add up, so it’s important for those on a serious bodybuilding diet to learn how to read food labels. Knowing what you’re getting is the first crucial step in getting what you need. It can seem difficult at first, but it’s really not rocket science. Here are the basics to get you started. >> First, look at the total number of servings in the package. Often, there is more than one serving of a food that, by sight, seems to be just one. For instance, according to the label, a small can of tuna contains 21⁄2 servings, yet most bodybuilders wouldn’t even consider it one full portion. Knowing this is critical, because all the other numbers are based on a serving, not on the amount of food in the container. >> Calculate total calories in the serving you plan to eat. If you’re going to eat the whole can of tuna, multiply the calorie count by the number of servings. With the tuna, 60 calories per serving equates to a total of 150 calories (60 x 21⁄2 =150) for the can. If it’s a bulk food such as cereal or oatmeal, where you won’t eat the whole packet, estimate the number of servings you will consume and multiply the calories per serving by that number. >> Protein contains four calories per gram, and fat has nine calories per gram. Knowing that, you can calculate the total number of calories of each in the portion you’re eating. One serving of tuna has about 13 grams (g) of protein and 1⁄2 g fat. So, in a whole can of tuna, you’ll get 13 g protein x 4 (calories per gram) x 21⁄2 (servings), or 130 protein calories. Similarly, 1⁄2 g fat x 9 (calories per gram) x 21⁄2 (servings) equals about 12 fat calories. >> I calculate carbs by using a formula for determining macronutrient ratios. To find your macronutrient ratios, divide macronutrient calories by total calories. Again, using a whole can of tuna as an example, the calculation is as follows. 130 protein calories 150 total calories = 87% calories from protein 12 fat calories 150 total calories = 8% calories from fat I attribute the balance of the calories (5%) to carbohydrates (100% – 87% – 8% = 5%). Often, this method slightly or even significantly overemphasises the amount of calories you take in from carbohydrates, but this better helps you keep your total carbohydrate consumption in check. For instance, I know tuna generally has no carbs in it. But many foods have ‘hidden carbs’ that are not listed on the labels. My technique ensures that you are at least counting any carbs that are present. BEST BETS AND WORST CHOICES VEGETABLES >> BEST BETS: Asparagus, green and red peppers, broccoli, spinach and leafy greens. >> WORST CHOICES: Corn and peas are somewhat starchy, and they should be eaten in moderation. Carrots provide good nutrients, but they are also high in starchy carbs. Eat these as frequently as desired, cooked or raw, but in moderate quantities. FRUITS >> BEST BETS: Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and oranges. >> WORST CHOICES: Grapes, bananas and watermelon. What they offer in nutrients or fibre doesn’t offset the carbs these fruits contain. >> WORST CHOICES: Fruit juice. Virtually all fruit juices are high in sugar relative to their nutritional value and should be avoided. MEAT >> BEST BETS: Lean beef, skinless chicken breast and fish. Fish, regardless of whether it’s lean or fatty, is an excellent bodybuilding choice because it contains healthy and necessary fats. >> WORST CHOICES: Minced beef and dark-meat chicken with skin. These meats contain far more saturated fat than the lean counterparts listed in Best Bets. GRAINS >> BEST BETS: Oatmeal, brown rice and granary bread. >> WORST CHOICES: White rice, pasta and white bread. These carbs are mostly processed, and they are much lower in nutrients and fibre than the Best Bets. M&F This article is for information purposes only. Weider Publishing Ltd does not accept liability for the effect of reported supplements or products, legal or illegal. It is the responsibility of the individual to abide by the dosage allowances specific to their country of residence. Always consult a doctor before commencing supplementation or changing dosage.

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