Muscle Builder

Protein is known to be a best muscle builder:
Protein is made of amino acids. Amino acids are the basic building blocks of muscle. Therefore, protein is an essential ingredient for muscle building. You can't build muscle without it! You will want to take in about 1-2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight throughout the day. So an average person who weighs 150 lbs would want to consume between 150 and 300 grams of protein in a day. Protein shakes and bars are convenient and provide high quality protein.
There are several forms of protein including: Whey, Soy, Egg, and Casein. So which kind is best? Well that depends on how and when you want to use them.

Whey - Basically, whey protein is awesome for post-workout supplementation because that's the time when your body needs protein the most, and whey is digested very quickly (about 30 minutes).

Casein - Casein, on the other hand, is digested very slowly (over 2 - 7 hours). This means it's great to use a protein supplement with casein before bed because the longest time your body goes without protein is during the night while you are sleeping.

Egg - Egg protein (albumen) digests at a medium pace (1.5-3 hours) so it's a good anytime protein to provide a good sustained release of aminos to the body.

Soy - Soy protein is the vegetarian's friend because it's one of the only complete protein sources derived from plants. Soy is a good overall protein, although it's not as effective in terms of absorbtion as whey or egg albumen. Additionally, soy has many recognized health benefits for women.

Blends - Either protein supplements are straight whey, soy, egg, or casein; or they are a combination of any or all of these kinds of proteins. What can a blend of proteins offer that a straight protein cannot? Basically, different rates of digestion. This means you can take a blended protein any time to get quick, medium, and prolonged absorption of protein.

Low Carb - Of the many protein supplements, the two other main categories are weight gainers and low carb protein shakes and bars. These two are on opposite spectrums of each other. Yep, you guessed it low carb protein shakes are good for those dieting or trying to lose or maintain weight.

Weight Gainer - Weight gainers are high calorie protein products that are great for people who are looking to bulk up. If you are having trouble gaining weight, taking in extra high quality calories will usually do the trick.

Essentials for Bodybuilding diet

Diet and Nutrtional plan:
=> Diet is the single most important part of muscle building. Yes, there are many other important factors to consider but none of them are as important at the correct diet and nutrition plan. Your training may be perfect, but without the correct fuel to feed your muscles to grow you will have little progress.
Most people that are new to weight training and bulking up get very confused when confronted with all the information that’s available in magazines, at the gym and online. In this article I am really going to simplify things for you. A good nutrition and diet plan for muscle building is not rocket science and it definitely does not have to be complicated.

3 main components that make up your diet:
Ok, so lets get started by showing you the 3 main components of a good muscle building diet and what role they play in helping you bulk up.

=> Protein
Ah protein, what would we do without it? We wouldn’t grow that’s for sure! Apart from water, protein is the most plentiful substance in the body. Protein is responsible for building, repairing and maintaining muscle tissue. Protein is also the body’s second resource for energy after carbohydrates. Put simply, without protein we would wither away to skin and bone. When it comes to muscle building, your body requires an increased about of protein to repair the muscle your break down at the gym.

=> Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are your body’s primary source of energy. There are two types of carbohydrates, simple and complex. Simple carbs are found in foods like sugar and fruit and will give you a quick burst of energy by raising blood sugar levels. Complex carbs are found in whole grains like brown bread, rice and potatoes. Complex carbs are important because they provide the long lasting fuel you need to train hard. If you don’t eat enough complex carbs in your muscle building diet your body will turn to its next source of energy, protein (which you don’t want!).


=> Fats
Fats are also a vital part of your diet, but must be consumed in the correct amounts. The most important fact you need to know about fats is there are two types. First, there are “good fats”. These fats are found in foods like olive oil, fish and nuts. Second, there are “bad fats”. These fats are saturated fats and trans fats. These fats are mainly from foods like meat, eggs and vegetable oil. You should aim to cut down bad fats in your diet and focus on eating the right amount of good fats.

So now you know the 3 main components that your muscle building diet will comprise of, now we need to look at how much you need to get on a daily basis for optimum muscle growth. A couple of points that need to be noted before we continue.
First, the best way to calculate the amount of protein, carbs and fat you need in your diet is to use your body weight. For the purpose of this article I am going to use a 200 pound man. Second, these figures are only a guide and intended to be used if muscle building is your goal. Like I say in all my articles, you will get the best results from experimenting with what works for you and your body type.

The basic amounts of protein, fat and carbs.
Like many aspects of training to build muscle, these figures are arguable. Some may agree, other may disagree, but these figures are good for a guide and have worked for me. So here is a basic guide on what you should be aiming for on a daily basis:

1. Protein: 1 – 1.6 grams per pound of bodyweight .
2. Carbs: 2.5 grams per pound of bodyweight .
3. Fats: 0.25 grams per pound of bodyweight .

So let’s take an example of a 200 pound man looking to build muscle. Using the figures above, he would have to eat 200-300 grams of protein, 500 grams of carbohydrates and 50 grams of fat per day.

So what does this mean in calories?
Here are the conversions of grams to calories for protein, carbs and fats.

* Protein – 4 calories per gram
* Carbohydrates – 4 calories per gram
* Fat – 9 calories per gram

So back to 200 pound man, he would have a daily intake of 3650 calories. This figure is just about spot on for a man of this size looking to bulk up.

When you should be eating.
=> When you eat is as important as what you eat. It’s important to get out of the “3 meals per day” mentality. Preferably you would eat 5-8 meals per day at 2 to 3 hour intervals. I know this is not possible for most people because of work, school etc but you should try to eat as many small meals as possible. If bodybuilding king Ronnie Coleman can work a full time job and eat a good muscle building diet then so can you!
Ideally, every one of your small meals should contain the right amount of protein, carbs and fat. It’s easy to work out how much you need from each meal. Just work out the totals and divide it by the number of meals you eat per day. So let’s say my 200 pound man has time in the day for 6 meals. Each meal would need to contain about 33-50 grams of protein, 80-85 grams of carbs and 8 grams of fat.
You should try to eat 1 meal about 1 hour prior to training (energy for your workout) and 1 meal after training (nutrients for muscle repair).

For guys with a thin build.
If you’ve got a naturally thin build and fast metabolism I would advise you to add more carbohydrates to your diet for extra calories. I am naturally a true ectomorph with a thin build and rocketing metabolism. While this has its good points (like burning fat), it means I have to eat more calories in build muscle. If you have this body type you should literally eat as much carbs as you can.

Easy, isn’t it!
So that’s basically it. That is how you plan your muscle building diet, the simple way.

Ronnie's Body building Diet Plan

A Monotonous Diet:
Besides the weight-training, Mr. Coleman each day completes 45 minutes to an hour of treadmill walking, his cardiovascular exercise. Then, 12 weeks before a major competition, he adds the other key elements to his regimen: a second round of cardio exercise and a diet that is far more about fueling than it is about dining.
The purpose is to whittle the body down to the barest minimum of fat and water content. When he starts to diet, Mr. Coleman usually weighs about 320 pounds, with an estimated 8% of it body fat -- still less than half of what's normal for an adult male. If all goes as planned, he'll drop 60 pounds over the 12 weeks.
The basic daily menu plan -- consumed in six meals -- features a huge quantity of lean meats (up to 5 pounds) and liquids (around 2 gallons); a moderate amount of starchy carbohydrates, such as rice and potatoes; and vitamin and mineral supplements to fill in the nutritional gaps.
On;y the most disciplined athletes can endure the monotony of the diet, says Mr. Coleman's nutritionist, Chad Nicholls. "Halfway through this diet, I can guarantee you'll be sitting there watching television, and the only thing you'll notice are the food commercials," says Mr. Nicholls, who lives in Springfield, Mo., and specializes in sports nutrition.
Mr. Coleman admits to having cravings -- doughnuts and cheesecake are two favorites -- while he's on the diet, but he neither cheats nor complains.
Mr. Coleman began working out with Mr. Nicholls in anticipation of the 1998 Mr. Olympia competition. In his six years as a pro, the bodybuilder had finished no higher than sixth in the event, but he figured the '98 contest might offer him at least a shot at the elite top five. The reason: Dorian Yates, the man who had had a virtual lock on the title for six years, had decided to retire, a development that held the potential of a complete rescrambling of the pecking order.
But McGough confirms that Mr. Coleman wasn't on anyone's list to take the title. "Most Mr. Olympias are prodigies," he says. "If they're great, they come through very quickly. Ronnie came through slowly, bit by bit. It was a real study in perseverance."
Mr. Coleman's nemesis was no different than any other bodybuilder's -- water retention that tends to make muscles look soft. To counter the tendency, Mr. Nicholls recalibrated Mr. Coleman's diet, hoping his body would respond to various additions and subtractions of proteins, carbs, and fluids over time.
"It's really a matter of trial and error," the nutritionist says. "But we got lucky."

Diet Plan:
Over the years Ronnie have received numerous questions about how to add mass to one's frame. To put on mass can be a painstaking task for some. I have found that the following things can help a great deal with adding mass to the frame.
Eat, eat and eat some more
To add strength and mass, try to consume four to six meals a day. Choose from a variety of food groups at mealtime. Try to include lots of potatoes, rice, pasta, fruits and vegetables


Make sure you are eating enough. A low fat diet and avoiding refined foods are good, but it won't help you build mass. On the same note you don't want to eat a high fat diet all the time. Fat provides additional calories, the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K and raw materials for important hormones that stimulate muscle growth.
Monitor the amount of mass you are gaining. Measure your body parts and weigh every week to see if you are going in the right direction.
Lastly, continue to train hard. And remember gaining mass won't happen overnight.

Supplement Fundamentals of Ronnie:
* My style of heavy training tears down my muscles and leave me very more, but vitamins and supplements helps a great deal in reducing recovery time and restoring my mucsles to peak condition. Multivitamins and minerals are my favourite supplements, especially vitamin C and vitamin E. Amino acids are very helpful and i'm a great fan of whey protien isolate. I also take creatine and ghitamine and i highly recommend creatine that has ghitamine in it.

Now that i have told you what assists in muscle growth, let me go on record as saying supplements are properly named. They assists your training and whole nutition program. They are not intended to replace them.

* Training is the most important thing. The best nutrtion and supplemention programs cannot build muscle without training. Conversely, muscle can be built by training alone (although, for optimum reults, it must be coordinated with nutritions and supplementations). It's those hard and heavy workouts that turn your meals into muscle. You will grow if you establish a training schedule of atleast four days a week, using mostly free weights and basic movements , and try to increase your strength every time you go to the gym.

The most important aspects of training are consistency and intensity. Looking back, I (Ronnie) can see that I made the most progress when i settled down to workouts that concentrated on basic excercise for each bodypart, then stayed with those routines for years in end. In each workout, I tried to increase the poundage. I was lifting by increasing my intensity.

At the same time, I tried to supply my body with all of the protein it could assimilate so that the protein could then be hammered into solid muscle by training. You should consume at least one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily, I also tried feed myself enough carbohydrates and fat to sustain my energy for these high-intensity workouts without leaving an excess of calories to be deposited as fat. Because each person metabolism is different, it took time to arrive at my ideal protein, carb and fat proportions, but once there, I found it almost instinctive to maintain a sensible daily menu. Now, I have five meals a day, sometimes six, all fairly evenly spaced.

Every one of my meals contains protein and of course, carbs. Some of my protein is in the form of supplement shakes, but Ialso make sure I eat chicken and steak every day. In fact, meals two through five always contain chicken or steak. That's the same thing i eat when I'm getting ready for a contest: chicken and steak all the way through, all year.

For carbohydrates i stay with potatoes and rice. For breakfast though, I like grits- it's boiled hulled corns, so it has lot more flavor than most carb sources.

Supplements can be of great value , especially to a bodybulider with a high-intensity training program. If your diet is too strict, you could fall into nutrient deficit, even if you are eating six or more meals a day. In such case, supplements can fill that void. That does not mean, however, that can you can rely solely on supplements. When you finally decide to take them, do so judiclously, and always select the high quality supplement you can find