If the question is asked - what do you need in your diet to gain muscle and at the same time, lose fat, then the answer is almost always the same. Protein!
The fact is that protein consumption can add muscle bulk. Protein consumption also means you reduce your appetite, thus no need to stack up on the calories.
In reality however, protein is only one part of the puzzle. A diet for weight lifters and people in general begs a comprehensive intake of more than just a lot of protein.
According to scientific studies, the level of testosterone in men within the western world has dropped by 20% in the last 20 years.
Here are some nutritional basics you should understand in order to craft a hormonal balance that is worthy of a true alpha status male.
Carbohydrates
Carbs are very often the focus for diets, particularly the fat-loss diets. Ever since Doctor Atkins decided that we should not indulge in eating doughnuts any longer, carbs have taken a huge beating. Before Mr Atkins got involved, doughnuts were an accepted form of nutrition, but it had to be the reduced fat type. So, if we decided to partake in the lower fat version, we felt a lot better about ourselves.
Doughnuts aside, carbs tend to get a bad rap - much worse than they deserve. They come to us in a variety of forms - some are not so good, where others are much more beneficial.
The bad carbs come in the form of highly processed foods. In reality, they should not really be considered as foods, other than the fact that they are edible. For some people, they are delicious, but fact of the matter is that they've undergone some crazy scientific process.
Obviously, if you process the good stuff out of our food, then there's a point where it's not healthy any longer.
Getting down to basics, carbohydrates are merely a collection of sugar molecules. Once consumed, your body attempts to break this down into a source of fuel. Fiber, sugars, and starches are all basic forms of carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are made up from two main types: simple as well as complex. There is another type, and that is fibrous carbs. Fibrous carbs come from green vegetables such as cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cucumber, peppers, and more besides. Nevertheless, for this discussion, we will not focus on fibrous carbohydrates.
Simple Carbs
What are simple carbs? Well, simple carbs include foods such as syrup, sweetened soda, table sugar. In an ideal world, it's best to avoid these types of carbs, other than on the "cheat" days whereby some may indulge themselves.
This type of carb is the "bad" carb that the fitness pros talk about on a regular basis. Included on this list are things like beer, cookies, puppies, snuggles, cakes, candy...
So, for most people, the very idea of fun eating is now off-limits.
So what is allowed, you may be wondering?
Complex carbohydrates such as apples, peas, oatmeal.
A Slightly-More "Complex' Point of View
For a long while most people considered that complex carbs were far better, but now we've changed over to believing that simple carbs are often the ones to fit the bill.
But it's not so much about healthy hormones and healthy metabolism that matters. It is about how quickly the body breaks the carbs down and also about how much the carb intake will spike your blood's glucose levels.
A more sophisticated way to qualify carbohydrate quality is by using the glycemic index (GI).
What the GI does is that it attempts to classify foods in terms of how fast they break down and also by how high they boost sugar levels within the blood.
For some time, people would argue that you could maintain insulin levels at a lower rate even if you eat a lot of carbs.
Well, for sure, this in some ways is true, the fact remains that there will not be too much difference to the size of your waistline if you stick to eating French fries instead of potatoes.
Both low-carb diets as well as low-GI diets are not going to provide a magic pill in order to lose weight. The idea though is that you eat the right amount of the "right" foods, in order to fuel your metabolism.
What's more however, you do need to consume carbohydrates, regardless of what some dieting gurus will tell you. If you don't consume carbs then your body will turn to breaking down muscle tissue in order to fuel your energy needs.
As a general rule, the ideal is to avoid simple carbs and high-GI foods.
The worst thing to do is to eat carbs on their own. Eating carbs with protein will slow down the rate of digestion of the carbs, and also lowers the glycemic or insulin response, as well as off-setting a number of the negative connotations that comes with the consumption of too many carbohydrates.
Fats
For a very long time, fats have been blamed for every food-related health problem you can think of. For almost 20 years in recent times, low-fat was regarded as being healthy. It's how many people determine if food is safe or not - if it's low fat, then it surely has to be good for you. Or, if there's no saturated fat content, then that's about okay.
Oddly enough, within North America, as the word spread around about the "fact" that fats were bad for us, and as the consumption of fats decreased drastically, the rates of obesity increased.
There's no single reason to be piling the blame on here, but there are some reasons that do stand out. Higher frequency of snacks and meals. Larger food portions. Too much sugar consumption - regularly in the form of "low fat" foods and drinks.
What's the bottom line though?
Fat is a necessary part of our diet, and it's very possible that you are not consuming enough fats. Fat in general is good! It's good for the heart, it's good for testosterone production, and it's also good for building muscle.
But these things aside, fat also plays a very important role in your overall body functions. It coats the nerve tissues, thereby making them more "productive" and efficient. Fat also serves as a substrate for a group of hormones termed as "eicosanoids". Eicosanoids help to regulate functions such as blood pressure, blood clotting, and inflammation. Fat is a requirement for basic human physiology, so it's a most thoroughly necessary constituent of our daily dietary needs!
What's more however, not all fats are the same. So here's some info about the different types of fats, and why they should be a part of your diet, with the exception of one - the trans fats.
Good Fat - Monounsaturated Fat
Monounsaturated fats are to be found in nuts like almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, and also in high-fat fruits like avocados. It's also found in olive oil.
This type of fat helps to raise good cholesterol while lowering the levels of bad cholesterol. They're said to also be beneficial in helping to lessen weight gain.
Good Fat - Polyunsaturated Fat
Similar to monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated help to fight against bad cholesterol. They can be found in foods like sunflower oil, various seeds, fish oil, and salmon. Polyunsaturated fats include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are also termed as essential fatty acids, or EFA's.
EFA's have to be ingested because our bodies are unable to manufacture them. The body requires these nutrients in order to remain healthy and function optimally.
Good Fat - Saturated Fat
Saturated fats are one of the most misunderstood substances that we consume. And this is partly because a number of studies linked saturated fat to heart disease.
Nevertheless, in more recent times, it's been concluded that the findings of those early studies were in fact flawed and there is no link between heart disease and saturated fats.
There are several more recent studies conducted on hunter-gatherer tribes that gained 50-70 percent of their daily diets from saturated fats, but yet they did not suffer any health issues. Oddly enough, when the original studies were conducted, these tribes people were totally ignored.
After a 20-year review, the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard - Walter Willett, publicly claimed that saturated fats have no link to heart disease and are not responsible for the high rates of obesity currently seen in North America and beyond.
Saturated fats are one of the very best sources of energy that your body can get, and that is why carbohydrates are stored naturally in the form of saturated fats.
Research has shown that foods that are higher in saturated fats are often the ones that are actually lower in total calories. And what's more, saturated fats have the ability to boost testosterone levels.
So, assuming that you are not vegetarian or vegan, you should make sure you eat lots of red meat, dairy products, as well as eggs in order to get enough saturated fats in your diet.
Bad Fat -Trans Fats
Trans fats are the only bad fat available for consumption. They are in fact one of the worst types of food that can be consumed. They are found in foods such as potato chips, French fries, in addition to a variety of other fried foods.
You will find trace amounts of trans fats in meats and some other foods - they occur naturally. However, most trans fats to be found are not naturally occurring at all. They are man-made so to speak, and they are manufactured through a process called hydrogenation. What happens is that a good monounsaturated fat, in the form of liquid oil, is packed full with hydrogen atoms, and thus the original oil is converted to a solid fat.
It possesses a high melting point as well as a smooth texture, and may be reused over and over in the deep-fat frying process. And this is what makes it an ideal product for the food industry.
So, the main concept behind trans fats is that they are over-processed foods which offer the vendor and consumer an oil that has a long shelf-life. In reality, you should try to avoid these oils as much as you possibly can. The health risks far outweigh any benefits.
Nevertheless, if you must partake in consuming junk food, then so be it. After all, most of us like the occasional binge on our junk food. And in which case, it's best to also make sure that overall your diet is good, and that you also achieve a good amount of regular exercise.
Protein The Alpha-Macro
Both fats and carbohydrates have been rated as number one and number two in terms of the public enemy, whereas protein has enjoyed a slow and steady rise up the charts and now sits prominently right at the very top.
Definitely a favorite among bodybuilders, and pretty much everyone who is involved in fitness and health in some way, protein is used within the body to repair damaged tissue - muscle, hair, teeth, bone. It has other functions too of course - you can think of it as mortar for which to lay bricks upon - a foundation, in a sense. Without protein, your body will begin to break down.
Protein is also good in aiding fat loss and building muscle. It helps to create an anabolic hormonal environment, and provides "materials" in order to build muscle bulk.
Protein is made from amino acids. From the 22 standard amino acids, only nine can be obtained through the consumption of food, and the body manufactures the remaining 13. The ones that have to be ingested are called "essential amino acids", and these include:
Threonin
Methionine
Valine
Leucine
Tryptophan
Lysine
Phenylalanine
Isoleucine
Histidine
A whole or complete protein will contain some amount of each of these essential amino acids, whereas an incomplete protein lacks one or perhaps more essential amino acids.
Amino acids play another role - they help with the creation of hormones within the body. These hormones aid in the regulation of blood pressure as well as blood sugar levels, which is, in turn, responsible for muscular growth and metabolic rate. Thus, proteins are immensely important, particularly those to be found in eggs, cheese, fish, red meat, and poultry.
In Conclusion
As something of a brief conclusion, do you, if you read through this article, sense some sort of trend going on here? Processed foods that are sold with the words "healthy" or "natural" printed on the side of the packaging - well, it's pretty much downright lies being told here!
Getting back to nature is the way that we should proceed, so it's far better to build your diet (and your health) around nature's own food - whole foods that are unprocessed. Although, the addition of something like whey-protein is not such a bad thing either.
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