26.Bodybuilding nutrition basics… A bodybuilding diet plan for the early stages 2 – Bodybuilding

It is also important to understand that, while there are many extremely popular ‘diet plans’ such as the South Beach diet, the Atkins diet and more recently, the Jenny Craig diet, a diet for activity (or perhaps more accurately, extreme activity in the case of bodybuilding) is significantly different because while all of these diets focus on reducing fat, none of them are particularly focused on building muscle mass.

Your diet for bodybuilding is likely to be far less strict about what you can and cannot eat, but much broader and all-encompassing than any of these weight-loss-only diet plans.

Remember that as a bodybuilder, someone who works out on a regular basis as a part of a preplanned program of muscle building, you cannot afford to be tired or lethargic, whereas it is an unfortunate fact that diet plans which focus only on weight loss can often leave you feeling this way.

Hence, the basis of your body building diet should be focused on the following characteristics and ideas:

• Eat plenty of green vegetables and fresh fruit, while including other essential foods such as whole grains, nuts, pulses, beans and seeds. The odd portion of occasional lean meat is acceptable, while fish, eggs and low-fat dairy products should also be included in your daily eating regime.

• Mono-saturated and polyunsaturated oil products should be included, while saturated fats such as those found in spreads, margarine and in most deep-fried foods should be avoided.

• You should limit your intake of alcohol, cholesterol, salt and any foods or drinks that contain non-natural or added sugar. For instance, while fruit juices which contain natural sugars are acceptable, soda and other similar soft drinks that are fortified with additional sugar should be avoided.

• Do not be tempted by apparently low-sugar soft drinks where the sugar has been replaced with artificial sweeteners. Besides the fact that many artificial sweeteners are of questionable safety, they are generally manufactured from various forms of chemical based solutions, some of which may appear on various banned substance lists.

• Drink plenty of water. For the average person who is ‘dieting’ (i.e. trying to lose weight), the normal recommendation is for a minimum of eight glasses of water a day, but given that a significant part of your body building efforts is going to be focused on training and exercise, you should ‘up’ this minimum daily requirement as necessary. Remember that it is almost physically impossible to drink too much water (it is just about possible to damage yourself by trying to drink many, many liters of water at the same sitting, but why would you do this?), so drinking as much water as you want makes a great deal of sense.

Once again, the perfect diet for you as in individual bodybuilder will depend upon your primary objective as a bodybuilder, and your current physical condition as well.