Nutrition For The Bodybuilder

There’s a fine line between dieting for weight loss and building a good physique. Some bodybuilders have reverse anorexia and will compromise the quality of food just to get their desired daily calorie intake in the hope it will pack on the muscle. It’s not that easy and is one of the many misconceptions that dominate the thinking of a typical bodybuilder, especially the beginner. Calories are not just calories; there are bad calories and good calories and even the good calories need to be properly balanced for best results. The same diet can have an effect on different people in different ways, each and every one of us is unique in the ability to digest and assimilate nutrients. Our individual genetic make up determines this.

Bodybuilding magazines are guilty of publishing diets with the inclusion of stacks of food supplements for building muscle and stripping the fat. Sometimes you have to look hard to see food on the list because there are so many recommended shakes and tablets for this and for that. Nutrients from natural food take a back seat with the recommendations you see in these mainstream magazines.

The bodybuilding-publishing world gets the reader to believe that certain supplements are essential and the most important aspect of a bodybuilder’s daily nutritional intake. These days there are food supplements crafted to any goal. It’s not hard to realise there is a hidden agenda to these magazines; they are all trying to sell something. If the magazine isn’t financially connected to the food supplements recommended you could bet they need the advertising revenue to stay afloat.

The quality of nutrition will determine the speed of progress and the amount of results you achieve with bodybuilding. Lifting weights doesn’t and can’t turn a bad food into a good food. It’s impossible to reverse the effects of a bad diet with exercise. It is also impossible to cancel out the bad effects of poor nutrition with food supplements. Food supplements are designed to supplement the diet and not take over it. A few of the top brands can be beneficial for convenience and nothing much more. A closer look at these supplements and you would find a list of cheap processed ingredients mixed with artificial sweeteners. My recommendation is no more than 10% of your daily diet should be from food supplements. Food from organic and free-range sources is far more superior then powdered and tablet concoctions.