What is a Good Diet for Training Hard?

The older I get the more I hear about how important diet is. Young guys eat any old junk and then train hard in the gym blasting their muscles and it all works out good. When you start to get a bit older or if you are beginning to train with a really flabby out of shape body then diet will have a greater importance. Not to say that a good diet can't help young people too of course. Let's talk about a good diet for going from nothing to muscle in a short time. One of the most important things to remember about getting a fast start from zero is that to drop fat and gain muscle you have to eat really often. Six meals a day is the minimum.

Eat frequently. Do not go more than 3 hours without a meal. What should you eat and how much? Well, don't eat any complex carbohydrates soon before hitting the sack. Lay off of them at about 5 for a 10 or 11 bedtime. Gobble up a gram of protein for each pound of your weight daily, but break it up so you never have more than about 75 grams in one meal. Remember you will be eating 7 or 8 meals so you have a lot of opportunities to get those proteins. No rush!

Carbs are your main fuel source. If you don't have enough carbs then your body will start to break down muscle to get energy, and we don't want that. But if you take in too many carbs, they will be converted into fat. So regulate your carb intake to just provide enough energy and not a shred more or less.There are basically three categories of carbs. It is a good idea to know them.

• Sugar: These are digested and converted into available energy really fast, good for a short term fuel boost.
• Long Chain Carbs: These are more difficult for the body to break down, and give you a slow release of energy throughout the day.  An example is oatmeal.
• Roughage: This stuff is pretty much indigestible and just goes snowplowing through your system scraping it clean.  It gives you no energy though.

Now about proteins. While carbs are the fuel your body runs on, proteins are like the concrete your muscles are build out of. Protein is a muscle structural material. If you don't have enough protein, you can't build muscle. Period. Because there is nothing to make it out of. And if you are undersupplied with protein your existing muscle cannot be repaired if it suffers damage either. The most important thing about protein is to get it from a lot of different sources. That is because each source has a different breakdown of amino acids, and you need all of the different ones.

When it comes to fat, avoid the saturated fat. These slippery little buggers will just coat up everything in your body. They are found mainly in fatty meat. The unsaturated fat that comes from vegetable sources is much more fluid and is needed to help with housekeeping in your body. Don't worry about having it in your diet. Get unsaturated fat for example from avocados.

And finally make sure you are drinking water. Drink as much as you can whenever you can. It can't hurt you and it helps out with all sorts of body housekeeping!

So when you think about training hard and blasting your muscles, don't forget to help them grow by eating a good diet!

Guest post by Bryce.