- How much protein is too much protein?
You eat lots of protein, right?
I mean, you hear from everybody that to gain muscle, you need to eat a lot of lean protein.
Even if you aren’t trying to gain muscle, you still hear how important protein is.
And we’ve written about it a ton here, here, and here.
The basic rule I use: if you are fat, eat at least 1 gram of protein a day per lean body mass (your total weight minus your fat weight). If you are not fat, then eat about 1 gram per total bodyweight. And this assumes you are lifting at least 2x a week.
So for the average man, this is at least 180 grams a day. (more…)
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Continue reading about How Much Protein Is Too Much Protein?
There are many articles on this site dealing with food – some of our most popular deal with junk food here and here.
Others deal with protein.
And of course, we recently dealt with eating for muscle gain vs eating for fat loss.
But one question that gets asked time after time is what to eat before/after your workouts in order to maximize muscle gain without adding fat.
I’m going to jump right into my recommendations and save the explanations for the end – I’m betting some of you don’t care about the explanations as much as the action plan!
Pre and Post Workout Eating Guidelines
Important preamble: except for #4, these guidelines apply to all of you, whether you are trying to gain mass, lose fat, or just maintain. No matter who you are, you should do about the same thing with your eating in the window before/during/after your lifting workouts. The main difference between gaining and losing overall bodyweight is not different overall eating plans. The difference comes down to total weekly calories. More on that here.
1. Never train on an empty stomach. I’m talking about weight training here (there are mixed reports of doing cardio in (more…)
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About a week ago, I offered to our email subscribers an open Q&A session: “ask your questions and I’ll try to get them answered”. The asking is something we only offer the email list, but RSS subscribers can still see the answers. As usual we had tons of questions. I’m posting most of them here – the rest will await a future post. Note: Please read our disclaimers at the bottom of this page – what I write is for information purposes only and you should always seek professional, licensed advice before starting any exercise program. If you have more questions, send them through http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/contact/ . On to the Q&A!
1) Question – Tyson asks: “How about doing speed runs or short speed bursts 5 times a week? Do you think that would greatly encourage fat loss? Or should i stick to doing speed bursts 1-2 times a week for fat loss?“
Answer: My answer for the typical person is no more than two HIIT (high intensity interval training) sessions a week. Note that I’m saying HIIT, not your typical interval training. I’m not sure which you mean when you say “speed runs”. HIIT is so intense that unless you are a pro athlete, you can’t last for more than about 10 minutes if you are doing it right. Tabata intervals are an example of HIIT (you go for 20 seconds AS INTENSELY AS YOU CAN – REALLY HARD, then take a 10 second break, then repeat, for a total of about 4 minutes). Most people can only do Tabata for about 4 or 5 minutes before feeling like vomiting. Myself included. I only do that once a week at most and only at certain points in the year.
Continue reading about Answers To Your Lean Muscle Questions – 4-21-09
Editor’s note – There is so much monthly science news when it comes to muscle fitness, that it’s probably hard for you to keep up. In these occasional posts, I’ll summarize various items of research in the past 90 days or so. I’ll cite the official reports so that the hard-core of you can read the science for yourself. But for the rest of you, these summaries should save you some time…
I Love This One – Cardio Plus Weight Training = Healthy Blood Vessels
To start us off, I’m actually pulling two studies from 2006 and 2007 that I just found. Many studies have shown that weight training/resistance training increases the stiffness of blood vessels (the theory is that they stiffen in response to the high pressure involved in weight training). But in Journal of Hypertension, Volume 24 – Issue 9 – p 1753-1759 researchers found that resistance training, compared to sedentary or combination resistance and cardio training, had about 20% more stiffening of arteries over a 4 month period. Conclusion: cardio training will offset the stiffness induced by weight training. And we’re talking about steady state cardio (the kind that a lot of modern day fitness gurus are pooh-poohing).
So I dug deeper and found that in J Appl Physiol 103: 1655-1661 Japanese researchers took 33 young healthy people (men and women) and broke them into groups. Some ran BEFORE weight training and some ran AFTER. And the only ones who saw the benefit of offsetting the resistance-training-induced-blood-vessel-stiffening were the ones who ran AFTER. I’ve said many times that
- Cardio is good! especially when combined with weight training; and
- Do your weight training first!
Now I have some science to back that up! You know I recommend both The Truth About Six Pack Abs and Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. Well, in this regard, Tom’s Burn the Fat (more…)
Continue reading about Science News For Building Lean Muscle – April 18 2009
Well, that headline might be a little sensational. But they are damn good tasting, can be made in under 5 minutes, and are quite healthy. Trust me – these are simple to make and I’ve got the recipe and tricks to make them fast (and even pictures to go with the instructions!) at the end of this post. In contrast to their simplicity, this turned into a long post! Last autumn I was addicted to protein bars. I loved Protein Plus from Powerbar, and Clif Builders from ClifBar. But I would go for anything that had a lot of protein and tasted good. I’d have one before, and one after, every workout (I wasn’t taking protein shakes). (more…)
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A week ago, I offered to our subscribers an open Q&A session: “ask your questions and I’ll try to get them answered”. I’m happy to say we had ton’s of questions. I’m posting 11 of them here – the rest will await a future post. If you have more questions, send them through http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/contact/ On to the Q&A!
1) Question – John asks: “I am 5’5″ at 125 lbs. My body fat % is 10% and my goal is to increase my muscle mass by 10 lbs (especially pecs) and get ripped (for the abs). I do full body workout with weights 3x every (more…)
Continue reading about Answers To Your Lean Muscle Questions – 2-16-09
When it comes to losing fat and building muscle, eating less food is not the answer to getting lean and cut. Others will try to tell you that losing excess fat is simply a matter of using more calories than you eat. What they don’t tell you is that eating less will slow your metabolism.
Part of the secret to eating the right amounts of food while keeping your fat levels in check is to use the thermic effect of food to your advantage.
The thermic effect (also referred to as specific dynamic action) is the incremental energy requirement above your resting metabolic rate used due to the cost of digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested food.
Translation: Some of the foods you eat speed up your metabolism more than other foods.
You’ll find it much easier to reduce your fat levels if you consume plenty of foods with a higher thermic effect. Proteins tend to have a much higher thermic effect than other types of foods.
Calculating the thermic effect: A general guideline used by some to calculate the thermic effect of the foods you eat is to take your total calorie consumption and multiply that (more…)
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Ever heard somebody say that you better watch what you eat? Watching what you eat is very important, but you’ll also need to pay attention to what you’re not eating if you want to keep muscle on your body.
I’m sure you’ve already heard that you need to eat plenty of protein to keep your body in good shape and build muscle, so I probably don’t need to repeat that to you.
But if you’re wondering how much protein you should get with each meal, when to eat it, and how to eat it… I might be able to help you out there.
Protein Every 3 Hours
First, let’s talk about the when and the why. Imagine, for a moment, that your body is a factory. This small factory works each day to produce the materials that it needs to keep its own walls and floor in good shape.
Imagine that the bricks in the factory walls are constantly wearing out, so a conveyor belt is needed to bring new materials into the factory. This is pretty similar to what’s going on inside your body as your cells are constantly being replaced. Just as the bricks in the factory wall need to be replaced, your body needs protein to rebuild it’s cells.
Your body is good at storing all those excess calories that you eat as fat cells, but protein isn’t really stored in your body for long periods of time. Protein only stays in your body for about 3 hours.
So, going along with the conveyor belt analogy, if more bricks end up on the conveyor belt than are really needed, they just fall off the end of the conveyor belt and are swept away to another place. They aren’t stored or used to build the walls. If you eat too much protein, it isn’t stored for later. (more…)
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