Diet Fundamentals: Fats

Fats are the most energy-dense of the three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats). Fats are made up of the same elements as carbohydrates - carbon, hydrogen and oxygen - but the way the atoms are linked together is different. (Oils, by the way, are simply fats that are liquid rather than solid at room temperature). Fats, which can be found in both plants and animals, are insoluble in water. They are grouped in three categories: simple fats (triglycerides), compound fats (phospholids, glucolipids, lipoporoteins), and derived fats (cholesterol).

Fats in the body serve three basic functions:

1. They provide the major source of stored energy (body fat)


2. They serve to cushion and protect the major organs


3. They act as an insulator, preserving body heat and protecting against excessive cold.
   

Fat is the most calorie-dense of any nutrient. A pound of fat contains about 4,000 calories, as opposed to 1,800 calories stored in a pound of protein or carbohydrate. When you exercise, assuming you stay within your aerobic capacity (not getting out of breath), the body uses fats and carbohydrates for energy on about a 50-50 basis. But the longer you continue steady exercise, the higher the percentage of fat is used. After working three hours or so, the body may derive as much as 80 percent of its energy from fat.

Fat molecules differ biochemically in their composition, being either saturated, unsaturated, or polyunsaturated. These terms simply refer to the number of hydrogen atoms that attach to the molecule. To use an analogy, consider a ball of string: Saturated fat is like a length of string in a badly tangled mess. Unsaturated is like string with only a few tangles. And Polyunsaturated fat is like neatly coiled string without the sign of a tangle. The more saturated (tangled) the fat, the more likely it is to remain in the body and clog arteries, adding to the risk of heart disease.

In addition to other factors, diets high in saturated fat tend to raise the cholesterol level of the blood. Therefore, health experts recommend that about two thirds of your fat intake be polyunsaturated fats.

Saturated fats are found in foods such as:

Beef, lamb, pork, chicken, shellfish, egg yolks, cream, milk, cheese, butter, chocolate, lard, vegetable shortening.

Unsaturated fats are found in:

Avocados, cashews, olives and olive oil, peanuts, peanut oil and peanut butter,

Polyunsaturated fats are found in:

Almonds, cottonseed oil, margarine, pecans, sunflower oil, corn oil, fish, mayonnaise, safflower oil, soybean oil, walnuts.

Essential Fatty Acids (EFA's)

Fats are an absolutely necessary nutrient in a healthy diet. But bodybuilders today often go on such low-fat diets that they develop dietary fat deficiencies. However, foods and supplements are available that supply these "good" fats in the necessary amounts. Some examples are: Fish oil - instead of low fat fish, try salmon, trout or mackerel. Fish fats cannot readily be made in the body, but are needed by organs (especially the brain). You can also take fish oils in supplement form. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils - two valuable oils are linoleic acid(Omega-6 fatty acid) and linolenic acid (Omega-3 fatty acid). Supermarket oils, such as corn, sunflower and safflower oils, cannot provide linoleic acid. Soybean oil is the only supermarket oil that contains linolenic acid. Flaxseed oil, which can also be found in walnuts and pumpkin seeds, is the ideal source of linolenic acid. Oleic acid (Omega-9 fatty acid) is considered essential but not technically an EFA, as the body can manufacture a limited amount, provided essential EFAs are present.

On the subject, I am a firm believer in the benefits of taking CLA supplements, and consider it a fundamental supplement that both athlete and non-athlete alike should take. CLA - Conjugated Linoleic Acid is a widely studied supplement that has been shown to:

• Reduce overall bodyfat


• Breakdown saturated fat and lower bad cholesterol


• Prevent depositing of fat in buttocks, thighs and hips in women (love handles for men)


• Increase lean muscle mass and improve overall muscle tone.


• Support sustained weight loss.
  

Further more, CLA is also a natural source of essential Omega 6 fatty acids, anti oxidants (vitamin E) and other compounds known to support healthy immune systems.

MCTs - Medium-chain triglycerides are obtained from coconut oil. MCTs have an unjustified reputation in the world of bodybuilding. It is commonly believed that MCTs cannot be deposited into fat cells, but research has shown this to be incorrect. Although MCTs are rapidly available to the bloodstream, they don't give an athlete more size, strength, speed, or endurance. MCTs are pretty much just fat calories, so I don't recommend them. Monounsaturated fats - these are the most benign of fats in that they don't affect your cholesterol or prostaglandins (regulators of hormone action) like some of the polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fats are found in olive oil and macadamia nuts. EFA supplements - various supplements that contain essential fatty acids derived from fish oils and other sources.

Diet Fundamentals: Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the body's primary and most easily available source of energy. All carbohydrates are sugars, molecules containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen synthesised by plants through the process of photosynthesis (using the energy of the sun) or by animals through the process of glycogen synthesis. But when I say sugar I don't mean the table sugar that you put in your coffee or on your morning cereal. There are a wide variety of different carbohydrates, and the following are the basic carb categories:

Monosaccharides
Glucose (blood sugar)
Fructose (fruit sugar)
Galactose (a kind of milk sugar)

Oligosaccharides
Sucrose (table sugar)
Lactose (milk sugar)
Maltose (malt sugar)

Polysaccharides
Plant polysaccharides (starch and cellulose)
Animal polysaccharides (glycogen)

How quickly carbs are metabolised by your body (converted into usable substances) is measured by something called a Glycemic Index. A high GI (large increase of serum glucose) means the carbs are metabolised quickly; a low GI (relatively small increase of serum glucose) means they are metabolised more slowly or differently. The Glycemic Index has replaced the former terms of simple and complex carbs. What were once called simple carbs are now categorised as those with a high GI value (fruits, processed sugars), and complex carbs are characterised by a low GI value (starches, cellulose). Carbs with a low GI provide their energy over a period of time, and therefore have a kind of time-release effect. By the way, you often have to look up foods in a guide to be certain of their glycemic index. Ice cream, because of the fat it contains, has a relatively low glycemic index. The kind of rice you get at a Chinese restaurant (the kind that sticks together so well), has a surprisingly high glycemic index, unlike brown rice or wild rice.

As explained, carbs are the easiest form of food for the body to convert into energy. Once ingested, they are turned into glucose, which circulates in the bloodstream and fuels muscular contraction, and glycogen, which is stored in the muscles and the liver for future use. Adequate supplies of carbs are essential for the serious bodybuilder for a number of reasons:

1. Carbohydrates are a primary source of energy. The carbs stored in the muscles as glycogen are what allow you to do heavy, intense weight training.
2. Muscle size is increased when the body stores glycogen and water in the individual muscle cells.
3. Carbs in the body have a "protein-sparing" effect, keeping the body from burning up excessive protein for energy - I'll get back to this point later.
4. The carbohydrate glucose is the main source of energy that fuels the functioning of the brain, and deprivation can have severe effects on mood, personality and mental ability.

The reason that carbohydrates are so important as fuel for intense training is that most exercise like this is anaerobic - that is, it takes place in short bursts, and outruns the ability of the body to supply enough oxygen to sustain the effort, But the structure of carbs is such that they can continue to fuel exercise for short bursts in the absence of oxygen. So when you do a hard set of weight training or run a 100m sprint, the source of your energy for those efforts is primarily carbohydrates.

Carbohydrate Supplements

Intense training creates a demand in the body for glycogen replacement as well as for amino acids. It is important to have enough carbohydrates in your system after training because otherwise the body may start to use amino acids for energy instead. The 'window' for carb replenishment - that is, the period during which the body is in very high demand for this nutrient - is much shorter than it is for protein. In fact, your best results occur when you are able to get the necessary carbs into your body within about 20 minutes of finishing training.

This need for immediate glycogen replacement is why many bodybuilders use a carbohydrate supplement after workouts as well as protein supplements. This is especially important if you follow up weight training with a session of cardiovascular training. If you try to work on a treadmill, stepper or exercise bike too soon after your workout, and your body is carbohydrate-deprived, you will find yourself lacking in energy and you can be sure your body is metabolising more amino acids to supply energy than would be otherwise necessary.

Later in my blogs, I'll go through a set of universal calculations that will provide an estimated value to the number of carbs that you should be looking to take in per day, based on your own specific body and activity requirements. This way, you may then estimate how many carbs you should be looking to take in post-workout. Personally, as I'm currently on a lean training phase, I take in 75g of ground oatmeal with my protein shake. That provides around 48g of fast-absorbing carbs.

Diet Fundamentals: Protein

Protein is used by the body to build, repair, and maintain muscle tissue. It should be no surprise that bodybuilders have been way ahead of most nutritional experts in recognising that building muscle (and in fact, hard training of all sorts) requires a lot more protein intake than had been formerly realised. The body cannot use the protein you ingest for muscle-building unless all of the necessary amino acids are present. However, the body itself can produce only some of these amino acids. The others, called the essential amino acids, have to be obtained from the foods you eat.

Protein is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (as are the other macronutrients) and one more element none of the other nutrients have - nitrogen. If you ever hear somebody talking about being in positive nitrogen balance or negative nitrogen balance what they are referring to is whether they are in an anabolic state (able to build muscle), or in a catabolic state (losing muscle).


Some foods contain what is called complete protein - that is, they provide all the amino acids necessary to produce usuable protein. Examples of these foods are milk, eggs, meat, fish and various vegetable products, such as soybeans. But even these foods contain differing amounts of usable protein per weight. That is, even though a food might contain 10 grams of protein, your body is only able to use only a certain percentage of it - for example, only 7 or 8.5 grams. Below is a chart that shows on the left what percentage protein makes up various foods commonly used as protein sources and on the right what percentage of that protein your body is actually able to use for building muscle: N.B. Whey, a milk derivative, which is a refined product, has even more net protein than eggs).





This chart tells us, for example, that an egg contains only 12% protein by weight. Yet because of the specific balance of amino acids present in that protein, 94 percent of it can be used by your body. In contrast, 42 percent of soybean flour is protein, but the make up of that protein is such that your body is able to use only 61 percent of it. So there is a big difference between how much protein a food contains and how much of that protein you can actually use to build muscle. Eggs are such a good source of quality protein that they are used as a basis of comparison in rating the protein quality of other foods, with eggs given an arbitrary value of a "perfect" 100.

Incidentally, notice that I have given the value of whole eggs. It is increasingly fashionable these days to eat only the egg whites because the yolk contains some fat and the egg white does not. However, I never do this (although I would certainly have additional egg whites to supplement my protein intake without taking in excessive fat and cholesterol). The yolk actually contains as much protein as the egg white, as well as the majority of the vitamins and minerals. If you feel the need to eliminate fat in your diet, I recommend you do so by eliminating other foods, not by throwing away what is in many ways the best part of the egg.

You can see that foods like rice, potatoes and beans give you considerably less usable protein than eggs and fish. The reason is they have some, but too few, of the essential amino acids that are required for complete protein. You can, however, combine two or more sources of this low-quality (incomplete protein) to obtain high-quality, complete protein. That is, one food lacks certain aminos that are supplied by the other food, so in combination, they give you what you need.

The need to assemble a complete combination of amino acids means that adding just a small amount of the right food to your eating plan can make a big difference. Combining incomplete protein in this way is useful because it usually involves eating foods that are relatively low in fat, and thus contain fewer calories than many common complete protein sources. When you are trying to build maximum muscle mass with as little body fat as possible, this can be a great advantage. The following are some recommended combinations of incomplete proteins:

Grains plus seeds

• Breads with added seed meals
• Breads with sesame or sunflower seed spread
• Rice with sesame seeds

Grains plus milk products

• Cereal with milk
• Pasta with milk or cheese
• Bread with milk or cheese

Grains plus Legumes

• Rice and beans (a fundamental part of many diets around the world)
• What bread and baked beans
• Corn soy or wheat-soy bread
• Legume soup with bread

Diet Fundamentals: Nutritional Minimums

Over the next few weeks, it's my intention to focus my blogs on the subject of diet and nutrition. It is my belief that today's aspiring body builders and gym enthusiasts place to much emphasis on supplementation alone to achieve their nutritional requirements and subsequent training goals. Now, I am not down-playing the role that modern day sports supplements play when trying to achieve an excellent physique or improved sense of well-being. Without supplementation of protein in the diet, for example, it would become incredibly challenging and widely impractical to achieve and sustain the greater levels of muscle mass that intense resistance training can create.

But supplementation is designed to be exactly that - a supplementary source of nutrition to a healthy, well-balanced diet. Today's standards and superb knowledge of body building supplements, together with the degree of scientific knowledge utilised promises us greater results faster and cheaper than ever before. But many people overlook the fact that not only is proper diet and nutrition the most important factor to achieve their fitness goals, a healthy well-balanced diet of whole foods is the foundation upon which everything else rests. If you don't posses this foundation, how hard you train and the supplements you take will make very little difference. So let's start with the basics - Nutritional minimums.

Certain nutritional minimums have to be met or else the body is going to suffer from some sort of deprivation. Of course, the harder you exercise, the more stress you are under, and the harsher an environment you live in, the greater your nutritional needs are likely to be. There is some disagreement over what actually constitutes nutritional minimums for both athletes and non-athletes alike, but the following guidelines represent a reasonable approach. In terms of macronutrients, these are:

Protein - The generally recommended amount of protein in the average diet is 1 gram per kilo (2.2 pounds) of bodyweight. A few experts believe wrongly than even hard-training bodybuilders do not require any more protein than this - that, in fact, the need for protein in the diet is highly over-rated. However, the majority of bodybuilders, including myself, prefer to take in larger amounts of protein, recommending at least 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. At 102 kg (225 pounds), I take in a minimum of 225 grams per day. Some bodybuilders prefer to take in much larger amounts of protein than this. However, the goal of a bodybuilder is to build maximum muscle while keeping body fat to a minimum. And since protein, like all food categories, contains calories, eating too much protein can often mean you are taking in more calories than you can digest and get or stay lean, so this has to be taken into consideration when developing an eating program (as I shall discuss in a later installment).

Carbohydrates - With today's general opinion that carbohydrates are bad for you, there's a lot of myth needed to be debunked on this one. The need for carbs in the diet varies a great deal depending on your level of activity. The body requires about 60 grams of carbohydrates simply to carry on the basic processes of the nervous system (the brain, for example, is fuelled almost entirely by carbohydrates). Carbs, as I have mentioned previously, are also an important fuel for muscular activity. So if your diet is too low in carbs, your workouts will suffer, and this too needs to be taken into consideration when planning what and how much of various foods you can eat.

When it comes to carbs, the amount you choose to eat is largely governed by whether you are trying to gain, lose, or maintain weight.. But your body requires adequate amounts of carbs in order to properly metabolise fat - "fat is burned in the furnace of carbohydrates".

In nutritional terms, your best bet is to include some of each type of carb in your daily diet. Some carbs can metabolise very quickly (simple carbs / high-glycemic). Fruits contain high GI carbs, so they are good for providing short-term energy, as well as being loaded with essential vitamins. Low GI carbs, which take much longer for the body to process, turn into long-term, time-release energy and nutrition with minimum calories. Green and yellow vegetables are also an excellent carb sources.

The bottom line is that carbs are an essential part of a good, nutritious eating plan, but only in balance and proportion to the other basic foods. But it is also true that people often confuse nutritious carb foods with those containing processed sugar - cakes, candy, soft drinks, or processed foods with sugar added. The problem with these fast foods is that they provide virtually empty calories, adding tremendously to your caloric intake and very little in the way of nutrition. This simply is not the case when you eat foods like fruit, vegetables, rice or potatoes.

Fats - Getting enough fats is seldom a problem in the British diet. Eggs, red meats, dairy products, and oils are all very high in fat. It is common to see diets that contain as much as 50 percent fats. For health reasons, the normal recommendation is to keep fats below 30 percent, and there seems to be no benefits to health (and some problems resulting) when you drop your fat intake to below 20 percent

The body works best when you ingest foods in certain combinations. The required dietary balance is pretty much the same for the bodybuilder as for anyone else. The current recommended balance is approximately: protein 12%, carbs 58%, fats 30%. What this means is that in your daily calorific intake, taking into account several factors such as activity level (as I shall discuss in a later installment) 12% of your daily calories should come from protein, etc. Arnold Schwarzenegger ate a balanced diet of approximately 40% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fats.

Some bodybuilders eat only a few foods for months on end - tuna, chicken, fruit and salads, for example. This may help them to cut down on body fat, but it also prevents them from taking in all the nutrients they need for maximum energy and growth. Cutting way down on the general food groups leaves you open to developing vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Eating a disproportionate amount of fruit, as some fad diets have recommended, makes it difficult to obtain sufficient protein and a wide enough variety of vitamins and minerals. Vegetarian and super-high carb diets might not provide enough protein for a bodybuilder attempting to build maximum muscle mass. Diets too high in protein can put an unhealthy strain on your kidneys and liver, cause your body to loose calcium, and make you fat.

That is why, in the upcoming weeks, I'm going to try to describe the tools used to design an eating plan, the calculations involved, and how to make sense of the numbers to allow you to achieve a healthy, well-balanced diet, supplemented by the high-quality products available at (you guessed it)...Explosive Nutrition.

Bodybuilding and Aerobic Endurance

There are two fundamentally different kinds of endurance: muscular and cardiovascular.

• Muscular endurance is the ability of the muscle to contract over and over during exercise and to recruit the maximum number of fibers to perform that exercise. For example, while doing heavy squats, you fatigue muscle fibers in the leg so quickly that if you want to get through an entire set you need muscle fibers that recuperate quickly and you need to be able to bring many additional fibers into play during the course of the set.
• Cardiovascular endurance is the ability of the heart, lungs and circulatory system to deliver oxygen to the muscles to fuel further exercise and to carry away waste products (lactic acid).

While these two aspects of endurance are distinct, they are also connected. After all, what good is having a well-developed cardiovascular capacity if the muscles you are using in some effort can't keep up the pace and give out? And how well can you perform if your muscles have tremendous endurance ability but your circulatory system can't deliver the oxygen they need?

Just about everyone understands that you increase cardiovascular capacity by doing high volumes of aerobic exercise - exercise that makes you breathe hard, causes your heart to race, and that you can keep up for long periods of time. When you do this you:

• increase the ability of your lungs to take oxygen from the air and transfer it to the bloodstream;
• increase the capacity of your heart to pump large volumes of blood through the circulatory system and to the muscles;
• increase the number and size of the capillaries that bring blood to specific muscles;
• increase the capacity of the cardiovascular system to flush lactic acid (which causes the feeling of burning in the muscles during intense exercise) out of the muscles.

You increase muscular endurance by performing a relatively high volume of muscular contractions. When you do this you:

• increase the size and number of capillaries to the specific muscles being exercised;
• increase the ability of the muscles to store glycogen (carbohydrate), which is needed to create energy for muscular contractions;
• increase the mass of the muscle mitochondria (energy factories) that create substances like ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) out of glycogen which are used to fuel muscular contraction;
• increase the development of the type of muscle fiber mostly involved in endurance exercise.

There are basically two types of muscle fiber (as well as a lot of intermediate, in-between fiber types):

1. White, fast-twitch fiber is a anaerobic power fiber that contracts very hard for short periods but has little endurance and a relatively long recovery period.
2. Red, slow-twitch fiber is 20% smaller than fast-twitch and not as powerful, but is aerobic and can continue to contract for long periods as long as sufficient oxygen is available.

Because bodybuilding training relies on a higher volume (sets and reps) of effort than weightlifting, it has some cardiovascular benefit and also leads to an increase in muscular endurance. Bodybuilders tend to train at a pace which is just below the threshold of cardiovascular failure - that is, they train as fast as they can without overwhelming the ability of the body to provide oxygen to the muscles. This doesn't make them automatically good t endurance activities, such as running or riding a bicycle, but it keeps them in pretty good cardiovascular shape. When it comes to those other types of activity, you are dealing with both specificity of training and specificity of physical adaption. You have to train on a bicycle to be good on one. You have to work at running to improve your ability as a runner. However, a well-trained bodybuilder will usually be in good enough shape to do well at these kinds of exercises and to show considerable improvement very rapidly, providing his size and bodyweight are not too much of a negative factor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger always believed that cardiovascular endurance is almost as important to a bodybuilder as muscular endurance. Hard training results in a build up of lactic acid in the muscles being used - a waste product of the process that produces the energy for muscular contraction. If the heart, lungs and circulatory system have been able to provide enough oxygen to the area, the lactic acid will be reprocessed by the body into a new source of energy; if not, the buildup will eventually prevent further contraction, leading to total muscular failure.

In my previous blog, I have described the virtues of jumping rope as an excellent cardiovascular exercise that can be performed for both aerobic and anaerobic endurance purposes. Together with my daily cycling and walking, 2-3 sessions a week provide all the cardio training I require. However, some people may find the jump-rope does not suit them or causes them to have problems with their legs and ankles, so other methods of developing cardiovascular conditioning includes treadmills, steppers and rowers.

The fact is, the better conditioned your heart, lungs and circulatory system, the more intense training you will be able to do in the gym and the more progress you will make as a bodybuilder.