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.