Bodybuilding Nutrition | 50 Secrets of the Pros - Part 3
Bodybuilding Nutrition: 50 Secrets of the Pros - Part 3
We went back over the last decade and unearthed 50 nutrition tricks of the trade from a wide range of pro bodybuilders. Since nutrition is equally if not more critical toward your ultimate success in reaching your personal physique goals, this insider information will greatly enhance your gains.
33. Toney Freeman
The problem with diet soda isn’t the calories, because there are none. It’s the various chemicals in these diet sodas and candies. They usually cause water retention. The artificial sweeteners have also been found to increase the appetite, causing most people to eat more. I think you can see the inherent catch-22 in that situation. I don’t like diet soda or these sugar-free diet foods. If I want a piece of candy or a cookie, I’ll have the real thing. I will sweeten things with Splenda from time to time, but that’s about it.
34. Dennis Wolf
Being a vegetarian does mean that it’s a little more challenging to get the best types of protein for muscle growth, but you can still use soy protein as well as protein powders. I feel you should be taking in two to three grams per kilogram of bodyweight a day. You weigh about 95 kilos, so you should try to eat about 200-300 grams of protein. I am sure that sounds excessive, especially if you don’t understand and appreciate the link between dietary protein and muscle gains, but give it a try for a couple of months. By then, the results you get will have convinced you of the effectiveness of a higher protein diet for bodybuilders.
35. Evan Centopani
I pretty much always stick with white rice and potatoes for my carb sources. Yams make me bloated, gassy and watery. Off-season, I think fruit is great. Pre-contest, many will argue that fructose is very difficult to store as glycogen, and will either be stored as fat or burned for energy. I feel grapefruit is safe to eat during the pre-contest period. I believe it aids in fat burning and sugar metabolism, and I always look better when I include one a day in my diet. Other than that, I may have half an apple with a meal that otherwise doesn’t contain any carbs, but that’s about the extent of it.
36. Jay Cutler
Vegetables aren’t a good choice for pre- and post-workout carbs. You need to eat rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes or oatmeal to fill up your glycogen stores. During a few of my contest diets, I would have broccoli with three of my six daily meals, but I never counted any of the carbs from that in my totals. Fibrous carbs are so low in calories that I will eat as much of them as I want to along with something very lean like fish. For my vegetables, I alternate between broccoli, asparagus and green beans. But to reiterate, don’t try to use these vegetables to carb-up for a workout or to replace spent glycogen stores after training. They will not serve those purposes.
37. Dorian Yates
I arrived at the amount of 1.5 grams of protein per pound for myself through years of trial and error. I kept detailed records of my workouts and my meals from the day I began training until I retired. I increased my protein gradually to a gram and a half and saw better gains, but beyond that amount, it didn’t seem to have any greater effect. Of course, I don’t advocate that everyone simply duplicates what I did and expect it to be ideal for them. By all means, experiment and keep records so you can find what amount of macronutrients work best for your body and your particular needs.
38. Ronnie Coleman
My carbs didn’t go up a whole lot from the time I turned pro until I retired, but my protein sure did. Back in my early days as a pro, I was eating about 300-350 grams of protein a day. The more I learned about nutrition, the more I realized how important protein was for making gains. By about 2002-2005 when I was at my biggest, I was taking in about 600 grams of protein a day. Considering I was weighing 320-330 pounds in the off-season, that really wasn’t excessive. It was still less than two grams per pound of bodyweight.
39. Lee Haney
For anyone who needs to take in clean, nutritious calories, I would recommend whole eggs, chicken and fish for protein sources. I’m not so big on red meat, as it’s much harder for the body to break down and digest, and for many people it can stress the digestive system. The best carbohydrate sources for you will be brown rice and sweet potatoes. You should also have a couple of servings a day of fruits and berries with natural antioxidants like blueberries, blackberries, acai berries and pomegranates.
40. Branch Warren
I’ve been drinking protein shakes for many years now. When I want it to be more substantial, I would blend in a banana or some strawberries. I’ve heard of guys who will have a cup of nuts with shakes, too. Shakes are much better than nothing, but you really shouldn’t be going all day at work just having shakes. Ideally, even with a busy job, you would have a shake on your first short break, a solid meal at lunch and another shake on your second short break. Your body needs food.
41. Victor Martinez
I have no idea how many grams of protein and carbs I was eating in my early years when I was putting on most of my size. I can tell you this, though. I would average a pound of meat— yes, a whole pound— of steak or chicken at every meal, and I usually ate five times a day. Protein was the priority for me because I felt that was what would help me recover and grow from my workouts better than anything else. By the time I would finish that pound of meat, I was already pretty full and I would eat whatever carbs I could manage. It wouldn’t end up being much, maybe close to a cup of rice or a medium-size sweet potato.
42. Rich Gaspari
I have never been unable to find a clean meal if I look hard enough. Everywhere in the world I’ve been, I was able to find a good source of protein and some clean carbs for at least two or three meals, and most often five to six meals. It just comes down to your desire and dedication to fueling your body right, and never settling for what’s most convenient. Most people won’t make the effort to find the right foods, and end up settling for terrible fast food.
43. Hide Yamagishi
I started competing at age 20, and at that time I had no idea that measuring your food was even something you should do. My progress over the next few years was OK, but not what it should have been. The main reason was that I didn’t really know how much protein, carbs and fats I was eating. I thought it was enough, but it wasn’t. Once I started competing at the national level in Japan around age 24-25, I talked to other top competitors and learned they all measured out their food. When I started doing that, I made new gains almost right away.
44. Jose Raymond
When I was 20, I just ate everything that wasn’t tied down and tried to put on as much weight as possible. Then I would hold on to it for a few months before dieting back down, and usually kept another eight to 10 pounds of new muscle each time I did it. The key is to try to always be able to see some sort of ab outline. Once your abs disappear completely, it will be that much harder to get back in condition. Young guys should eat as much clean food as possible, plus the calorie-dense cheats on top of that.
45. Mark Alvisi
One thing I can tell you is that if you eat clean instead of going overboard on junk like so many guys do, you should be able to hold pretty decent condition and make gains at the same time. That’s even truer if you keep a moderate amount of cardio in your program.
46. Ben Pakulski
I cycle my nutrients in the off-season. It depends what “phase” I’m in. If my training volume goes up, so does my protein. Typically, I keep my protein down a bit so as to give my kidneys a break. A high-protein diet, year-round over long periods, can be a bit stressful on the kidneys. I also let my body fat be the gauge. I do keep the carbs high. So if my body fat starts going up, I take the carbs down, throw in some cardio and up the protein a bit to bring it down.
47. Fouad Abiad
Carb-cycling can work very well, depending on the person and if they need it. As for the setup, it really depends on the person and how their body is responding. Some simply repeat a three-day cycle of low, medium and high days. Others do three days low and one day high. It can be set up in a variety of different ways, and for many it seems to work very well. Others see good results on a consistent amount of carbs every day.
48. Kevin English
I confess, I am addicted to sweets like a crackhead is to that rock. I use a lot of substitutes to satisfy my sweet tooth. Instead of soda, I drink a lot of Crystal Light. As I’m starting my diet, I usually add a lot of Splenda to everything to give it a sweeter taste. I’ll even put that on my vegetables, along with Molly McButter, so they taste like candy.
49. Antoine Vaillant
Breakfast is, in my opinion, the most important meal of the day. You are coming off a seven- to nine-hour fast while you were sleeping! So it’s crucial to BREAK that FAST (where the name breakfast comes from, by the way) by eating tons of good-quality food. Whether you are cutting or bulking, you need to eat a good amount of food as soon as possible once you wake up, within an hour at the most. You should eat all three nutrients: protein, carbs and also fats.
50. Aaron Clark
My food sources during prep are not complicated. For meats, I go with extra-lean ground beef, extra-lean ground turkey, tilapia, chicken breast and eggs/egg whites. My carbs come from sweet potatoes, white rice, brown rice and Ezekiel bread.
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