To build muscles effectively you need a supply of right amounts of building materials and energy at each point in the day and night. This requires special diet conciderations.
During a period with training for muscle building, your muscles will grow every hour during the whole day or night. Also your skeleton, tendons and joint structures will participate in this growth. The rate of growth will depend on the intensity of training, but also upon the material for growth available at each point in time furnished by your diet. There is however some limit for how fast you can make your muscles grow, so consuming nutrient to surpass that limit will only result in over-weight.
The material needed for growth are proteins with an optimal composition of amino acids, but also some other building blocks like lecithin, essential fatty acids, calcium, magnesium and other minerals. Lean versions of fish, poultry, meat, mushrooms, seafood and cheese are good protein sources for muscle growth. In addition you can use easily digestible protein concentrates to meat a peak need.
You will also all the time need energy for your training and other daily activities. The best energy sources are carbohydrates and fat. The fat should not be chemically altered and it should mostly be a blending of the types mono-unsaturated, poly-usaturated omega-3 and poly-usaturated omega-6. Most of the energy sources you take in should be of the low glycemic kind, so that it is taken up slowly from the digestion. Then you will have an even basic flow of energy from your digestion to your muscles all the day.
Full corn bread and cereals, peas, beans and potatoes are good sources for low glycemic carbohydrates. All fat is low glycemic. Fat fish, almonds, sunflower seeds, other fat seeds, olive oil, rape oil and flax oil are good fat sources.
In addition you need some extra energy that is taken up quickly just before your training session, which means sugar from a natural source. The best source of sugar is sweet fruit. In addition you can use a carbohydrate concentrate.
It is not possible to indicate how much you should eat, since that depends on how active you are and your aims for the training. Here are however some general advices how you can compose your meals to achieve these objectives. The ideal is to eat four meals each day. More that four meals is not necessary if you eat enough at each meal, since the food will remain in the intestines several hours and be gradually utilized.
In the morning you should start your day with a meal consisting of equal amount of protein rich food, food rich in low glycemic carbohydrates and plant foof like vegetables and fruit. This meal will secure an even supply of energy and building materials until the mid of the day. That means: One portion of things like fish, meat, seafood, poultry, sea food, lean cheese or mushrooms. One portion of things like peas, beans, potatoes or fat seeds. One portion of vegetables and fruit. This will secure an even supply of energy and building material until the mid of the day.
In the mid of the day you also eat a meal with a similar composition, but with other food sources than in the morning. This will secure an even supply of nutrients until evening.
In the evening your meal should have an over-weight of protein rich food, and less of food rich in carbohydrates and fat. Try to eat other protein rich food types than you ate earlier in the day to get variation. You should have a rather large portion of vegetables and fruit in this meal. In this way you get enough material to grow muscles during night, but less energy, because you do not need so much energy when you sleep.
Just before training you should eat a smaller meal consisting of easily digestible protein rich food and of food with carbohydrates that are easily absorbed. You can base this meal upon fish or seafood, very sweet fruit and fruit juice, which all are easily utilized. You may also use protein concentrates and carbohydrate concentrates in this meal. A supply of lecithin, minerals and essential fatty acids will also be useful at this time.
This meal will come at different parts of the day, depending of when you do your training session. If you train at a time when you ordinarily should eat one of the main meals, you just eat that main meal earlier or later than ordinarily.
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Knut Holt is an Internet marketer and author with a focus on health items. Please see his web-site to find more health information. There are also presentation of products to improve health, to make effective training and enhance fitness.