Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Chapter Six. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Chapter Six. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng

Thứ Bảy, 1 tháng 8, 2015

Factor Nine: Eat Every Three Waking Hours

The way that the majority of people in the Western world eat is the mirror opposite to the way that they should eat. Which probably explains why we are drowning in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Consider the traditional 3 meals per day that we’ve all grown up on …

After six to eight hours of fasting, our bodies need the energy that breakfast promises. However most people don’t give their bodies the fuel they need at the start of the day. They either skip breakfast all together, or they shovel heavily processed, sugar-encrusted cereals down their throat. That’s usually chased down with coffee – and more sugar.

As a result of these less than ideal breakfast choices, many people get hungry around 10am. Muffin break anyone?

For many people lunch consists of a mix of processed carbohydrates and fat – with a soft drink chaser.

By the time that dinner rolls around, most people are starving. They load their plates to the hilt and then eat like there’s no tomorrow. When they finally walk away from the dinner table they are so gorged with calories that all they want to do is sleep – which is exactly what they do. And what happens while they sleep? – all those calories are going straight to their belly!

Today you are going to learn a better way - a way that will not only stop your fat accumulation in it’s tracks but that will actually reprogram your body from a fat storage warehouse into a muscle building super furnace.

Eat every 3 waking hours: Forget about the traditional 3 meals per day eating plan. It is bad for you. From now on you will eat more often and on a regular schedule. Each meal will be about the same size. As well as preventing binge eating and grazing, eating regularly will allow a constant flow of energy to your system. The very act of digesting your food will also rev up your metabolism

Making it Work for You


In order to be able to stick with an eating plan it has to be easy to work with. That means it should be easy to prepare, easy to carry your food with you so that you avoid convenience eating and easy to eat. In order to do that you will prepare your meals ahead of time and store them in Tupperware containers. Every meal will combine protein and carbs. Getting into the habit of prepping your food ahead of time will allow you to have the food ready to eat right when you need it. That, in itself, will go a long way toward helping you to stay consistent with your 80% clean eating diet plan.

Putting your food in Tupperware encourages you to eat the food that you’ve prepped, making it easy to eat healthy. This system will prevent you from cheating, putting you on the path to automatic consistency. Also, with this system you only have to cook once every 4 or 5 days. That saves you having to wash pots and pans, rush around after work while you’re starving and stopping in at McDonald’s just to get you through. Prepping your food and putting it in a container will save you between 7 and 14 hours every week.

A key to success with this system is to keep your food choices limited. Stick to just one or two carb and protein sources for the week. If you do this you will be able to prepare your entire food for the week in less than two hours.

Hot Food on the Go


So you’ve prepped your meals and put them in Tupperware containers. How are you going to keep them hot when you’re out and about? Simple! Buy a small food cooler and a standard hot water bottle. In the morning put your containers in the microwave for 10 minutes. At the same time boil some water and pour it into the hot water bottle. Now put the containers in the cooler and cover them with a towel. Place the hot water bottle in there as well and close the lid. Your meals will stay hot for up to 8 hours!

Factor Eight: Boost Your Growth Hormone Levels

The body naturally produces growth hormone in the pituitary gland and, as its name implies, it is responsible for cell growth and regeneration. Increasing muscle mass and bone density are impossible without human growth hormone. However, it is also a major player in maintaining the health of all human tissue, including that of the brain and other vital organs. The secreted growth hormone remains active in the bloodstream for only a few minutes, but this is enough time for the liver to convert it into growth factors, the most critical of which is insulin-like growth factor-1 or IGF-1. IGF-1 boosts a host of anabolic properties. Scientists began to harvest growth hormone from the pituitary glands of cadavers in the 1950’s, but didn’t synthesize the first human growth hormone (HGH) in laboratories until 1981, with it’s use as a performance enhancing drug becoming popular thereafter.

HGH inhibits insulin, which is the fat storing hormone. Sadly, from about age 21 onward, our bodies start producing less and less HGH. That’s why younger people can get away with eating junk food and not pack on the pounds, whereas someone in their 50’s only has to look at a pizza to gain weight. Over eating also mucks up our HGH levels. Balancing your HGH levels will not only help you to lose weight, it will but you in an anabolic state to promote muscle growth and keep you looking young and fantastic.

Let’s find what you can do – legally and safely – to boost your own HGH levels.

(1) Eat a Balanced Diet


Diet is the third major factor in keeping growth hormone levels topped off. It is necessary to eat a balanced diet that provides as many of the following growth hormone boosting agents as possible:


· Vitamin A

· Vitamin B5

· Vitamin B12

· Folic Acid

· Inositol Heaxanicotinate

· Chromium

· Zinc

· Magnesium

· Iodine

· Glutamine

· Glycine

· Carnitine

· Arginine

· Taurine

· Lysine

· Ornithine Alpha-ketoglutarate

(2) Work out with weights


Lifting heavy weights over a regular period of time releases human growth hormone. By reducing our rest between sets this process is enhanced. Try to keep your between set rest periods to under a minute for the best results. Focus, too, on compound movements that work your major muscles groups together, such as squats, deadlift and bent over rowing. Short bouts on high intensity aerobic exercise performed for bouts of about 10 minutes at a time are also effective for HGH release.

(3) Supplement


A multivitamin provides many of the nutrients needed to boost growth hormone. Amino acids such as arginine and glutamine have been shown to boost growth hormone levels in separate studies. Instead of taking these separately, you now have the choice between a multitude of specialty supplements.

Other hormones, such as testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, can also lead to growth hormone increases. The following compounds have all been shown to enhance growth hormone levels;

• Colostrum

• Alpha GPC

• Tribulus terrestris

• Coleus forskohlii

• Panax ginseng

• Siberian ginseng

• Aswagandha root

• Schizandra berry

• Astragalus root

• Dong quai

• Wild yam extract

• Goji berry

• Red date berry

(4) Sleep


Our natural growth hormone production hits its peak at night time. It is, in fact, part of the vital repair and restoration process of sleep. But the daily surge in HGH production doesn’t happen when we’re awake. It’s vital, then, to establish and maintain a regular sleep pattern.

Factor Seven: Boost Your Testosterone

Testosterone is the male growth hormone that is primarily responsible for muscle growth. It also boosts your sex drive. Clearly, then, you need as much of it as you can get. We produce testosterone in our testes. Most men are capable of producing about 7 mg of testosterone each day. Our testosterone levels peak at about the age of 20. It then declines but not at a marked pace.

Here’s what testosterone does to help you get massive and strong:

· Increases lean muscle mass and reduces body fat

· Promotes positive nitrogen balance

· Promotes fat metabolism

· Stimulates red blood cell production, expanding blood volume and improving oxygen delivery throughout the body.

5 Ways to Boost Testosterone Levels


1. Weight train

2. Eliminate cardio

3. Sleep - get a minimum of seven hours

4. Eat more red meat

5. Lean out – the body produces more testosterone when our body fat percentage is under 15 percent.

*This is my favorite resource for raising testosterone to maximum levels, naturally.

Factor Six: Drink Your Water

Your muscles are 70 percent water. In order to make them bigger, you need to keep them hydrated. If you don’t drink enough water, your muscles will shrink. Dehydration causes water to come out of the muscle cell. This puts the body into a catabolic state. That’s why it is critical to keep your muscles flushed with water.

It is especially critical to get water into your body first thing in the morning. You’ve just been in a fasted state during the night. As well as not eating, you haven’t been drinking water. That is why you should consume half a liter of water first thing in the morning. And that means actual real, pure water. If you’re one of those who need a coffee to wake them up, you might have to rethink that habit. Caffeine is a diuretic. It will take even more water from your system.

If you need a bit of flavor to make your water more palatable, place a slice of lemon in your water jar. Set your sights on a gallon (almost 4 liters) of water per day. You should also drink water while you’re working out. Forget about those expensive sports drinks. With your short duration workouts you don’t need them. But you do need water.

Carry a water bottle with you at all times and sip from it regularly. Replace sodas and fruit drinks with flavored water. Set you sights on that gallon a day target and, remember that water is just as important to your muscle building efforts as protein is.

Thứ Sáu, 31 tháng 7, 2015

Factor Five: Get Your Complex Carbs

The poor old carbohydrate has gotten a bad rap. Over recent years, low carb diets have been touted as the solution to rapid weight loss. Believing that curbing the carbs will force the body to draw on their fat stores for energy, millions of people have extremely restricted their total carb intake while actually eating more fatty foods. For most of them, the fat stays where it is while their body starts eating into their muscle stores for that essential energy. It’s about time that the carbohydrate started getting the respect it deserves. Maybe then people will begin to be able to eat their carbs in a manner that promotes leanness and health – as well as muscle gain.

Carbs Promote Anabolism


Carbohydrates are complex sugar molecules that promote the release of insulin. Insulin is a potent anabolic hormone that transports amino acids into the muscle cell, to be utilized for repair and regrowth of the muscle. So, even if you are getting all the protein you need, without quality complex carbs, that protein will be a huge stack of coal sitting at the train depot – it won’t have a transport system to get it into the muscle.

Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred fuel source. The body can also use protein and fat for fuel but these macronutrients are far less efficient at providing the body with the energy it needs. All the carbs that you eat end up in your blood as glucose or blood sugar. Yet not all carbs are equal.

Simple VS Complex Carbs


The two broad categories of carbs are simple and complex. Simple carbs are made up of either a single sugar molecule or two sugar molecules linked together. They provide very little in the way of vitamin or mineral content. They are easily digested by the body and provide an immediate energy boost. This leads to an increase of the release of insulin in the pancreas. The insulin does the job of clearing the glucose from the bloodstream with the result that weak, low in energy and hungry. This leads to a repeat cycle of binging on more simple carbs and the whole process starts over. Simple carbs are not your friend.

Complex carbs are made up of many molecules and are known as polysaccharides. The majority of them consist of fiber. In contrast with simple carbs they provide a consistent, slow release of energy into the bloodstream. Complex carbs are nutritionally dense, being packed with vitamins and minerals. Complex carbs include starchy and fibrous vegetables as well as grains. Fiber is essential to efficient bodily function as it provides bulk for the intestinal contents, aids in digestion and the elimination of waste and helps ward of digestive tract disease and colon cancer. In addition, fiber can help you to lose body fat. Because they are so low in calories, you can eat a lot of them without impacting on your calorie count. The smart person, then, will use fibrous carbs to add bulk to their meals so that they aren’t eating too many calorie dense starchy carbs and proteins. Eating a starchy carb AND a fibrous carb at each meal will provide an ideal macronutrient mix.

Rather than staying away from carbs all together, the person who is interested in a balanced, sensible fat loss nutritional program will focus on eating natural, unprocessed carbs. She will reduce refined, processed carbs as much as possible. White sugar and white flour products should be on the ‘no go’ list.

Fruit Facts


Fruit provides natural sugars in the form of fructose. Fructose has been blamed as a fat stimulator and many people avoid eating fruit as a result. The fructose myth, however, has been well and truly laid to rest by scientific studies and fruit should be an integral part of any sound nutritional plan. A piece of fruit is a great source of vitamins and minerals as well as carotenoids, flavonoids and polyphenols, all of which promote heart health. Fruits are also high in fiber while being low in total calorie count.

How Many Carbs?


Aim for 50% of your total daily caloric intake from natural carbohydrates. 25 to 35 grams of these carbs should be in the form of fiber. To pack mass onto your frame, you need to be taking in 2 grams of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight. So, if you weight 180 pounds, you’ll need …

180 x 2 = 260 grams of carbs per day

Over the course of six meals, this equates to about 44 grams of carbs per meal. In terms of calories, he should eat 1500 calories per day of carbohydrate, mixed between fibrous and starchy varieties. If he is eating six small meals over the course of the day, he will be ingesting approximately 250 carb calories per meal. Use the following lists to plan out the carb component of your meals.

  • Starchy Carbs:
  • Potatoes
  • Sweet Potatoes
  • Yams
  • Oats
  • Beans
  • Brown Rice
  • Lentils
  • Chickpeas
  • Pumpkin
  • Quinoa
  • Millet
  • Fibrous Carbs:
  • Broccoli
  • Spinach
  • Asparagus
  • Cucumber
  • Tomatoes
  • Cauliflower
  • Brussels Sprouts
  • Celery
  • Onions
  • Carrots
  • Mushrooms

Factor Four: Curtail Cardio

Exercise, while good for us, induces a catabolic response in the body. Simply put, it places stress upon the body which results in the breakdown of body tissue. If our exercise sessions go on for too long, or involve extra training on top of our weights workouts, we will find it very hard to stay in an anabolic state.

Your weight training workouts need to be hard, intense and short. You need to get in, work the muscles like hell, and then get out. Your whole body workouts should be over and done with inside of an hour. If you train for longer than that, you will be entering a state of catabolism.

When you are ready to focus on getting ripped you can venture into the cardio area of the gym. Until then, however, you have no place there. Your goal as a hard gainer right now is to pack solid mass onto your frame. Cardio exercise that burns up valuable calories and depletes your energy reserves will put you in a state of catabolism. That is not what you want.

You should also consider the amount of sport that you’re playing. An hour of basketball every other day will not be conducive to either building muscle or staying in an anabolic state. If you are going to play sport, make sure that you replace the extra calories that you will be consuming. Remember that you will not build muscle if you are in a negative calorie balance.

Factor Three: Take Advantage of the Anabolic Window

After your workout your body is screaming out for protein. Your intense training has created tiny tears in the muscle cell that need fixing and rebuilding. Muscle glycogen has been depleted as a result of your workout. In addition, your workout has drained your body of energy. Your muscles are craving nutrients. This creates a window of opportunity for you to boost the body’s anabolic state. But beware – this window only lasts for twenty minutes.

Your body will begin the rebuilding through muscle protein synthesis and glycogen resynthesis immediately after the workout. This provides an ideal opportunity to provide protein and carbs to the muscle. So, don’t wait an hour to refuel your body after your training is done. Get some quality protein and carbs into your system straight away – even before you hit the shower.

To ensure that the protein gets to the muscle as quickly as possible you should rely on liquid protein sources after your workout. But remember you also need carbs to replenish your energy stores. Use a protein / carb shake that you can mix in your shaker bottle and gulp down as you head toward the change room. Make sure that the protein is whey based, as this is the fastest acting and most bio-available protein that there is.

Factor Two: Supplement for Size

Why Supplement?


The right supplements - taken at the right times - can help propel you to your bodybuilding and strength training goals by doing three things. They can increase your anabolic drive, improve your workload capacity and decrease your recovery time. Individually these factors can make a big difference. Put together they will work synergistically to power you towards your goals. Let’s consider them one at a time:

Anabolic Drive


The word ‘anabolic’ refers to the body’s ability to produce more muscle tissue. Anabolic drive involves the natural production of testosterone, growth hormone (GH), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), insulin, thyroid, cortisol and other hormones and growth factors involved in muscle growth. For athletes, it refers to the body’s ability to increase it’s anabolic (or muscle producing) response to exercise, nutrition, supplements and other factors.

In the case of supplements, those targeted towards increasing the production of testosterone, growth hormone and insulin, and decreasing cortisol, will result in both anabolic and anti-catabolic effects, thus maximizing the anabolic drive.

Workload Capacity


Endurance or workload capacity involves your ability to maintain high quality training throughout a workout. If your capacity is limited and you don’t have the energy, endurance or concentration necessary to train hard from the beginning of your workout to the end, it won’t matter how well you manage the other components - nutrition, supplementation and rest. Your diet may be excellent. You may even be training properly six days a week, but if you don’t have the overall energy and muscle endurance for a productive workout, you aren’t going to experience maximal progress or muscle growth.

Recovery


This involves your ability to recover properly between sets as well as workouts. The goal is to ensure that the body recovers fully from the stimulus of exercise and to reduce the amount of time necessary for it to take place. Recovery is critical to muscle growth. Your body must recuperate from the catabolic process before productive protein synthesis can occur. The sooner you recover from a workout, the sooner your body can begin to respond to it and adapt by adding muscle.

When you don’t recover from workouts, you can go into a state of chronic over training. You’ll actually begin to lose muscle instead of gaining it. In the gym, you’ll find yourself lacking the energy to do further sets at maximum ability. Even if you do manage to get through a workout without losing effort, your body still won’t respond with the kind of adaptation you want - more muscle.

Certain supplements can have a strong effect on lowering recovery time and increasing muscle growth. Supplements targeting recovery can also help you handle additional stress in your training. If you want to extend workouts from four to six days a week, supplements can help you accelerate recovery to make those workouts productive. Similarly, if you’re training for another sport, in addition to your bodybuilding and strength training endeavors, supplements might just spell the difference between being able to train for both effectively and having the dual training sabotage your progress in both areas.

Anti-catabolism


You can decrease the breakdown of muscle tissue both during and after exercise and thus provide potent anti-catabolic effects in several ways. A lot of substances and methods decrease muscle breakdown and have anti-catabolic effects; for example taking in adequate carbohydrates is known to have a protein sparing effect.

Certain supplements can also create an anti-catabolic effect. Cortisol is a necessary hormone and in plays a significant role in decreasing muscle stiffness and inflammation. Without normal and somewhat elevated cortisol levels, we couldn’t even exercise properly - so it wouldn’t matter what training, diet, drug or nutritional supplement regimen you followed. Yet, chronically elevated levels of cortisol have a catabolic effect on muscle and decreases the effect of anabolic hormones. Decreasing the amount of cortisol after exercise can provide you with an added anabolic boost by decreasing muscle tissue breakdown and increasing amino-acid influx and utilization by muscle cells. In addition, decreasing catabolism by using appropriate methods and supplements can dramatically increase protein synthesis and muscle mass.

Substances that decrease catabolism can have anabolic effects on muscle. But like growth hormone stimulation, many nutritional supplements can also have anti-catabolic effects. Increasing dietary calories and protein and using branch chain amino acids, glutamine, alanine and other amino acids, Vitamin C, beta-carotene and other anti-oxidant vitamins have been shown to lessen muscle breakdown.

Supplements can also be used to increase insulin, Growth Hormone, IGF-1 and testosterone levels, and decrease cortisol levels and decrease cortisol levels and other anti-catabolic factors at specific times to maximize increases in lean body mass.

Convenience


Let’s face it – we’re all busy. It’s not easy to get 40 or so grams of whole food protein into our body every three waking hours. Quality protein supplements, while never as ideal as whole foods, can be a life saver in this regard. Low-carb protein supplements are available in powder forms, as ready to drink bottles or cans, and as protein bars. These options make it a whole lot of easier to fill your protein requirements. However, try not to use supplements for more than two of your six daily meals. The human body was designed to eat protein, not to drink it!

In Chapter Seven we will reveal the essential supplements that you need to pack on quality mass fast.

Factor One: Be Protein Positive

Your muscles contain about 40% of the protein in your body. It is the raw material from which you are constructed. It is crucial in the rebuilding and recovery process. Yet, the consuming of protein, in itself, does not build muscle. It needs to be just one in a whole continuum of factors that work synergistically to bring about the end result of more mass on your frame.

Muscle growth can only occur if muscle protein synthesis exceeds muscle protein breakdown. This means that there must be a positive muscle protein balance. Strength training improves muscle protein balance, but, in the absence of food, the balance will remain negative, or catabolic.

The ingredient within protein which makes it so vital in the muscle building process is nitrogen. Unlike carbohydrates and fats, protein contains nitrogen, which is essential for the replacement of body cells. To be able to build muscle, and even to keep the muscle that we currently have, we must be in a state of positive nitrogen balance. That means that we need to be taking more nitrogen into our bodies than we are expending in the course of our daily activities.

If proteins are the building blocks of the body, then the building blocks of protein are amino acids. There are 20 amino acids that can be reformulated in a vast number of ways to create hundreds of different proteins. A dozen of these amino acids are able to be produced naturally by the human body. They are known as non essential amino acids because we don’t have to rely on outside food sources to get them into our body.

The remaining 8 amino acids are known as essential because they can’t be manufactured by the body and must come by way of the food we eat.

Here are the eight essential amino acids:


· Lysine

· Isoleucine

· Leucine

· Methionine

· Phenylaline

· Threonine

· Tryptophan

· Valine

Proteins sources that contain all eight of the essential amino acids are referred to as complete proteins. Many complete proteins come from animal sources. That’s because an animal’s molecular structure is similar to a human being. Here are some great animal sources of complete protein:


· Chicken Breast

· Salmon

· Turkey Breast

· Lean Beef – flank steak, bison, sirloin, lean ground beef

· Low Fat Pork

The very best complete protein source of them all is the egg.

As a hard gainer, you should aim for 1.5 grams of protein for every pound of bodyweight. So, if you are currently 175 pounds, you should be taking in …

175 x 1.5 = 262.5 grams of protein per day.

This consumption should be spread over the course of six or seven meals during the day. Your body can only absorb about 50 grams of protein at one sitting. By eating six meals per day, spaced about three hour apart, you will be able to get your daily protein requirement without any waste.

Our 175 pound guy will be taking in …

262.5 / 6 grams of protein per meal

That equates to 43.75 grams per meal. To give you an idea of how much of a certain food to consume in order to get your protein requirement in, a large egg contains 6 grams of protein, while most lean meats like beef, chicken, turkey and fish contain 6 grams of protein. Milk contains 1 gram of protein per fluid ounce.

Thứ Năm, 30 tháng 7, 2015

Chapter Six: THE ANABOLIC ADVANTAGE: 9 WAYS TO GET IT

When it comes to muscle, your body knows two processes – anabolism and catabolism. They are the ying and yang of bodybuilding. The positive and the negative. The building up and the tearing down.

You goal is to be in a state of anabolism as often as possible. To build muscle that’s where you need to be. Working out hard is not enough. Unless you’ve got all of the other factor in place, that sweat and strain will be all for nothing. So, what are these other vital factors that will determine whether your efforts in the gym will translate to mass on your frame?

By ensuring that the following 9 factors are taken care of consistently your body will be in the prime state to build muscle mass – the anabolic state…