If there is any area that people looking to build muscle forget, it's diet and nutrition. For those of you who don't know, what you eat is just as important as how hard you train. It's that serious. So if you are eating the wrong foods, you are not living up to your full muscle building potential.
Remember the old saying, you are what you eat? Well, it's definitely true here. Eat the right foods and watch your muscle building efforts skyrocket. Eat the wrong ones and you'll be like a mouse on a wheel. Giving it all you've got, but never getting anywhere.
So what should you eat? Lets go through some of my favourite muscle building foods. I'm going to break up these foods into 3 main categories, because that's the easiest way to do it and I'm inherently lazy.
The first category I'm going to look at is protein. You probably already know everything there is to know about protein and it's important role in muscle building, so I'm not going to go into detail here. What I will do is list the best sources of lean, muscle building protein. While you can get protein from a Big Mac, it's better to stick to lean sources, so you don't end up looking like a Bic Mac.
My personal favourite protein source is chicken breast. It's almost pure protein and tastes fantastic. Roasted on it's own, marinated in exotic spices, whatever, there are so many things you can do to chicken that no matter what your tastes, you will be able to find recipes you love.
Another couple of great sources are turkey, lean cuts of steak, tuna, salmon, fish and skim milk. There are so many things you can do to spice up your proteins that you'll never get bored. Maybe I'm just a freak, but I could easily eat chicken, turkey, steak and fish all day.
The next group I'm going to look at is carbohydrates. With the whole low carb fad, you're probably staying clear of them right? If you are, you've just made a big mistake with regards to muscle building. I won't go into too much detail on their function, but basically, carbohydrates provide some of the energy required to build your muscles.
You have to be careful when choosing carbohydrates, as not all carbs are created equal. Stay clear of processed, sugary carbs and instead, choose more natural products. I personally love wholemeal English muffins, wholemeal bread, oats and pita bread. Add a nice source of protein to one of these carbs and you have the foundations of a great muscle building meal.
The final group I'm going to mention are perhaps the most misunderstood of all. For years, fats have been perceived by everyone as bad. After all, we don't want to get fat, so it makes sense not to eat them, right? Not quite so simple I'm afraid.
There are good fats and bad fats. I could write an entire article on this alone, but for brevity's sake, I'm just going to mention which ones to stay away from and which ones you should be including in your diet everyday.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realise that foods loaded with saturated fats like fast food are bad. So if you didn't already know that, stay away from those!
My favourite source of good fat is actually peanut butter. That's right, peanut butter is a great source of good fat. You want to get natural peanut butter if you can, but even regular stuff is better than nothing. Another great way of getting your fat requirement is to eat raw nuts. Walnuts, almonds and peanuts are fantastic.
One thing to be careful with is the calorie density. Fats have more than double the calories in them per gram than other muscle building foods, so make sure you don't over do it.
So there you go, my favourite muscle building foods revealed. Not so weird and exotic are they? I bet if you head down to your local supermarket, theres no reason you can't find all of them, plus a whole heap of other great muscle building foods. So don't just read this and forget about it, actually make sure you put it into action.
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