Bodybuilding Nutrition Principles – Vary Your Diet

The first of our bodybuilding nutrition principles encourages you to vary your diet. Many people who are concerned about their physical appearance and are interested in improving their physique and strength training performance, are quite prepared to do anything which might help them to achieve success in this field.  However, the advice given to strength trainers and bodybuilders is often misleading if not completely wrong.

There are several bodybuilding nutrition principles which those athletes interested in looking after their bodies, and which will enable them to reach the pinnacle of their chosen sport, should follow.  These include: varying your diet, following a high energy diet, consuming enough calories, timing your food and nutrients and stopping megadosing.   If you follow these basic principles then it is quite possible that you will achieve the physique that you have always wanted and even help you to attain the top of your chosen field.

It is very likely that you have looked in a magazine and have admired the picture of the strapping young person staring back at you.  They are very muscular, well defined and, in as far as you can see, near to perfection proportion wise.

However, in truth what you are looking at may not be the picture of health that you think.  A lot of bodybuilders and strength trainers consume a lot of calories which contain a lot of fat.  If this type of diet is maintained habitually for a period of time, such an enormous amount of fat intake will lead to health problems in the future, specifically heart problems.  The majority of diets which bodybuilders adhere to are boring, with them eating the same types of food day after day.  The result of this is that the diet lacks variety  and if this is missing it therefore follows that a lot of nutrients essential for peak health are missing also.

In general bodybuilders and strength trainers do not eat a lot of fruit, dairy products or red meat.  If they don’t eat fruit they are missing out on disease fighting, health building antioxidants.  If they leave out diary products they are missing out on calcium which helps to build strong bones.  Red meat is a vital source of mineral such as zinc and iron.  When such foods are left out of a diet, then the result is a potentially serious deficiency.

This is most prevalent in pre-competition season diets where bodybuilders believe that they must restrict their diets in order to achieve the best muscle definition.  Many studies have shown that the worst deficiencies are in the amounts of calcium and zinc in the body, and this is more so in female bodybuilders. A serious deficiency of calcium could lead to the development of osteoporosis in later life for many of these women. The good news however is that foods containing these nutrients should be added back into the diet in the form of skimmed milk and dark poultry meat.  This should help to alleviate some of the problems.

A further nutritional problem for strength trainers and bodybuilders is that of fluid restriction.  In general, many bodybuilders compete in a state of near dehydration.  They restrict the level of water in their bodies in the belief that it will inflate their physiques to the point of blurring any muscular definition.  Some even take laxatives and diuretics to assist in this process.  This only helps to flush more water out of the system, but it then takes with it an important mineral called electrolytes.  In competitions it has been known for bodybuilders to pass out because they are in such a dehydrated state.

It is often the case that many bodybuilders and strength trainers go mad at the end of a competition season when it comes to their food intake.  They gorge on all the foods that they have restricted from their diet.  If this is done habitually, it too can have serious consequences and can lead to extra fat pounds being added on.  It should be noted however, that the majority of bodybuilders do get some things right when it comes to their diet, specifically during the training season,  They will eat several meals throughout the day, rather than a lot at one given time,  This is a practice that many nutritionists would like to see replicated in the general public.

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