Schwarzenegger Arnold, Dobbins Bill "The New Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding" Book 5

HEALTH, NUTRITION AND DIET

Chapter 1 Nutrition and Diet

Training stimulates muscle growth, but for training to be effective, your body needs enough energy and raw materials; only then can you reap the most benefit from your exercise program. The role of nutrition is precisely to provide the body with these raw materials and energy.

Proper nutrition includes knowing how to stay lean and muscular. You must know what kind of food and how much to eat in order to achieve the best possible result. You should have a clear understanding of the key nutrients and your need for each. Proper nutrition also includes protein, carbohydrate, vitamin and mineral supplements, which not only help you become stronger and more muscular, but also boost your immune system so you don't have to miss your workout because of minor ailments like a cold. The benefits of proper nutrition range from accelerated recovery after hard workouts to good skin quality and optimal functioning of the liver, kidneys and other internal organs.

Therefore, the basic principles of nutrition are of no less value to a bodybuilder than the basic principles of training. Like training, proper nutrition is absolutely essential for a strong, healthy and muscular body. Intense exercise creates a need for nutrients; the quality and quantity of these nutrients is a major factor in ensuring the desired result of training.

Every year at the Arnold Classic, I interview the contestants after they leave the stage. Here is one of my questions: "What do you think got you in great shape before the competition in the first place?" Champions like Shawn Rae, Nasser El Sonbaty, and Flex Wheeler (or women's bodybuilding champions) don't usually attribute their success to more intense training, extra rest, or increased work on isolating individual muscles. In most cases, especially in recent years, they refer to the better quality of nutrition, to the complex use of nutritional supplements or a more effective diet that allowed them to build muscle, lose fat and train with maximum energy until the very day of the competition.

I believe that the significant progress in nutritional science is the main reason for the appearance of many first-class bodybuilders in modern sports. The quality of training has improved over the years, but has not undergone a revolutionary change, which cannot be said about the quality of nutrition. Of course, no diet will allow you to become a champion without long and hard training. But along with physical and psychological preparation, the right nutrition strategy is one of the "three pillars" on which the building of success in bodybuilding is based.

In the past, bodybuilders approached nutrition and diet based on their instincts and common sense. Therefore, at first they could increase the size of the muscles, but they could not achieve real relief. With the advent of bodybuilders such as Harold Poole or the late Vince Gironde, whose musculature was distinguished by excellent relief and isolation, there was a tendency to reduce the size. Bodybuilders have not yet coped with the difficult task of how to simultaneously maintain the size of the muscles and make them as embossed as possible.

I ate well in my youth and quickly grew to an impressive size. But I soon discovered that the massiveness of the muscles alone could not take me to the heights that I wanted to achieve. So after moving to California, I began to seriously study the principles of healthy eating and diet in an attempt to create a muscle that has all the virtues: size, shape, relief and proportion. To be the best, I thought, you have to push your body to its limits. But the body will not be able to perform at its maximum efficiency if it does not have enough nutrients - in the right place and at the right time.

The basic principles of proper nutrition are quite simple. But pairing them with your personalized training program, understanding your body's needs and how it responds to various types of weight gain or loss, is another matter entirely. As with other aspects of training, ultimately you have to rely a lot on your intuition.

First, you must grasp the basics and highlight the variables that are important role in building and maintaining muscle tissue. Then comes the more difficult stage. Not only will you learn about different nutrients and how the body uses them; you learn to use this information in your own life, in relation to your body type.

In this chapter, we will consider in detail the properties of nutrients, their chemical composition and features of action. Then we will try to create individual nutrition programs for muscle building. controlling body weight or preparing for a competition.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR BODYBUILDING

Bodybuilders stand apart in the sense that they make very special demands on their body. They need to maximize muscle mass and minimize body fat at the same time, which is a very difficult task. Athletes such as gymnasts, wrestlers and boxers, who are supposed to be muscular and agile, follow a special training regimen that burns so many calories that they rarely need to diet to reduce body fat. They usually don't try, unlike professional bodybuilders, to reduce body fat to 8-11% for men and 7-9% for women (even lower body fat percentages are reported in many tests, but such figures like 3–5% are most likely wrong). Most athletes aim to maximize muscle size and strength with little attention to fat loss.

A bodybuilder has practically no room for error. His diet must be rich enough for muscle growth, but at the same time he must shed fat without sacrificing muscle mass. He can use aerobic exercise to burn extra calories, but without compromising his regular gym workouts. He should keep track of the calorie content of food, but consume enough protein to keep the muscles in the best possible shape. Nutrition is a complex and constantly evolving science; specialists provide us with new information almost daily. However, the basic principles of proper nutrition are well known, and a detailed acquaintance with them is necessary for a bodybuilder who wants to unleash his full hereditary potential for growth and physical fitness. development.

KEY NUTRIENTS

There are three main types of nutrients called macronutrients:

1. Protein (protein), consisting of various amino acids, provides the "building material" for muscle tissue. It is part of all organs of the body and is present in the structure of the skin, bones and tendons, and also participates in many functions of the body (all enzymes are protein compounds).

2. Carbohydrates, the fuel for the energy produced by the body, are made up of many more or less complex sugar or starch molecules.

3. Fats are nutrients that contain energy stores in the most densely packed form.

Another vital nutrient is water. Human muscles are 72% water, and most bodybuilders drink liters of it every day. Additional nutrients include a number of other substances, such as medicinal plants and hormones, which we will discuss in detail in the following sections.

A special group of substances called micronutrients include:

1. Vitamins are organic substances that contribute to various biochemical reactions.

2. Minerals are essential for a number of vital bodily functions, including muscle contraction.

3. Basic amino acids are parts of proteins that we get from food.

4. Essential fatty acids - found in plants or in fish oil.

PROTEIN

Protein is used by the body to build, repair and maintain muscle tissue. As we will see later, in this area bodybuilders are far ahead of most nutritionists: they are well aware that building muscle (in fact, intense training) requires much more protein than previously thought.

The body cannot use the protein you consume to build muscle without all the essential amino acids. However, the body itself can produce only some of these amino acids. Others have to be taken with food.

Protein is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (like other macronutrients), but it also contains nitrogen, which is not found in other nutrients. If you had to when you hear about "positive nitrogen balance" or "negative nitrogen balance", it means whether the body is in an anabolic state (gaining muscle mass) or in a catabolic state (losing muscle mass).

Some foods contain what is called a complete protein, which means they contain all the amino acids needed to make healthy protein. Examples include milk, eggs, fish, and various plant foods such as soybeans. But even these products contain different amounts of useful protein per unit weight.

The table below shows on the left the protein content by weight of various foods that are commonly used as protein sources, and on the right what percentage of that protein your body can actually use to build muscle.

(Whey, which is a refined product, contains even more healthy protein than eggs.)

You can see, for example, that eggs contain only 12% protein, but due to a specific set of amino acids, 94% of this protein can be used by the body. On the other hand, protein makes up 42% of soy flour, but its composition is such that only 61% of this amount can be used by the body. So, there is a significant difference between the total protein content and the amount that is actually used by the body for muscle growth.

Eggs are such a good source of healthy protein that they are used as a basis for comparison with other foods. In this case, the eggs are assigned a conditional value of 100.

By the way, note that we are talking about eggs in general. These days, it is fashionable to eat only the whites of eggs, because, unlike the yolks, they do not contain fat. However,