Working Out: What should I eat?

[Blarg]

Protein powder helps a lot. And it's a relatively inexpensive way to get an awful lot of protein in your system.

The milk that is usually drunk with it sure doesn't hurt, either. But some protein powders taste decent enough, and mix well enough, that they're fine in just water, too.

If you're going to be eating tons of protein, try to get some healthy measure of it in things like beans, chicken, and fish, so you aren't pounding cholesterol into your veins at quite as crazed a pace. A heavy-eating, super high protein can be kind of hard on the body.

And get plenty of roughage, too. Eating all that meat can pack your guts pretty tight, and a little help pushing it all out makes life a lot more pleasant.

By the way, serious bodybuilders are very into eating a huge bowl of oatmeal in the morning. I do that too now, adding in a couple bananas and a couple scoops of protein powder. The protein powder makes the flavor a lot better too. Consider that as well. It'll give you carbs early in the day for sustainable energy, and plenty of time to burn them off. Plus oatmeal is supposedly pretty good for you.

[diebitter]

BTW, if you follow this advice, be aware you're gonna need new clothes (especially tops) in the future, and when you get em, get em loose so you have further room to grow.

[AEKDBet]

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you actually need carbs as well.. like a 2:1 ratio of carbsrotein for meals after you work out. Tuna is a really good protein source. Any kind of meat is good also.

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Reef is VERY much correct in emphasizing carbs. MOSTLY you are eating carbs, then protein, then fat. something like 50/30/20. The less solid food the better for your skinny ass. milk, protein, etc - the colder the better as well. being cold = hungry

Check out Body-for-Life. All the info you need for nutrition, exercise, and supplements. When I'm on it, it works really well.

ScottieK

[ChicagoTroy]

Chicken and fish are good, too. Just avoid processed foods and drink lots of water. Performance nutrition is not a complicated topic.

You want to eat a slow releasing protein before you go to bed, like milk protein. This is best mixed with a healthy fat to further slow the protein digestion. This will keep nitrogen levels up while you sleep and keep you in a anabolic state. Neglecting this will literally mean losing muscle while you sleep. As an ectomorph our biggest hurdle is nutrition. Quality calories every 2 to 3 hours is what it takes.

There some better tasting protein powders out there if you do not like the standard ones. They cost a little more but help in meeting your protein requirements.

Oh ya, what Blarg said about oatmeal is true. Make sure its old fashion kind. I believe it has the lowest glycemic index of any other food. This is one of the best foods anyone can eat.

[vexvelour]

Organic food.

[jthegreat]

Fish. Lots of fish. Especially fish with lots of good fats like salmon. You can get bags of salmon filets really cheap at Sam's (and probably other big warehouse stores).

[pokerdirty]

Balance bars.

[AEKDBet]

Dietary Protein to Support Anabolism with Resistance Exercise in Young Men
Stuart M. Phillips, PhD, FACN, Joseph W. Hartman, MSc and Sarah B. Wilkinson, MSc

Exercise Metabolism Research Group, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, CANADA

Address reprint requests to: Stuart M. Phillips, Ph.D., FACN, Exercise Metabolism Research Group, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1 CANADA. E-mail: phillis@mcmaster.ca

Resistance exercise is fundamentally anabolic and as such stimulates the process of skeletal muscle protein synthesis (MPS) in an absolute sense and relative to skeletal muscle protein breakdown (MPB). However, the net effect of resistance exercise is to shift net protein balance (NPB = MPS – MPB) to a more positive value; however, in the absence of feeding NPB remains negative. Feeding stimulates MPS to an extent where NPB becomes positive, for a transient time. When combined, resistance exercise and feeding synergistically interact to result in NPB being greater than with feeding alone. This feeding- and exercise-induced stimulation of NPB is what, albeit slowly, results in muscle hypertrophy. With this rudimentary knowledge we are now at the point where we can manipulate variables within the system to see what impact these interventions have on the processes of MPS, MPB, and NPB and ultimately and perhaps most importantly, muscle hypertrophy and strength. We used established models of skeletal muscle amino acid turnover to examine how protein source (milk versus soy) acutely affects the processes of MPS and MPB after resistance exercise. Our findings revealed that even when balanced quantities of total protein and energy are consumed that milk proteins are more effective in stimulating amino acid uptake and net protein deposition in skeletal muscle after resistance exercise than are hydrolyzed soy proteins. Importantly, the finding of increased amino acid uptake would be independent of the differences in amino acid composition of the two proteins. We propose that the improved net protein deposition with milk protein consumption is also not due to differences in amino acid composition, but is due to a different pattern of amino acid delivery associated with milk versus hydrolyzed soy proteins. If our acute findings are accurate then we hypothesized that chronically the greater net protein deposition associated with milk protein consumption post-resistance exercise would eventually lead to greater net protein accretion (i.e., muscle fiber hypertrophy), over a longer time period. In young men completing 12 weeks of resistance training (5d/wk) we observed a tendency (P = 0.11) for greater gains in whole body lean mass and whole as greater muscle fiber hypertrophy with consumption of milk. While strength gains were not different between the soy and milk-supplemented groups we would argue that the true significance of a greater increase in lean mass that we observed with milk consumption may be more important in groups of persons with lower initial lean mass and strength such as the elderly.

Key words: dietry protein, skeletal muscle, muscle hypertrophy, resistence exercise, milk proteins

Abbreviations: MPS = muscle protein synthesis • MPB = muscle protein breakdown • NPB = net protein balance