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ASK THE DIET GURU THE SKINNY ON FAT
Can I still eat dietary fat when I'm trying to get lean? If so, how much can I eat, and what types should I be eating or avoiding? Yes, you can still eat fat; there's not much credence to the idea that a zero-fat diet is the way to go if you want to drop fat. In fact, a fat-free diet lowers levels of testosterone, a hormone that plays a huge role in muscle retention. Any time a person diets, he risks losing muscle mass, since lower-calorie states burn fat and also chip away at muscle.
As a rule of thumb, I suggest including a 175-250 g serving of lean beef daily along with 1–2 egg yolks for breakfast. For your other four meals, keep fat and calories lower by eating very low-fat sources of protein such as protein powder, chicken or turkey. You should also include salmon, tuna or trout as part of your menu 2–3 times a week; they're dense in omega-3 fatty acids, which help boost levels of hormone- sensitive lipase, an enzyme that promotes greater fat-burning. And don't forget about healthy monounsaturated fats from nuts, olive oil and avocadoes.
Shoot for about 0.25–0.5 gram of fat per pound of bodyweight per day. The lower you drop your carbohydrate intake, the higher you can go on fat. |
GET YOUR FILL
My muscles seem flat. What foods should I be eating to fill them out, and when should I eat these foods? If your muscles are flat, you're probably eating too few carbohydrates. Carbs help make muscle glycogen, which is a storage form of energy for muscles. Glycogen is made of glucose from carbohydrates and water, and the more you store — from eating a diet higher in carbs — the bigger and fuller your muscles will look.
To maximise your glycogen stores, you need to do four key things:
1) Eat a high-carbohydrate diet, roughly 3 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight a day.
2) To ensure that you don't gain bodyfat, eat a large portion of those carbs after training and in your first meal of the day. These are two crucial times when glycogen stores may be a bit lower, and eating more at these times ensures that carbs are stored as glycogen with little or no chance to trigger an increase in bodyfat.
3) Eat six meals a day. In general, this helps keep the glycogen-storing machinery moving so carbs are always being stored, creating fuller-looking muscles. If you eat fewer than six meals, you risk storing a disproportionate amount of carbs as bodyfat.
4) Always eat protein with carbs. Protein and carbs together drive up levels of insulin, a hormone that helps facilitate greater storage of muscle glycogen. Chris Aceto is currently nutrition consultant to Jay Cutler. To order his training and nutrition books Championship Bodybuilding and Everything You Need to Know About Fat Loss, visit nutramedia.com |
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