Best Food to Fuel Gym Gains

Hi guys, today I thought I'd talk about what food is best to eat to fuel your progress in and out of the gym. Now I know that so many of you are concerned with your workouts to a crazy degree, and that's great. Certainly one of the biggest pitfalls around when it comes to lack of progress is not pushing hard enough in the gym. This is certainly one of my pet peeves - if you're going to do something, go all the way, after all.

Once you have that workout and training intensity dialed in though, you need to keep pushing the envelope in order to see results. I'm not only talking about increasing sets, weight, reps, etc. to keep the body adapting to new stress. I'm also referring to the all important fuel that you give your body in order to enable it to actually respond to the stress you're placing on it. This is the only way to grow.

Ok, everybody knows that protein is incredibly important for making muscle gains, so I'm not going to go too in depth on that here. Recommendations vary about what is the absolute best amount of protein to ingest per day for optimum muscle growth, but it will vary depending on the person, training intensity, current muscle mass, and so on. A safe recommendation, however, for someone looking to put on as much muscle as they can, is to make sure to get around 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight each day. This will make sure that your body always has enough protein to call on to build new muscle.

Great, we got protein down, but there's so much more that's incredibly important to fueling growth. Often demonized or overlooked is sufficient carbohydrate intake. Fact is, you need plenty of carbs to fuel those intense training sessions, or you just won't have the energy to work hard enough in the gym to push that growth. Plus, carbs help fill out the muscles, giving them a larger, more full appearance too. And who doesn't mind that?

Last but not least, always make sure you're getting plenty of green and colored vegetables in your diet as well. These guys have all the vital micronutrients your body needs to run at its highest level. As far as supplements go, I'd recommend leaving them at GNC or whatever and just spending that money on good food. That's the way to go for optimum absorption, etc. The one thing you all should have is a good protein powder for those after workout shakes. Other than that, focus on your foods for all your nutrition needs.