Bodybuilding Meal Plans - What To Eat And How Often
Bodybuilding meal plans are the place where most people fail completely, or at the very least, don’t do themselves complete justice. I can attest to this personally.
Preparing meals is a chore, and as such, we can find ourselves all too tempted to opt for the easy option of fast food, or processed rubbish, trying to make the calories up – or ‘calorie chasing’ as I call it.
This can work, to an extent, for some, but it’s hectic – and quite often you can find yourself severely lacking in calories come the end of the day, and having to stuff your face full of food when all you want to do is go to sleep.
So, here are a few pointers for you when laying out your diet plan, that I believe will help you to get off to a good start, keep you on track, and won’t cause you any more stress than necessary.
How to make your meals easy and highly effective
- Know how many calories you have to eat in a day, and divide that up into a set amount of meals that you are comfortable eating. Many find 6 – 8 meals a day a good number. Trying to eat too much in one go when you don’t particularly feel like it – and at times you won’t – can be hell on earth, and, it’s not the best thing for the digestive system. Several small meals is better than a few big meals, allowing the nutrients to be processed more effectively.
- Having a set diet, if you can stick to it, will be much more time efficient and stress-free than having to do everything on the fly. Plus, it’ll no doubt be better for maximum muscle gain and keeping fat gains to a minimal.
- Plan your meals in advance: cook in batches where possible, and place into containers in refrigeration.
- However you divide your macronutrients up in your diet, be it 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fats, or 50% protein, 25% carbs 25% fats, or whatever, that you try your best to you subdivide those ratios up into your individual meals as best you can. Now, you won’t be able to do this precisely, and in some cases not at all, or the dish simply won’t be palatable. But it certainly makes sense to try, so you are getting an evenly balanced and regular intake of all the nutrients you need.
What types of foods to eat
If you can, try to go for whole foods. Things like milk, eggs, beef, fish, pasta, potato, rice, fish oil, etc. These kinds of foods are timeless muscle builders, and should form the bulk of any persons diet.
