Monday Muscle - Skinny Guys - Here's the #1 Ingredient for Muscle Growth (Part 2)

A couple years ago, I spent a summer as a personal trainer for a really slender college kid who had recently experienced a near brush with death. This young guy had the unfortunate habit of internalizing an enormous amount of stress when faced with his academic workload, especially during finals. There's nothing unusual about that - right? Well, except for the fact that when he would get stressed (which was nearly all of the time), he'd stop eating. This combination of semi-starvation and adrenaline-inducing stress had eventually led him to having a devastating ulcer. When the ulcer opened up like a flood gate one day, he ended up hospitalized after being lucky that the severe internal bleeding didn't kill him.

Needless to say, he needed a lot of mind training before muscle training could reap benefits. The doctors found him so deficient of protein, he needed a daily iron supplement just to get his levels of this vital mineral up to par.

Quality protein sources are key

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that protein deficiency is about as conducive to muscle growth as doing uphill sommersaults to escape a tsunami. Steady intake of high quality protein is essential to muscle growth. Iron, present in meat, is important for adequate energy levels. If we didn't first improve his mindset toward healthy eating, none of the physical training would have amounted to even a few ounces of muscle gain.

So what's my point in sharing this story with you? Well, in my first article aimed at skinny guys, I really drove home the fact that stuffing down mega calories and haphazardly tossing weights around will rarely lead to mesomorphic nirvana. My point was that without having an optimal muscle breakdown/recuperation routine and schedule, all the calorie gorging one could partake in would just cause undue stress to the body and little or no muscle weight.

However, eating too little and too sporadically is detrimental as well. If you train like a tiger and eat like a bird, an optimal training/recuperation system will fail to deliver maximum results. In order to steadily gain muscle, you need to eat four to six meals a day consisting of 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. You must also eat enough carbohydrates to fuel your daily activity energy expenditures while having a few grams left over for the energy requirements of muscle recuperation. This is not such a tall order. However, it can be somewhat daunting for those who have an aversion to eating like the young man I was training a couple summers ago.

So how many carbohydrate calories above your daily expenditure do you need for gaining muscle? Studies have shown that we need no more than two or three hundred above what would keep us at our present body mass.

Carbohydrates are important as well

That's about equivalent to eating a whopping three bananas or a couple bowls of oatmeal. Of course, you'd be best off by adding those few hundred extra carb calories evenly throughout your day. A meal every three hours with 40 grams of protein and 50 grams of additional carbohydrates is enough to put muscle on anyone, considering they've got the #1 key to muscle growth covered.

If this sounds inadequate, consider what I've done in the six weeks prior to this writing. I decided to get as ripped and low in body fat as I could. I reduced my calories and increased my activity until I was definitely burning more calories than I was consuming. Making sure to ingest enough protein, I ate a hefty 40 grams (at least) during each of my five daily meals. Not only did I NOT lose any muscle or strength - I gained more. I actually built muscle while restricting my calorie intake.

That's the power of obtaining the optimum muscle breakdown/recuperation routine and schedule. With a few caveats (like eating enough protein), it remains the number one key to muscle growth.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Scott_Abbett/91209

Ten Most Frequently Asked Questions About Weight Loss - Part 7

7. Does quitting smoking lead to weight gain?

Yes and no. Not everyone gains weight when they stop smoking. Among people who do, the average weight gain is between 6 and 8 pounds. Roughly 10 percent of people who stop smoking gain a large amount of weight-30 pounds or more.

When smokers quit, they may gain weight for a number of reasons. These include:

Feeling hungry. Quitting smoking may make a person feel hungrier and eat more than usual, but this feeling usually goes away after several weeks.

Having more snacks and alcoholic drinks. Some people eat more high-fat, high-sugar snacks and drink more alcoholic beverages after they quit smoking. Some feel the need to snack absent-mindedly to keep their mouths busy on times that it is supposed to be pursed over a cigarette stick.

Burning calories at a normal rate again. Every cigarette you smoke makes your body burn calories faster, but is also harmful to your heart. Once you quit, you are no longer getting this temporary effect. Instead, you are burning slightly fewer calories on a daily basis.

Physical activity and a healthy eating plan may help you control your weight. In addition, being physically active may ease withdrawal symptoms during smoking cessation and help reduce the chances of relapsing after quitting.

While it is a good idea to be physically active and eat healthy foods as you quit smoking, try not to worry about your weight. It may be easier to quit first and focus on controlling your weight when you are smoke-free.

To lower your chances of gaining weight when you stop smoking:

Accept yourself.
Get regular, moderate-intensity physical activity.
Limit snacking and alcohol.
Consider using medication to help you quit if you feel you are about to get derailed from your plan.
Consider getting professional advice about weight control if the weight gain caused by quitting smoking will send you over the overweight standards.

Are Diet Drinks Making You Gain Weight?

Let's get right to the point, soda does not do the body good. "Pop", as it is popularly known as, is becoming the drink of the past, not of the future generations. Most people falsely believe that diet soda is helping them lose weight, but in fact, it is sabotaging their weight loss efforts.

I just read a study recently that stated that there is evidence that diet soda drinkers gain more weight than regular soda drinkers. This idea may be a shock to some diet soda lovers.

One of the first problems with diet sodas is the artificial sweeteners. These should be avoided at all costs, regardless of what they are in product wise. Some of these artificial sweeteners are used to kill lab animals in order to get body count ratio to humans to be within the "legal limit" for human consumption.

Artificial sweeteners fool your body into craving more carbohydrate based foods, which in turn makes you eat more carbs later, thus gaining more weight. Plus, one may think, since they have consumed zero calories, there is room for more. Not true! Studies show that diet soda drinkers eat more food because they subconciously believe that they saved on calories with a diet drink.

There is hope though in today's world for lots of alternatives. The first, most obvious healthy alternative to drink is pure water. If you don't however like the taste of plain water, you might put lemon in it. Lemon is the best cleanser on the planet, if you ask me. I once had the flu for 3 days. By day 2, I still couldn't keep anything down. I opted to start the master cleanser with lemon, grade A or B maple syrup, pure water, and a pinch of cayenne pepper, for the circulation, and some mint tea. I followed this for 7 to 10 days, without hunger pangs because my stomach was already so small because of not keeping any food down with the flu. I lost 20 pounds of water weight in 10 days. This can be modified, of course to upon waking, just drink a glass of fresh squeezed lemon water.

My favorite alternative to diet drinks is green tea, slightly steeped. I have found leaving the tea bag in for more than 3 minutes creates less of medicinal tang to it. I don't even wring out the tea bags, for it makes too srong of a flavor. I enjoy also some combos of black, green, red, and white teas, especially because of their antioxidant properties.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maureen_Kurman