Bodybuilding Diet

“Bodybuilding is 80% diet.” This statement was uttered many years ago and made famous in the bodybuilding world by one of the greatest professional American bodybuilding trainers of his era, Vince Gironda.

He had his own ways of success with bodybuilding and he became famous as he trained many Hollywood stars. He became to be known as “The Iron Guru” as one of his students became the greatest bodybuilders of all time, Arnold Schwartzenegger. The rest is history.

His acolytes list reads like a who’s who in bodybuilding of the 1950s through 1997.

Vince was pretty unique in his ways of bodybuilding. He believed that muscle building starts in the kitchen rather than in a gym. He created his own bodybuilding diet and laid the foundation and gave it much emphasis to this principle as the core of creating champions.

His signature bodybuilding diet in a nutshell should include the best useable sources of protein, natural carbohydrates which includes fresh vegetables and fruits, fats and oils, and finally, nuts.

To help grow muscle tissue, bodybuilders also need to include supplements which in turn will help to reduce the subcutaneous fat on the body. Subcutaneous fat is the layer of subcutaneous tissue that is most widely distributed. It is the place where all the fats are stored.

Bernard Beverley, a renowed biologist, has stated that the human tissue is 100% biological and that eating foods that are very high in biological content is of great paramounce for developing that tissue as much as possible. This fact has to be taken note for all bodybuilders.

There is a tendency for many people to get confused between foods high in biological content with foods high in protein. Biological content means that food containing protein has a similar structure to the protein contained in human tissue. So this kind of structure doesn’t contain in all types of protein-rich foods.

Believe it or not, but the food with the highest natural biological content is the humble egg! This might be a surprise for some but if you can recall, Sylvestor Stallone was drinking a few raw eggs early in the morning before he went out for his training in the movie Rocky.

Other foods that are good examples containing high in biological content are raw milk, organ meats (heart, liver, kidneys and sweetbreads), lamb, steak, poultry and fish. Some vegetables like beans and legumes are also good sources of protein. Thus it’s very important to have them include in your diet as well.

Soybeans has been touted as to be very rich in protein by many food enthusiasts. The truth is that they are only about 22% biological. This means you have to consume a considerable amount of soy to match the amino acid content of the higher quality protein as mentioned above.

The ideal way for contest preparation is to eat as many as three dozen eggs per day rather than laying your hands on anabolic steroids which the Iron Guru highly disapprove!

Food high in protein

The rationale behind this idea is that the huge consumption of eggs and other protein-rich foods will give your muscles a much needed boost of biological protein.

This will ensure new levels of strength and rapidly repair any damage in the course of training.

After a period of six to eight weeks, you should then reduce the intake amount to about one or two each day as you would have achieved your goal.

Most of the bodybuilding diets if you came across focus rather on red meat and fresh vegetables, or one rich in dairy products and fish. They each serve a particular goal primarily to reload the system with protein to replace and rebuild muscle tissue torn or worn down due to heavy workout sessions. They are not meant for long-term diet plans.

Bodybuilding supplements that Gironda recommended were: Kelp tablets, desiccated liver, Lipotropic Amino acids(Inositol, Choline, Methionine, Betain that aid in the metabolism and assimilation of protein) and wheat germ oil. Another diet method the Iron Guru developed was putting his students on a special bodybuilding diet cycle in preparation for contests, to get rid of that last bit of subcutaneous fat.

His program outlay would be to have a diet of zero carbohydrates for four days. On the fifth day normal diet resumes. The next four days diet would consist of zero levels of carb and then on the tenth day is back to normal diet. He would let his students follow this regime for between three and eight weeks, until every muscle separation and vein starts popping out on the surface.

In summary, a good bodybuilding diet should be focused on protein, fats, good carbohydrates and fiber. The breakdown should be 24% protein, 40% natural carbs (no refined starches or sugars) and the balance in fat and fiber.

Just before competition diets, and cycling of zero carbs for four days and the fifth day free, should be followed for no more than eight weeks. Along with this appropriate supplements should be taken too.

There you have it! If all these bodybuilding diet information is totally unheard of to you, then you really did spent a good time learning it here! Just to let you know, Gironda’s favorite form of supplements came in the form of his own concoction of a blender mix of raw fresh cream, farm eggs and other ingredients. He stated that the most essential part of the blend is the eggshells!