10 common mistakes that hold back your diet
My aim is to share what I have learned from observing the eating habits of top bodybuilders. I hope these tips help you correct and avoid nutrition mistakes and make faster progress. Here are the 10 biggest mistakes to avoid to maximize your progress.
1. Not sticking with your diet
Many bodybuilders jump from one diet to another without giving the previous one time to work. It takes at least three weeks for your body to adapt to a change in diet. If you start a high-carbohydrate, moderate-protein, low-fat diet to reduce your body fat percentage, you should not expect visible results before 21 days. Do not expect immediate changes in your physique!
2. Failing to track calories
Keep track of both your calories and where they come from — carbohydrates, protein or fat. Many bodybuilders fail to lose as much fat as they would like because they do not record what they eat in their training diary. Others fail to achieve the increase in body weight they want. Successful bodybuilders keep an accurate record of how much they eat — they do not guess or make assumptions. Find a food composition table to help you and buy a scale!
3. Eating irregularly
Whether you are trying to burn fat or add lean muscle mass, consistency is key, and eating on a whim holds back your progress. If you are a hardgainer or struggle to get lean, 5 meals a day would be optimal. This approach — a meal every 2-3 hours — makes it harder to store fat, improves nutrient absorption and adds lean muscle mass.
4. Relying on the scale to measure progress
You cannot manage your diet by watching the scale alone. Some bodybuilders get discouraged when their body weight does not increase quickly during a bulking phase, so they jump to conclusions and increase their calorie intake to speed up their progress. Some athletes take the same approach during contest prep, fearing they will not achieve their desired condition in time for competition. Although scales and other measuring tools, such as body fat monitors, are useful aids, it makes more sense to base your decisions on photos, the mirror and an impartial observer — bodybuilding is, after all, a visual sport. If you look lean and your muscles are full enough, your diet is probably working, even if the scale and other measuring tools suggest otherwise.
5. Overeating, especially carbohydrates
Athletes who try to add mass at any cost start eating excessive amounts of food, which in turn promotes fat gain. Some bodybuilders follow a low-fat diet but still gain a lot of fat because they eat too many carbohydrates. Of course, carbohydrates are needed for hard training and also aid recovery, but once your body has received the amount it needs, the excess is very easily converted to fat.
6. Failing to tailor your diet to your needs
There is nothing wrong with learning from professional bodybuilders, but Dorian Yates’ diet, for example, differs considerably from Nasser el Sonbaty’s. The only thing their diets have in common is that each is tailored to their individual needs. Dorian’s diet may not work for Nasser, and vice versa. If you have recorded everything you eat and how your body responded to particular foods, you already have most of the groundwork for a personalized diet.
7. Expecting supplements to work miracles
Some bodybuilders try to keep their body fat percentage low by taking carnitine and chromium regularly without reducing their calorie intake. Others turn to creatine, glutamine and branched-chain amino acids for muscle building but do not consume enough calories and protein. Supplements work alongside your diet; they do not make up for eating mistakes and poor planning.
8. Becoming a slave to canned tuna
To succeed, you need to eat properly all the time. I have known bodybuilders who burned out from the boredom of eating nothing but plain chicken breast and canned tuna. Laura Creavalle’s cookbook “The Lite Lifestyle,” for example, contains 150 contest-prep recipes for bodybuilders. Recipes like these allow you to keep eating the same foods for a long time without becoming sick of them.
9. Cutting all fat out of your diet
Reducing dietary fat helps keep your calorie intake under control, but eliminating fat entirely and consuming only very low-fat or fat-free protein sources, such as turkey, fish and protein concentrates, can reduce fat synthesis and/or slow muscle growth. A low-fat diet that includes the essential fatty acids found in meat, chicken and fish helps promote optimal fat synthesis, muscle growth and recovery.
10. Making overly large changes at once
When increasing or decreasing the calories in your diet, try to make small changes at a time so your body can adapt. Abrupt changes in calorie intake can cause fat storage.
This article was first published on Fitness.ee on 03 February 2000
Author: Chris Aceto; translated by Kristjan
Read also: bodybuilder.
Source: Turg.Fitness.ee
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