Why Cutting Carbs at Night Can Help You Build Muscle

Building your muscles gets harder and harder when you enter your 30s, as your levels of testosterone and growth hormone naturally start to decline. However, this problem gets even worse if you have a high amount of sugar in your diet. Manhattan endocrinologist Florence Comite, MD, author of Keep It Up: The Power of Precision Medicine to Conquer Low T and Revitalize Your Life, explains, ‘High blood sugar can compound that problem by hampering the production of both hormones and triggering fat storage. In fact, something as seemingly benign as having a cookie or a couple handfuls of chips late in the evening can undermine your efforts to build muscle.’

 

According to Comite, ‘Sleep is when your body does most self-restoration. Crucial to this process are human growth hormone (HGH) and insulin growth factor (IGF-1), which are typically produced at night. IGF-1 is triggered by the presence of HGH and is released by the liver and skeletal muscles to help build and repair tissues. Unfortunately, IGF-1 shares the same receptor sites as insulin, the peptide hormone that regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism. When insulin is present because you’ve indulged in a high-carb snack before bed, IGF-1 is pushed aside. Eating carbohydrates at night hampers the muscle-repair process because insulin levels increase, preventing IGF-1 from binding to receptor sites.’

 

Therefore, if you avoid eating carbs after your evening meal and try consuming smaller meals low in high-glycemic carbs throughout the day, you may be able to get your muscle wellness back on track. However, if you really want to build muscle, you need a few more tricks up your sleeve:

 

1. Eat Plenty of Protein: ‘Protein provides the raw material needed to repair your daily tissue damage, not just your muscles after a workout,’ says Comite. ‘For example, your body replaces blood cells every 100 days or so. That’s a lot of cell turnover, and almost every system in your body is constantly renewing itself. You need to fuel that repair and renewal process by eating protein throughout the day. As a bonus, eating protein also helps you burn more calories because it takes more energy to metabolize protein than carbs (sugar) or fat.’

 

2. Eat it Early: Comite asserts, ‘I recommend this to almost every patient: Start each day with a protein-rich breakfast. It sets you up right. If you eat within 30 to 60 minutes of waking, you signal the body to start burning energy.’

 

3. Fill Up On Fibre: ‘Fibre, like protein and fat, helps you feel full, takes longer to digest, and slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream,’ notes Comite. ‘It also helps maintain digestive health and lower cholesterol. The daily recommendation is around 25 grams of fibre. Eating lots of vegetables will help you get there. Other high-fibre foods are apples, beans, and nuts. Grains like oatmeal (steel-cut is best) and quinoa are also good.’

 

4. Avoid Alcohol: Comite advises, ‘Cutting back or completely eliminating alcohol is one of the most effective ways to lose weight and improve your blood sugar levels. Think about it: Beer has one of the highest glycemic values of any beverage—a double shot of sugar from alcohol plus carbs. Wine, too, is very high in carbohydrates. Having one or two glasses of wine a couple of nights a week is generally not a problem.

 

5. Invest In Your Index: Your glycaemic index (GI) is ‘one of the best tools for combating diabetes (and losing weight),’ Comite points out. ‘This measure indicates how a typical serving of a certain food will raise your blood sugar.’

Categories: Blood Sugar, Build Muscle, comite, cutting carbs, eating protein, growth hormone, late night eating, muscle building, nbsp, Protein, receptor sites, Sugar

Bulk Up: Advice For Women Who Actually Want to Put On Weight

For women, wellness advice is often tailored towards losing weight, slimming down and looking after your overall wellbeing. While these are all solid goals, what happens if you’re a woman who wants to actually gain weight and build muscle? This seems like an odd goal to a lot of people, which means that the advice out there is scarce. There’s plenty of information on fat loss for women and muscle building for men, but not much for women who want to get bigger. That said, implementing the same basic muscle-building recommendations for men into your nutritional and workout programme can work for you too.

 

When you start weight training, most women assume their eating enough calories. Women who want to lose or maintain their weight often underestimate their daily calorie intake, but women who want to bulk up often overestimate their daily intake of calories. Therefore, being honest with yourself about the number of calories you consume daily is your primary hurdle to overcome. For this, a common weight loss tip can easily be applied; keep a food journal. While dieters should keep a journal to find out exactly what they’re eating and where they can cut calories, you should keep a food journal for several days to see what you are eating, the times you are eating, and the gaps in your daily meals.

 

Another way in which you have to be honest with yourself is to realise that you need to eat in order to grow and put on muscle. As a woman, you can be reluctant to consume carbohydrates and worried about getting fat, but you have to consume an adequate amount of proteins, carbohydrates and fats to build muscle. When using your food journal, add up your total calories at the end of each day – including those that come from carbs, proteins and fats – and see where you can add in more. Yes, eating more of these foods will add on a little fat, but without this fat you are never going to put on muscle. You need to be in a caloric surplus, and so you need to take steps to gradually accomplish this.

 

The reason why we say you have to go slowly is that suddenly adding a load of calories to your diet will cause you to gain too much unwanted body fat. For the best results, you should begin by adding an additional 200-300 daily calories for a week, preferably from carbohydrates. If you currently consume 1,600 calories a day, for example, you should increase this to 1,800 calories every day for a week. After this week is up, take a look and evaluate your progress. You should aim for a weight gain of one to one-and-a-half pounds a week, but certainly no more than two pounds weekly. This is a slow process for sure, and it can be frustrating, but in the long run you will be more satisfied.

 

In order to see results, you need to stick to your increased caloric intake for at least thirty days, if not more. The slow progress may make you want to give up, but stick with it! At the very least, it’s worth giving a month of your life to see what might happen. Another foodie tip to consider is to have the best possible pre-workout meal, as this is a great place to add in those extra calories. A pre-workout snack of 20 grams of whey protein and some fast carbs such as a big bowl of cream of rice or a white bagel, for example, will help you to bulk up and work hard. Remember, you will grow outside of the gym not in it.

Categories: Build Muscle, calorie consumption, calories, daily, Food Journal, Muscle, muscle building, Pre-Workout, weight, weight gain, Women

Are Pre-Workout and Post-Workout Supplements Necessary?

While you might not have given much thought to how supplements affect your wellness before, if you’ve started to get interested in athletics and working out, the chances are you’re thinking about it now. How do you know which supplements – if any – benefit your wellbeing and your performance, and which ones give you the best value for money? As an athlete or fitness fan, you’ve probably spent some time looking into both pre- and post-workout supplements. While the results with these products tend to vary by the individual taking them, the actual truth is that neither is absolutely crucial. That is not to say that supplements can’t help you, but no one is urging you to stock up on pills and powders here.

 

With pre-workout supplements, manufacturers tend to use a lot of stimulants in their products in order to give you a little extra pump before you hit the gym. Some pre-workout pills focus on certain types of proteins or amino acids, but the vast majority will focus on a few ingredients; including 1 3 dimethylamylamine, caffeine, nitric oxide, beta alanine, creatine, and various other well-known stimulant enhancers. Again, different ingredients will work better for different people, but the most universally effective and safe performance-enhancing ingredients to consume are caffeine and beta alanine.

 

The debate with pre-workout supplements lies is in nitric oxide, which is an ingredient that pops up in almost every product like this. Some wellness experts, writers and enthusiasts will swear blind that nitric oxide is essential to your performance, but others will say that it’s all a placebo or muscle-memory hype. No pre-workout supplements are absolutely necessary, but if you do choose one, the best thing to do is try and test out what works for you. Read reviews, try sample sizes and pick a supplement that will benefit you long-term. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

 

• 1 3 dimethylamylamine: This ingredient tend to enhance short-term performance, but can force you to wear down at a much faster rate.


• Beta-Alanine: This ingredient gives you less of a pump, but increases your sweat rate and helps you work harder or for longer, which is good for cardio days.


• Jack3d: This is good for major, powerlifting, muscle building days and supersets with very few breaks.

 

Post-workout supplements work differently to the pre-workout varieties, in that they are used to help you recover from hard workouts. Some may decrease your delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) while others can help you get ready for your next workout in as short a time as possible. There are so many products out there to really go into detail. That said; a good-quality whey protein is your most advisable option. Unless you have more specific goals, don’t use isolate or mass builder protein. Whey protein provides whole protein and branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) and the higher quality ones contain beneficial ingredients for decreasing muscle soreness. These include glutamate, creatine monohydrate, and several other ingredients.

 

Still, you cannot neglect other, more natural sources of lean protein. Grilled, boneless, skinless chicken breast is a healthy option, while tuna provides a great source of protein that will help in muscle building and recovery, as well as giving you some all-necessary omega-3 fatty oils. You can also get your caffeine stimulants from more affordable and natural sources; green tea and coffee, bolstered with some complex carbs. An hour before a workout, try having a baked potato, and then follow that up 20 minutes before the workout with a black coffee.

Categories: amino acids, beta alanine, muscle building, natural alternatives, natural sources, nitric oxide, Post-Workout, Pre-Workout, whey protein, workout supplements