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When it comes to nutrition for muscle building and weight gain there are only three rules to remember: eat more, eat often, eat quality food.  Quantity + Quality There is no other way around it. In order to gain weight you need to eat more, a lot more, but you need to eat quality muscle building food rather than junk food like doughnuts and chips. Because you’re aiming to build muscle rather than just get fat, eating a lot of the wrong things will not give you the results you want. To gain weight and gain quality muscle mass you need to base your diet around an intake of quality protein and complex carbohydrates. Make sure you eat more poultry (chicken and turkey), fish and lean meat (pork and beef), eggs and low fat dairy (Greek yogurts and low fat cheese are the best), beans, quinoa, oatmeal, nuts, nut butters and oils. If you are vegetarian or vegan, check out tempeh and seitan meat substitutes. Milk, cow or any other type, is also a good source of protein. Vegans need to incorp...

Pre and post workout nutrition is simple: one is fuel and the other one is repair. You eat before your workout to have the extra energy to push yourself during a training session. You eat afterwards to repair the damage done to your muscles, help them rebuild faster and grow. Depending on your goals, you can do either or both, or you can ignore it altogether. The before and after meals are there to aid you do all of the above. They’re not something you need if all you are trying to do is lose weight. Your body has two fuel tanks: primary and secondary. Your primary fuel tank is the energy stored from your previous meal (glycogen stores) and the secondary fuel tank are your fat reserves (fat stored in fat cells). Unless the primary fuel tank is empty, your body will not access the secondary energy supply = your fat cells. So if your goal is to lose weight and/or streamline, you really want is to make sure you empty your glycogen stores first so you can access the fat stores. Weight loss...

Roast meat and vegetables in the oven instead of frying.  You can roast pretty much anything in the oven in half an hour or less with only one teaspoon of olive oil, salt and pepper. Use foil to line the oven tray or make a foil “boat” for no-mess and easy clean up afterwards. Try to have at least one meatless day a week . Use beans, tomato salads and salads with nut toppings, oven roasted broccoli and cauliflower, spinach and mushrooms with or without eggs to compensate.  Snack on fruit, vegetables and low fat plain yogurts  instead of chips and chocolate bars. If you don’t like plain yogurts, make your own toppings using fruit, berries, seeds, nuts, honey or cinnamon.  Try to eat meals that are at least half vegetables . Vegetables can be eaten in pretty much unlimited amounts and can easily fill up a plate making a meal look larger.  Use fresh sliced tomato or mashed avocado instead of ketchup and mayo  in sandwiches. Most chicken or turkey sandwiches an...

For most of us, food bill is the largest bill we’ve got already before we introduce healthy into the equation. Most of us spend over half of the money we earn monthly on food alone so there is no surprise it is such a sensitive subject. It doesn’t have to be, though, there is a way to keep the food bill low and still eat healthy and well. Just be practical about it. You can eat healthy, eat well and eat on a budget at the same time if you shop smart and cook everything yourself. Healthy eating isn’t rocket science – you already know what’s good and what’s bad for you, it’s just that junk and takeouts are often more convenient when it comes to a quick budget meal. If you make healthy eating convenient and affordable at the same time, you’ll have no problem switching to better food. Understanding “Healthy” The idea of what is healthy is distorted these days. Most of the stuff available is modified and has been altered in some way. I doubt that you can get hold of anything truly pure unle...

Making something easy or accessible (or not) is how you change your snacking habits. We snack more and we snack more often because it’s easy and because it’s convenient, we snack before a meal, afterwards and sometimes instead. We snack all day and it very soon becomes a habit to snack and grab something we can crunch on all day long. With a few smart modifications we can change that.  Eat protein rich snacks. Quick snacks with lots of sugar will give you an instant energy boost but it won’t last and you’ll be coming from the sugar high within an hour feeling worse and being hungry again. High protein snacks (protein bars, nuts and yogurts) satisfy your hunger, longer and will not raise your blood sugar levels. They will keep you feeling full longer and keep you in a better mood all day long.  Never keep any commercial snacks in the house. If you want a bag of crisps you will have to come out and buy some. By making it inconvenient you are likely to not bother  and either...

We are split personalities, almost two beings living in one body. Biologically we have evolved to communicate to get our point across and make our intentions clear. To express where we stand, what we want or why we do something we only have to speak up… or so we think. In order for another person to understand what you are saying and what you want you both have to speak the same language or at the very least have a common framework for communication. When that is not the case, you have to find that common framework or you won’t be heard and be understood and you will not get the results you want. And that’s exactly the kind of miscommunication we have with our bodies 24/7.  Why? Because our body has ideas of its own. It has a prime directive, its main goal being to give us the best chances of survival. It has the same goal it had 200,000 years ago: to keep us alive. Just because our goals have recently changed, it has no way of knowing that which is why, within our own body we are ...

The question of how to lose fat and gain muscle is at the heart of almost every fitness activity. Before we get into what has to be done to achieve both at the same time it’ll help to understand the mechanisms involved. Weight loss and a reduction in body fat are the result of creating an energy deficit in the body. In other words when we eat fewer calories than we spend the body cuts into its stored fat reserves and we become leaner. Muscle gain and an increase in weight is the result of an energy surplus. This means we eat more than we burn but train hard enough for the body to use the surplus energy to repair muscle fiber and build new one. Because muscle is expensive to build and expensive to maintain the surplus is only used up to build muscle if we train consistently at a challenging rate. The description above is an oversimplification, mainly because the moment we start to have less calories than we need or more than we can use there are complex endocrinal processes that kick in...