Monday, November 24, 2008

Bodybuilding Dieting, Tips to Do it Right

By Ricardo d Argence

Ok, so you want to get huge and you get into the gym, pound weights till you have a big red head. And you maybe think that's all you have to do, pump the weights, if only it was that simple.

An important aspect of both repair and growth is nutrition. Bodybuiding diest are always changing for the simple reason muscle mass increases, putting muscle on means eating more, losing muscle means you will need to eat less. How do you stay on top of what is going on inside the body?

The first is to monitor your weight to see if your goal to put muscle on is causing an increase in bodyweight. If the scales show that weight are staying the same or going down then its time to look at the diet and eat more. If the weight is going up because your stomach is getting bigger then you are eating too much. But be cautious, you can expect to put some bodyfat on when trying to put muscle on, but you want to monitor that the dreaded fat isn't going on to much.

Using body fat calipers is a great technique to assess whether muscle or fat is increasing. You can use the calipers every other week. If muscle seems to be going down according to your calipers, that is the evidence that you are not eating enough good nutrition. If the calipers reflect that the percent of bodyfat is increasing then you will have to consume less.

Every good gym will have a set of calipers and assuming it is the same person doing the measurments each time you will get a honest reading as for what is going on. After you have figured out the amount of millimeters and your bodyweights, it is then that the chart which comes with calipers will determine what bodyfat percentage you are.

In order to figure out what the amount of your body fat you have, you need to take your body weight, in pounds, multiply it by your body fat percentage. This formula will tell you what your total body fat is. Subtracting this amount from total weight will estimate your free fat mass. This total includes not just muscle but all structure in the body, but it is a good estimate for our purposes.

You should record and keep the figures you calculated for total body fat and for fat free mass. When you have your measurements taken you can check to see if the percentage of bodyfat has increased. If you do the correct exercise and eat correctly then your body fat will go down. And with the decrease of body fat, you will find that your muscles and fat free mass will go up. If you are not eating correctly you will discover that your fat free mass, muscle is decreasing and the bodyfat is increasing. - 15266

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