Sunday, November 23, 2008

Bodybuilding Dieting, Tips to Do it Right

By Ricardo d Argence

All right, so you want to get physically fit at the gym, and lift heavy weights. If only weight lifting were as simple as pumping the weights up and down.

It is nutrition that plays in big role when it comes to recovery and growth. You need to change your diet according to the increase or decrease of your muscle mass. If you gain muscle you need to eat more. If you loose muscle you need to eat less. How can you observe what is occurring inside your 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.

If you get yor bodyweight in pound and then multiply it by the percentage of bodyfat, that will give you your total bodyfat. Total bodyweight less the resulting figure will equal one's fat free mass. Although the figure has organs and muscle we use the entire model for the calculations including organs and bones.

After these two figures have been worked out, you should keep notes of your total body fat and free mass. You can then compare these measurements in the future to check if your body fat percentage has increased. You'll discover that with proper food consumption and balanced exercise and nutrition, the amount of mass without fat increases while bodyfat total decreases. If you don't eat enough, your muscles and fat free mass will decrease, but your body fat will increase. - 16004

About the Author: