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Think proper nutrition is complicated? It doesn’t have to be.
Follow these simple principles and you’ll never go wrong.

I would bet that without even thinking, you could name 4 or 5 diets or eating plans that are in the popular media…Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Atkins, South Beach, etc. Every time you turn around, there’s a fantastic “new” approach to eating. It’s enough to make your head spin!

But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. I’ve got some easy-to-follow nutritional principles that will help keep you on the right track. Beginner or advanced, these will work for you!

1. Focus your eating on natural, unprocessed foods as much as possible.

While I know it’s not always possible to get fresh fruit and veggies and other unprocessed foods everywhere you go, your body will always respond best when you feed it foods that are not altered through processing. Your body has evolved over thousands and thousands of years to process foods in their natural state – it’s only relatively recently that processed foods have appeared on the scene.

Your body has the digestive mechanisms for efficiently processing foods in their natural state. When you add in the fats, salt, sugar, additives, etc., your body starts having a hard time digesting and coping. Think of it like trying to put regular gas into a vehicle that runs on diesel. It may run, but it’s not going to be very efficient with the fuel and it could cause problems down the road (no pun intended!)

Bottom Line: Eating foods that are not processed allows your body to function more efficiently. You’ll lose fat without even trying.

2. Get plenty of good quality, lean protein sources in your diet

When you’re training, your body has a much greater need for protein. During weight training and endurance training especially, your body is constantly breaking down muscle tissue. Protein is required to rebuild it. By regularly feeding your body good protein sources, you’ll be able to hold onto and build muscle mass easier.

Good sources of lean protein include meats (look for leaner cuts like sirloin), poultry, eggs (while not lean, eggs will not shoot up your cholesterol as many worry), fish, low-fat dairy, soybeans, and various legumes (beans).

As far as how much protein your body needs, this will vary according to how much you weigh and your activity level. A level of around 1 gram per pound of lean bodyweight is a good guideline (we don’t count total bodyweight because fat is not metabolically active and doesn’t require protein to sustain it).

3. Don’t be afraid of “good” fats

Fats can be extremely beneficial, even when you’re trying to lose weight! Fats are important in a tremendous variety of bodily processes including hormone production, immunity, joint and organ protection, and even burning bodyfat. Without the “good” fats, your body will not function as well as it could.

“Good” fats include sources such as fish, nuts, flax oil, borage oil, and olive oil (there are many other good sources as well). Increasing your intake of these good fats can help keep you feeling good and burning your own bodyfat more efficiently.

Your total fat intake should be around 30% of your daily calories. A good way to go about getting this is to try and keep your focus primarily on low-fat foods while purposefully adding the “good” fats into your diet (like eating a few almonds every day or taking fish oil or flax oil capsules).

4. Carbs are fine

Despite all the talk about carbs being the enemy, it’s important to note that carbs and foods that contain carbs can actually be quite good for you! It’s generally the refined sugar added to foods that is the problem, not the carbohydrate as a nutrient on its own.

5. Non-nutritious foods should be minimized

This is an easy one. More than likely, you already know that you shouldn’t be eating Cheesy-Poofs or chocolate bars 3 meals a day. The calories you get from these foods don’t come with any actual nutrients. When your body is missing nutrients, it craves more food (not to mention the insulin response to the sugar in many of these foods) and you tend to eat more of the poor food that doesn’t have nutrients in it.

It’s ironic to think that many overweight people are actually malnourished! When you eat nutrient-dense foods, your body gets the nutrients it needs and functions much better.

5. Salads, fruits and vegetables will give you lots of fiber, roughage and nutrition

Eat plenty of salds, fruits and veggies every day. This is usually one that everybody already knows yet doesn’t normally focus on. The fiber in the foods helps keep you from getting too hungry and helps keep your digestive system clean.

6. Just do the best you can

It’s not always easy or convenient to follow good eating principles. There are plenty of tasty temptations to be found every time you turn around.

The REAL key to proper nutrition is to focus on trying to do well MOST of the time, not all of the time. It’s what you do most of the time that will give you the long-term results you’re looking for. Determining that you MUST be perfect all of the time is a sure way to set yourself up for disappointment when the time comes that you don’t eat a perfectly healthy food choice.

Sometimes, you just have to eat those Cheesy Poofs and not worry about it.

——————

Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss,” “The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of,” “Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!” and “The Best Abdominal Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of” all available at (Betteru). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

By Nick Nilsson

1. Train heavy and to muscular failure

In order to gain muscle mass, you need to give your muscles a REASON to grow. Training with heavy weights (relatively speaking, of course – what’s heavy for one person may be light for another) to muscular failure is the stimulus that starts the process.

And by muscular failure, I mean the point where you physically can’t perform another rep WITH GOOD FORM – reps done with terrible form don’t count!

The best rep range to train for muscle growth, in my experience, is between 6 to 10 repetitions per set. Training in the range below that (1 to 5 reps) will primarily lead to strength gains rather than muscle gains.

Training in the higher rep ranges (for the most part, unless you’re using specialized high-rep techniques) will primarily work on muscular endurance with minimal effects on muscle mass.

Training to muscular failure is VERY important for muscle gain.

Muscles will not grow unless they are pushed beyond what they’re used to. Doing your sets only up to a certain number of reps and stopping on that number regardless of whether the muscle has been worked or not is a very common mistake made by both men and women alike. Counting reps and stopping on an arbitrary number will NOT work the muscles fully and will hamper weight gain.

So to train for optimum muscle gain, select a weight that will cause you to reach muscular failure in the 6 to 10 rep range.

2. Utilize basic exercises for most of your training

Dumbell tricep kick-backs will NOT help you gain weight. The Pec Deck will NOT help you gain weight. Leg extensions will NOT help you gain weight.

These exercises are not bad exercises; they’re just NOT the exercises that are going to give you the results you want. In fact, doing exercises like these at the expense of the basic exercises can actually detract from weight gain, especially if you have a hard time gaining weight. They will use up your valuable time and energy!

Basic exercises are the exercises that use the most muscle mass. They are the HARDEST exercises…the ones you either love or hate. This “make or break” challenge is what makes them the most productive for building muscle.

Basic exercises include squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, barbell curls, barbell bent-over rows, dips, chin-ups, lunges, and calf raises. This is not a comprehensive list but it will give you an idea of what a basic exercise is. Essentially, a basic exercise is an exercise that you can use a lot of weight on and that requires the most effort.

Use these basic exercises consistently for the majority of your sets and you WILL gain muscle.

3. Eat good quality nutrition in sufficient quantities.

Now that you’ve stimulated your muscles with hard, heavy training, it’s time to feed them. Gaining weight, a.k.a. building muscle, requires a caloric intake in excess of what it takes to maintain your current bodyweight.

Basically, you need to eat more.

The amount of calories you require to gain weight will vary greatly depending on several factors, primarily your current amount of muscle mass, your daily activity level and your metabolic rate.

The more muscle you already have and the more active you are, the more calories you’re going to need to eat in order to gain weight. If you are already thin, you probably have a fast metabolism (i.e. you lose weight quickly and gain it slowly), and you’re going to need to eat even MORE.

In order to keep your muscles supplied with nutrients, you’re going to need to eat frequently throughout the day. It’s best if you can manage to eat 5 or 6 meals over the course of the day. Naturally, these meals will be smaller than your regular meals if you currently eat 3 per day.

The idea is to keep feeding your muscles so that they always have nutrients available to grow. If you go without food for long periods of time, your body will turn on its own resources (e.g. your muscles) to provide needed nutrients for repair and recovery.

And whatever you do, if you want to gain weight, DO NOT skip breakfast! If you do, it will kill your metabolism for the rest of the day.

Besides sufficient caloric intake, protein is also critical for muscle gain. Protein is the structural nutrient that your muscles are made of. You must feed your body protein in order to help your muscles rebuild.

Good protein sources include fish, poultry, dairy, meats, soy, legumes (beans), eggs, and whey. A typical recommended protein intake for a person looking to gain muscle would be around 0.8 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. For example, as a 136-pound person, this would have you eating 109 to 136 grams of protein per day.

Supplements can also be extremely useful for weight gain. Whey protein, creatine monohydrate, and the amino acid glutamine are among the most effective supplements.

And I’ll tell you right now, there’s no need to get crazy with your supplement purchases… manufacturers will often prey upon your strong desire to gain mass and try and sell you a TON of supplements you really don’t need.

Keep it simple and get your training and eating in order. THAT is what builds an impressive body – not a boatload of bizarre supplements.
So to sum it up: eat a lot, eat frequently and eat plenty of protein.

4. Get enough rest

Your muscles don’t grow while you’re training. Your muscles actually grow AFTER your training session is done. One of the best things you can do to help you reach your goal of gaining weight is to learn to relax. This is especially important both after a workout and at night.

Immediately following a workout, your body is in an emergency situation. You’ve just put a lot of stress on your body and your body needs time to recover from it.

If you immediately have to rush off to do errands or some other stressful chore, you’re not going to get optimal recovery and that means you’re not going to get optimal muscle growth. If you can manage it, try to schedule your workouts for when you have a little time to relax after. Heck, take a nap about an hour or so later if you can!

Getting some good, solid sleep at night is also very important. A large part of your growth process occurs at night. If you don’t get enough sleep or your sleep is restless, your body will not be able to take full advantage of the growth you’ve stimulated with your training.

Conclusion:
If you want to gain mass, you HAVE to do the basic things right…train hard with heavy, basic exercises, eat well and get plenty of rest. As I mentioned above, this ain’t rocket science, yet you’d be surprised at how many people miss more than one of these items!

Don’t stop yourself before you even get started – make sure you’re got these four “no fail” principles down pat!

Check out more articles related to these mass-building principles:

My Practical “Lazy Cook” Recipes For Building Muscle! So Easy Even a Caveman Can Make Them…

Training on the Edge – Learn How Overtraining on Purpose Can Get You Maximum Results FAST!

Rest-Pause Training
Eight Mistakes I’ve Made In My Training and How You Can Avoid Them

Abdominal exercises are, in fact, done in order to rectify a series of past mistakes and ignorance.  These mistakes are lead to huge bulk on one’s abdomens.  It is critical to know how one can identify and avoid repeating the abdominal mistake in their exercise or training.  Inaccurate abs training can result in back pain and no results for one’s efforts at all. While the first concern becomes a cause of more worries, the latter will carry forward whatever worries once had at the start.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #1 Having crunches on inclined benches are not recommended if one is starting off after forty years of age.  It may lead to faster abdominal fat burning but this could also lead to severe back pains. Since crunches are really effective on abdomen, it would be adequate to do it on thick rugs on flat surfaces or floor. One needs to avoid doing the crunches on couch or sofa. Couches and beds are softer than necessary.  It will not be able to support for your back completely.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #2 Many people believe overdoing their exercises is working and effective by straining their whole bodies with workouts for abdomen. It is enough to clasp one’s hands behind the head and pull oneself up by their abdominal muscles. Having the hands stretched fully before the start is unnecessary as one will be drawing some force from hands which relieve the stomach muscles of their workouts to that extent. This simple gesture or exercise would make people wonder on the benefits or how it has flattened one’s stomach.  Improving the core muscles is the key and it will eventually see physical results if done regularly. 

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #3 Wrong judgment on the quantum of workouts of what the body can take or needs leads to undesirable and surprising results. One should need to work with a trainer in order to adjust the right amount of exercise needed for an individual. There are two noteworthy points here.

1. Overworking may over strain the vertebral column.  Back muscles may not only cause spasms but also dictates the abdominal muscles to temporarily stop the exercise routine. 
2. Under working may to nowhere as the soft belly tissues are not sufficiently stretched or compressed.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #4 Rest pauses in between sets of crunches are essential. Many people are working out with insufficient or no pauses over enthusiastically but giving up later or learning the lesson in the end. However, take care to see that one’s rest pauses are not long enough to let the muscles reconcile or cool down completely, because in both these cases one will be losing out on the momentum that one has generated.

Abdominal exercises are the easiest of all physical training routines but for results to come one’s way, one needs to know precise steps.  Before improving and correcting the abdominal exercise, below are some guidelines to follow:
Perform several abdominal exercises 3-5 times a week. One should start with exercises and repetitions that are comfortable for one’s fitness level and as one improves, increase the number of repetitions. These exercises may vary from the side bends, Medicine Ball Sit Ups, and the cable crunch.  It is suggested to simply select those that work well for the person and vary the routine over the months.