If you’re not trying to lose or gain weight, estimating serving sizes can work.
If you DO want to lose weight, measuring and understanding how much food you are consuming is critical.
Particularly at first, so you can learn more about portion sizes.
Once you’ve arrived at your destination, you can let go of the precision. You’ll also know what to look for and what mistakes to avoid.
I’m not suggesting that you weigh every banana you eat.
Simply be aware that different amounts of food will have varying calorie contents.
Peanut butter, oils, avocado, and nuts are high in calories and can quickly add up, so use caution when consuming them. Small amounts add up, and if you eat 1000 calories more than you thought in a week, you’ll be perplexed as to why you’re not making progress.
▪️Protein shakes can help you maintain or improve your muscle mass.
▪️But which type should you choose?
▪️Proteins are the building blocks of muscle tissue, and ingestion of protein signals the body that there is plenty of these building blocks available to start building muscle.
▪️It has been well established that increasing the amount of daily protein consumption can help maintain muscle during dieting. Furthermore, protein ingestion can improve the muscle building effects seen after exercise.
▪️But which type of protein is the most effective to maintain or improve muscle mass?
▪️Previous research has indicated that leucine is the key amino acid that turns the muscle building switch. Whey protein has a higher percentage of leucine compared to the other proteins.
Well, that depends on your goal, your training schedule, and your organizational skills.
You can have some protein, complex carbs, and fats if you can eat 2-3 hours prior to your workout. Given that you will have time to digest it, this meal can be somewhat substantial.
But if you eat 1-2 hours beforehand, your meal should be a little easier to digest. You would be consuming fewer complex carbs, less fat, and some protein.
When you eat just before working out, the food needs to be very straightforward. Easily absorbed carbohydrates, protein, and no fat
Unless you’re really trying to gain weight, please keep in mind that you are NOT eating at all three of these times. You can have a larger meal early and a quick snack before, but not all three.
Caffeine, creatine, and water are additional pre-workout additions that can and should be consumed, with the other two additions being optional (although they will improve performance).
The main lesson is that your body requires blood for your muscles while you exercise. Because your body will want the food out of your system as soon as possible and you won’t feel fantastic, you shouldn’t be digesting a large meal at the same time.
What to eat AFTER your workout:
Here, you need to consume a sufficient amount of high-quality protein and carbohydrates.
In order to feel good and be prepared for the next activity, you’ll be able to have the protein you need to start repairing our muscle tissues and the carbs you need to replace the energy you used throughout the workout.
Protein is broken down into amino acids when it is consumed. In the intestines, these amino acids are absorbed before being released into the bloodstream. The amino acids are then transferred to nearby tissues where they can be absorbed and turned into tissue protein.
Building new proteins is a process known as protein synthesis. All organs go through this procedure. Building primarily muscle protein is called muscle protein synthesis.
Consider a muscle to be a wall. An amino acid is a brick. The laying of new bricks on the wall is known as muscle protein synthesis.
This would imply that the wall will progressively get bigger. There is, however, a counterproductive process. Bricks are being removed from the opposite side of the wall by a procedure called muscular protein breakdown. Muscular degradation or muscle proteolysis are other terms that are frequently used to describe muscle protein breakdown.
It’s crucial to understand that muscle protein production and degradation occur continuously. They can speed up or slow down, yet they are neither “on” nor “off.” The rate at which these two antagonistic processes proceed affects the overall change in the size of the muscle protein.
The wall will enlarge if muscle protein synthesis outpaces muscle protein degradation (your muscles are growing). The wall is contracting (you’re losing muscle mass) if muscle protein synthesis is less than muscle protein breakdown.
Your net balance is determined by adding these two steps together:
Muscle protein production minus muscle protein degradation equals net muscle protein balance.
Whether we intend it as static, passive stretching or active and more “dynamic” like muscular contractions under stress, stretching muscles surely improves muscular growth.
That, of course, presupposed adequate effort and advancement through time.
Recent research has demonstrated that static stretching can definitely result in significant gains in strength, hypertrophy, and range of motion, even though some protocols may seem fairly “brutal” (Warneke et al, 2022).
On the other side, there is growing proof that lengthier muscle training sessions are advantageous (although not for every single one of them). Maeo et al. 2022; Maeo et al.
Furthermore, we are aware that, when compared to concentrics alone, eccentric contractions—basically the lengthening component of a contraction—show stronger hypertrophy.
And that’s probably because Titin helps us produce more force by resisting fiber deformation. Titin is also thought to be one of the main mechanosensors, which detect mechanical tension.
What should we do, though, to promote hypertrophy?
Both approaches can be effective, but ultimately, it depends on what you want to accomplish and how adaptable you can be.
Static stretches will undoubtedly help students whose areas of study require particular flexibility skills. They will also cause stretch-mediated hypertrophy and have many other positive effects on those who practice them.
Other pops might benefit from regaining movement and enjoying greater ROMs, perhaps after an accident or for other reasons.
I think it’s less significant for bodybuilders, especially since most moves won’t require much flexibility (but flexibility may still be developed by exercises!) We also want to avoid weariness by limiting the amount of fiber damage we sustain, which is more noticeable after eccentric contractions.
There has always been a lot of misunderstanding about protein intake, much alone how frequently it should be done to achieve hypertrophic effects. especially given that the research itself isn’t really clear!
While we are aware that meal timing and protein frequency are unimportant for maximizing protein synthesis (as long as chronic protein requirements are satisfied), there are several tactics that may offer a minor advantage and may even be more effective:
In fact, studies show that eating 40 grams or more of high-quality protein per meal enhances MPS by 10 to 20% when compared to lesser intakes.
If your goal is to increase muscle mass, 30–40g each meal would be excellent because that is the amount of MPS that is maximized. This, along with the proper training methods, may imply that dividing your protein consumption into smaller, more frequent meals is a better course of action.
“Oh, but we only absorb 30g of protein per meal, right?”
No, there is actually no “limit” on the amount of protein that our bodies can absorb. In actuality, healthy individuals will absorb 100% of the protein consumed.
What matters the most for losing fat is the overall number of calories that you are consuming…and making sure that this number is putting you in a deficit
Sure, there are slight advantages to eating frequently and there are advantages of eating 1-2 times a day
For fat loss though, your absolute best bet is to eat the number of meals that is the most CONVENIENT for you and to make sure that the total calories in those meals put you in a healthy deficit
If you are working out regularly then I would suggest that you try to get a good amount of your calories around your workout, if possible
If building muscle is one of your main goals, then spreading your meals/protein intake throughout the day can be helpful.
I know feeling that soreness 1-2 days after a workout can be super satisfying.
It makes you feel like you worked hard and got in a really awesome workout.
The problem is that you also get sore because you did something new or different, not only because your workout was necessarily good.
It’s best to evaluate the effectiveness of your workout based on how you’re improving, not based on how sore you are.
Changing your workout too much gives you that sore feeling but doesn’t allow you to actually progress with your strength.
You have to stick to the same lifts for awhile and get stronger with them to utilize progressive overload and give your muscles a reason to adapt and get stronger.
You can get sore from increasing increasing the weight of some lifts or doing extra reps but it’s generally not the same level of soreness.
If you want to get stronger and see the best results, stop chasing that feeling of soreness and changing exercises all the time
Stick to a plan and get better and better at that. Once you start to plateau then you can change your plan.
When you jump rope a few minutes per day, you’ll reap all of these life improving rewards. Benefits begin at just 5 minutes a day:
-Boost your metabolism -Burn more fat than typical cardio -Strengthen legs, glutes, calves -Improve brain & heart function
MASTERY TAKES PRACTICE If you haven’t mastered jump rope basics yet, don’t worry. Practice is the key to getting better & reaping more of the benefits. Anyone that you see who is good at it, has put in the work. That’s what I always remind my clients.
musclehacking.org 