Eating food with a lot of nutritional value is part of the absolute MUSTS of gaining muscle mass for both average people and competitive bodybuilders.
The problem with the whole topic of eating is that we have a tendency to take it for granted, food is available to us all the time and we don’t think about what kind of food it really is.
Food generally goes into 2 categories:
a. Nutritional food (Fruit, Veggies, Fish etc.), this is natural food, stuff that usually has only ONE ingredient and can only be grown in farms or caught in a lake(fish).
b. Comfort food (Candy, Pizza, Hamburgers etc.) which tends to replace normal food these days, most of the time it is made up of a lot of different ingredients, many of which can not even be pronounced.
I am not going to lie to you by saying that I only eat the nutritional stuff, I have had the best of both worlds, but I do try to eat more of the food that is good for my body.
1. Eat Nuts
As an example we will put cheese burger calories against walnut calories.
A cheese burger can have about 300 calories, a bag of walnuts can have about 700 calories. Believe it or not you are more likely to actually lose fat and keep it off eating walnuts because they contain the kind of fat that will boost your metabolism, and also contribute to your muscle growth.
Cheese burgers, while I do eat them it only happens once in a while and it is easier to gain fat from them instead of muscle, in some cases ectomorphs (skinny dudes) will get fatter from this (I was one of em).
What can you do now? Put nuts into your grocery list right now to avoid forgetting to buy them.
2. Eat Fish
My step father who is a doctor once said that fish has 10 times more nutritional value than chicken or beef. You should eat as many different types of fish as you can because each species has different vitamins that will improve muscle growth and as a bonus generally keep you healthy.
For example cod fish has vitamins A and D and Tuna has tons of vitamins B12 and D. Fish has Omega 3 essential fats, especially Oily fish.
Add fish to your grocery list.
3. Are Supplements Good For You?
Supplement nutrition is something that I am generally against, they never worked for me, from what I’ve heard the body does not consume these powders the same way it consumes food.
You won’t get the same amount of vitamin A from a powder as you will get from fish, even if the supplement has the same amount of it. With that said, I did some research and found out that there are some reliable types of powders that will benefit you if you don’t have time to eat a lot or just can’t afford to buy lots of food.
Whey protein has been out there for years and is relatively cheap, multi-vitamins might be of some use if you can’t always afford fruits and veggies, fish oil products are good too.
If you are on a budget put supplements into your grocery list, but only do so if you really have no other choice.
4. Eggs
I met a guy who got really big a while ago, he ate about 12 eggs every time I saw him eat at lunch. According to him, egg whites are a source of high-protein and the yolk has saturated fat which is good for you.
You might have noticed that I keep mentioning fat, you need fat, not the greasy types of fats from hamburgers but the fats that come from natural food, of which there are many kinds.
I think that you may already have eggs in your grocery list, if you don’t add them now.
5. Water
When I mention water I don’t mean coke or a juice of some sort. I mean WATER.
Your muscles need water because they are partially made of it, if you just had a good work out and you are really thirsty, drink water, your body will thank you. Lately when I go out grocery shopping I would buy bottled water and about once a week, I’d buy myself a coke, try to take this as an example.
Add water to your list, you can also buy a filter instead to save on bottled water.
