Strength and Fitness Tips | How to Build Muscle Top muscle building and fat loss tips.

What, and when you eat can have a crucial impact of your performance in you workout, be it an endurance workout or strength session. I hope today I can give you a good indication of some of the types of food you should be eating before a workout. What to eat before a workout – Energy Source Whether it be aerobic or anaerobic exercise your body is going to need to burn either fats or carbohydrates in order to have sufficient energy. As a rule of thumb you should be consuming a little bit of both before a workout. If you are going on a long run for instance, it is likely that you will have an average heartrate around 70% of your max. This is borderline above the ‘fat burning zone’, this is when fat can be broken down at a fast enough rate to supply you with energy. ... Read More »

Today I wish to open your horizons to a new diet which is sweeping the globe and becoming very popular. I will go through what the diet entails and at the end i’ll give you some of my personal opinions and some great paleo resources. What is the Paleo Diet for Athletes? For millions of years we humans evolved as hunter gatherers. What ever we could find in our natural environment we ate. Natural being a buzz word in the paleo diet. Diet revolved heavily around meats, fruits, nuts, fish and vegetables. As you can see these foods are high in fats and proteins and low in carbohydrates. It’s only really recently that we have been able to harvest and process foods that are unnaturally high in sugars and fats etc. When our diet was like this it would be very very disadvantageous to be overweight. Of course we would ... Read More »

In this article I am going to go over all the reported side effects of creatine and give my personal views towards the use of creatine. It’s important to consider both documented research results as well as anecdotal results due to the unique responses we all have to different chemicals. I have already written a post on ‘what does creatine do‘ which you should check out if you don’t know how creatine works. Creatine Side Effects Creatine is a very well researched substance, and there has yet to be a paper reporting creatine to be the sole cause of any sort of problem. Research involves looking at how creatine affects athletes performance in sports that are anaerobic or aerobic based. Many research trials have also been conducted into the affect supplemented creatine has on the kidneys and liver. It’s worth noting that 85% of users taking creatine reported substantial strength ... Read More »

Insulin and Bodybuilding – Isn’t Insulin a drug to treat Diabetics?   Before I started hitting the gym and reading up on how to put on muscle I thought that Insulin was used to treat high blood sugar levels in diabetics, little did I know about how it’s affects work wonders for muscle growth. In every healthy human insulin is produced in the pancreas, and it is produced on demand in order to regulate blood sugar levels. High blood sugar causes dehydration and loss of nutrients through urine. If all your energy is in your blood you will feel weak, lose weight and will have varied water retention throughout different parts of your body. All of these things are signs of being diabetic and obviously things to look out for. Insulin combats high blood sugar by channeling the sugars into the muscle where they can be used for energy and ... Read More »

Do Protein Shakes Work? Or are they just a scam? If you pick up any muscle magazine, go into any gym or go on any website you will undoubtedly see a fitness professional endorsing protein shakes. The supplement trade is a multi billion dollar industry, however is this down to good advertising? Or great results? If you have read some of my earlier posts and my transformation story you will notice I put a lot down to starting to take protein shakes. This also went hand in hand with a radical change in diet and exercise programs. Some surveys show a vast majority of protein shake takers lie in the 12-18 year old demographic, which could be because of the, ‘muscles in a drink promise’. I too fell into this category, I took protein shakes on and off during my teenage years and because of poor diet and exercise they ... Read More »

Kim Kardashian Diet Exposed Seeing as I recently covered Chris Evan’s Workout I was advised to do a similar scoop on a female celebrity and I chose the Kim Kardashian diet. Why? Well for starters she often is described as one of the most, ‘curvaceous’ women on around. She works hard in her entrepreneurial ventures and also in the gym and kitchen in order to obtain a very desirable physique. Kim has often been heard and quoted saying, ‘if I want to eat something then I eat it.’ Which I believe is her trying to bring her physique into the real world. You have to take this with a pinch of salt, publicists will tell her to say what the public want her to hear. Saying a remark like this makes her much more down to earth and appealing to the public eye. She may eat that slice of cake once ... Read More »

Get Ripped Diet In response to a couple of requests about my current diet i’ve decided to do a post explaining exactly what i’m eating. Firstly what is my diet currently catered towards? You may have read my previous post on getting ripped for summer, I am currently going by that workout routine. I have developed my diet to supply me with the perfect amount of nutrients to gain muscle and lose fat. So if you want to get ripped and want some diet ideas then this should be perfect for you. Get Ripped Diet – Routine 6:45am Breakfast – 8 Egg whites, 2-3 Egg yolks – I have the egg yolks just to make them more tasty. I will also have some 0.1% natural Fromage Frais with some oats. This has 8g of protein per 100g and has no fats or sugars. I will then also have some carbs ... Read More »

There are some foods that will help increase muscle mass and some that obviously will not, as ever protein content is a vital factor in choosing the right foods to build muscle. Eating foods that are high in protein will substantially increase muscle growth and repair. Here are a few examples of such foods: Eggs Eggs are a excellent cheap source of protein, one of the top choices for athletes. The majority of the protein is found in the egg white and it’s very easily broken down into amino acids in the body. As well as being easy to prepare, tasty and wholesome, eggs are a vital food you need to consume to help build muscle mass. One of my personal favourites is a ‘protein pancake’ which involves 5 egg whites and 40g of oats blended in a blender and a scoop of protein shake, preferably vanilla. (You can add ... Read More »

You may have read my post on workout nutrition, you would have noticed that I recommended a flapjack to help give you lots of energy. I said you could buy them or you could make your own and here is a recipe for doing so: Ingredients 1 1/2 cups (140g) of porridge oats A heaped 1/2 cup (150g) of CRUNCHY peanut butter 1 cup of chocolate whey (3 scoops) 125ml-ish of skimmed milk Tablespoon of honey 1. Add the oats and the whey to a mixing bowl and give it a quick mix 2. Add the milk and peanut butter 3. Get stuck in with your hands!!! (You HAVE to do this! No Spoons!!) 4. Place into non stick tray and pat down to about an inch thick (you may wish to line with greaseproof paper) 5. Drizzle the top with honey (you may wish to leave it out, but ... Read More »

Have you ever been in the gym after a night out drinking and been frustrated at how lethargic and weak you feel? Obviously this is going to be down to the alcohol, you are not the only person who is going to have experienced this but why is it so apparent? I’m afraid it’s not good news…. First of all alcohol is a diuretic, this means it forces the increase in the rate of urination. Specifically it acts as a vasopressin inhibitor, this is also known as ADH and this regulates the rate of water reabsorption in the kidneys. Thus meaning more water is lost during urination. Co-insiding with this effect is it’s solubility, alcohol is transported around the body in the blood plasma. It’s a polar molecule and prefers being dissolved in water as opposed to fat. This effect causes it to remove water from cells so that it ... Read More »