Thursday 23 June 2011

Basic Nutrition Tips

In response to the question I posed at the end of my previous post I wanted to give you guys an answer quickly because improving your nutrition is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It's not just important for losing weight (it is, very much so) but it's also important for building muscle and keeping your body overall healthy.

Water intake

You know the way it's a well known fact that you need 8 glasses of water a day? Well it's not a fact, it's wrong. 8 glasses of water in a day isn't bad for you but what you need is far less and a lot of it can be gained through food. Personally I drink the equivalent of about 4 or 5 glasses per day. Maybe more depending on the intensity at which I work out. If you find drinking water boring, go for some green tea. Green tea tastes good, hydrates you and boosts your metabolism.

Protein

Protein is necessary for muscle maintenance and if you're looking to build muscle it's crucial that you get enough. If you're looking to build muscle it's recommended that you consume 1-1.5g of protein for every pound of lean body mass you have. Good sources of protein are fish, white meats, nuts (almonds are good as you can easily add them to breakfast cereals such as oatmeal) and whey protein. If you're not looking to build a lot of muscle, you probably won't need to make a whey protein shake.

Replacing the crap with the goods

It's easy to make small changes in your diet in order to improve your overall health, here's a list of things you can do with little effort and minimal cost.

  • Replace white bread with wholegrain.
  • Instead of coffee, drink green tea.
  • Eat oatmeal for breakfast instead of sugary cereals, it can be sweetened by adding fruit.
  • Instead of eating chocolate for a snack, grab a handful of nuts and eat them over time.
  • If you're looking for a good breakfast and aren't fond of oats, bran flakes are a personal favourite of mine and they're pretty good for you.
  • To increase your vegetable intake, mix in some cauliflower to mashed potatoes. They have similar consistancy and taste so you might not even notice a difference.

Hopefully you'll find these tips useful and in future articles I'll go more into what each of the nutrients do and why you should take them.

33 comments:

  1. This is really handy, I just started to do fitness but didn't know all of this.

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  2. I don't know if I can do with no coffee. I need that shit in the morning. I have/can done/do everything else though, I just need my coffee.

    Green tea in the afternoon though.

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  3. Some coffee in the morning won't do you much harm, a suggestion I have is to not add sugar.

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  4. naaah nuts apparently have high cholesterol and give you zits :s

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  5. Actually, nuts help improve you cholesterol.

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  6. I've found the best tip is to not by junk to begin with therefore forcing me to eat the better stuff when I am hungry =]

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  7. It doesn't work so well when you're living with other people who do buy it unfortunately, haha. I'd agree with you though, if you don't stock it up, you can't fall back on it.

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  8. Thanks for this info. Will try the breakfast part ;)

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  9. Is it bad to not eat in the morning? because I have to get up at 6 am and only eat around 10 am

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  10. Research has been done and it showed that skipping breakfast isn't THAT bad for you (it's not exactly good either of course) in itself but you're much more likely to overcompensate for it later in the day.

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  11. these are allways good to remember. Water intake is so simple, but everyday johnsons will usually miss it.

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  12. Oh, wow. This is pretty good.
    I'll actually pay attention to a bit of this.
    I was thinking steak might be a good source of protein, but after reading this, I remembered fish is also good for your brain.
    Thanks.

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  13. what protein can you advice?

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  14. i always beat myself up for not drinking enough water! This post really helped to educate me and relieve me of stress, thank you!

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  15. Steak is fine every so often as long as it's not greasy and has a lot of fat on it.

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  16. I would really like to follow your advice about green tea but summer in my country is way too hot for drinking warm beverages. Do you think I could make it a ice green tea? Is there a way? Nice post, keep it up mate!

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  17. Funnily enough, I tried my own method of making iced green tea a few weeks back when the weather was actually good here. Make regular green tea, refrigerate it for a while until it's cool (doesn't need to be freezing). Crush up an ice cube and put it in the cup.

    It's not exactly store bought but it tasted pretty good and was nicely chilled.

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  18. jrallen i really have to say i like your blog very much. i'm also pretty much into fitness and bodybuilding and i'm very well informed myself. i have to say it is a pleasure to see that there are still people like you out there, who really know the basics and share them with people who want to know about fitness.

    please keep it up.

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  19. Thank you very much for the comment polatzki, I hope the blog continues to be up to standard!

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  20. These are quality tips, im a bodybuilder myself, and I can confirm this :) followed

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  21. Great article bro, already pointing out a bunch of stuff i'm doing wrong.

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  22. Always good tips here, keep it up!

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  23. Thanks for the good tips!
    +followed for more

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  24. Most of that is pretty obvious,people just don't like to give up their junk food

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  25. Some of it may be obvious but a lot of the time people need to be told how to take action before they'll actually do it. Junk food is a hard habit to quit, I still eat it occasionally but it's severely reduced from what it was a few years ago.

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  26. I've read that to find the amount of water you need, you have to take your weight and divide it by 3. I don't know if this is right.
    +followed for the great posts.

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  27. I'm not sure exactly how but that can't be right because the amount of exercise you do what need to be taken into the calculation also due to loss of water from it. I'll try and find out and put it as a footnote in my next nutrition post.

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  28. Ill be sure to keep this in mind!

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  29. thanks for this post. its very helpful considering i am starting to work out a bit.

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  30. Nuts! I'll take that advice of green tea/water intake, but not that bottled crap.

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  31. Bottled water is a joke, it's just a scam. If you want to ensure that your water is clean, boil it and put it in the fridge.

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