Protein and Nutrition
Why is nutrition important?
Proper nutrition helps gain muscle mass for efficient progression in the gym. Today, I'm mainly going to be focusing on the proper consumption of protein. It's extremely important to consume the adequate amount of protein for your body based on the amount of exercise you do. If you do not consume enough protein, some long hours in the gym might be going to waste and time is money.
How much protein should I consume?
The standard is between 0.8-1g of protein per pound of body weight. (i.e., I weight 174 and I consume around 170-175g of protein per day). This can come from protein shakes, poultry, red meat (not good for environment, however), fish or plants.
For consumption per meal, research shows:
Your body can only process between 25g to 40g per meal/sitting (30mins), so it is more optimal to separate the consumption of protein throughout the day.
Protein intake after workouts are more effective and protein synthesis decreases after 24h periods. However, the decrease in protein synthesis from missing these windows only become significant after 48hrs from the workout. (Basically, if you don't enough eat enough one day, you can compensate the next day.)
Check out this article about nutrition and training. It's super long so only focus on part 7 of the table of contents. (You can click on the table of contents and it will directly take you there): http://www.nutritiontactics.com/measure-muscle.../...
Stay tuned for Part 2 on an introduction to counting macronutrients and useful resources to help track!