I want to get huge. I've already bought a pull-up bar for the doorway in my room, so I'm covered with the exercise part. But I have no idea what to eat after a workout. What about before a workout? And when I'm not working out? Can you give me some pointers?
-David Mitchell, 6.5% body fat, intramural basketball captain
There is so much information on nutrition that it becomes difficult to decipher what is right for your needs. Let's focus this answer primarily on eating in order to build muscle. If you want to get bigger, it's important to do two things. The first is to ingest enough protein that your muscles have adequate raw materials in order to grow.
The second is to make sure you are taking in enough carbohydrates that you can produce the energy needed to grow your muscles. Think of the protein as the bricks to the house and the carbohydrates as the workers putting the bricks together. You need both in sufficient quantities to maximize your muscle growth.
As far as eating before and after a workout, you shouldn't workout on a full stomach or an empty one. Try to eat a small meal one to two hours before a workout so that you have enough energy to exercise but don't feel bloated. After the workout, it's important to get protein and carbohydrates into your system as soon as possible. For the first 15-30 minutes following a workout, your muscle cells can synthesize protein at their most efficient rate.
The protein will give your muscles the raw materials to build muscles and the carbohydrates will raise your blood glucose levels. The increase in plasma glucose will trigger a release of insulin, which makes your cells more receptive to nutrient uptake. All of this should help to increase muscle growth.
Every time I go to the gym, I spend 45 minutes on the elliptical and call it a workout. I'm starting to get bored. What else can I do to tone up and get a good workout in?
-Lily Motta, 48Dub, online poker enthusiast
For some reason, a lot of people believe that the only way to get 'cut' or 'toned' is to spend lots of time on the cardio machines in the gym and do nothing else except for a few crunches. If your workout is always the same long, slow aerobic exercise, you have a number of problems: 1) your body will adapt quickly to this workout; 2) you're going to get bored quickly; 3) you're neglecting to include strength training in your fitness regimen.
Here's what you should do. Change up your cardio and start to incorporate weight training into your routine. You can change the cardio by altering duration and intensity. Instead of going for 45 minutes at a moderate pace, work out for 20 minutes at a quicker rate. Also think about interval training, which alternates sprints with slower recovery periods.
The resistance training will not only help to improve strength and fitness level, but will build muscle, which raises your metabolic rate at times that you aren't exercising. On top of this, after weightlifting our bodies experience a metabolic boost for 8-16 hours following strength training, which will help you burn more calories and improve your energy level throughout the day, staving off the urge to nap.
If you are unfamiliar with how to use weights, ask someone at the fitness desk for information about signing up with the Tufts Personalized Performance Program and obtaining five free - no strings attached - personal training sessions.
I've heard that working on endurance exercises and trying to build muscle are opposing goals. Is there any way that I can improve on both types of fitness at the same time? What would you recommend?
-Mark Sigal, Laguna Beach Fanatic, intramural basketball assistant captain
It's true that building endurance and building muscle are opposing goals. Working on both simultaneously will result in decreased progress towards each one. My advice would be to decide which objective is more important to you at the current time and focus on that in the majority of your workouts.
This isn't to say that you should neglect cardiovascular exercise if your goal is to build muscle, but rather that you should taper your cardio workouts to about once a week in order to maintain your current level of fitness while you spend your other workouts focusing on muscle building.
After you have structured your workout in this way for about eight weeks - and hopefully seen muscle growth in the process - then you can switch to focusing on aerobic health while cutting back on your lifting to once a week for maintenance. By focusing on a specific goal, you will achieve results more efficiently than if you try to do everything at once.
