Bodybuilding Foods: Pros, Cons, And What You Can Eat

The goal of a bodybuilding diet to build muscle is to ensure that your diet also helps you maintain a lower body fat percentage. This approach lets you build that ripped physique that you always wanted. However, it is important to note that these diets are not ‘one size fits all’. The suitable bodybuilding foods depend on your body type, namely ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph, your age and the workout routine that you follow.

Let us explore the pros and cons of a high protein diet designed to gain weight and bulk. Understand the best approach to get the results that you want.

Understanding Bodybuilding Foods for Your Diet

Normally, when it comes to consuming a bodybuilding diet to build muscle, people think of increasing the bodybuilding protein intake drastically. While it is true that protein is necessary for your muscles to repair themselves and grow in volume, there are a few things to keep in mind: 

1. Make sure that the transition to a high protein diet is gradual. This prevents any load on your kidneys and liver.
2. Even to gain weight, your diet must be healthy and balanced. The only difference is that the quantity and the timing of your meal depend on your weight training regime with a bodybuilding diet.
3. Nutrition experts recommend that you rely more on natural food sources, and use protein shakes and drinks as a supplement. The intake of these foods and drinks as part of your bodybuilding diet can help achieve your daily calorie intake and protein requirement.

What You can Eat

While the actual bodybuilding diet plan is different for an ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph, there are some basic rules about what you can eat to build muscle. The emphasis is mostly on lean protein sources that fuel muscle recovery and growth. However, you need to balance protein foods for bodybuilding with complex carbs like whole grains and fruits and vegetables that are nutrient-rich. If your diet does not contain enough carbs, the proteins that you consume become the energy source. This does not leave you with enough protein for muscle building.

Here are some simple thumb rules that can guide you towards developing a great bodybuilding diet plan for your fitness goals: 

1. Load up on carbs before working out: A workout session designed to gain weight requires you to lift heavyweights. This means that you need enough fuel to sustain a rigorous training session. Consuming carbs about 30 minutes before your workout is highly recommended. Bananas, peanut butter, or a good pre-workout drink like Cellucor C4 Explosive Preworkout are the best options. 
2. Refuel yourself during the cardio session: Cutting down on fats requires cardio. When you are performing a high-intensity workout, a sports drink keeps you fuelled and hydrated. 
3. Eat well post-workout: Repair and regeneration is the key to build muscle. Make sure you have a good post-workout meal. Within 30 minutes of completing your training, consume a meal with a 3:1 ratio of proteins and carbs for best results.
4. Limit the consumption of supplements: Try to get your proteins from lean chicken, soy, fish, skimmed milk, and other natural sources. Supplements should only be used to fill up any nutritional gaps. 
5. Ensure fruit and vegetable consumption: Fresh produce gives you a source of vitamins, minerals, and fibre. These nutrients are vital for processing and absorbing the proteins and carbs that you consume.
6. Include healthy fats in your diet: Healthy fats from natural oils, nuts, and seeds keep your heart healthy, avoid inflammation and keep your joints healthy. In addition to protein foods for bodybuilding, healthy fats help improve the quality of your workout for better results. 

High Protein Diet: Discussing Pros and Cons

A high-protein bodybuilding diet, like any other meal plan, has its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s look at the pros and cons of high protein diet to see if it’s good for you.

Pros of a Bodybuilding Foods

Here are some benefits of following a diet to build muscle: 

1. Your diet contains a healthy mix of micro and macronutrients including lean protein, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. 
2. These foods have a lot of nutritional value and are, therefore, very effective in giving you the best results. 
3. Supplements like HealthKart My First Protein ensure that there are no nutritional gaps.

Cons of a Bodybuilding Foods

There are some disadvantages when you are trying to follow a strict diet regime to gain weight: 

1. These meal plans are complicated. They require careful planning while tailoring a meal that is best suited for your body type. 
2. It seems impractical at times because you need to consume frequent meals at fixed timings. It is also extremely time consuming, given the meal planning and prep that is involved. 
3. It is also easy to get sucked into unhealthy habits like consuming too much protein as part of your bodybuilding diet. In the cutting phase, especially, the focus on losing fat and retaining muscles increases the chances of missing out on important nutrients like healthy fats and carbohydrates. 

Conclusion

Whenever you plan to follow a diet with specific fitness goals, the initial phase must be alongside an expert. This ensures that you do not make mistakes with a bodybuilding diet that can have negative effects on your health. A professional can guide you better and provide customised bodybuilding diet plans based on your requirements. Of course, it also increases the efficacy of the diet to give you the results you want faster.