Bodybuilding and eating a lot of carbohydrates and protein? Find out how bodybuilding pros can metabolize 500 grams of carbs per day! All bodybuilders need to adhere to a proper nutritional program, but to do this, you must first put together. There are several general rules that every athlete needs to know.
Digestion improvement rules
- It is necessary to thoroughly chew food, which will allow it to be absorbed faster and better.
- Eat 5-12 times a day.
- Drinking water should be about 20 minutes before meals and at least 40 minutes after that.
- Exercise for 20 minutes each morning, including stretching, abdominal, and cardio exercises. This will greatly speed up the process of food digestion.
- You should never overeat. Eat two or three large meals and keep the rest light.
How to improve digestion?
In addition to the 5 main rules for improving digestion in bodybuilding, you should also remember that there are several methods for improving the performance of the digestive tract. This is what will be discussed now.
Eat foods that improve digestion
To make food digest faster, you can include various spices, mustard, horseradish, or honestly in your diet. These foods are great for increasing the speed of digestion and absorption of food. Consume them with every meal.
Use additional digestive enzymes
During a heavy meal, you can use preparations containing digestive enzymes. This group of medicines includes Festal, Pancreatin, Mezim, etc. But you can't always use them. Do this only when consuming large amounts of food.
Protein loading method
Before considering this method in detail, you should remember. What is hidden under the concept of "metabolism". These are all processes taking place in the human body and aimed at obtaining energy. With regard to muscle tissue, two types of metabolic processes should be noted: anabolic and catabolic. As you know, thanks to the first group, new muscle tissues are created, while the latter destroy them. Strength training tends to shift the balance towards catabolism.
Thus, any workout affects the entire energy system of the body, not just muscle tissue. If an athlete has a naturally high metabolism, then gaining mass is quite difficult for him. It is also bad to have a slow metabolism, since little energy is produced, and it is quite difficult to conduct high-intensity activities.
Some would think that both of these situations can be resolved by consuming a large amount of protein compounds. Protein will ensure the growth of muscle mass and at the same time enable the body to produce the required amount of energy. But in practice, the human body cannot process large amounts of foreign protein. If a person preaches a passive lifestyle, then the body can efficiently utilize less than one gram of protein per kilogram of a person's weight. For athletes, this figure is significantly higher and can even go up to five grams. If protein compounds are consumed in larger quantities than the body can utilize, then the load on the kidneys and liver will increase and all excess protein will be removed from the body.
If you learn to overcome this limitation, you can significantly increase the speed of your progress. And there is such a way - the protein loading method. Its essence is very simple: when the calorie content of the diet is reduced to a level bordering on starvation, the destruction of muscle tissue is possible, which, however, does not happen. This is due to the fact that the body primarily reduces the metabolic rate and improves the quality of assimilation of nutrients, including protein.
If you use a low-calorie diet for a certain period of time, and then return to the original nutrition program, the body will absorb protein much better and faster. This mechanism remains active for one week. In practice, it looks like this:
- 1 week - Consume a minimum of protein compounds.
- Week 2 - slightly increase the proportion of the nutrient in the diet.
- Week 3 - Consume a lot of protein.
- Week 4 - Use as many foods as possible containing protein compounds.
Zigzag food
If the previous method is cumbersome for you, then you can use a zigzag pattern of food intake. It is important to note that thanks to this technique, you will have the opportunity to gain quality mass. When using a high-calorie diet, not only muscle mass increases, but also fat mass.
However, this can be avoided. Let's say the energy value of your diet is three thousand calories. Increase this figure by 50 percent, bringing it to 4.5 thousand calories. Eat like this for three days and no more.
Thanks to this step, nutrients will be absorbed better and faster, and the glycogen reserve will also increase. After three days, you must return to the previous diet.
Fasting days
This is a very simple and highly effective way to improve the quality and speed of food processing. To do this, you will need to spend one fasting day during the week and consume only water throughout the day. Next week, you can add fruits and their juices to the water. For the rest of the time, you should adhere to the basic nutrition program. This simple method will allow your body to metabolize food much faster.
For more on digestion supplements, see this video review:
