1. Food

Here is a compilation of things that you should have on your grocery list. You can pick and choose the foods in those categories that you like. Cost varies per products and places to source them so we appreciate it might be hard to always get everything but a nice spread is often better than a constant diet of chicken.

Proteins:

• Egg White
• Fish
• Ground Turkey
• Chicken
• Round Steak
• Tuna
• Protein Powder

Complex Carbs:

• Oatmeal
• Black Beans
• Cereal
• Brown Rice
• Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes

Fibrous Carbs:

• Broccoli
• Asparagus
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Lettuce
• Bell Peppers
• Spinach

Other Produce And Fruits:

• Lemon
• Onion
• Tomatoes
• Banana
• Zucchini

Healthy Fats:

• Olive Oil
• Almonds
• Peanut Butter
• Salmon
• Flaxseed Oil

Dairy And Eggs:

• Egg Whites
• Cottage Cheese
• Non-Fat Milk

Calories & Meals

So in winter and leading up to these months you really want to eat more than the maintenance months. Eat a regular amount often, smaller meals more frequently is the ticket. imagine a normal three course Breakfast Lunch Dinner set up and then break these down and share them into two more meals

If you have time, supplements or a nice boss you could also, for better gains and fat loss educate your body to know it will be fed more, doing more breaks even with something small like peanut butter and fruit your body learns it will have constant fuel and not need to store as much. This will help your muscles grow and body recover due to a constant supply of nutrients to the muscles. This will kick start your metabolism. Just as an idea you should have 1-2 grams of protein per pound of weight. So a 150 pound person needs to be eating 150-300 grams a day every 2-3 hours.

2. Supplements

Here is a list of supplements which are great during any time of the year, including while bulking, These are meant to aid the balanced diet of real food and not replace them. Replacing simple foods is not ideal at all and could lead to other long term issues. .

Note: We do not recommend supplementation for anyone under the age of 18, nor is supplementation a replacement to a good diet.

Whey Protein (Concentrate Or Isolate)

Protein is the building block for muscle. Without it, you won’t make the gains you are looking for. You can use whey protein at any time of the day and it won’t hurt you. There are many different brands and flavors out there; find one that suits your taste buds and isn’t overpriced, we try and stock decent brands that get good results. People will always have their favorites so try different ones.

You can use it pre-workout, post-workout, as a snack, or add some fruit and throw it in the blender to use as a meal replacement. It is a quick and easy way to get your daily protein intake.

Casein Protein

Casein protein is the best protein you can get to keep you anabolic throughout the night. It is a slow-digesting protein which slowly breaks down over a span of around 6-8 hours. The last thing you want to do is go into a catabolic state and lose your hard-earned gains. This protein comes in especially handy before bed when compared to whey.

Multivitamin

It is a necessity to purchase a good multivitamin. You need to get proper vitamins and minerals which you can’t get from food alone when training very hard unless you really listen to your body and eat correctly. A multivitamin is essential to help with everyday activities and give you exactly what your body needs to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to keep the level correct to help in all body and mind scenarios.

Creatine

Creatine will help you not only recover better, but it will help you gain some lean mass quicker. Creatine is one of the most widely studied supplements out on the market today. There are no harmful effects from creatine and it can be used safely before and after workouts. Creatine can safely be used for both pre- and post-workout.

Fish Oil

Fish oil gives you EFAs which are the “good fats” that we all need. Fatty acids are a necessity which most people don’t understand. They are important for cellular, heart, and metabolic health. We do not get enough good fats in our diet each day, so supplementing with fish oil is a must.

Amino Acids

Amino acids are the building blocks for protein. Without protein, gains are minimized. Amino acids are also used to help the brain function properly. Everyone needs BCAAs to help build muscle and recover. Yes, protein powder has amino acids in it, but look at the nutrition label and if they are in low doses, then it is best to get yourself some BCAAs, we do sell these at the desk which can get mixed into a blend with protein and you can pay per scoop. Its best to have a shake within 20 minutes after a workout to feed the muscle repair.

3. Compound Movements

Compound movements are what make you grow, improve posture and help your full body. Isolation movements, like a bicep curl are more for shaping muscles rather than jacking up the growth hormones in your body and gaining some mass across your whole body. Compound movements are the squats, deadlifts, barbell presses, military presses, and similar movements which work multiple muscles through ranges of movement and hits the main muscles along with the synergistic muscles. .

They are any movement that requires more than one muscle to execute an exercise. These are the foundation to bodybuilding and bulking.

4. Rest

It’s a fact that you don’t grow while in the gym, even if you want to spend 4 hours a day here. You grow while you rest. Sure, when you have a nice hard pump in the gym and your muscles are swollen and look larger, you feel like you’re getting bigger and bigger with each set but im afraid you are incorrect. That nice pump that we all long for is only temporary as the blood flows and muscles tear to send signals to your brain to repair it.

After about an hour those effects start to diminish and you will be about the same size as you were before you stepped into the gym that day. You need to rest your muscles and get adequate sleep at night to help increase growth hormones in your body, which in turn help you gain lean muscle mass. You should be getting no less than 8 hours of sleep per night, really deep and unbroken sleep is the best. Anything less and you will be cutting your gains down. Take some casein before sleep to slowly release protein into your body all the way through the night.

5. Post-Workout Meal

Post-workout meals are very important, you really want to get some kind of high protein into you within 20mins. You really do not want to shuffle food in hours after a workout while you have been hungry for a while, you will store it as fats. The food you eat pre-workout gets used as fuel for the body during exercise.

Then as your workout comes to an end, the fuel has surely run out and it will be starving for more to grow. If you don’t feed your body, it can’t grow. And it is especially needed post-workout because that is when your body absorbs nutrients best as it goes into your stores and tries to repair the broken muscles. .

Your body is literally starving for nutrients at the end of your workout. If you don’t feed it, it simply can’t repair itself and grow.

At the post-workout meal, you need to be taking in around 45-50 grams of protein. Add in one to two times that amount of carbohydrates (90-100 grams). If you are a hard-gainer, make it closer to 2 with most all of them coming from simple sources. If you tend to gain weight easily, it’s better to stay closer to the equivalent of the amount of protein and make it half simple, half complex sources.

6. Keep Cardio To A Minimum If Bulking

This one isn’t rocket science; you don’t need a PhD to understand. Obviously when you do cardio, you use up fuel (calories). Calories are what you need to grow. You take away calories, you take away gains. Now I’m not saying to stop cardio altogether, because you don’t need to.

Cardio is actually a good way to keep from putting on body fat during a bulking phase and an excellent way to keep the heart healthy, We would never suggest to be big you shouldn’t do anything as we would erge you to still do cardio but easier and less intense as cardio still increases blood flow and aids in intense reps and less muscle fatigue.

Cardio also increases your appetite so you will be able to down some extra calories to make up for the loss you experienced during your workout. You can get away with doing some low-intensity cardio without losing lean mass gains, so do not be afraid to do cardio while bulking. You really do not need to be dripping wet when you get off the machine, she feeling warm and skin clamy would be best to stay out of the cardio zone and remain in fat burning. We have charts in the gym to work out your perfect heart to work too if you want to be more precise.

7. Increase Your Calories

In order to gain weight (muscle), you must increase your calories. This does not mean you can eat McDonald’s or Wendy’s every meal, since you would be increasing your calories. You could do that, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to look like a blimp.

An easy way to do this (especially if you are stuck at the same weight) is to track your calories. When you find out how many calories you are eating which maintaining your weight, add 250-500 calories each day, and by the end of the week see if you gained any weight.

Don’t forget that 3500 calories is equal to one pound. So theoretically, if you increased your calories by 500 each day for a week you should gain a pound. Now let me explain something to you; this isn’t as easy as you may think. You can’t just eat some Twinkies or eat a cake.

You still need to be eating clean to ensure you don’t gain fat. Yes, during your bulking phase, you will gain some fat. But do not get worried about this unless you are gaining a lot of fat, in which case you need to look at your diet and clean it up more. It would be a smart idea for you to write down your weight once a week on the same day and at the same time.

This will help with the accuracy of your results. You can also get your body fat measured once per week to see how much fat you are gaining. Like I mentioned before, if you are gaining a lot of fat, re-evaluate your diet.

8. Water

Water is key no matter what you are trying to accomplish. Staying hydrated increases protein synthesis, so you will make better use of the protein you ingest. Water is also a good way to stay hydrated without adding sugary drinks like soda and tea.

Strive for at least a gallon of water per day. If you sweat a lot during your workout, you definitely should be shooting for more than a gallon per day. An easy way to track your water intake is to carry around a gallon jug wherever you go.

When it’s empty, you know you got your gallon in. At that point you can refill and start over. Water also keeps your metabolism up due to the oxygen content in the water.

Are you drinking enough? People suggest at least 1 gallon of a day or more with cardio, classes and if you sweet a lot. So that’s 3.79 litres (Standard Bottle of Pop type size) or for the drinkers among us, this is 8 pints of Water a day.

9. Training

Most people have the mentality that more is better. This is not the case with training. Most of the time the people who have that mindset are overtraining and in turn minimizing their gains. Depending on your exercise level, you could train smartly with 3-6 days in the gym.

You want to keep your workouts short but intense. This means that you should ideally keep your workouts to less than one hour. Anything more and you are lowering your natural testosterone levels, which you don’t want to do. The key is to experiment and find out what training style works best for your body.

Some people respond well to lower rep sets while others find higher reps sets are the way to go. Some people can get away with a low number of sets while some people need to complete many sets to get results. I would actually recommend starting with lower sets, evaluating your progress, and adjusting it accordingly.

If you find you aren’t growing with the number of sets you are doing, gradually increase the sets and see how you respond to that. When it comes down to it, there really is no one way to train. Everyone is different. The fun part is trying new things to see what works best for you.

If building the body of your dreams was easy, then everyone would look good. It takes hard work and determination. Keep training hard and never be afraid to switch things up. Hitting the muscle differently is what sparks new growth, which is what I’m sure everyone is trying to accomplish.

10. Have Fun!

For most of us, bodybuilding isn’t our full-time job. And for the majority of us, that is a good thing. Being a professional bodybuilder isn’t for everyone. The determination and hard work isn’t for the faint at heart. Sure, anyone can say they are a bodybuilder, but to be good at it, you need to stick with it.

You need to find something that motivates you and go with it. Set some short- and long-term goals for yourself, check on your progress, and re-evaluate things. Make things fun, try new things. You do not want to dread going to the gym every day.

By evaluating your progress and seeing the improvements, that should be enough to make you want to keep hitting the gym. Sure, there are days where everything around you is going wrong and you really don’t feel like going to the gym, but once you are there everything changes.

The weights don’t complain, they don’t yell at you (unless you have some serious mental issues). It’s a great way to release stress. Bodybuilding isn’t just a weekly or monthly thing. Bodybuilding is a lifestyle. Where it takes you, no one knows. But what do you have to lose by having fun in the process? Living the bodybuilding lifestyle is a great way to stay healthy and achieving the body you always wanted. Your first step begins now.

Many useful websites are out there with such a wide range of information. Look at who is writing it before trying. If you want to try something then take a look at the research behind it and not just a hero in the gym saying this is amazing!!!