Proteins and Muscle Toning
Getting Fed Up with Your Lack Of Muscle Tone and Growth?
Have you ever wondered why you weight train like crazy and yet your muscle tone decreases? You've increased your weights, fat burned like crazy to lose extra body fat, so you can see your muscle definition, but none of this seems to work. You are not sure what you are doing wrong but you are getting fed up not getting results.
So why Would Protein Help?
When exercising, particularly weight training, our bodies need plenty of protein to develop and maintain muscle. Protein is broken down into amino acids, and then turned back into protein to produce and repair our muscles after our training session. Because amino acids can be burned by the body during exercise, especially aerobic exercise, it is important that we make the effort to supplement our muscles to help them repair faster and more efficiently.
What happens to my muscles if I don't bother to increase my protein intake?
At the beginning of this article I mentioned instances that you may be familiar with. If you are training hard and don't bother to supplement your muscles with extra protein your muscles can quite easily be burnt away as energy. So your muscles will then start to deplete.
So how much protein should I be taking?
This depends on your body size, training schedule and program. It is important that you increase your intake to cater for your training so your muscles can survive your training sessions.
Protein intake for the average person (performs a light amount of exercise) - Approximately 1 gram of protein per kilo of body weight
Protein intake for an Athlete (who has a heavy training schedule that involves resistance exercise and weight training) - Approximately 2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight
Protein intake for the hard-core heavy weight lifter - Approximately 2.5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight
The above are approximations and examples to give you some idea of what the body's requirements are for protein. See the difference in the protein intake for the programs that involve more muscle damage?
Keeping up with protein consumption
Such high intakes of protein can be difficult to keep up with on a daily basis. So as well as including the following protein sources in your low fat healthy eating program you can also use a protein powder.
Sources of protein
Lean Red Meat, Lean White Meat: Fish, Chicken or turkey (no skin), Eggs (preferably egg whites) Beans and legumes (which are high in carbohydrates). Nuts (nuts are also high in fat).
When performing regular resistance training try to include a source of protein in each meal. Say for instance: Breakfast: 2 x poached egg whites, morning snack: 1 x protein shake, lunch: lean chicken with salad sandwich, afternoon snack: 1 x protein shake, dinner: grilled lean read meat or fish with veggies. If you are still hungry late at night, and you've been training hard, you might want to also have a protein shake before going to bed, as this is your peak muscle recovery time. 2 x protein shakes per day should be sufficient for the average person wanting to increase lean muscle mass.
Protein Powders
Protein Powders help supplement your eating program with the necessary muscle nutrients that your body requires such as Amino Acids (mentioned above), Vitamins and Minerals. Protein powders are a convenient way of ensuring you receive an adequate protein intake. On the average, 2-3 serves per day of protein powder are required. There are so many protein powders available to us now. You can choose from heaps of different flavors, different powders for different training needs and even easier to mix powders that can be mixed in shakers rather than blenders. Make sure that you drink lots of water when increasing your protein intake to prevent dehydration and to help the digestion of your protein. Try to cycle your protein intake here and there to give your body a rest from trying to digest large amounts of protein.
Copyright © 2003 Fitness Muscle. All rights reserved. Disclaimer. save money with coupons at eddie bauer coupons. savings for eddie bauer and more.
