Monday, March 17, 2008

Back to our example of the 150 lb person, let's assume the person weight trains 3x a week and does some cardiovascular training on his off days. This is a very active person who will need a bit more protein than the average adult. His protein intake would be 1.5g/lb of body weight, so he would need about 225 g of protein. Now he divides his protein in to 6 smaller meals, giving him a total of 37 g/meal, which is not very bad. Now let's say he wakes up at 6:00 am and goes to bed at 10:00 pm. A rule of thumb here i to not eat for three hours before going to sleep. The reason behind that is that when you sleep is when all of the muscle growth or fat loss really happens, and if you put food into your system, you're slowing down that process, and with that the food will not be digested properly, thus causing morning gas and stomach cramps. So, this person's last meal will be ingested at 7:00pm, and breakfast is within one hour of rising, thus giving you the schedule of:

7:00
9:30
12:00
2:30
5:00
7:00

The reason the last two meals are so close is that this is the time people get back from work and do there workouts, and you always need a post workout meal that is consumed roughly 30 minutes after a workout in order to maximize the muscle building and fat reduction. Now this may look like a lot of food, and it is. What I tell most of my peers is that these do not all have to be full meals, and I recommend that you invest in protein powder. It is a simple powder that provides you with approximately 25 g of protein per serving, and with it 225 or even 300 g of protein a day is very achievable.

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