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We’ve all heard the saying ‘you are what you eat.’ If you take this to be true, then you can assume that to become big and strong, you must eat with those goals in mind. You don’t have to take it from us – take it from the guys in the trenches. We’ve interviewed four of the biggest, strongest, and most successful men in the business: Mr. Olympia 2006 Jay Cutler, three-time Arnold Bench Press Championship winner Ryan Kennelly, the man who placed second at the 2006 Arnold Classic, Branch Warren, and the winner of the 2006 Colorado Pro and New York Pro, Phil Heath.
Eating for Strength and Mass
We then distilled their nutritional methods into nine ‘strength rules’ you must follow to get stronger. Follow them on your journey to a powerful physique.
Strength Rule 1: Tomorrow’s workout is built on today’s food
From a nutritional standpoint, it’s not just the day of training that matters. Eating well the day before a heavy gym session is just as important. That’s because it takes your body time to convert the carbohydrates from foods like rice and potatoes into blood sugars and then into glycogen. Glycogen is a carbohydrate form stored in muscles and used as energy when needed.
Cutler explains: ‘I make sure I eat enough carbohydrates the day before training (3 to 4 grams per pound of body weight. These are American pounds, which translates to about 6.6 to 8.8 grams per kilo) to raise my muscle glycogen levels. It’s the food you eat the previous day that gives you energy the next day. Your nutrition must be right 24 hours before a workout.’
Strength Rule 2: Want strength, you need carbohydrates
The primary fuels your muscles use when lifting heavy are creatine phosphate (which you burn through in about 10 to 20 seconds) and muscle glycogen (which helps you finish the set after creatine phosphate runs out). To be strong set after set, your body needs enough carbohydrates stored in your muscles as glycogen.
You should aim to eat 2 to 3 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight (about 4.4 to 6.6 grams per kilo) per day, increasing to 4 grams per pound (8.8 grams per kilo) the day before a heavy training day. That’s 400 to 800 grams of carbohydrates for an athlete weighing 90 kg. Good sources of quality carbohydrates include oats, rice, potatoes, pasta, and whole grain bread.
Don’t just eat carbohydrates right before a workout. Kennelly – who bench pressed 410.5 kilos in competition – eats enough carbohydrates, especially after a workout. ‘We go out to eat after the workout and eat all the good stuff: mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, rice. I focus on carbohydrate intake and protein intake. When I eat more protein, I notice it in my strength in the gym. If I do the same with carbohydrates, I see it on the scale. High-protein and high-carbohydrate is a fantastic combination for strength. It’s a little different from bodybuilding, but in powerlifting, you can eat whatever you want and be strong’.
Strength Rule 3: Protect your muscle mass with protein
Proteins are essential for growing your muscles. When you train extremely heavy, protein is very important for several reasons, the most important being protecting your muscles. The heavier you lift, the more mechanical damage your muscle fibers endure and the more recovery they need. More damage and better recovery even translate into more growth.
If you train heavy, make sure you get enough protein to promote recovery and support muscle growth. Aim for 1.5 grams per pound (3.3 grams per kilo) of body weight per day. That’s 300 grams per day for a 90 kg bodybuilder. Quality proteins can be found in eggs, beef, poultry, fish, and low-fat dairy products.
Warren says: ‘In the morning before a workout, I take my bodybuilder’s meal: proteins (without the egg yolk), oatmeal, and a steak. The next meal consists of some turkey, beef, and potatoes. The third meal of the day is the same as the second, and then I go to the gym’.
Strength Rule 4: Fat – in normal doses – in your diet can be your friend
Unsaturated and saturated fats are important for bodybuilders and powerlifters for various reasons. Research shows that athletes who consistently have a higher fat intake, especially saturated fats, have higher testosterone levels than athletes who use less fat in their diet. Beef, for example, is not only a high-quality protein source but also a good source of saturated fat.
Unsaturated fat has many health benefits. It can also help you stay lean and repair damage to your joints. Good fats can be found in olive oil, nuts, avocados, and peanut butter.
To get essential omega-3 fats, you can opt for fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, and white tuna, or other foods like flaxseed oil and walnuts. Many athletes, like Phil Heath, get their omega-3s at the sushi bar. ‘Outside the competition season, it’s not a problem for me to eat a lot of sushi with white rice,’ he admits. Try to get about 30% of your daily calories from fats, with 10% of those fat calories coming from saturated fat.
Strength Rule 5: Ramp up your calories
Here’s the thing: you need enough calories every day to fuel your heavy workouts. As long as you follow the previous four rules, you should aim for about 20 calories per pound of body weight (around 44 calories per kilo), which translates to about 4000 calories for a 90 kg man.
You must ensure you eat more calories than you burn. Otherwise, your body will go into starvation mode, meaning it’s unable to repair and grow muscles.
‘I’ve changed my eating habits a bit, I mainly eat healthy food but try some other things’ says Heath. ‘In my offseason, I want to be a little looser with my diet and eat more calories’.
Strength Rule 6: Eat regularly
One way to ensure you get enough calories is to eat more often at roughly fixed times. This keeps your metabolism high and the energy-producing processes working constantly. Kennelly says that when he trains for a big powerlifting competition, he ‘eats every two hours’, which translates to a small nine meals a day.
A schedule like that might be a bit much for the average bodybuilder, but a minimum of five or six meals a day (with no more than three hours between meals) should be doable. ‘Outside the competition season, I eat five bodybuilding meals a day’ says Branch Warren. ‘When you eat this often, you not only get enough calories, it ensures your body has enough fuel, your muscles constantly have amino acids available, and your metabolism is running at full speed’.
Strength Rule 7: Eat before you hit the weights
You can see the last meal you eat before a workout as a final chance to feed your body properly for the major effort to come.
Just before your workout, proteins are the most important nutrients because they help prevent the muscle mass you already have from being used for energy. It also promotes muscle growth immediately after training. Many athletes opt for a whey shake just before training because it’s the easiest way to get protein and is also the easiest to digest.
Other bodybuilders prefer solid food before a workout. When we asked Cutler what he eats before a workout, he said ‘Definitely meat. I usually eat protein (from eggs) for breakfast, and my second meal (before training) includes red meat’. Aim to eat about 20 to 40 grams of protein before your workout, in the form of a shake or a real meal.
Strength Rule 8: Eat after you’ve trained with weights
Right after your workout, you need to recharge your body with proteins and carbohydrates that are quickly absorbed. The proteins provide your muscles with an immediate source of amino acids, the carbohydrates ensure that your muscle glycogen stores are replenished, cortisol release (a catabolic hormone) is inhibited, and the level of the anabolic hormone insulin rises. Insulin helps to get nutrients like glucose, amino acids, and even creatine into your muscles, and it initiates the molecular process that converts amino acids (from your protein shake) into muscle tissue.
After your workout, it’s best to eat 40 grams of protein in shake form, along with 60 to 100 grams of carbohydrates like dextrose, maltodextrin, Vitargo, or sugar. You can also get your fast-absorbing carbohydrates from white bread and white potatoes.
Strength Rule 9: Cut down on junk food
When asked what food he avoided, Warren quickly replied: ‘I personally don’t feel good when I eat junk food. I feel weak and tired. That’s why I make sure the first four or five meals of the day consist of good food. If I eat something bad, I do it in the evening and only to feel better mentally’.
Calories are important, as we saw in rule 5, but they shouldn’t be consumed in the form of candy, chips, pizza, and fries. That kind of food contains a large amount of ’empty’ calories, calories that provide sugar and fat with little to no nutrients. Many of these foods contain trans fats, which are not only associated with cardiovascular disease but can also hinder muscle growth and promote muscle breakdown.
While a fast-digesting carbohydrate like sugar is good after a workout, it’s bad at other times during the day for the same reason: it raises your insulin level. Increasing your insulin level while resting promotes fat storage and leads to feelings of hunger and reduced energy.
A big problem is high-fructose corn syrup: muscles can’t use fructose as an energy source, so it goes to the liver where it’s converted to glycogen. Once liver glycogen levels are too high, the fructose is converted to body fat.
Old Faithful
If we were to add a tenth rule to this list, it would be: follow the other nine rules consistently. Be disciplined. Sometimes you may skip a training day, but more often you’re inconsistent with nutrition, where a lack of discipline can quickly veer you off the right path. You can’t eat well one day, poorly the next two days, and then expect to get stronger and build muscle.
Building a better, stronger body requires more than one good workout or occasional days of perfectly balanced food at perfect times. You must adhere to the complete package of training and nutrition plan, day after day, week after week. That kind of discipline is what the champions in this article have, and it can work for you too.
