Building Muscle Foods

Before you go to the gym you should ingest some good building muscle foods to ensure you get the most out of your gym session. Eating the right foods can give you the energy you need to focus and do a good work out. Eating the wrong foods can leave you feeling bloated and have you quitting your gym session halfway through. A good place to look for pre-gym food is the net.

A good food to eat before you go the gym is a banana. They have a lot of glucose compared to carbohydrates which will provide the energy you need to last through your workout. The glucose is absorbed more quickly into the bloodstream which makes it available to muscles as a fuel source. The potassium in bananas also helps to regulate fluid levels and release energy.

Another good food is lentils. They have a low glycaemic index (GI) which means they release energy slowly - to last for your whole workout - instead of releasing it all at once which will cause you to crash and burn near the end of your workout. Studies have shown that cyclists who ate lentils before an event were able to cycle at 65% of their maximum for 20 minutes longer than the cyclists who didn't consume the lentils. The protein in lentils also aids your workout by reducing and preventing muscle breakdown. The B vitamins in lentils aid in their energy release. Lentil soup (3/4 of a cup) would be a good pre-workout food.

Another good muscle building food to eat before a workout is chocolate. Some of you may be thinking, "Huh?" but there is a good reason. The compounds tyramine and phenylethylamine in chocolate provide a direct energy release to really kick start your workout. It is important however, to find a chocolate with a low fat content, for example a mars red. They are double-whipped so they contain half the fat content of a normal mars bar. You could also try dark chocolate as a muscle building food, it's low-kilojoule nature combined with the fact that it is full of anti-oxidants make it a great pre-workout food. If you are about to participate in an event, chocolate milk is the key to success. Instead of your sports drink, try drinking chocolate milk - studies showed cyclists could cycle 51% longer after drinking chocolate milk compared to those that consumed a pre-event sports drink.

A big no-no is to eat fried food before a gym session. Foods that are high in protein and fat will take a long time to digest and remain in your stomach for a long time and, you guessed it, throughout your workout, leaving you feeling bloated. They can also cause cramping, causing you to give up halfway through your session.

So if you are after some good building muscle foods, take this as a starter and look online for more muscle building tips and strategies.