An ideal diet and correct nutrition is very important for achieving success in your weight lifting endeavors, without which you will either have zero results or your results will delayed. Therefore, all women bodybuilders must understand what an ideal diet is for bodybuilding and try to fulfill their body’s nutritional needs.
From the first day of your bodybuilding itself, your body’s nutrient and energy requirements increase drastically. Since it is not possible to source all the essential nutrients that your body requires from your food alone, you need to take certain types of supplements (such as a multivitamin and mineral formula, protein supplements, antioxidants such as Vitamin-C and Vitamin-E, essential fatty acids, etc) to meet the increasing nutritional needs of your body and also to prevent any form of nutrient deficiencies in the body.
Muscle building requires a properly hydrated body to facilitate more productive workout. Drinking enough water keeps your muscles adequately hydrated and prevents muscle spasms. It also aids in burning down the excess fat present in your body and in building stronger muscles by maintaining a sustained nutrient transport to the muscle tissues. Water also helps to flush out loads of harmful wastes and toxins from the body. It also assists in maintaining the perfect electrolyte balance within our bodies.
For building muscles, you need to take a well balanced, wholesome diet, comprising of all the essential nutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water in the correct ratio. Ideally, your bodybuilding diet should comprise of 30 to 50 percent proteins, 20 to 50 percent carbohydrates and 20 to 40 percent fats.
Ideally, you need to increase your protein intake to at least 2 gm/kg of your body weight by including high protein sources (such as fish, low fat meat, chicken or legumes) in your diet. Your balanced meal must include carbohydrates (such as whole wheat breads, oatmeal, mushrooms, cucumber, granola, baked potatoes and Rice) as a ready source of fuel. For the fat, you can add some nuts or flax seeds. You must also supply more vitamins and minerals to your body by adding a lot of fruits and vegetables to your diet.
In order to add more lean muscle mass to your body, you need to eat substantial quantities of nutritious food every couple of hours. You can set an alarm or set a reminder over your mobile phone to remind you to eat ever 2 to 3 hours. You must aim at eating 5 to 6 times per day, at an interval of 2 to 3 hours in between.
Many women bodybuilders complain about feeling cold or chilled, and if you belong to that category, you must get your hemoglobin levels checked. This could be a symptom of severe Iron deficiency in your body. Basically, Iron is present in a hemoglobin molecule and the deficiency of iron in your body can hamper the red blood corpuscles count in your body. As a result, you will feel tired and out of breath after only a little workout. Therefore, immediately consult a doctor if you are experiencing any such symptoms. You must eat a lot of Iron rich foods such as green leafy vegetables, raw bananas, papaya fruit, lean red meat and dark poultry.
All women bodybuilders are advised to increase their calcium intake because calcium tends to get depleted from the body of a female owing to a lot of biological reasons. Therefore, female bodybuilders must aim at increasing their calcium uptake by consuming a lot of milk, cheese, curd, calcium fortified fruit (orange) juice, or alternatively by using calcium supplements.