Written by Chris Aceto and Eric Velazquez | Photos by Brad Walker
Are you offcourse in your quest to gain mass or get lean, despite your best efforts in the gym? You may be making one of these common dietary mistakes
When it comes to fitness, there are two main
archetypes: the success story and the cautionary tale.
The success story is the gym rat who has found the
winning equation—a perfect blend of exercise and nutrition
that has produced a physique with heaps of new
muscle and only traces of bodyfat. The cautionary tale,
well … you don't want to fall into that category.
These are the people who just can't seem to get things
right, and it's usually due to one or more nutritional snafus.
They'll lift thousands of pounds in their workouts but
skip their postworkout shakes. They'll aim to reduce their
calorie intakes to shed bodyfat but forget to supplement
right or monitor protein percentages. Cautionary-tale
guys are the ones who almostget it right but keep missing
the mark with food and supps.
If that describes you, allow us to help you right your
nutritional rudder. As hard as you may work in the weight
room, you still need to cozy up to the fact that your work
in the kitchen and at the dinner table is just as important.
LEANING-OUT MISTAKES
Those looking to get lean are often the biggest nutritional offenders. Because they're so
obsessed with shedding bodyfat, they often go too far in their efforts and stall their progress
or, worse, start to backslide into the awful realm of being "skinny fat" (the result
of lost muscle mass without a marked loss of fat). Remember, moderation is the key to
steady gains. The following three mistakes are the result of pursuing extremes.
MISTAKE NO. 1: AGGRESSIVELY CUTTING CALORIES
You're ready to get ripped at all costs.
No sacrifice is too great. As a result,
you decide to slash your caloric intake
in half, expecting to transform your
body in just a couple of weeks. Big
mistake—not only is this completely
unhealthy, but your body also isn't
likely to reciprocate with the same
dramatics.
The reality is that aggressive cuts in
calories can backfire, causing metabolism,
your calorie-burning engine, to
downshift into a lower gear. The better
approach is to create a mild deficit, eating
15%—20% fewer calories on a daily
basis. If you currently eat 3,000 calories
a day, for instance, reducing that to
2,400—2,550 calories will do the trick,
creating a calorie shortfall without
causing your metabolism to plunge.
Still, even moderate cuts such as
these can become frustrating over time.
After a couple of weeks, your metabolism
can adapt and burn fewer calories
on its own, which negates continual fat
loss. One way around that is to take
a day each week to go back to square
one and eat the amount of calories you
ate before starting your diet—in this
case, 3,000. The temporary increase
actually interrupts the adaptation
response, allowing the metabolism to
continually burn at a higher rate.
