From Chapter 1: Fueling for Strength Training
POWER EATING, SECOND EDITION, Susan Kleiner with Maggie Greenwood-Robinson

If you are serious about improving your physique and your strength-training performance, you'll do everything you can to achieve success. Unfortunately, advice given to strength trainers today is a hodgepodge of fact and fiction. What I'd like to do is separate one from the other by sharing several basic principles with you--principles that all strength trainers can follow to get in shape and achieve their personal best in performance. These principles are the same ones I have advocated for world-class athletes, Olympic contenders, and recreational strength trainers for more than 15 years. Let's review them here.

1. Vary Your Diet
You have probably admired the physiques of bodybuilders in magazines. And for good reason. They are muscular, well defined, and in near-perfect proportion. The picture of health, right? Wrong--in many cases. The first study I ever conducted investigated the training diets of male
competitive bodybuilders. What I found was that they ate a lot of calories, roughly 6,000 calories a day or more. The worrisome finding about this study was that they ate, on
average, more than 200 grams of fat a day. That's almost as much fat as you'd find in two sticks of butter! Short term, that's enough to make most people sick. Eaten habitually over time, such an enormous amount of fat will lead to heart disease.

Bodybuilding diets, especially precontest diets, tend to be monotonous, with the same foods showing up on the plate day after day. The worst example I've ever seen was a bodybuilder who ate chicken, pepper, vinegar, and rice for three days straight while preparing for competition. The problem with such a diet is that it lacks variety, and without a variety of foods, you miss out on loads of nutrients essential for peak health.

Bodybuilders, on average, don't eat much in the way of fruit, dairy products, and red meat. Fruit, of course, is packed with disease-fighting, health-building antioxidants and phytochemicals. Dairy products supply important nutrients like bone-building calcium. And red meat is an important source of vital minerals like iron and zinc.

When such foods are limited or eliminated, potentially serious deficiencies begin to show up. In studies I've done, and in studies others have done, the most common deficiencies observed are those of calcium and zinc, particularly during the precompetition season. In fact, many female bodybuilders have dangerous shortages of these minerals, and they may have the shortages year round. A chronic short supply of calcium increases the risk of osteoporosis, a crippling bone-thinning disease. Although a woman's need for zinc is small (8 milligrams a day), adequate zinc is an impenetrable line of defense when it comes to protecting women from disease and infection. In short, deficits of these minerals can harm health and performance. But the good news is that some skim milk, red meat, and dark meat poultry added back into the diet will help alleviate some of these problems. A three-ounce portion of lean sirloin beef has about six milligrams of zinc; nonfat, 1, or 2 percent milk has about one milligram of zinc in one eight-ounce glass; and three ounces of dark meat turkey has about four milligrams of zinc.

Another nutritional problem among bodybuilders is fluid restriction. Just before a contest, bodybuilders don't drink much water, fearing it will inflate their physiques to the point of blurring their muscular definition. Compounding the problem, many bodybuilders take diuretics and laxatives, a practice that flushes more water, plus precious minerals called electrolytes, from the body. Generally, bodybuilders compete in a dehydrated state. In one contest, I saw two people pass out on stage--one because of severe dehydration, the other because of an electrolyte imbalance.

After a competition, bodybuilders tend to go hog wild. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as it's a temporary splurge. But such dietary indulgence over a long time can lead to extra fat pounds you surely don't want. Bodybuilders, however, do a lot of things right, especially during the training season. They eat several meals throughout the day--a practice that nutritionists recommend to the general public.

2. Follow a High-Energy Diet
It's well known, too, that most athletes, strength trainers included, don't eat enough carbohydrates, the primary fuel food. Most athletes eat diets in which only half of their
total daily calories come from carbs, when seven to nine grams per kilogram of body weight daily should be consumed as carbs. Lots of bodybuilders practice low-carbohydrate dieting because they believe it promotes faster weight loss. The problem with these diets is that they deplete glycogen, the body's storage form of carbohydrate. Once available glycogen stores are emptied, the body starts burning protein from tissues (including muscle tissue) to meet its demand for energy. You lose hard-earned muscle as a result.

Fitness-minded people, athletes, and others shy away from carbs, particularly breads and pastas. They think these foods will make them fat--a food myth that is partially responsible for the lopsided proportion of carbohydrate, fat, and protein in strength-training diets, which are typically too high in protein.

Carbs are probably the most important nutrient for losing fat and building muscle. By the time you finish this book, you'll be convinced of this truth!

To read more about Nutrition Principles for Strength Trainers,get your copy today!

POWER EATING, SECOND EDITION
Susan Kleiner with Maggie Greenwood-Robinson
Paperback • 288 pages
ISBN 0-7360-3853-1
$17.95 ($29.95 Cdn)

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