Diet, or the stuff you eat plays a huge role in stopping loss of your muscle mass. The stuff that we put into our mouths can make us become little more muscular or little less muscular or a lot less muscular. Even many professional athletes, that already reached their maximum muscle potential were able to gain few more pounds, just from the change in their diet. There really is a way to make your diet to stop loss of your muscle mass and even gain some extra of it if done together with intensive weight training and enough rest.

Cut the crappy carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are necessary for our health and energy. They are the fantastic source of energy. But not the kind of carbohydrates we eat these days. These kind of carbohydrates are your worst enemy. Muscle loss wise included. They can make you loose muscle mass. The way they do it is by keeping too much insulin in you blood and preventing your body from releasing a naturally optimal levels of HGH – Human growth hormone.

If your body is not producing enough of HGH hormone, your muscle mass will shrink too. So it is important to eat only the right carbohydrates. What are the right carbohydrates? They are the most natural form of carbohydrates for us humans – fresh vegetables and fruits.

If you can manage to keep your carbohydrate intake from only these sources, your life will change. Your health will improve. You will stop losing muscle mass. You will have more energy in your days. It’s quite amazing what this simple rule can do for you. So don’t wait and eat only fresh vegetables and fruits as your carbohydrates. Check the best sources of carbohydrates here.

What are the bad carbohydrates?

They are all around us. From worst – baked commercial goods, cookies, pastries, sweets, cakes, candy bars, sweetened drinks, croissants, muffins, breads, bagels. Pasta, white rice are little bit better carbohydrates, but still you want to try to avoid them. What about beans and legumes? Yes, you can add them to good carbohydrates and you can eat them several times per week.

Start changing your diet now and start with your carbohydrates. It’s the best and quickest way to stop a loss of your muscle mass. Start now! In your next meal, you should have only veggies and fruits as your carbohydrates.

HGH – Human growth hormone and your diet

As I mentioned before. Our diet can stump the natural production of HGH in our body. And let me just say it straight. People who don’t have an optimal HGH production in their bodies get old fast. HGH is also called a drug of youth. And with it’s decline, we get old. We loose our muscle mass. We get fat. We get easily tired. We develop a heart disease, diabetes, cancer and than we die. So, right now. Decide to stop this process by changing your overall diet. And I will show you how. Hopefully you already started with your carbohydrate rule and didn’t put any sugar into your coffee today. And you are sticking with only fruits and vegetables as your only source of carbohydrates.

Eat optimal amount of protein

Muscle building and HGH production needs protein. Protein is a building block of muscles. And since your muscles are going through constant rebuilding process, we need daily intake of protein. Human growth hormone synthesis can happen only when we get enough of amino acids in our diet. And you can find those in protein.

How much protein do you need to consume daily? You should eat at least 0.7 grams of protein per pound of your body weight. So, if you are a 130 pounds heavy woman, you will need to consume 130 X 0.7 = 91 grams of protein. With intensive weight training your protein demands increase. But 0.7 grams of protein per pound of your body weight is a good amount to shoot for.

The best way to consume enough protein in your day is to spread it throughout all meals. You should be consuming some protein with every meal you eat. There is a big variety of protein choices. The best are outlined in my article about protein here.

Please don’t be afraid to eat some eggs. They are really not that bad for you. Eggs have been having some very bad reputation lately because of their high cholesterol content. Let me just get it straight for you: egg is a super healthy, natural superfood and if anything, you should eat more of them. Starting today!

Increase consumption of good fats

Now, when you look at your plate, what we covered is that, you have nice piece of chicken on it and some green salad on the side. What you have to add to it to make your meal compete and work for you as muscle loss preventive meal, is to ad some good fat to it. And you can do it by adding few walnuts on your salad or some first cold pressed olive oil on it.

Every meal you eat should be with some good fats in it. Fat in your diet plays few important roles you can’t just pass by. It keeps you satiate for longer period of time, so you don’t snack on bad foods. Fat helps preventing sugar spikes in our bloodstream. It works little bit like a traffic controller in your stomach. And he allows only a little bit of sugar to enter the blood stream at the time. Great service from Mr. fat officer indeed.

We already talked about the dangers of high sugar spikes in blood stream and natural Growth hormone production. The spikes in sugar levels in your blood stump it. And fat makes it to prevent it from spiking. So your muscles can stop disappearing and grow even more with more fat in your diet.

We humans were mend to be fat burning animals. Energy from fat is the most natural and healthiest source of energy for us. But, modern medicine put some dark cloud over it. And it named it the worst enemy of humans. Causing heart attacks, strokes and weight gain. This is simply not true. This is the new old school advice: avoid fat. What a bad advice that is! Anyway, if I manage to convince you, which I doubt, that fat, even saturated fat like butter, lard and coconut fat is actually good for you, you energy levels, health, muscle mass and the whole life will change to better.

I am simply convinced that eating large amount of fat daily is a very healthy think to do. If you understand little bit about human fizyology, you will agree with me. If not, that’s ok. In mean time I just had my second large bite from organic butter as a snack. Try it!

What are the best fats out there? They are all fats occurring naturally. Yes, saturated fat included. Here you can find my favorite fat choices. Don’t be afraid, add fat to your diet. I will go as far as to say: indulge in it!

Don’t eat any processed foods

It all comes down to stop eating anything that is processed. Processing means, that human had to interfere with natural foods that were mend to be good for us. And he changed them to taste better and last longer because he added sugar, white flour, salt, trans fats and conservatives.

Now, of course it gets harder than ever to eat natural foods. The processed foods taste so much better after all. Our taste buds are so spoiled that the fresh apple doesn’t even taste sweet anymore. Of course it doesn’t, if you had sprite with your diner.

All these processed foods are not only killing our health, but also robbing you of vital, good life important muscle mass. They taste good, but they are lacking the nutrients and contain chemicals, sugar and flour. And those are a true muscle killers substances.

For muscle to be happy, you need to create certain homeostasis in your body. The kind of homeostasis, that’s only possible by eating plain natural foods that you can find in the nature. No processed foods belong to this natural healthy state of your body. They damage it.

Sugar water

One of the worst things people do to kill their health and muscle mass at the same time is, that they drink sweet beverages. These beverages often advertise that they are healthy. Hey, the Hansens soda is actually made from real Cain sugar! And it’s written with big letters on the front of each Hansens natural soda can. Now people, and especially moms of little kids think, that this is actually healthy for them and their kids. Bul****

Sugar, no matter in what form can slowly kill your muscle mass and your health over time. It doesn’t matter if it’s brown sugar, honey or high fructose corn syrup. They are all empty calories. And they are all the same bad for you. They throw your body completely out of balance by polluting your blood with sugar. Insulin spikes and your muscle and health suffers dearly.

To this sweetened drink categories belong all processed, sweetened beverages like: all fruit juices, unless you squeeze them out out of the real fruit right now before you drink it. Juices made from 100% fruit concentrate are just the same thing what sweetened soda is. They are loaded with sugar. And those diet ones are loaded with plastic sugar. Which is of course unnatural chemical also bad for your body and muscle mass.

Don’t sweeten your tea or coffee with honey or brown sugar. Drink them plain with no sweeteners. Now, you might say: no way! I need some flavor Milan. I can’t drink it just like that. It doesn’t taste like anything. Well it’s time to unspoile your taste buds. Tea and coffee actually taste great without sweeteners. And if you want to be healthy, and I think you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, you will stop putting a sweet crap into your beverages. Period!

To stop the loss of muscle mass, you need to drink only the good boring stuff. To this category belong only unsweetened teas – herbal and dark, coffee, plain water and carbonated water. And nothing else. Let me repeat that one more time for you. Nothing else! And your muscle mass will be very happy and healthy.

Muscle preserving desert

Does all this means that in order to preserve muscle mass and stay healthy, you cannot have a desert after your dinner? No it doesn’t. You can still have fantastically tasty desert almost every day. The key is to have a great quality desert, that you make yourself, or somebody else makes it that you trust. Please don’t buy your desert in your grocery store. These deserts are most likely loaded with sugar, preservatives and trans fats. You really want to avoid eating these muscle killing chemicals.

Here, check the pancakes I make. Normally you would make your pancakes dough with milk 2 eggs lots of flour and mix it. Well I do it with 5 eggs, milk and just a little bit of flour. Do they taste different? Not at all. They actually taste much better. They have a beautiful yellow color, they are loaded with protein and there is actually very little bad stuff – the flour in it. What do I put on them. Most often just a fresh berries like strawberries, raspberries or blackberries and make my own whipped cream. There is no sugar added in these pancakes, they are so delicious, they are loaded with protein and you don’t have to feel guilty to eat them. They actually promote the muscle growth.

How about ice cream?

There must be something wrong with you, if you don’t like ice cream. Everybody likes ice cream. Me included. But instead of buying the one in your grocery store that is so full of sugar, you can make your own thick smoothies with no sugar added.

I make smoothie that makes me not crave ice cream anymore. Why? They simply taste much better than the ice cream I used to eat.

This is how I make it: I put the whole can of whole coconut milk, yes, the one that has all the fat in it. It’s good fat and you need fat in your diet. Than, I put frozen berries in it, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, whatever you have. I add some frozen mango, 2 fresh bananas and a little bit of whole milk. Than I blend it for 1 minute. Done! Thick smoothie for 2 people. Fast, super delicious, super healthy, no sugar aded. This is a fantastic way how you too can brake your evening ice cream habit. And you can get your partner involved too. It’s easy to make this smoothie for two and it’s delicious.

Stop losing muscle mass with better diet right now!

Start today. Start changing your bad eating habits. Do it just one step at the time. This is one of the most important things that you can learn in your life – how to eat healthy. It will not only stop the loss of your muscle mass, it will improve your whole life. You will be healthier, you will have more energy, you will sleep better, your body will rest more efficiently and yes, you will stop losing your muscle mass. and you will naturally build some more of it. It’s well worth the try. Are you ready to change your life? More muscle mass means better life. Great diet means more muscle mass.

Related articles

>>How to stop losing muscle mass: part 2 – strength training

>>How to stop losing muscle mass: part 3 – weekly strength training 101

>>How to stop losing muscle mass: part 4 – consistency and intensity

>>What and how should you eat to be healthier and to perform better

>>17 healthiest breakfast choices

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