Muscle Toning Diet
Written on: November 28, 2005
While there isn't any one specific type of Muscle Toning Diet, there certainly is one dieting technique which will help your muscle building efforts. But first of all, we have to eliminate a lot of diet hype / myth. There are many diets that come and go, the south beach diet, the atkins diet, all of the diets pushed by the major fitness companies, etc... Well they all come and go because there's usually always at least one thing each of the diets lack. These diets keep being created though because it makes fitness companies money and fitness magazines money because you buy their books, guides, manuals, and instruction kits on how to follow the new "Ground Breaking Diet!". There's no money in revealing a diet that actually works. It's unfortunate, but that's how the world works.
So there really is only one way to diet, whether your goal is to lose fat, build muscle mass, or "tone" (which is basically a combination of fat loss and muscle growth). If there was one thing you read or understand in this article, this should be it: A muscle tone diet is a diet with an abundance of protein, low fat, and moderate carbs, along with a daily caloric total that is equal to your daily caloric expenditure. That was a mouthful, so let me break it down for you.
Adequate Protein
Getting enough protein is important because it helps sustain your muscles, and build them. But you have to be training with resistance (freeweights) to warrant the significant protein intake. The only way you will see a noticable amount of muscle / muscle tone, is by forcing them to grow through resistance training and supplying them with protein to make them stronger. How much do you need? If you weigh 180 pounds, then you multiply that number by .75 and that is how many grams of protein per day that you should consume. That's 135 grams of protein (4 calories per gram of protein = 540 calories by way of protein). You will want to train with moderately high reps and weight to warrant the use of this much protein.
Low Fat
You always need some fat in your diet. There are different ypes of fats though, to be general, there are three types of fats. Saturated fat (the bad kind that you don't want ANY of), Monounsaturated (inbetween saturated and polyunsaturated), and then polyunsaturated which is the ideal kind of fat, the type that your body can use. Your brain uses fat to function on a number of different levels, but you have to be conservative in the amount of fat you consume. Nuts are a good source of fat, amongst some other natural sources. Assuming you weigh 180 lbs again, you would want around 10 to 15% of fat, (25g's of preferably good fat), which = 225 calories from fat. (So far that's a total of 765 calories along with the protein).
Moderate Carbohydrates
Just as with fat, there are different types of carboydrates which can be good or bad. Carbohydrates high in fast acting sugar, (high on the glycemic index, you can google the glycemic index for which types of foods fall on this chart), are the ones you generally want to stay away from. A lot of natural foods fall on the lower end of carbohydrates, which are great to consume before performing any type of strenuous activity, like exercising. They help provide your body with fuel, as well as keep you awake and active throughout the day. That's why low carb dieting is bad, it leaves you feeling left without energy and it's unhealthy as your body needs carbs. So if you're 180, you want anywhere from 90% to 110% of your bodyweight in grams to come by way of carbohydrates. Let's take 100%, that'd be 180 grams of carbs, which is 720 calories (4 calories per 1g of carb). In total that's 1,485 calories, that's a tad bit conservative so if you were to increase anything, it'd be the carbohydrates. The more physical activity your body endures, the more carbohydrates it wants.
It is best to consume a lot of carbs early day (to fuel your later activities), and then protein later on in the day (to help repair muscle). For fat, you can consume evenly throughout. Following these few steps will help your muscle toning goals.
