Bodybuilding Nutrition For A Low-Fat Diet

Low-Fat Diet

As I mentioned earlier, eliminating beef and pork from the diet will significantly reduce the fat content in a low-fat diet. Other high-fat foods include full-fat milk products (including butter and cheese), cooking and salad oils, egg yolk, nuts, seeds, grains, corn, avocados, bananas, shortening, and cream substitutes for coffee. Consumption of all of these foods should be gradually cut back, or completely eliminated, when on a low-fat diet.

Dieting & Bodybuilding
Overall, a low-fat diet is the best way to eliminate the body’s fat stores while maintaining maximum muscle mass. Here’s a typical day’s menu when on a low-fat diet (the amounts of each food actually eaten vary according to sex, relative body mass, and severity of the diet):

Meal One - broiled fish, fruit, supplements, and water.
Snack - one piece of fruit.
Meal Two - tuna salad made with water-packed tuna, fruit, supplements, and iced tea (artificially sweetened, or with lemon).
Snack - piece of fruit or a dry, baked potato.
Meal Three - broiled chicken breast, green salad, supplements, and coffee or iced tea.

You can adapt the above sample diet to your own requirements and situation. Simply experiment with various amounts and types of low-fat foods and use your instinct and body appearance to determine what exact diet you should follow.

The following are 10 dietary hints that I can suggest for use when following a low-fat diet:
1. If choosing between pork and beef, eat beef because it is lower in calories. Similarly, chicken and turkey have less fat than beef (poultry white meat has less fat content than the dark meat, too), and fish is even lower in fat content than poultry. Remove the fatty skin of all poultry before cooking it.
2. Never fry foods, because they soak up the cooking oil, significantly raising the caloric content of the food. Always bake or broil poultry and fish. Charcoal broiling adds a particularly nice flavor to all foods.
3. Don’t use butter or any full-fat milk products. If you must use milk products, be sure that they are made from non-fat milk (e.g., mozzarella cheese). Overall, you should avoid all milk products, particularly for the last two weeks before competing. Milk tends to hold excess water in the body.
4. Never use oils or commercial dressings on salads. To a salad base, add parsley and other herbs, then vinegar and/or lemon juice. This will make any salad quite palatable, and many bodybuilders feel that vinegar helps to metabolize body fat.
5. Eat baked potatoes plain, with out butter, margarine, or sour cream (all of which are high in fat). Dry baked potatoes actually taste quite good once you get used to them. Adding butter or sour cream can double the caloric content of a potato.
6. Use as many herbs and spices as possible in your cooking, because each will impart a distinct taste to ordinary fish or chicken. Additionally, herbs and spices have almost negligible caloric content.
7. If you must eat bread, buy whole-grain, flourless bread in a health food store and eat it plain or toasted. Be sure the bread has been baked with out the addition of butter or shortening. When you do eat bread, never put butter, peanut butter, jelly, jam, honey, or anything else on it. These bread spreads can double or triple the caloric content of a slice of bread. Avoid all grain products when on a precontest diet, particularly for the last two weeks before a show. As we have mentioned, grains tend to bloat the body with excess water, which would be disastrous at contest time.
8. Don’t boil vegetables, because that leaches out many of the vitamins and minerals these vegetables contain. Of course you should never use butter or oil on cooked vegetables. In stead of boiling them, either lightly steam your vegetables or eat them raw.
9. Avoid using sodium (table salt, artificial sweeteners) in your diet, and avoid high-sodium foods like celery. One gram of sodium will retain 50 grams of water in your body for two to three days. Avoid all sugar substitutes, diet sodas, and table salt, particularly for the last two weeks prior to competing.
10. Every bodybuilder gets cravings when on a precontest diet, particularly for sugar and fats. Don’t fall prey to such cravings, however, because weakening just once will lead to blowing your diet time after time. There are numerous naturally sweet fruits which will quickly assuage any cravings you might have for sweets. Try watermelon, strawberries, or peaches. A serving of one or two of these fruits will get your mind off ice cream and back on your bodybuilding competition diet quite quickly.

Within the framework for precontest dieting that I’ve provided here, there are numerous ways you can fine tune the low-fat diet. Any book with food calorie tables will give you plenty of ideas for lowering caloric content in a diet, even over and above limiting fats. As an example, fruits and vegetables like strawberries, melons, seed sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, and tomatoes are much lower in caloric content than bananas, avocados, apricots, dates, and sweet potatoes.

Author: Rex Grogan
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