Nutrition is very individualized and has to be based on your individual goals. There will always be cookie cutter templates you will be able to find online or that trainers will try to sell you. For best results I would always recommend consulting a nutritionist.
Nutrition for strength
Before we get too far if you are a strength athlete no matter how hard you train if your nutrition is not on point you will not hit your full potential. Yes you can still make a lot of gains and improvements but improving your nutrition can do wonders for your training.
How much should I eat?
The answer you are probably getting tired of hearing is …it depends on your goals. We have already outlined strength as a goal but sometimes there are different situations such as someone also looking for:
- Maintaining weight
- Fat Loss
- Gaining weight
Maintaining Weight
This is pretty self explanatory, keeping the same weight while getting stronger. People will want to do this for a number of reasons including staying in the same weight class or making improvements in both relative and absolute strength.
The key is to know how many calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight which would be your caloric maintenance amount.
Fat Loss
There may be a few reasons one may want to lose weight while keeping/putting on strength. For example Powerlifting is a weight class sport and if you are planning on dropping a weight class you will need to strategically lose weight.
In order to lose weight you will have to maintain a caloric deficit. Meaning you are expending more calories than you are consuming. It will be important to track your macro-nutrients and calorie intake to determine how many calories you should be consuming. Personally if I am cutting weight I also like to add very light exercise like walking to help expend more calories without exerting myself too much.
Gaining Weight
If the goal is to gain weight than you have to maintain a caloric surplus. meaning you are consuming more calories than you are expending. A lot of times people use weight gain as an excuse to completely let their diet go. But you want to be smart with your weight gain and put on as much lean muscle mass as possible as oppose to stuffing your face with everything and putting on too much excess fat.
What Should I eat?
I am not going to provide a nutrition plan here for you as I said earlier that is the job for a nutritionist. But I will share some general best practices. Our focus here is on your macro-nutrients which are protein, fat and carbs. I do believe you should try and focus on whole, natural and unprocessed food which are nutrient dense.
Here are some examples
Protein
I would try and consume protein at every meal. Some will argue protein is the most important macro-nutrient it is key for muscle growth and repair.
Fats
Very misunderstood macronutrient. Fat has a lot of health benefits. But the problem is a lot of processed foods we eat has too much of the unhealthy fats. You most likely will not need to focus on consuming more fat, but you should focus on healthy fats. You can use the list above for inspiration.
Carbohydrates
Carbs are also very important but often overemphasized and utilized. Carbs are usually your main source of energy so incorporate them into your diet.
Want to learn more about macronutrients? Here is a macronutrient overview.
