Nutrition Question

[Rhyfelwyr]

A lot of it is genetics. My one friend eats like crap, and do mean crap, and has a six pack.

I eat sparingly and fairly healthy diet, and I'm much stalker than he is. Good old genetics.

I'm not even sure how much of it is down to genetics. I used to eat a hell of a lot of crap, and not even a decent piece of food passed my lips. All KFC, Chippie stuff etc. And yet I'm still skinny. Not in a healthy way, but I can't seem to get any fat on me.

Meanwhile one of my brothers always ate OK, and yet he's a bit podgy.

In fact I'm pretty small for my age. My youngest brother wanted a DVD today (I am Legend, its a 15). So I went to get it for him, and the person at the till woudn't let me get it. And I am 18!

[Ice]

I'm not even sure how much of it is down to genetics. I used to eat a hell of a lot of crap, and not even a decent piece of food passed my lips. All KFC, Chippie stuff etc. And yet I'm still skinny. Not in a healthy way, but I can't seem to get any fat on me.

Meanwhile one of my brothers always ate OK, and yet he's a bit podgy.

In fact I'm pretty small for my age. My youngest brother wanted a DVD today (I am Legend, its a 15). So I went to get it for him, and the person at the till woudn't let me get it. And I am 18!

Just grow facial hair. I stopped being carded.

[Strike For The South]

Gentics play a role yes but you cannot let that limit in what your goals are. ICE write down your workouts and what you eat everyday it helps loads

[ReiseReise]

Just grow facial hair. I stopped being carded.

Receding hairline did it for me.

[Papewaio]

1 To decrease body fat you need to consume less calories then you use.
2 To increase muscle mass you need to work the muscles and eat protein and carbs and some fats (omega-3s) to help build the muscle.

1 and 2 tend to contradict each other. Bodybuilders tend to have a large calorie intake to build up muscle mass, they also put on fat too. Then they trim down and define.

Building up the large muscle groups (particularly legs as they often get overlooked) will build up more muscle quicker then say building up stablisers and smaller muscles (including the bicep).

So I would say go 6 weeks and build up the big muscles groups.
And then 6 weeks of muscle maintenance with more cardio working out.

[Beirut]

So what's the deal if you work out but don't take in enough protein and/or calories?

[naut]

So what's the deal if you work out but don't take in enough protein and/or calories?

Anorexia??

[LeftEyeNine]

So what's the deal if you work out but don't take in enough protein and/or calories?

Yes endurance, no power.

Skinny guys with defined muscles may amaze at their capabilities from time to time.

[BigTex]

I was under the impression that creatine just increased water retention?

One of the effects of high doses of creatine is to increase the water retention in muscles, yes. But that is not only thing it does. There's quite alot of research out there about what it does. One of the main things is to increase the rate of skeletal muscle growth and increase the brains abiltiy to remember things. The memory increasing effects are quite interesting, there was a more recent study done with vegetarians taking mild doses, the memory gains were incredible. It's a wonderful little amino acid .

Don't really want to put creatine into my body. I'd rather do this in a more natural way, although I do take a multi which includes about 150 mg of amino acids two being taurine and gluatamine.

Your going to be hard pressed to find a whey mix without it in there.

You'll be suprised at how much faster your recovery times are when using glutamine and tuarine.

1 To decrease body fat you need to consume less calories then you use.
2 To increase muscle mass you need to work the muscles and eat protein and carbs and some fats (omega-3s) to help build the muscle.

Beautiful advice, you cannot bulk when you are minimizing. Only difference I'd say is while minimizing is to stick to power lifting, not going all the way down to endurance lifting and lots of cardio.

When bulking try to take in around 20-30% protien in every meal. You'll add alot of weight but your going to be adding loads of muscle and ramping your metabolism up. So burning off the excess fat will be much simpler. When minimizing don't go crazy, cut just below what you need, your not trying to starve yourself.

So what's the deal if you work out but don't take in enough protein and/or calories?

Pain, lots and lots of pain. Not to mention your body will burn muscle before fat. Going on an anorexic binge is a good way to add more to your overall body fat % and lose tons of your strength and mass.

As a side note alot of problems with having a defined 6 pack can be caused by a high sodium diet. You may try cuting down on the salt a bit, should decrease the amount of excess water in your system and help to define your muscles more.