A good diet supposed to be simple and not to over-complicate things. Because the key to a sustainable fitness lifestyle is to have your diet simplified so that you’re able to stick to it long-term.For those who seek to gain muscles, your priority is not food restrictions. Instead, you should be focusing on the number of calories you’re going to take throughout the day.

For starters, I recommend tracking your daily calories intake to have a clear picture of how your diet looks like and how you can manipulate it afterward. Next is to determine what are your macronutrients percentage and finally the essential micronutrients (which can be easily covered with supplements). Trust me, by becoming aware of your daily food intake, you will ultimately make better food choices in near future.

Diet Plan Tip: Preparation is the key to eating healthy. It may sound tricky and complex to prepare. Do not over-think it, instead choose foods that you enjoy eating and make a balanced meal.

Foods to avoid

Generally, you should be avoiding food that makes you feel ‘bloated’, ‘sick’ and ‘low-energy’. This includes processed, highly-toxic (with chemicals), junk food and sugary foods. Sugar is the main factor that  you should really look out for as it is present in foods particularly that aren’t fresh, frozen or dried. Additionally, sauces such as pasta sauce, ketchupand chili sauce contain sugar as well. Moreover, fruit juices and fizzy drinks are things that you need to avoid as well.
Supplements To Avoid
Supplements today are expensive! And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up burning a hole in your wallet with supplements that do not work. There are a lot of people these days sold to the craze of muscle enhancing supplements that promise jaw-dropping muscle mass development.

But honestly, do they even work? There are various supplements that that would improve muscle growth but only handful of it are actually scientifically proven to work if consume in the recommended method.

Supplements that does not offer any muscle growth are considered placebo pills and powders which is merely an
implication to your mind that it affects your body.

Testosterone Booster
They are supplements that increase testosterone levels in the blood, most of the compounds do boost testosterone levels and there are those which do not actually boost testosterone. It is recommended to cycle testosterone boosters as they do have side-effects that could be detrimental to your health if taken excessively.

Studies show that testosterone booster can actually cause testicles atrophy and lower HPTA stimulation if used excessively or with prolonged usage.Also, it is shown that some even developed “adrenal fatigue” due to the chemical compounds in boosters.
There are 3 prime examples of compounds that have been scientifically proven that does not affect testosterone levels which are Tribulus Terrestris, ZMA, and D-aspartic acid.

• • Tribulus Terrestris simply does not have any factors that would increase testosterone levels as well as body composition and improving exercise performance.

• • ZMA is a combination of zinc, magnesium and vitamin B6 which is in the same line with Tribulus Terrestris. People who are deficient from zinc and magnesium would benefit their overall health but not for increasing testosterone level. The least ZMA could do is removing micronutrient deficiency that is suppressing testosterone production.

• • D-aspartic acid could increase testosterone levels but the effects are short-lived and temporary, you could put into word it is unreliable.

There are various scientific studies that have been conducted to determine if increasing testosterone levels could help with boosting muscle gains. The results pretty much show that no matter how high you increase your testosterone levels, it would not help boost muscle building compared to consuming proper diet meals and viable
supplements.

The key to building muscle is proper training and nutrition not reliance on supplements.

Protein Supplement Scams

We like protein powder. It’s a quick, convenient and cost-effective way to hit our daily protein targets. Whey protein is not the cheapest, but it is popular due to the high BCAA content, particularly leucine, which is critical to the muscle building process. Now, with consumers becoming wiser there is a rising demand for products that claim to have been lab tested, but this comes at a time of overall rising global demand (and thus prices).

With consumers becoming sensitive to these price increases and a lack of general education about what they should be looking for on the packet, the incentives for companies to cut costs by cheating the system are all there, and many do. I’m talking about the rise of the phenomenon known as ‘protein spiking’. The way it works is this: some labs test for the total amino acid content rather than the amounts of the individual amino acids themselves.

This means that protein companies can dump cheap amino acids into the mix (mainly glycine and taurine), skimping on the actual whey content, which is expensive, and yet still pass some quality tests.

Here are some red flags to look out for when choosing a whey powder:

1. 1. The cost per pound / kilo of claimed protein content is considerably cheaper than average. Whey is a commodity traded on the open market. You can be ripped off and pay way too much (You can even find places that sell 10x market price in luxury gyms!)

1. 1. It has a proprietary blend (or doesn’t list leucine content).

1. 1. Leucine content, when listed, is lower than 2.7 g per 25 g of protein content (the BCAA content of whey is 25%, leucine should be 11%). If your protein powder doesn’t pass those checks, you’re rolling the dice with the quality of what you’re getting. Protein supplement consumption is entirely optional and is based on personal preference. You can still opt for dieting instead of taking in protein powder.

Keeping in mind how adamant I am regarding the combined quality, validity and effectiveness of any substance, these are the supplements I highly recommend to everyone and especially useful for those of us interested in gaining muscle and strength. Of course, there are other useful supplements worth mentioning such as Multivitamin, BCAA, HMB, Beta-alanine, glucosamine etc.

Now there’s always some subjectivity in deciding whether these supplements are worth being on this list or not and as with all of my advice, feel free to disagree with it based on your own judgment. Additionally, it is quite likely that this list will prove to be outdated in a few years as more research comes out.