In order to get the best results from your workouts, it is a fact that you must make available to your body all the necessary vitamins and minerals in addition to enough of the major components of the diet i.e. protein, carbohydrate and fats and oils (lipids). The proteins, carbohydrates and lipids are the 'macro-nutrients' of the diet since they are consumed in much larger amounts compared to the 'micro-nutrients' which are the vitamins, minerals and other biological substances consumed in much smaller amounts in the diet than are the 'macro-nutrients', but are found in varying amounts accompanying the macro-nutrients in food.

It is true that most of the micro-nutrients are already present in the foods that make up the macro-nutrients, but hard-training bodybuilders have been shown to require much more than food can provide in terms of the micro-nutrients which are often lost out of foods through cooking. In addition, the stresses of training the body uses up a large amount of the micro-nutrients in growth and repair of body tissues, and extra levels are required at amounts that could not be acquired by food alone, and so are taken via a few pills from a health-food store in the morning, evening, and with meals.

The important question is what to take and when during the day. A good time in the day to take a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement is during the first meal of the day and this meal SHOULD be breakfast. If you are inclined to miss out breakfast then you really are working against yourself in terms of any lean muscle mass gains that you would otherwise make if you did have a good breakfast on a daily basis. After you have been asleep for a good number of hours, on waking up your blood sugar level is low, and the body is at the point where it has to start accessing materials to raise blood sugar levels and this ALSO means that your muscles can be accessed to raise blood sugar i.e. the muscles are being broken down (catabolised) in such a way that is the exact opposite to what we have in mind which is building muscles (anabolism) i.e. BODYBUILDING!

Therefore, as you can see, a good breakfast is an extremely important meal, which should include milk, an egg-white omelette and complex carbohydrates including rice, which boost blood sugar levels steadily as they are digested. So make sure you give yourself sufficient time in the morning for breakfast otherwise visible results on training will be slow.

Some people may be lacking a good appetite at first, but as long as you eat omething healthy for breakfast, its not a problem, as your appetite can be your guide, and will probably grow alongside gains from your training. Why does the appetite increase? Well basically cause your body has more muscle tissue to feed as your training continues. Many people should benefit a great deal from extra vitamin B-complex supplements as well as extra vitamin C as they are water soluble vitamins and therefore are not retained to any great extent within the body and are used up quickly in general tissue metabolism and EVEN MORE so when your muscles are growing !!!

Therefore, it would be a good idea to try supplementing with extra B-complex and C vitamins in the morning and before sleep, and perhaps before your workout that day. When using high levels of vitamins such as this, remember to take in extra amounts of water / fluids which may come from just drinking water (recommend bottled water) or water used in making brand-name carbohydrate sports drinks and for mixing your creatine with. Consuming a couple of litres of fluid each day may be enough for some, not enough for others. Optimum hydration is required to flush out waste products from the body tissues that lower levels of fluid intake could not accomplish.

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