High Protein Foods for Weightlifting

Want to do weightlifting? Well, firstly you need to eat food that help to maintain and build muscles. If your exercise routine primarily focuses on weight training, following a high protein diet is a must. Weightlifting exercises are meant to extend the functionality of the muscles by putting more strain on them in comparison to other forms of workouts.

Muscle tissues do get damaged after a rigorous weightlifting workout. In order to repair wear and tear of muscles from exercise, nutritionist often advice to eat high protein foods during meals. This is because, muscle fibers primarily consists of proteins.

Therefore eating protein rich foods can contribute immensely in building muscles and speed up recovery of injured muscle tissue post exercise.

Eggs form an indispensable part of high protein diet plan for muscle-building. Eggs are rich in proteins and can definitely promote muscle growth. A large-sized egg can provide as much as 6.3 grams of proteins. Taking out the egg yolk and only eating the egg white is not a good option as the yolk is also found to be a good source of proteins.

Apart from proteins, eggs also contain carotenoids, antioxidants that protect the eyesight from age related disorders.

Fish is an excellent source of high quality proteins. Steamed or grilled fish like tuna and salmon are definitely a great addition to the diet as these popular seafood promote growth and maintenance of muscles.

Meat, be it chicken or red meat like beef are always high in fats. Hence the fear of gaining weight looms large. However, weightlifters really don't have to worry about weight gain, if they prefer lean cuts of meat. Lean meat is a very good source of protein but more importantly, they are found to be low in fats.

Lean cuts of chicken breasts, beef and turkey have ample amounts of proteins but the fat content is negligible. Hence, eating lean meat can be a great support in your attempt to build strong muscles.

You can also complement your weightlifting exercises with high protein foods like low-fat dairy products. Low fat cheese (cottage cheese), yogurt and of course, milk are high in protein content.

Moreover, milk contains a great deal of essential minerals and vitamins, whereas yogurt is high in good bacteria. Considering their high nutritional value, one can only expect plenty of health benefits from inclusion of low-fat dairy products in the diet.

Meat and eggs are not the only contributors of protein rich sources. Weightlifters looking for non meat sources can always rely on soy products and kidney beans. Talking about soy products and one simply cannot forget to enlist soy milk, tofu, soy cheese and soybeans. They contain a high amount of plant-based healthy proteins.

You can also get muscle-building proteins from kidney beans. A very popular high protein salad recipe involves a combination of red kidney beans, green beans, onions and 2 hard-boiled eggs.

Although high protein foods are essential for weightlifters, one should avoid too much of protein intake. Otherwise, one may face high protein diet side effects. This is bound to happen if one is following high protein low carb diet for a long duration. Instead follow a balanced diet that is a good source of proteins,healthy carbohydrates (available in vegetables and fruits) and fiber.

Overall, what you eat after a vigorous exercise is extremely important. There is no doubt that doing weightlifting exercises alone are not enough to get those well toned muscles. The effort to do exercise for building muscle mass is futile, if the right food is not consumed.

So, in order to achieve the purpose of following a weightlifting exercise routine, don't forget to add high protein foods in the diet.