Muscle building diets and supplements are not cheap! Eating big, using supps and working out all the time can just about send you broke! The “usual” sources of protein are always so expensive! Chicken breast, fish and red meat cost a fortune these days at the supermarket! So you want to eat the best muscle building diet possible without spending hundreds or food per week right? Well this article is for you! I’m going to show you some of the things I do every week to keep the grocery bill down. It is possible to follow a strict muscle diet and keep some money in the bank! Here are my tips for eating big on a budget…
TIP #1 – Buy mince meat (ground meat)
Lean fillet steak, veal and lamb can often be very expensive. The solution, mince meat. Mince meat has the same amount of protein in it as steak and it’s so much cheaper. You can make it into beef patties for burgers, make a chili to feed you for a week or even make a pie with it. Chili is my personal favorite. I can buy all the ingredients for a big chili for around $20. That includes 1.4kg or meat! One thing to remember though, always get the premium mince. The normal stuff has way to mach fat in it. (>20%)
TIP #2 – Eggs are your friend
Egg whites are a really rich source of natural protein. Eggs are cheap and so very versatile. You can make omelets, scramble them, boil them, fry them… the list goes on – use your imagination! One point to note though, the yolk of the egg is very high in cholesterol so if you’re making an omelet use 4-6 egg whites and 2 full eggs.
TIP #3 – Buy in bulk and save
You hear it in every second TV advert, “buy in bulk and save!”. Well they’re not lying! Sometimes you can save up to 40-50% of meat sold in bulk. You’ve got a freezer haven’t you?! Don’t write butchers off either, sometimes their prices (especially on bulk) are cheap than the supermarkets. And if they’re a small outlet the might even be willing to do you a deal.
TIP #4 – Eat sandwiches
Bread is cheap. Head to the deli isle of your supermarket and you’ll find loads of good cheap sandwich meat available. Chicken, turkey and beef are all good sandwich meats. All some salad and you’ve got yourself a wholesome snack.
TIP #5 – Cook like a restaurant
What I’m telling is to cook in bulk. Find your favorite chili recipe, times the ingredients by 4 and cook it on a Sunday afternoon. There you have 10-15 meals for the week ahead. All you need is some 2 minutes brown rice and you have yourself a meal ready in minutes. Perfect for post workouts and rush meals. Now you’ll have no need to stop at that sandwich shop!
TIP #6 – Natures cheapest fish
Tuna tuna tuna. Tuna is one of the best foods you can eat if you want to build lean muscle. Not only has it got more than 20% protein but it’s cheap and rich in natural essential oils. Just one problem, it tastes like cat food! I find it hard to stomach tuna, but I eat it anyway because it’s dirt cheap and so good for me. If you don’t like the taste or small on tuna mix it with some satay sauce. My favorite is tuna mixed with satay sauce on some boiled brown rice. Nothing but goodness! (tastes average though!)
Filed under Muscle Building Programs by on Apr 22nd, 2010. Comment. 
It seems so hard for people to get it through their heads that more work doesn’t equal more results. Especially when it comes to working out and muscles.
I see this everyday in the gym and even with people I’m closest to. I could write a book on common gym misconceptions (I just might do that) and this would be at the top of the list.
This is called Overtraining and is the deadliest culprit when it comes to building muscle.
In so many other areas of life, we are taught to work harder for more results.
You want more more money, get more jobs (this is false as well) or work harder at work to get promoted.
If you wanna get there sooner, drive faster.
Girl not responding to your come-ons, be more persistent (this is false as well).
Want to build more muscle, go to the gym more often (false).
Why is this not the case? It seems counter-intuitive.
You have to realize two things.
1. You don’t BUILD muscle in the gym. You TEAR it down.
2. Your muscles need time to recover and get stronger, just like any other part of your body when you damage it.
With that being said, why would you spend most of your time in the gym tearing down muscle and never give it time to grow back?
It’s like that scab on your leg when you were little that your mom told you to stop picking at. (I still pick my scabs, lol)
She knew that the more you picked, the longer it would take to heal.
The same is true for your muscles. If you always tear them down and never give them time to recover, you’ll plateau really quick.
What do most people do when they plateau?
The figure “I’m not working out hard enough”, so they go to the gym more.
That’s only making a bad situation worse.
The best thing to do would be the counter-intuitive thing and that is to REST more.
That’s why I’m so big on education and so dedicated to giving you the right information.
Sorry if that flies in the face of what you believe. But if you always follow common beliefs, you will always get common results.
The only way to debunk a myth is to find out the truth…and that’s what you have here.
The whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.
Until Next Time,
Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Body Building Tips by on Mar 29th, 2010. Comment.
If you’re trying to get lean, or lose weight, I’m sure this question has crossed your mind a number of times.
It’s easy to follow the crowd and become a hamster on a wheel by doing endless hours of cardio on a treadmill or bike.
While it’s true that these exercises burn fat, they only burn fat during the workout a for a few hours after.
On the other hand, intense training, aka. weight training or interval training, burn overall calories and keeps your metabolism revved up for up to 48 hrs after.
Here’s a few examples to drive this home.
Your metabolism can be likened to a row machine and that wheel that spins when you pull the cord.
If you pull the cord slowly and steadily, yes it’ll move. But when you stop, it’ll only go a few more revolutions before it stops also.
However, if you yank the cord really hard and really quickly then stop, it’ll continue spinning at a high rate of speed long after you’ve stopped pulling.
The reason for this is because during interval training or weight training, you’re breaking muscle down.
We all know (or you’re about to find out) that muscle burns fat around the clock. Muscle to your body is like a heavy load is to a truck.
It takes a lot of energy to carry all that excess load around. That energy comes from fat. So the best way to burn fat is to build lean muscle.
The main reason your metabolism remains at an increased level is because when you do either weight training or interval training and break down muscle, your body has to repair the damage you’ve done to it.
Think of your muscles as an ant pile. If you just remove some of the dirt, only a few ants will come out and repair it. The damage will be repaired pretty quickly.
However, if you wipe out an entire chunk of the pile, all of a sudden you see hundreds of ants scurrying out to repair the pile. It’ll be a day or two before they have it back to normal.
This was one of my favorite activities as a kid, by the way.
With that being said, which exercises burn the most fat by doing damage to your muscles, increase your metabolism, and build lean muscle?
The answer: Compound Exercises.
You can check out my blog on isolated exercises vs. compound exercises to get the real low down on what compound exercises do to your body.
My page on interval training will enlighten you as to how to do proper interval training and HIIT.
Some great compound exercises to rev up your metabolism, build muscle, and burn fat around the clock are:
1. Deadlift
2. Back Squat
3. Power Cleans
4. Standing Military Press
5. Pull Ups
6. Bench Press
7. Cable Rows
You can also check out my page on greatest muscle building exercises to get a video demonstration of these movements.
Incorporating these exercises into you routine will give you a great start to getting lean as well as building muscle.
Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Abs Training, Body Building Tips by on Feb 23rd, 2010. Comment.
Next up on my list of Versus Series is cardio.
When it comes to cardio, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. However, since you’re a reader of my blog, I trust you’ll follow my lead on this one.
One trainer will tell you something, your buddy at the gym will tell you a different something, and some know-it-all on online with a muscle building blog will tell you something else 
The problem is that the story is different depending on who’s telling it.
It could be true in one circumstance and false in another. That’s just the nature of working out. It’s not easy to give you a “one size fits all” scenario.
I don’t wanna “poo poo” on steady state cardio because it has it’s place – if you’re training for a distance event or it’s your only kind of physical activity.
The biggest thing is that your body adapts to whatever you repeatedly do to it. It adapts to become stronger, your neural pathways adapt to fire more efficiently, and your metabolism adapts to burn less and less calories.
That being said, you must progressively overload your body to make favorable adaptations, or make changes in your routine.
Steady State Cardio
As I said before, it’s good to do if you’re training for a distance event because your body adapts and becomes more efficient at doing the same thing.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not all that great for burning calories and losing weight. Why?
Because your body ADAPTS.
For one, you only burn a few hundred calories – 200 to 400.
Second, it doesn’t increase your metabolism a whole lot and your rate of calorie burn is only increased while you’re doing the exercise.
Lastly, by doing the same thing over and over, your body becomes energy efficient so it eventually takes a lot more work to burn the same amount of calories.
I’ve seen plenty of overweight people run marathons, but I’ve never seen an overweight sprinter.
Interval Cardio (HIIT)
Also known as HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training is great for burning more calories and losing weight.
Interval training forces your muscles in to an anaerobic state, meaning they are in an oxygen deficit. When your muscles do this, they are forced to burn more calories to maintain the same level of activity.
Interval training can be things like short sprints with short rests, or quick body weight exercises.
Very intense “aerobics” can do the trick also. You can review my post about Interval Training here.
Generally this creates and overall higher calorie burn which results in more fat burned up.
It also increases your metabolism for up to 24 hrs after the workout because of its anaerobic nature, unlike steady state cardio.
So there you have it. A brief but thorough look at the two main types of cardio and what they’re used for. Choose wisely.
Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Abs Training, Body Building Tips by on Feb 21st, 2010. 1 Comment.
When it comes to “cutting”, losing weight, or burning fat, your biggest ally or biggest enemy is your diet.
To build muscle, you need to eat certain things, just as you need to eat certain things to burn fat.
When I tell people “I can’t eat that because it’s not apart of my diet”, they look a me funny and say “you don’t need to lose weight”.
Your diet is what you eat, good or bad, whether you want to lose or gain weight.
That being said, if you want to burn fat, your main goal in your diet should be to keep your metabolism as high as possible.
Your metabolism is the rate at which you burn energy. We all know that fat is stored energy (and wastes), so to get rid of this, your aim should be to keep the rate at which you burn energy quite high.
But I can hear you saying right now “I have a slow metabolism. I gain fat/weight easily and it’s hard to lose it.” I’ll do a blog later on internal beliefs but in short, YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK.
CONTRARY to popular belief (popular hardly ever means right) your genetics only influence your overall metabolism by 5% to 10% – a very small portion.
Your rate of calorie burn is largely determined by your age, weight, level of activity, food, and increments of food – to name a few.
Needless to say, your metabolism is largely up to you. Review my blog on 9 ways to instantly increase your metabolism.
Now, for the fat burning foods, which actually increase your metabolism.
1. Oats & Whole Grains
They are a great source of carbs and they digest slow. This keeps your insulin low, which you want to do most of the day.
2. Jalapenos
Spicy peppers contain capsaicin which increases your heart rate (so that’s what that is!). A spicy meal can boost your metabolism for several hours. I like to throw plenty of spices on my chicken breast and in my rice.
3. Chicken
A great source of lean protein and should be a staple in any diet (whether to gain or to lose weight). This lean protein is great for boosting your metabolism and helping you burn fat because proteins takes more energy to break down than carbs. I think like most builders, I eat chicken breast almost every day.
4. Salmon
Fish is a great source of protein also. But it’s on the fat burning list because it contains Omega-3 fatty acids which help lower leptin levels. Lower leptin levels increase your calorie burn. I eat fish several times a week.
5. Green Tea
It’s not exactly a food, but a drink and also important for many reasons. It has EGCG which increases brain and nervous system activity, it’s an antioxidant, and helps increase calorie burn because of these.
I tried to include different categories here, to give you a framework of which types of foods increase your metabolism and help you burn fat.
Now go out, and start burning around the clock.
Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Muscle Building Programs by on Feb 17th, 2010. Comment.
