Every (serious) bodybuilder knows: bulking can be a costly affair. How can you cut back on your groceries without cutting back on your results? Six tips.
1. BUY WISELY
The first tip is as obvious as it is important: don’t go into the supermarket without a plan. So don’t randomly browse the shelves, but first check at home what offers are available. There are always discounted products that are both tasty and healthy.
Armed with a shopping list, you go to the supermarket, preferably a large one: small (local) stores are often more expensive.
2. EAT HIGH-CALORIE (YET HEALTHY) PRODUCTS
Bulking means eating slightly more calories (approximately 250 kcal) than your maintenance level. So you eat relatively high-calorie food, but that does not have to cost a lot of extra money.
Choose products that provide many calories and are healthy at the same time. So no fast food. Then what? Well, oatmeal in combination with whole milk, for example. Add a tablespoon of peanut butter for extra calories and healthy fats. Student oats – a loose mixture of nuts, currants and raisins – also contain a huge number of calories per gram.
3. DON’T EAT MORE PROTEIN THAN NECESSARY
Proteins are important for muscle growth; as a bodybuilder you need a relatively large amount of it. However, you should not overdo it: many studies show that for optimal muscle growth you need no more than 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So that 1.6 g/kg/d is a plateau: eating more proteins will not help you with more muscle growth.
Protein-rich food is relatively expensive. So don’t eat more proteins than necessary to optimize your muscle growth.
Tip: canned fish is a cheap source of protein – much cheaper than fresh fish. Tuna steak in oil also contains healthy fats and extra calories.
4. DON’T EAT MORE FATS THAN NECESSARY
The distribution of fats and carbohydrates is not very important for body composition. But from an economic point of view, it is best to eat relatively many carbohydrates, as this is the cheapest of the three macronutrients.
Therefore, do not eat more fats than you strictly need: 1-1.5 g/kg/d (see also this article).
You can easily combine the consumption of fats with that of proteins. For example, if you consume full-fat dairy, you get both a lot of proteins and a lot of fats in one go. And we already mentioned peanut butter: in addition to being high in calories, this product is also relatively rich in proteins and healthy fats. Other examples include peanuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.
5. BUY FROZEN FOOD
Frozen food has a bad reputation, but that is unjustified when you look at the research in this area. This shows that freezing has little influence on the nutritional composition. Also remember that most of the foods we buy today are not really fresh, even if they are labeled as such. They have often been frozen before.
Fruit and seafood in particular are great to buy frozen.
6. SKIP ORGANIC FOODS
In general, organic food has not been shown to be healthier than conventional food. Organic is a lot more expensive. If there is any health benefit, it is so small that it is not worth the higher price.