Usually building a great physique for general and competitive purposes is best when one undergoes a stage for contest preparation, where the individual will reduce calories and try to be as shredded as possible, and a stage for bulking, where the objective is to put on as much quality muscle as possible. During the bulking stage, one must drastically increase calories to ensure that the muscles will grow properly. However, many of the foods people choose to bulk with, to lean out, and foods for general wellness are not as good as you think. Let’s take a look at some of the top  food choice mistakes.

Mistake #1 – Peanut Butter

Peanut butter is often chosen as a food to bulk up with due to the “good fats” it contains along with some protein. Often people will say that peanut butter is just a healthy food to eat overall. Unfortunately, even though these are healthy fats, we cannot deny the fact that peanut butter is almost COMPLETELY fat. There is more protein in a bagel than in an equal portion of peanut butter. It has SOME protein, but roughly 80% or more (depending on the brand) calories are from fat. This means that instead of each gram containing 4 calories like a gram of carbohydrate or protein, it contains 9 grams. The problem with this is that even though they are good fats, there is just too many calories and even though you might be developing some hardcore mass, you will probably see yourself very pudgy if this food is consumed a lot.

Mistake #2 – Fruit

What’s that you hear? You’re hungry and you’ve been given the suggestion to eat fruit as a healthy snack to curve your weight gain. You see on the bottle of grape juice that there is no “added sugar”, so apparently you believe this makes this sugar free. Fruit comes naturally with sugar, and even though there are many vitamins and general wellness benefits from eating fruit, they are still packing all the calories with sugars. I’m not saying that you should go back to eating pizza as a snack instead of fruit, but don’t believe that eating vast amounts of fruit each day will be the huge weight loss secret you’ve been wanting to find out.

Mistake #3 – Cooking Oils

As with the peanut butter, people will splash on tons of cooking oils into the pan such as olive oil. These oils do contain a lot of the healthy fats and you will hear the excuse of them being heart healthy as a reason of using them – which is true – but these oils are 100% pure fat calories. Because fat calories are more than half as dense as calories from protein and carbohydrates, it is very easy to gain tons of weight just by splashing on oil every time you make a meal. A good substitute would be to use fat free cooking spray. People will try to claim that certain food substitutes have other effects which lead to more weight gain than the food they’re substituting, but just think about the science. You must consume more calories than you burn to gain weight. If the substitute you’re using contains 0 calories, versus 100-200 calories in one teaspoon of the original substance, how is it possible to gain even more weight? Stay away from these oils or, as they say, use in MODERATION.

Mistake #4: – Vegetable Chips and Fruit Chips

Unfortunately the average shopper and even person who is trying to lose weight will try a million diet plans yet will not take the time to knowledge themselves on exactly what each food choice contains in terms of fats, carbohydrates, and protein. I’m sure that people will walk by the chip isle and see banana chips there, and assume that they can eat these all day and lose weight, so they just throw it into the cart. These chips are just as fattening and calorie dense as normal chips – and banana chips in particular have much more calories than even the normal chips. A substitute for both the normal chips and these chips would be baked chips.

Mistake #5 – Granola bars

Granola bars and other breakfast bars are about as bad as a candy bar. Do not think for a second that you will lose weight eating these throughout the day! Although they can be decent for breakfast, they contain high sugar and trans fats. Even in the morning you would be better off eating a bowl of oatmeal with Splenda and fat free milk or even a normal bowl of cereal.

Mistake #6 – Reduced sodium foods

The reason most of these products contain “25% less sodium” on the package is due to the fact that the law may require that the individual food products contains 25% less than the original product. This still doesn’t mean that there is low sodium in the food choice – it may still have tons more than even the recommended daily amount. A good substitute would just be to flip the food product over and read how much sodium each serving has. It will only take you a second and can save your health in the future.

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