Vitamins and minerals can also be called micronutrients. Micronutrients are extremely important in your diet for many MANY reasons. We will stick to focusing on how they relate to muscle health. First of all, your muscles work by being strong but also flexible. When you use them for things such as training at GW, they must be “repaired” in order to get stronger and stay healthy. Here are a few vitamins and minerals that help to promote strong muscles:
- Vitamin C : can be found in many fruits and vegetables; among other things this vitamin is a building block of collagen which promotes muscles elasticity and growth
- Vitamin E – can be found in nuts; helps muscles recover from the “stress” of exercise
- Calcium : can be found in green vegetables; helps your muscles to contract while working out
- Magnesium : can be found in leafy greens, nuts, and whole grains (among other places); helps relieve muscle soreness!
It’s important to know that you can get almost all vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. Nutrition Australia reported in 2018 that 96% of Australians don’t eat enough vegetables! I will always encourage members to choose natural whole foods that are colorful to try to get their recommended intake. Where necessary a supplement may help you balance out your intake, but a great way to get more vegetables into your diet is to try to eat different kinds of vegetables at all meals! Below are two links for you to view that may help you to increase your vegetable intake and increase the muscle gains:
https://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/eat-rainbow
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