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Ok, so you want to get huge and you get into the gym, pound weights till you have a big red head. And you maybe think that’s all you have to do, pump the weights, if only it was that simple.

Nutrition plays a very large part of recovery and growth. Bodybuilding diets are constantly changing due to the increase of your muscle mass, if you put muscle on you have to eat more, if you lose muscle you need to eat less. So how do you keep an eye on what is happening inside the body?

Watching your weight daily is important if you are trying to increase your mass. If your weight is going down or staying the same, you may need to consider eating more. If you find yourself gaining a lot of weight you need to take a closer look at what you’re eating. Be careful, while you can expect to gain fat while attempting to gain muscle, you should keep an eye on it to ensure you don’t gain too much fat.

Fat calipers are another great way to determine if you are building muscle or fat. When you use calipers every two weeks, you can see what precisely is going on, for example if you see your muscle going down from not eating, the calipers will reveal that you should eat more. Eat less if the calipers show that your body fat percentage is increasing.

Every good gym will have a set of calipers and assuming it is the same person doing the measurments each time you will get a honest reading as for what is going on. After you have figured out the amount of millimeters and your bodyweights, it is then that the chart which comes with calipers will determine what bodyfat percentage you are.

If you take your bodyweight in pounds and times it by the bodyfat percentage then that will come out with your total bodyfat. Then take this figure from the total bodyweight and that will give you a figure for your fat free mass. The figure is not all muscle but includes internal organs, bones, etc, but just use the figure as muscle for our calculations.

You should record and keep the figures you calculated for total body fat and for fat free mass. When you have your measurements taken you can check to see if the percentage of bodyfat has increased. If you do the correct exercise and eat correctly then your body fat will go down. And with the decrease of body fat, you will find that your muscles and fat free mass will go up. If you are not eating correctly you will discover that your fat free mass, muscle is decreasing and the bodyfat is increasing.

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