Does it matter If you have frozen berries or fresh berries? frozen - I just buy a bag a week and chuck in a serve with my morning shake in the blender, see oioi's post for the reasons
Also does the type of milk make a difference, eg, rice milk instead of low fat milk / full cream milk. Full cream has the most calories, so as long as you account for it in your calorie calculations you won't dirty bulk. I use rice milk to reduce the amount of lactose in my diet, sorry I probably should have just said milk.
Is WPC or WPI better for you? Or does it depend on the individual person? WPI = faster digestion, less lactose, higher protein content per serve. Which means it's more expensive than WPC. Therefore it depends on the individual person in terms of budget and their tolerance with lactose.
As for normal meals, white rice a yes or
A no? The general consensus used to be that you have white rice (and other faster digesting carbs) around your workout and you have brown rice (or other slower digesting carbs) at other times of the day. However, a lot of people subscribe to the view that it doesn't matter. A carb is a carb is a carb.
Unless you are a competitive bodybuilder, the GI index of the carb won't make a difference.
Personally, I enjoy basmati rice, so I eat basmati rice. Therefore if I'm trying to bulk and need to eat substantially more calories, eating brown rice isn't good because I can't physically bring myself to eat as much of it!
I like to get the steam veggies in the frozen packets from the supermarket as it normally has 3 x veg in it and it's quick good or bad? General opinion seems to be that frozen is as good. If that is going to get you your recommended daily serve of greens, then it's better than nothing in my view. Personally, I used to get those bags. Than I found 1kg bags of frozen broccoli for about $4-5 so I would put it in my leftovers to keep my food cool. It would defrost during the day, then when I would microwave my food for lunch it would taste good. Currently though I haven't been bothering - again up to you!
Then just regular servings of fruit, meat ( kangaroo, fish, beef, chicken, pork, tuna ) I try stick to a couple of serves of fruit, particularly say a banana with some roasted almonds makes a decent morning tea when you're busy. Otherwise, yep you're on the money.
Should I be taking anything else before and the after gym in the means of supplements? There are lots of things you can take, but unless you're planning on competing as a bodybuilder, then that extra 2-5% won't a bigger enough difference to warrant the drain on your wallet.
The key supplements in my opinion are:
- protein (to help eat enough protein per day, mainly out of convenience)
- fish oil (source of EFAs and is generally awesome for you)
- multivitamin (to help make sure you're getting enough of the good micronutrients); and
- glutamine (seems to help with recovery and most importantly, during winter you don't seem to get sick as often so you can keep training - however, this is probably a want rather than a need).
