What you should eat is one of the two big components of your plan when you are trying to get ripped. First of all be must make a division between what you should eat in general times and what you should eat right after your workouts.
For your general dietary needs you should aim in simple terms to increase your protein intake and cut down on ‘bad’ food types like fats, carbohydrates and sugars. The proteins are what are used to essentially power your muscles and getting lots of protein in will mean more visible, stronger and more effective muscles. The other bad types are obviously vital as part of a balanced diet but are less useful as part of a diet that involves trying to get that killer ripped body. In the busy world we live in finding enough time to meet with the perfect diet is clearly going to be difficult but getting into a good routine and planning ahead helps immensely.
The ideal solution seems to be 5 or 6 smaller portion meals steadily throughout the day allowing good indigestion and processing of the food you take in. The last meal should be a couple of hours at least before you go to bed as your body quite simply does not digest food well when you are sleeping and is much more likely to store it away as fat which is not what you want when trying to get into shape. You should in particular watch out for carbs and try and make your last intake around 4 hours before you sleep to limit the effects and process most of it before you sleep.
Your natural diet may contain enough protein to be healthy but you really need to go above and beyond that if you want to get cut fast; for exactly this you can get whey protein powder which allows you to make handy shakes to drink which top up your protein levels suitably.