The best source of calories for bodybuilding:
No doubt about it, building muscle requires a calorie surplus. The more calories you eat over your body’s daily needs, the faster you’ll build muscle. But since all calories are not created equal there are some that will help your muscles grow better than others. Two of the most important include dietary fat and carbohydrates.
1. Dietary fat:
Dietary fat has several important roles. It helps the body absorb needed vitamins, like A, D, E, and K. But dietary fat also aids in muscle growth by creating an optimal environment for the synthesis of testosterone. Exercise creates tiny tears within muscle fibers that you want to accelerate recovery and growth. Dietary fat helps these muscles recover by slowing protein breakdown and increasing protein synthesis.
How much dietary fat? That depends on several factors, including which type you’re eating. For most people, the body can absorb only 30 grams at a time, so they need to ingest it in 6-10 five-ounce servings per day. Since dietary fats are more calorie-rich than other nutrients, you should rotate between them to prevent your body from getting saturated.
Sample dietary fat servings:
Meal 1 – 5 egg whites, 2 yolks, 1 tsp coconut oil or butter
Meal 4 – 8 oz white fish, 9 cashews
Meal 7 – 3 scoops Metabolic Drive® Protein, 3 tbsp almond butter
2. Carbohydrates:
On the other hand, carbs are the bodybuilder’s friend. After all, you train to increase muscle mass, not lose it. The body loses about 1/2 pound of muscle every week it doesn’t have enough calories for bodybuilding – so getting enough carbs is crucial Carbs are also critical to anabolic activity. That’s why most bodybuilders use a pre-workout meal – they provide high amounts of glycogen (the form in which carbs are stored) before training. The more carbs you eat, the bigger your muscles get.
How much? That’s very individual too, but most people can only store about 500 grams worth in their muscles and liver at any one time. If you burn that amount during intense training, you’ll need to get a refill within 1-3 hours afterward.
Liquid calories for bodybuilding:
Should you drink protein shakes to help build muscle?
If you are trying to gain lean body weight and have been following a resistance training program for at least a few months, perhaps incorporating liquid protein into your regimen might benefit you. The reasons that researchers have suggested this to be advantageous can be boiled down to less of a chance of overeating and improved recovery from intense weight training sessions. In a famous bodybuilding experiment, participants were assigned to either drink calorie-containing beverages of various kinds or not after their workouts over the course of several weeks.
The group that drank calories for bodybuilding during their workouts gained more lean mass and lost a little bit more fat than the other group – but honestly, you probably wouldn’t notice the difference. The goal for this “supplementation” is really just to prevent overeating or hunger, not necessarily to enable you to gain weight at a greater rate than what you’re capable of by eating more food. Some people would argue that it’s easier to eat an extra meal before bed if you’ve already had some quick absorbing protein throughout the day.
That seems like a pretty legitimate argument to me, and there is research out there that suggests protein synthesis rates are increased if you ingest some protein before going to sleep – not just after training. If we want our muscles to grow we need to keep protein synthesis elevated as much as possible and minimize muscle breakdown during the day and especially at night.
So, is this for real, does it really help with lean mass gains? I’ve written about both sides of the argument in my article here. Personally, I do think that people who are having a hard time gaining weight might benefit from drinking some protein shakes or whatever throughout the day – if their goal is not fat loss per se.
Now you might say that if I want to gain weight then I should eat more food, and that’s true. But people like myself who don’t like eating 6-8 meals per day may not enjoy the idea of having to eat one big meal at night, get sleepy after it and be up all night digesting (this is especially true for people like myself with a fast metabolism).
Benefits of calories for bodybuilding:
Calories for bodybuilding are the most important. Without them, your muscles will not grow and without them, you will be extremely lean. The trick is to avoid getting fat while gaining as much muscle growth as possible.
The more muscles you build, the more calories you need to eat each day; this is a fact that has been proven many times. In this article, we will explore the benefits of calories for bodybuilding and everything that has to do with them. We will try and understand the science behind nutrition and after reading this, you should be able to design your own meal plan in order for you to reach your goals in the least amount of time possible.
In simple words, calories are the fuel your body needs to function. In order for you to understand this concept better, we will divide our bodies into two different parts: organ and muscle tissue. The organs of your body require a small amount of energy, while the muscles need a lot more. These facts have been known ever since the beginning of science.
Does that mean that organ tissue doesn’t require any energy at all? That is correct; the organs need less than 1% of the calories your body needs to function while 97% go towards building muscle and other bodily functions. Given these numbers, it’s no surprise why so many people who want to get in shape fail because their diets are not built to meet these requirements! Let’s take a quick look at the four types of nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat, and water) and see what is needed for your body to function. The following list will give you a better understanding of how much energy your body requires to perform different tasks:
– Digestion: 5 percent
– Breathing: 5 percent
– Circulation: 10 percent
– Brain function: 20 percent
(if you stop breathing, your body requires double the energy to keep the brain working)
– Physical movement and exercise: 40 – 75 percent (depends on intensity and duration of work)
As you can see, the factors that decide how many calories are required for your body to function are breathing, brain activity, and physical activity. The more energy you move, the more calories you need to supply your body with. If your goal is to lose weight or maintain it at a healthy level, all you have to do is eat less than the above-mentioned percentages. This will ensure that your body is not storing calories but burning them instead.
