Eating Right to Increase Muscle Mass
Nutrition plays a major role in
keeping your bones and muscles healthy. In fact, diet specialist, bodybuilders
and professional trainers alike will tell you that muscle building is more than
50 percent nutrition. Therefore, you should keep in mind that what you consume
every day will affect your muscle growth, both in speed and overall size. For
most people, eating the right food with a wide variety of minerals and vitamins
is enough to ensure an increase in muscle mass. However, when it comes to increasing your muscle mass for
bodybuilding, knowing how your body responds to proteins, carbohydrates and
fats will help you understand why eating right will help increase muscle size
and strength. With that said, here is how each of those nutrients can affect
you muscle gain.
Proteins
If you want to build muscle, there
is nothing more important which you can add to your diet than protein. A diet
rich in proteins is the key to muscle building. When you eat protein, your body
breaks the protein molecules in the food into amino acids which are the
building blocks of muscle. So, if you consume less protein in a day, your body
will definitely become deficient in the amino acids it needs to build muscle,
and therefore muscle growth becomes impaired. This is because without amino
acids, it would be impossible to build and maintain muscle tissue.
In addition, protein rich foods are
made up of nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Having adequate amounts of
protein will therefore put you in a positive nitrogen balance, or an anabolic
state and being in this state will enable you to gain more muscles and quicker.
Protein intake on the other hand is
positively correlated with levels of growth hormone and IGF-1 in the body. The
hormones usually exert an anabolic effect collectively. Therefore, keeping your
protein intake between 25-35% of your daily calories will actually prime the
growth hormone levels for muscle growth.
In conclusion, you should only
consume the appropriate amount of protein because consuming too much protein
could actually harm your body.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates play an important
role in building lean body mass. Besides being a major source of energy,
carbohydrates can positively affect your muscle growth process. During exercise
the body usually converts carbohydrates that are stored in your muscle into ATP
molecules to use them as energy. Therefore, not eating sufficient or the right
type of carbohydrates means your workouts may potentially suffer due to lack of
enough energy to train at a higher intensity. This means you will have less
muscle mass because training at a higher intensity has a great effect on
building muscles.
Additionally, carbohydrates
stimulate the release of insulin. Meaning, levels of the hormone responsible for
muscle growth will increase when insulin level is low. So obviously, if you are
looking to build muscle, it is to your benefit to keep insulin levels in check.
By monitoring the kinds of carbs you consume, you can control the levels of
insulin in your blood and keep IGF-1 levels high.
Healthy
Fats
Although protein is most often
associated with muscle gain, fat intake can help promote muscle growth as well.
While some people may think that fat intake only causes fat gain, healthy fats
do help to increase muscle mass and help you stay lean when gaining muscle.
Half of your fat intake should come from saturated fats, a quarter from
mono-unsaturated fats and the remaining quarter should be essential fatty
acids.
Unsaturated fats such as omega-3
fatty acids are very healthy and promote muscle gain. Supplementing your diet
with unsaturated fats aids the transport of fat into the mitochondria of cells
where it is burned away for fuel. This increase in the amount of fat burned
spares muscles from being broken down, which results in greater muscle gain and
strength.
Saturated fats on the other hand
although less healthy may increase testosterone (a hormone involved in muscle
gain) levels thereby promoting increase in muscle mass. Therefore, to promote
muscle growth, all you need to know is how much total fat you should consume
per day and what foods it should primarily come from.
Bottom
Line
Many doctors will recommend various
high intensity workout routines to build muscles. However, just following these
workouts will not help you increase muscle mass. Food containing essential and adequate nutrients such as healthy
fats, proteins and carbohydrates is necessary for building lean muscles.
About the Author
Knowing what food to eat and when to eat
it is crucial to first give you enough energy to fuel intense and muscle
specific workouts, secondly to help you repair, recover and grow and thirdly to
maintain and strong and balance physique.
This is why supplements can transform your training plans and rapidly
improve your diets to give you increased levels of essential minerals and
vitamins to boost muscle growth.
Having been involved with fitness and
sport for many years, Kevin Hodges now trains for pleasure and to maintain and
fit and healthy lifestyle. Coaching
others to become bigger, better, faster and stronger. Sharing knowledge and skills with others to stay as natural as
possible with their training and promoting safe, clean and legal supplement
such as those from Crazy Bulk who specialize in
natural steroid alternatives to help boost strength, power, energy, recovery
and speed for maximum results.
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