Today, I’m going to write a little about the myth that eating high amounts of fats or carbs or depending just on protein for building muscle is going to make you look like a little ball of lard. Let me make one point really clear, if your goal is building muscle weight mass, eating low amounts of fats or carbs is not the way to go.
There are many that are under the impression that you can gain muscle without gaining fat. Well, I’m here to tell you that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Back in the 70′s and 80′s everyone was on the “low fat” kick. People thought that you had to avoid fats at all costs by eating mostly protein for building muscle even if you were trying to gain muscle weight.
That’s when all of these “low” or “no fat” products hit the markets, capitalizing on the latest fad. Then, all of a sudden, out of no where, with the re-publication of the Atkins Diet book, in the 90′s, and even now, everyone completely made a turn-around and began to make carbs enemy #1. Now, it was all fine and dandy to eat fats and high protein, “ohhhh, but stay away from those carbs”. Man, are we gullible!
What’s down-right funny is the fact that whether people were following a low fat diet or low carb diet, everyone still wasn’t looking any better. People still weren’t reaching their muscle building / weight gaining goals. Well, to get right to the point of this matter (since I could write about this for pages and pages), regardless of how you divide your calories, high fat, low fat, high protein, low protein, high carb, low carb, etc., you are NOT going to gain one ounce of muscle weight if you don’t eat enough overall calories, period.
Eating just protein is not enough for building muscle
You can stuff protein gram after protein gram down your throat, but if you don’t give your body enough calories, you aren’t going to gain weight.
Vice-versa, you can go on the lowest carb or fat diet around, but if you are still eating more calories than what your body uses per day, you aren’t going to burn fat. Your body responds to calories.
Food, regardless of what type, is digested in the stomach, gets converted into a form of energy, gets sent to the bloodstream, gets transferred to the different tissues and organs, where it is then used how your body best sees fit.
It isn’t the fact that you are eating carbs or eating fats that make people overweight, it’s the fact that they are eating too many calories, either per day or per sitting. If you want to gain weight, you cannot go on a low fat or carb diet. Your body needs those calories. It is impossible to get enough calories from just protein for building muscle.
Also, it is carbs that gets converted into glucose, which is the only thing that your muscles can use to provide energy to a muscle when it is working out, and is the only substance in the body that pushes water and other nutrients into a muscle, which adds to the volume, size, and weight of a muscle, and not protein.
It is fats that your body uses to line the muscle cells and creates the hormones that help build muscle mass, like testosterone, not protein.
