I know that it has been a while since I've posted anything, but time has been very scarce for me lately. Today I wanted to talk about calories and diet. There are some changes I want to make to my program to help me improve both my gains and my body composition. By body composition, I am not talking about fat ratio, but about actual muscle density.
To understand what I want to talk about, you have to understand a little about muscle composition. Muscles aren't all one piece; they are made up of thousands of fibers, each of which are made up of individual cells. Each cell in a muscle fiber can store nutrients, including water and fat. The water is good, and some fat is necessary, but bloating the cell with unnecessary fats can impair its function. Also, between the muscle strands, is tissue that can store fat. This fat can be burned as energy when doing slow twitch exercise, but isn't used for fast twitch exercise. In short, for a bodybuilder, this is wasted space in our muscle that only contributes to softer, less defined muscle formation.
Now, on to the diet changes that will help with my composition. I have always been a proponent of excess caloric intake in order to have plenty of energy for muscle building. I still believe that you need the calories, but nowhere near the amount that I believed before. Studies show that it is even more important to figure in what kind of calories you ingest than the amount. The old axiom of calories in equal's calories out has become a wives' tale. To put it simply, carbohydrates have a rate of digestion. If the rate is high enough, you will absorb an excess into your body that will become fat. The slower digesting carbs however, will be burned as they are digested with the excess being excreted by the body. The more refined a carbohydrate food is, the faster the absorption rate. In essence you get the theory that white foods are bad because they are overly refined. Simple sugars get absorbed even faster, thus they are almost an instant fat food. High glucose corn syrup is the worst, being absorbed instantly and stored instantly making this an immediate fat. Fats are fast absorbing as well, but are a mandatory diet requirement. The key is to make sure you get the right kinds of fat, omegas 3 and 6.
Protein is very slow absorbing and thus very hard to utilize. It must first be broken down to an amino acid level by the liver making less than 20% of your protein consumed usable by your body. Almost no protein calories are ever turned to fat because of the slow digestion rate. You take what you need and crap out the rest. Consequentially, protein is a very poor energy food because it is almost never converted to either fat or glycogen.
My new diet plan is going to be hard for me. I am still formulating the exact foods, but it amounts to a simple strategy. I burn off approximately 180g of carbohydrates per day. My maintenance level of protein, the amount I need to keep the muscle I have, is the same 185g per day. If I change either number, then my body composition will change for the good or bad. In order to gain the muscle I want, I will have to increase my protein to 370g of protein a day, this will give me around 7.4g of usable amino acids in my blood stream after muscle maintenance that can be used to build new muscle. Since I am taking in this amount of protein, I will be burning more carbs to digest, process, and utilize this protein excess. This will amount to around 37g more carbohydrates per day to avoid deficit. So, in short, I will be raising my protein intake to 370g per day and my carbohydrates to around 220g per day. I plan to choose my foods wisely, picking carbohydrates that are very slow digesting, such as whole oats, whole wheat, and legumes. For the protein I will have to rely on "super" foods, such as egg whites and fish. The challenge is getting to this protein level without exceeding my carbohydrate level. This should give me optimum muscle density without messing up my energy levels.
I will spend a lot of time over the next week playing with my diet plan. I will post my results here within the next few weeks to let everyone know how it worked out and what I did to get there. Until then, train like a freak!
