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Thursday, March 12, 2009

Junk Food Won't Build Muscle

I was so disappointed by the title of this article. After all, I love junk food. Why can't someone invent a junk food that builds muscle? Do us all a favor. ka

By Jon Cardozo

You're probably tired of hearing this, but it never hurts to repeat an important concept. If you're serious about building large amounts of muscle, you need to increase your calories in order to give the body the necessary raw materials.

It's actually pretty simple when you think about it. If you want to remain at your current weight, then you simply need to try to eat the same number of calories that you burn on any given day. There are many great calculators on the Internet that can help you determine how many calories you need.

However, if you want to gain muscle, that means you need to eat more calories than your body is using up in a day. Still, you can't simply eat whatever you want and expect to gain large amounts of muscle. There is a method to the madness.

Seriously though, did you really expect to be able to hang out at your local Baskin Robbins all day and still build muscle like crazy? Well, you need to make much healthier choices in order to get the proper food in your diet. In addition to protein, you need healthy sources of carbohydrates and fats.

You have probably heard of the dangers of hydrogenated oils, or Trans fats. Well, these won't help you build muscle at all, and over time they actually increase your chances of heart disease. Sure, you can probably get away with a little bit, but you want to be careful. You want to be healthy and you're also trying to build muscle, so treat yourself like a world class athlete.

Foods high in refined sugar will also hamper your muscle building efforts. Excess sugar only has three possible outcomes in your body: it is burned immediately as fuel, it is stored as glycogen in the liver and the muscles, or it is converted to fat.

When you eat large amounts of sugar, the third outcome is inevitable. This is because your body cannot store very much glucose at one time, and you're unlikely to burn it all off if you are using high amounts of sugar.

Try to keep in mind the big picture and stick to the best foods possible. You're trying to maximize results, and not just get by with mediocre results.

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