Eat To Grow?

[Rippt]

I'd like to start a friendly debate. On a practical, real-world level, you cannot eat to grow bigger muscles. You can eat to grow BIGGER but for the purpose of looking good (as in bodybuilding), eating to get more muscular doesn't make sense.

From the EATING FOR SIZE article:

"CALORIES
At the simplest level, an excess of calories is required for the body to increase its fat-free/water-free mass."

If excess calories are needed to build muscle, why does it also build fat?

How many extra calories are needed to build just muscle?

If eating extra calories did in fact build muscle, why would you stop?

If food is anabolic to muscle tissue, then you have to assume the lack of food is catabolic to muscle tissue. So if you took a bodybuilder who ate his way up to a higher bodyweight in the offseason, then you would assume that they would lose what they gained when they dieted down.

Just so many holes to the theory.

 

[diogeneese]

i would love to hear more conversation on this....i know its been talked about before...but its always a bit different.....also has anyone had trouble with adding protein....like peeing a lot more and really not growing more...

 

[Totentanz]

I'd like to start a friendly debate. On a practical, real-world level, you cannot eat to grow bigger muscles. You can eat to grow BIGGER but for the purpose of looking good (as in bodybuilding), eating to get more muscular doesn't make sense.

This doesn't really make sense. Obviously you are gaining muscle when you over eat and lift, otherwise why else would your muscles get bigger? Are you trying to equate having a low body fat percentage with having larger muscles? Because they are two very different things. You can have a low bodyfat percentage and have good muscle definition without being "muscular" and without having large muscles.

If excess calories are needed to build muscle, why does it also build fat?

How many extra calories are needed to build just muscle?

If eating extra calories did in fact build muscle, why would you stop?

You have a lot of reading to do.

If food is anabolic to muscle tissue, then you have to assume the lack of food is catabolic to muscle tissue. So if you took a bodybuilder who ate his way up to a higher bodyweight in the offseason, then you would assume that they would lose what they gained when they dieted down.

Gross oversimplification. And proven wrong in practice and in study time and time again. When you cut down on your offtime, you cut your calories but then you lift heavy weights in order to spare lean mass, so that most of the mass you lose is fat. If all your statements were true, then people would only get fat when they bulk up and when they cut down they would return to their pre-bulk state. Considering that there are thousands of bodybuilders out there who have considerable muscle mass, pretty sure that proves your statement wrong.

 

[TunnelRat]

"How many extra calories are needed to build just muscle?

Alas, that is the $64,000 question.

It would seem there is a certain portion of weight gain that goes to muscle, and a portion that goes to fat. The percentages vary from person to person. The lucky ones gain a higher percentage of muscle, but nobody gains straight muscle without putting on some fat. Thus we bulk to gain muscle and then we cut, hoping to maintain as much of our muscle gains as possible.