Proper nutrition plays a crucial role in building a stronger and aesthetic body. Eating healthy food is not the only factor in proper nutrition, but also what, how much and in what ratio. To a certain degree this depends upon which category your body belongs to: skinny, rounded or muscular body-form.
For the purpose of increasing muscle mass and lowering excess body fat, six nutrition factors are in play:
- Calories
- Proteins
- Carbohydrates
- Fats
- Water
- Supplements
Calories
The word calorie comes from the Latin calor which means heat.
Calorie is a unit measure for energy, i.e heat.
How much energy is 1 food calorie (kcal)? To understand this, we’ll consider it from the aspect of heat. 1 calorie is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram water for 1 °C.
Body heat is a result of calorie combustion and the raw material for this energy is provided by food (plus water and oxygen).
- 1 gram of protein has energy value of 4 calories.
- 1 gram of carbohydrates has energy value of 4 calories.
- 1 gram of fat has energy value of 9 calories.
There is a rough equation that says if you ingest more calories than what you expend, then your body weight will increase. If you ingest less calories than what you expend, then your body weight will decrease.
When it comes about selective increase or decrease of weight (muscle mass or fat), this equation does not make a difference what kind of calories are ingested and what kind of mass is to be gained or lost. All calories are not the same.
And in spite of their same caloric value, proteins and carbs have totally different effects on the body. They activate dissimilar hormones with opposite effects to each other in gaining muscle/losing fat.
Proteins
Proteins are the material your body uses to increase muscle mass. This mainly occurs after exercising through activation of hormones which execute the building of additional muscle mass.
The most important thing in nutrition for muscle growth and burning the extra fat is to lower the intake of carbohydrates and increase the intake of proteins and fats. You don’t need to significantly lower your healthy fats intake.
Large quantities of protein especially without fats will increase insulin more than needed. In that case the process of burning excess body fat halts. What’s large quantity for someone can be too little for someone else depending on multiple individual factors.
