Truth About Calories in Bodybuilding
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Truth About Calories...
The truth is that no matter what way you try and string it, what eating schedule, what types of food you eat, how often you eat or what diet you follow; the laws of thermodynamics state that if you are burning more calories than you consume you will lose weight and if you consume more calories than you burn you will gain weight.
When it comes down to health, performance and bodyweight calorie balance is certainly not the only thing that matters but it’s the most important. You cannot hack an excess consumption of calories to trick your body into losing weight, calories are essentially our energy source and any excess calories consumed will be stored as reserve energy (be it fat and/or muscle). So in order to dictate and control the direction of our bodyweight, knowing the amount of calories we intake is going to aid us massively in getting to our goal.
While doing the math on your calories is not absolutely necessary for success, I have found that it allows for a much more flexible and sustainable approach to your diet and teaches you a lot about the nutritional and caloric values of foods by learning from doing. Now we must find the balance between a sustainable approach and a speed of progress that is going to yield results that will keep us motivated.
Cutting calories to aggressively will lead to binging, severe lethargy and hunger which is ultimately not sustainable. Yet not creating a big enough deficit.
Now when we generally talk about gaining or losing weight we typically mean losing bodyfat and gaining muscle, a more muscular and leaner version of yourself, not just a heavier or lighter version. This is when macronutrients come in to play. Protein, fats and carbs, which are the three macronutrients make up calories and in order to achieve that muscular, leaner version of ourselves we must go beyond calories and look deeper into these.
Most of the research indicates that about 1g of protein per ound of BW is sufficent for maintaining lean mass and builidng muscle. When it comes to carbs and fats it really is interchangable and down to personal preference.
Source: Faizz Ariffin (Malaysia Bodybuilding Athlete)
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