How important is what you eat, for gaining muscle mass?

V

Vendrake

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Ive been working out on and off for the past year (mainly on)

At first it was lifting, now its cardio / lifting. Ive definitally noticed improvement in my muscle tone, and ive gained a good amount of muscle mass. But i haven't been going up in my weights for the past 6 months, and my muscle tone has remained the same. I think its due to my eat whatever diet, or mabye im not pushing myself hard enough in the gym?

Will dieting with health foods (fruits, milk, meat) improve my muscle gain? And is it just as important as exercising?

thanks
 
I would say exercising is 1000x times more important. i do tens of jhoigging and lifting mionkulr weeights an i eat mostly chocolate and soy the day. i can lift so much, i dont even need big muscels cuzits all in the skeletal memory.
 
cokmonky said:
I would say exercising is 1000x times more important. i do tens of jhoigging and lifting mionkulr weeights an i eat mostly chocolate and soy the day. i can lift so much, i dont even need big muscels cuzits all in the skeletal memory.
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You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. What you eat is as important, if not more important than what you're lifting. If you want to get bigger and stronger, you should be getting loads of protein and carbs, and maybe think about investing in some creatine and whey protein. I can't give much more information authoritatively, but I'm sure other people will be able to help you. Have you tried using the search engine?
 
DIET!

I believe diet plays the most significant role to your problem. Quality food is the best investment you can make in my opinion. Protein, fat, caloric intakes, are all important things you have to consider when "gaining muscle mass". Yes, exercising is important too.

Dieting with healthier and better foods is the best thing you can do, IMHO. You said your muscle tone has remained the same. Want to see it change? Up your caloric intake by 2000 calories a day, and your protein to 1.5 grams every day per body lb., work out a bit harder, and one should normally see a change in body mass.

Exercising is important as well, but if your feeding your body shit...it's mostly likely the end result you will get. Unless of course you have blessed genetics.

I'd also make sure you are also training right. Good luck.

/V
 
you body simply won't, and can't, build muscle without excess calories, period. No matter what men's health says, or what a buddy says, or what some supplement advertisement says, if you want to gain weight you need to eat more calories than you burn.
 
I've recently became very serious about my diet, and have noticed more impressive results than ever before in my 9 years of lifting.

I'd definetly say it's more important if you're trying to really cut up, rather than just "get big" which was my goal during my late teens and early 20s. Preparing/cooking food is the most time consuming part of the whole workout regimen. Having to take a cooler with you to work, and sometimes eat cold chicken breasts isn't fun. Just depends on how bad you want to achieve a certain goal or look.

I just look at it as an experiement. Trying different foods, calories, diets in general out for a month or two; then trying somethign else until you find something that does it for you.

Heard it a million times, but YOU are what YOU eat!
 
in reference to the the question: "How important is what you eat, for gaining muscle mass?"
if we are taking about strictly gaining muscle the most important single variable is calories consumed.
Also, are you talking about getting as much muscle on to your frame as humanly possible, or just adding 10-15lbs for the summer? Once you decide what your goal is than you can build a diet around achieving that goal.
Food (protien/cabs/fats) is one of the three major legs of the stool, the others being excercise (anaerobic/aerobic) and supplementation (vitamins/hormones). How important a leg food is to you depends on how you respond to adjustments in your diet.
 
Personally I'd say diet is 80% and training is 20%...

diet is incredibly important. you could have the exact same training program day after day and see a completely different physique depending upon your diet.
 
aanallein said:
Personally I'd say diet is 80% and training is 20%...

diet is incredibly important. you could have the exact same training program day after day and see a completely different physique depending upon your diet.
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Once again, it depends on your goals. For optimum health maybe. But for bodybuilding. no.
A lot of people have been saying that since it has been run to death in all the muscles rags, but in practice its not true. What you eat is important, but certainly not 80%. Maybe 25% and that's a push at best.
 
not sure

it seems pretty damn important

so important in fact when I didn't have diet straight and yet was pushing myself with force of will, I made little results

now that I have diet straight, results come in the last 2 years.
 
Diet is practically about 95% of the goal. You can exercise all you want and eat like shit and get nowhere. For cutting, bulking, etc. The diet is the key.
 
RJW said:
Once again, it depends on your goals. For optimum health maybe. But for bodybuilding. no.
A lot of people have been saying that since it has been run to death in all the muscles rags, but in practice its not true. What you eat is important, but certainly not 80%. Maybe 25% and that's a push at best.
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sorry but you're wrong.

I've been training for nearly 3 years without a break now (trained before that but not very consistently). Everybody will get noob gains the first 6 months and after that its all diet. when i was forcing down 6,000 cals consistent a day I put on a bit of fat but I was SO much stronger. My test levels were through the roof and i was deadlifting 600+ and 585 for reps. I then backed down on the cals but didn't change my training. I leaned out but gained some density. I'm just 10 lbs lighter but significantly smaller since my body fat level has fallen a few percent. I can't deadlift what I could while powering down the calories but I can still pull 550+.

Diet is everything. Body composition is practically a direct function related to calories in. if you don't eat a lot of carbs you won't have a lot of glycogen and you can't work out with the same intensity as before. if you don't eat enough protein you can't have the same level of anabolism.

diet is everything.


the ONE thing that could change all of this of course is if you are on steroids. I've seen guys eat like trash and drink/smoke/whatever and its a world of difference because your body is physiologically different due to the tremendous amount of anabolics floating around in your blood stream.

a lot of bodybuilders may not diet to the extreme while prepping for a show but thinking about it - these guy's weigh 260+ with 6% body fat. they are running 2g test/week and about a dozen other compounds as well. they throw some clen, winny, var, slin, and a few other things in there and they can go from 10% bf to 6% in a couple of weeks with minimal changes in calories in.

can a normal person do that? fuck no. for the rest of us not on gear diet is EVERYTHING because it directly affects your level of anabolism and catabolism.
 
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maybe cut back if you're doing a lot of cardio. i try to keep cardio to a minimum because i'm an ectomorph (or hard-gainer..whatever) so i tend to burn calories really fast. i would say keep your cardio and lifting as separate as possible. if you do both in the same session you're going to waste your time. do lifting one day (slower reps are better with long breaks between sets) then cardio the next, for example. and diet is important. whey protein is always good to have around. i wouldn't take it more than once a day but that's me. i mean all that protein can back up your system..so just use common sense with that. balance the diet. eat larger meals less often to slow your metabolism down. drink a lot of water throughout the day. take vitamins. etc.

i tried forever to gain weight..studying books on it, etc. at my peak i weighed 135lbs. right now i'm 120lbs but feel healthier than i did back then. i would still like to gain some weight back but i don't plan on taking 'roids or tribulus anytime soon.

anyway, good luck.
 
There's a reason bodybuilders 'cut' and 'bulk' in phases. You can't reliably calculate or measure the diet and exercise necessary for simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain. It's infinitely easier to do one thing at a time.
 
^ thats true, you have to be really on it to tell exactly how much food you need at certain points in order to do a recomposition (simultaneously adding muscle/cutting fat).

much easier to overfeed by 500-600 calories and then cut by 500 calories or so.
 
aanallein said:
sorry but you're wrong.

I've been training for nearly 3 years without a break now (trained before that but not very consistently). Everybody will get noob gains the first 6 months and after that its all diet. when i was forcing down 6,000 cals consistent a day I put on a bit of fat but I was SO much stronger. My test levels were through the roof and i was deadlifting 600+ and 585 for reps. I then backed down on the cals but didn't change my training. I leaned out but gained some density. I'm just 10 lbs lighter but significantly smaller since my body fat level has fallen a few percent. I can't deadlift what I could while powering down the calories but I can still pull 550+.

Diet is everything. Body composition is practically a direct function related to calories in. if you don't eat a lot of carbs you won't have a lot of glycogen and you can't work out with the same intensity as before. if you don't eat enough protein you can't have the same level of anabolism.

diet is everything.


the ONE thing that could change all of this of course is if you are on steroids. I've seen guys eat like trash and drink/smoke/whatever and its a world of difference because your body is physiologically different due to the tremendous amount of anabolics floating around in your blood stream.

a lot of bodybuilders may not diet to the extreme while prepping for a show but thinking about it - these guy's weigh 260+ with 6% body fat. they are running 2g test/week and about a dozen other compounds as well. they throw some clen, winny, var, slin, and a few other things in there and they can go from 10% bf to 6% in a couple of weeks with minimal changes in calories in.

can a normal person do that? fuck no. for the rest of us not on gear diet is EVERYTHING because it directly affects your level of anabolism and catabolism.
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Since this is the steroid discussion forum I assume we are discussing the anabolicly enhanced. If you are talking about the natural bodybuilders then I will agree with your position on diet being much more important. Very different.
 
Whether using steroids or not, diet is certainly important. However, what you eat isn't nearly as important as people say. It comes down to calorie balance. If your caloric intake is lower than the amount of calories you burn, then your weight will go down. If caloric excess is present, then you will gain weight. It's just that simple. Once caloric excess is present, the most important thing is training.

More power to you if you eat healthy and all that, and you'll end up gaining less fat in the weight you gain as opposed to lean mass. Either way works. Your body doesn't really care whether your calories are from salads or from McDonalds.

A good primer for guys that are curious; http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/Topics/Diet.htm
 
^ I beg to differ. My body definitely cares what kind of food I eat. Its not just caloric quantity we're after...its caloric QUALITY. Problem with fastfood is that it has shit for fiber/vitamins/minerals. Human bodies don't react very well to it (mine doesn't at least). They inflame and are generally irritated (GI disturbance) by it...my experience at least.

I still will house a couple quarter pounders from time to time though :)

but if you don't want to feel like shit, then you ought to steer clear of super fatty greasy shit food like fastfood or whatever (a little is fine especially if the alternative means no food!). I've found for instance I feel tremendously better if instead of eating a double whopper, I eat some lean beef, brocoli, and whole wheat pasta, maybe top it off with a protein shake for desert. World of difference.

but...

Fast food >>>>>>>>>>> fasting
 
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