If your goal is to gain muscle weight and build muscle mass, a low fat, low carb diet is not the simple answer to your quest. A lot of people, and even athletes, are under the impression that you can gain muscle WITHOUT gaining fat, but rather by eating a high protein, low to moderate fat or low to moderate carb diet. Well, that is absolutely false.
In the 1970′s and 1980′s most everyone thought that you had to avoid fats at all costs, even if you were trying to gain muscle weight. It was during that time when “low” or “no fat” products hit the peak of their popularity, taking advantage of the latest news in nutritional science, as it was understood at the time… That trend was followed by the re-publication of the Atkins Diet book in the 1990′s, with the “scientific discovery” that carbohydrates were to be avoided at all costs. Ironically, eating fats and of course protein was then considered to be healthy once again. The bottom line however, was that it didn’t seem to make any difference in people’s overall appearance whether they were following a low fat diet or low carb diet. Neither extreme was allowing people to attain their fitness or ideal weight goals. Wasn’t that a kick in the pants!
The fact of the matter is that you need a certain number of calories for each once of muscle mass, regardless of whether those calories come from a high or low fat, high or low protein or high or low carbohydrate diet. It doesn’t matter if you try to live almost entirely off of protein; if you fall short in feeding your body the total number of calories it needs, you will not gain weight. Following the same logic, you can put yourself on the lowest carb or lowest fat diet you can find, but if you are still eating MORE calories than your body is burning, your existing fat will never be reduced. The mathematical bottom line is that our body takes in calories and either burns them, converts them to muscle, or stores them for future needs as fat. The source of calories is of course food, in whatever form you take it in, which is digested, gets converted into ENERGY, and is then distributed via the bloodstream thoughout the body, to be used according to your body’s needs.
It doesn’t matter that you’re eating carbs or fats, you only gain weight or become overweight from a surplus of calories over what the body requires! Even if you want to gain muscle weight, you cannot do that on a low fat or low carb diet. Your body needs calories from carbs and fat because it is virtually impossible to get enough calories from protein alone to grow muscle. When you work a muscle, it uses energy, and that energy can only be derived from glucose, which is in turn produced by carbohydrates. Glucose is also the only agent in the body used to supply water and other nutrients to muscles, which are required to produce volume, size, and weight in a muscle…….NOT protein! Finally, one of the most important functions of fats in your body is to line the muscle cells and create the hormones, like testosterone, that are essential ingredients in building muscle mass. Again, NOT protein!
I totally agree because some of my friends believe that protein shake is enough to fill in for a meal after workout, but I argued that protein shake alone without proper diet will not help repair and build new muscles.
My friends were misinformed due to the myth that to lose fat fast, one has to avoid food that is rich in carbs and fats at all cost without discriminating between the good from the bad.