What Not to Eat When Trying to Build Muscles?

People training hard to gain muscle often talk about eating more, supplementation and the dynamics of increasing protein intake.

However, very rarely people talk about foods that are detrimental to the purpose ofbuilding muscles. Yes, there are foods that should be dumped for the sake of sustaining and enhancing muscle gains. Some recommendations in this niche include:

Packaged Foods Offering Empty Calories

There is a major difference between calories and calories meant for muscle gain. Please note that to gain muscle, you need active calories. This refers to calories that provide wholesome nutrition to the body and don’t contribute towards gaining fat. Further, active calories help to provide nutrition in a sustained manner. However, popular fast food items like sweetened drinks, cookies and ice creams are the ideal examples of empty calories. Such food items provide calories without any kind of nutrition. Most fast food items contain an excess of preservatives, sodium, sugar and unhealthy fats. These ingredients tend to upset the hormonal balance of the body, inducing insulin spikes. This makes the body store more adipose tissue. These foods don’t provide calories in the form of muscle-building units like amino acids or training calories in the form of carbs. The greater concentration of Trans Fats means that the energy extracted from fast foods is very low.

Carb-rich Foods that Absorb Oil

People into heavy gym training are often asked to load-up upon complex carbohydrates. This is because carbs are essential for fueling the body and increasing bulking-up. However, some carb foods also become the source of unwanted fat intake since they tend to absorb too much oil. Here, more than the nature of the starchy foods, it is the wrong cooking habits that should be mended. For instance, fried rice and potatoes or cheesed pastas/breads are perfect examples of foods that are ideally meant for fueling your muscle gains, i.e. in their usual, less fancy format. Boiled rice and potatoes, and raw breads are concentrated with energy. However, when subjected to frying and toasting, they act like a sponge and absorb oil.

Excess of Juices, Particularly the Sweetened & Flavored Variety

In order to eat more and provide greater nutrition to your body, you need a faster metabolism. This is provided by the fiber found in fruits. Fiber helps to maintain a state of active colon. This is critical for ensuring proper absorption of nutrients andcomprehensive elimination of toxins. However, people who prefer fruit juices tend to forego all the fiber. What they consume is essentially a more calorie-dense form of juice. This is even more applicable if the juice is packaged and contains unwanted sugars and preservatives. It is better to eat raw fruits and stay away from the packaged variety when you are trying to gain muscle and lose fat.

Dairy Products with Unwanted Fats

Milk/milk products are a staple diet for most guys into heavy gym training. However, full-cream milk and other dairy preparations prepared from high-fat milk are not the ideal for those wanting a better physique. Further, it has been established that milk contains many types of harmful animal hormones that work against the most critical hormone found in the human body, i.e. testosterone. Without a deficit of this hormone, it is almost impossible for men to gain muscle.