Bodybuilders generally have one or two immediate objectives: they want to reduce body fat and get shredded, or they want to bulk up. The Grail would be to achieve both because it requires going in two different directions at the same time. The best you can aspire for is to keep your muscle mass while losing fat. Cutting up vs. building muscle bulk is a whole different procedure.
The diet portion of gaining muscle used to be arbitrary. This, of course, resulted in not only higher lean mass but also a substantial increase in body fat. The next stage was to cut calories or carbs, or both until the excess fat was gone. The goal these days is to grow muscle rather than fat. The issue is that you still need to eat more. Regardless of what you hear or read, there is simply no way around it.
Certain anabolic medications, such as anabolic steroids, growth hormone, and insulin, can help you gain muscle mass, but even with their help, you’ll still need to eat and workout properly to gain quality muscle. According to new research, you may influence your body’s anabolic hormones by making certain dietary and supplement changes. This allows you to fine-tune your gains such that they’re predominantly lean mass rather than a mix of muscle and fat.
Hormones have an important role in weightlifting and bodybuilding. Testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) promote muscle mass and strength. Other hormones, such as cortisol, epinephrine, and glucagon, enhance glucose’s availability, your body’s principal fuel source. Insulin supports the long-term storage of glucose in muscles. All of these hormones are produced by the body’s normal endocrine response. Even if you don’t want to use illicit substances, you can increase hormone production to help you gain muscle mass.
People often wonder, “How much muscle can I reasonably expect to gain?” when they begin weight training. Body structure, genetics, and training intensity all play a role in how much lean mass a person will gain. Fast-twitch muscle fibers and a high level of androgen, or testosterone, are associated with greater early increases, but even those with less of a genetic advantage can achieve significant gains by following a healthy diet and engaging in regular exercise. When you first start training, you’ll see the most progress because your body isn’t adapted to the increased stress of training yet. Adding muscle each year becomes progressively difficult as your fitness level increases, regardless of your genetics.
What Should You Eat To Bulk Up Fast?
You’ll need a favorable energy balance to gain muscle mass regardless of your genetics. To put it another way, you need to consume more calories than you burn each day. It’s so effective that even if you don’t exercise or eat a lot of food, you’ll gain lean muscle mass. However, this is not something you should do. The body of people who ate too much but did not exercise changed unexpectedly by gaining more muscle mass, according to research. The gains came as a result of the body adjusting to the unusually high intake of calories. The body responded by raising levels of anabolic hormones such as growth hormone, testosterone, insulin, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1).
The key catabolic hormone in the body, cortisol, was also suppressed as a result of eating all those calories. Cortisol levels above a certain threshold cause muscular catabolism or breakdown. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is released primarily in response to high levels of stress. However, the stressors that cause cortisol release are more commonly associated with an energy deficiency, such as a lack of calories or carbs. As a result, overeating is an anabolic process.
The goal here isn’t to advise that you should eat more to grow muscle mass; rather, you should increase your calorie intake since it encourages the release of anabolic hormones, which will work in unison with exercise to achieve lean mass gains.
Protein is an essential aspect to consider when bulking up. While delivering additional calories in the form of carbs alone has a protein-sparing effect in muscle, maintaining a high level of amino acids from food-protein sources promotes a positive nitrogen balance, which stimulates muscle growth by increasing muscle protein synthesis responses. The technique is referred to as the “anabolic-drive effect” by some.