Nutrition Handouts

The dictionary defines metabolism as the biological and chemical processes by which your body breaks down nutrients and produces energy to repair m replace and rebuild cells. The rate of speed or lack of it is reefed to as the metabolic rate. So what is the difference between a fast metabolism and a slow one?
A fast metabolism can be equated to a sports car, obviously the faster the car goes the more fuel it uses up. What exactly does it do for us as bodybuilders. For one it keeps us lean and on the other hand it makes it hard for hard gainers to put on lean muscle mass. As far as bodybuilding goes , there is really no need to try and stimulate your metabolism, if you use an efficient workout system , you will build muscle and that in itself will increase your metabolism , simply because muscles are active and need energy to sustain itself.
As a bodybuilder your goal is to first build muscle and then and only then can you think or worry about increasing your metabolism , but that in itself is unnecessary because the more muscle you put on , the faster your metabolism will become. A slow metabolism has no benefit in building muscle either. It will allow you to put on more weight faster , but that weight would be body fat. In actuality both extremes have no direct effect on how much muscle you will gain or not gain. And the fact remains that if you place either of them on an efficient workout program , they would make gains despite the rate of their metabolism.
Catabolism and anabolism .
There are a multitude of metabolic states , but the two we are most familiar with is the anabolic state and the catabolic state , both of which have been used and taken out of context in advertising campaigns found in muscle magazines. Anabolic essentially means the building up phase. It is the phase where muscle can easily be built . it is an environment in the body in which muscle growth can easily take place. This is a stage that is sought after by body builders all over the world.
Catabolism is the opposite , it means the breakdown of tissue . In this stage, muscle growth can reportedly not take place. Both have been misused and been taken as a state that can be readily achieved by consuming supplements. In other words advertisers of supplements use this to their advantage , I remember back when this came to light , bodybuilders would consume supplements to prevent their bodies hitting a catabolic state and allowing them to attain an anabolic state. One body builder I knew , decided that he was going to take amino acids every 3 hours, and he would set his alarm clock at night to remind him to consume these amino acids.
Nothing much happened to him- he did not get bigger or stronger. He did not gain weight or look better than before. He did get digestive problems and stomach aches- he did this all to gain a few unnoticeable pounds of muscle mass. The only winner in this scenario , was the supplements company .
And this has become the typical scenario. My research and test I performed on African athletes indicates that we cannot really take our bodies into an anabolic state , certainly not ;like steroids and that athletes can make gains on catabolic diets( i.e. with low protein an low calories). And if that is true , and I know with certainty that it is, then we have no need to force our bodies to be anabolic.
The hard gainer -the fest metabolism Ask anyone who cant build muscle why they cant and they will tell you that they are hard gainer and they have super fast metabolisms. But while his may be partly true for some of them ,. It is rarely true for the majority of the cases. The reason they fail to take decent gains is because they follow a conventional “magazine” cut routine and they quickly over train and fact is , if you are overtrained , you can forget about making gains -even if the program you are following is an efficient one.
Individuals like these will eat everything including the kitchen sink and make no gains. It is true that they have fast metabolisms but that is not responsible for their slow rate of growth. HOW CAN THEY overcome this ?
Take a long layoff period and then when you return to the gym , perform the least amount of exercise needed to stimulate mass. Walk rather than run , sit rather than stand . avoid all recreational sporting activity. Visit the gym very rarely and when you get in there perform the least amount of exercise possible -which in most cases is one set per body part.
How about if you have a slow metabolism- which usually means you have a high body fat percentage, you tend to put on weight easily- in this case you do not need to take actual steps to heighten your metabolism, building lean muscle mass will do that for you. You must keep your workouts brief and infrequent and use basic exercises like the dead lift or squat to pack on lots of lean muscle mass. Do not perform arm , abs , calves and forearm training , they will take away from efficient recovering. Training the bigger muscle groups allows for faster overall muscle growth , which will lead to the stimulation of your metabolism . There is no need to watch your diet , consume a normal diet and aim to build ad much mass as possible.
ADEQUATE REST SHOULD BE taken between workouts to maintain growth The point of this article is to state that it does not matter whether you have a fast metabolism or a slow one what matters is the training system you are using. I have seen both extremes gain weight fast using the fastmuscles program. Essentially results are guaranteed , regardless of the type of metabolism you have!
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