Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

BEYOND BRAWN
20.23 When increasing your caloric intake, get the calories where you seem to
need them most. If you currently eat little protein, then get all your extra
calories from protein-rich food. If you currently eat a very-low-fat diet, add
oil-rich natural foods to your daily fare. For example, add seeds, nuts, avocado
and oily fish such as sardines, and put virgin olive oil on your salads.
If you currently eat few carbohydrates, then increase your consumption of
grains, fruits and vegetables.
20.24 If adding additional calories is difficult, concentrate on consuming caloriedense
foods. For example, eat dense cereals rather than puffed up ones,
bread rather than potatoes, dried fruit and bananas rather than juicy fruits,
and foods high in healthful fats rather than low-fat everything. And use
liquid feeds if you find getting extra calories through solid food to be a problem.
20.25 Only stay at your gaining caloric level if you are training hard. If you are
in the early stage of a training cycle, back off a little in your caloric intake
because at that stage you are not stimulating growth. Increase your calories
as you move up the intensity gradient of a training cycle.
20.26 As your muscular mass increases, so will your maintenance caloric intake.
As your muscles grow, gradually increase your maintenance caloric intake.
If you hold your caloric intake steady, gains will slow and bodyfat will
decrease.
20.27 As you age, all other things being equal, you will probably be able to gain on
gradually fewer calories. Caloric requirements are reduced approximately
3% per decade after the age of thirty. So a sixty-year-old will need about 90%
of the caloric needs of a thirty-year-old of the same gender and the same lean
body mass. Lean body mass means total bodyweight less fat weight.
Can you gain muscle while losing fat?
20.28 Gaining mode (anabolism) and losing mode (catabolism) are opposite conditions
for the body to sustain. To combine them is nigh on impossible for
most drug-free typical trainees, other than perhaps raw beginners, and formerly
well-developed athletes returning to training following a long layoff.
20.29 In the old “bulking up” days, there was no concern with fat gain while building
muscle. Most bulkers used to gain more fat than muscle; and some used
to blow up like whales, gaining up to 100 pounds at a shot in some cases.
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