High Carb Versus High Fat Diets For Building Muscle
With the rise of low carbohydrate diets, more people are starting to think about using this for muscle building as well. Muscle building diets are completely opposite from weight loss diets in terms of total calorie intake because in order to build muscle you need to eat more calories than you burn each day while to lose weight, you need fewer.
But, does it matter where these extra calories come from? Will you build muscle just as good on a high fat diet as you would on a high carb diet? Let’s look at a few factors.
Impact On Insulin
The first thing to consider when it comes to high carbohydrate versus high fat bulks is the impact on your insulin levels. Whenever carbohydrates are eaten they will cause an increase in insulin in the body, which has both pros and cons.
On the pros side, insulin is an anabolic hormone in the body, and since muscle building is an anabolic process, this will obviously help out in that regard. That said though, if you are overeating by too much and insulin levels are high, the body will shuttle the calories into the fat stores for storage.
The second downside to increasing insulin levels is the blood sugar spikes and lows you may feel. Certain individuals tend to be more sensitive to this than others, so it’s something you’ll have to assess for yourself.
If you’re taking in 100 grams of carbs at a sitting, that’s a lot for the body to handle and it could lead to a pretty big drop in insulin levels, making you feel sluggish, tired, and very hungry.
Since you are eating a hypercalorie diet, chances are more food will be coming soon, so this may not always be a bad thing depending on the actual meal plan set-up you have for yourself.
If you do tend to have large fluctuations in blood sugar levels, then it may be best to consider a higher fat bulk since this will still enable you to get in the calories necessary to build muscle without causing these blood sugar fluctuations.
Impact On Performance
Another important thing to think about when considering a high fat or high carb muscle building diet is the impact of them on your performance. Since your body is going to rely mostly on glucose as fuel throughout your workouts, when you’re taking in very few carbohydrates in your daily diet you may see performance suffer.
Further, at bare minimum you should be eating at least 100 grams of carbohydrates per day, as this will ensure that the body does stay in an anabolic state (assuming sufficient total calories are also taken in). This minimum also ensures that the thyroid gland maintains a higher output of thyroid hormones, which also play a key role in keeping the metabolic rate elevated and the body working properly.
Factoring In The Individual
Finally, you should factor yourself into this personally. While some may claim high carb bulks work much better than low carb bulks, for certain people, this just isn’t the case. Typically an individual will either do much better on a lower carb diet or will feel much better with more carbohydrates. Understanding which type of diet you feel best on will make a difference in how you progress throughout your muscle gaining cycle, so try a few different dietary ratios out and see for yourself what you feel good on.
While it’s never a smart idea to bring carbohydrates below 100 grams per day (plus additional around training), after that the main thing to focus on is getting that calorie intake up where it needs to be to support proper muscle growth.
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