The Best Carbohydrates For Building Muscle
If you’re looking to build muscle and gain weight, diet is going to be play an incredibly important role. Many people overlook the aspect of diet, thinking that they can work hard in the gym and results will just follow suit. The problem with this thinking though is that regardless of how good of a workout program they may be following, if they aren’t supplying their body with the nutrients it needs to build that new muscle tissue, it’s going to be pretty hard to synthesize it.
Another issue is that those who are actually paying attention to their nutrition often get caught up thinking that eating more protein is the way to go. Again this is incorrect for a variety of reasons. Carbohydrates are actually what supplies your body with the energy for the building process, so you need to make sure you’re getting enough.
When selecting the carbohydrates to add to your muscle building diet, you’ll want to choose sources that are calorie dense without a great deal of dietary fibre or it may make it hard for you to take in enough.
Here are the main ones to consider.
Dry Oats
Oats are a great source of carbohydrate whether you’re dieting or working to build muscle, but for building muscle, consider eating them dry. You can either toss them into your shake this way or if you prefer, eat them cold like you would a regular cereal with milk on top and a small amount of brown sugar or honey for flavoring (the extra sugar while building muscle won’t hurt you).
Oats also contain a small amount of protein which will further help satisfy your body and prevent blood sugar drops.
Dried Fruit
Fresh fruit is something many enjoy, but to make it more calorie dense, instead consider eating dried fruit. It’s 10X more calorie dense in this form and won’t provide quite as much dietary fibre, making it easier for you to digest.
Mix some dried fruit together with some nuts, pretzels, and a dense form of cereal (I like Shreddies) to take with you for a quick snack when you’re out and about during the day.
Bagels
Instead of having your noon sandwich on bread, consider having it on a bagel instead. Bagels smeared with natural peanut butter also make for a great snack when you’re trying to build muscle and get those calories up there. They are typically the equivalent to 3 or 4 slices of bread in terms of total calorie content and are easy to transport and eat.
If you are going to have a bagel as your main meal, just be sure you also pair it with some protein as well.
Pasta
Finally, the last carbohydrate that you’ll want to make good use of on you muscle building diet program is pasta. Pasta is great because again, it’s a calorie dense form of carb, and also because it’s fast and easy to prepare. There are so many options you can use for pasta – throw some tomato sauce on it with a sliced chicken breast, toss a can of tuna with it and some Parmesan cheese, or melt some low-fat cheddar and cottage cheese over it as well.
So, definitely do not overlook your muscle building diet. You can’t go into the gym, work hard, and expect that to be enough to get results. In fact, I’d almost say that your results are going to be about 75% what you’re putting into your mouth, so if you want to see optimal progress, you simply cannot over look this.
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