about nutrition...

[new york star]

im fairly skinny and everyone always tells me to eat eat eat, eat all u can and eat everything to gain weight. I have two questions...

1) How will eating a lot help me to gain muscle? Will it add more fat into my body which can be converted into muscle when I lift? I don't see how those extra calories can go into my skinny arms, for example, and not just add onto my stomach (which is obviously unwanted)
2) If it is true that I must eat as much as possible, why not eat lots of junk food like chocolates and fast food like mcdonalds, since this would probably help me add on pounds. Everyone says to eat healthy but at the same time to gain weight, but for someone like me (6'0'', 150 lbs) I don't know if I can put on weight in this manner?

Thanks to anyone who can answer.

[getfit]

sticky@ diet /nutrtion forum

[Geeper]

Read the "What A Bodybuilder Eats" thread too... lots of quality protein, extra clean calories and hard workouts and you will put on size. Some of the guys on here eat 6000+ CLEAN calories a day. That's things like a breakfast of 2 cups of oatmeal, 1/2 dozen eggs and a banana or 2.

[Drai's]

1) How will eating a lot help me to gain muscle?

It won't. Eating a lot AND lifting weights (with progressive overload) will help you gain muscle.

[jack_of_all]

how do you gain muscle at all? stimulus like weightlifting does very small damage to muscle fibers which grows back stronger when allowed to heal. this process takes ENGERY so you need more energy to grow, ie more food, if you want to weigh more you HAVE to eat more. it doesnt become fat unless you eat unclean/too much/ dont excercise, it goes into creating muscle tissue. if you dont eat clean your food has less bioavailability and other problems which makes it much harder for it to become lean bodymass.