The Great Bodybuilding Debate

[Matthew Bryduck]

Here is a interesting video on diet and nutrition. What works better for building muscle and loosing fat, self experimentation and experience or hard science?? A veteran national level bodybuilding competitor and an advocate for safety and moderation discuss this hot topic.

You decide.. Thoughts? Opinions?

Video

[chris mason]

Hmm, one problem I have with this kid is he barely looks like he trains... If his methodology was so wonderful one would think he might achieve better results. And no, don't hit me with the drugs are age argument. I looked better than him at the same age and I was drug-free.

[chris mason]

Something on the thermic effect of food and also, separately, meal frequency for bodybuilding.

First, eating every 2-3 hours is NOT needed. There is no real purpose to it. Meals which contain all of the macros take several hours to fully digest. They are therefore delivering nutrients to the blood over the course of more than a few hours.

There are studies relating to increasing protein synthesis and if my memory serves they show that once a meal (or protein by itself) stimulates protein synthesis, it cannot be further increased for 4-5 hours. So the bodybuilding idea you need protein every 2-3 hours doesn't pan out. If you are getting substrate in the form of amino acids delivered from a meal for up to 6 hours (the fattier the meal the longer), and you cannot enhance synthesis once started for 4-5 hours, then consuming it more frequently serves no purpose.

As for the thermic effect, the kid is right that the size of the meal has a much greater effect on the metabolism than frequency. In other words, you will increase your metabolism to a greater degree (and I believe for a longer period) with a large meal than with smaller meals consumed more frequently.

[Whoopipally]

They bring up a lot to discuss. To this day, one topic I'm not a master of and desire to learn more about is the positive benefits of eating, say, 2-3 times a day whenever convenient versus 5-6 a day structured. Assuming you're eating the same total amount of food (cals) with the same amount of macro's, how will your body react if you choose one path over the other?

Also another topic I want to delve in is liquid foods versus solid foods. I've seen a lot of arguments saying a 50g of protein piece of hard meat is more beneficial for you (from a muscle building/strength point of view, regardless if you're a powerlifter or BB) than a protein shake.

I'm curious as to how some people here have experimented with these things and what they found.

[danki]

Whatever works, works. If you follow dogma that "works" but it isn't working, then it doesn't work.