Bodybuilding Nutrition Principles – Eat Enough Carbohydrates

The second of our bodybuilding nutrition principles encourages you to eat enough carbohydrates. Generally not enough of the primary food fuel – carbohydrates - is eaten by many athletes, including bodybuilders and strength trainers.  In the majority of athletes’ diets, only half of their daily total intake of calories come from carbohydrates, when in fact 7 to 9 grams per kilogram of body weight daily should be consumed as carbohydrates.

This may be because a lot of bodybuilders are under the impression that a low carbohydrate diet promotes faster weight loss.  The main problem with these diets is that they cause a depletion of glycogen, the body’s way of storing carbohydrates.  Once the glycogen supply is depleted the body starts to use up protein from tissues, including muscle tissues, to meet its demand for energy.  The result is that you will lose hard earned muscle.

Many fitness minded people and athletes steer clear of carbohydrates, particularly bread and pastas, as they believe that these foods will make them fat.  This belief is the main reason why there is an unbalanced proportion of carbohydrate, fat and whey protein in bodybuilding training diets, which in general are much too high in protein.  The truth is that carbohydrates are probably the most important nutrient for losing fat and helping to build muscle.

We’ll look at the role of carbohydrates in building muscle later in our series looking at bodybuilding nutrition principles.

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