Building muscle and staying lean
Sometimes as you read this column, you may get the impression that attaining a bodybuilding physique is
bodybuilder
pretty easy. I talk about how to control your hormones, how to stimulate fat loss, how to drive muscle growth, how to channel food energy to muscle stores, and so on, and bodybuilding sounds not too hard. The truth is, achieving a bodybuilder’s physique is very hard, and that’s why you don’t see too many bodybuilders walking around. If it was easy, everybody would look great. The key reason why it’s so hard is that you have to be in a calorie deficit to stimulate fat loss, yet in order to drive muscle growth you have to supply all the nutrients and energy muscles need to grow. In a way it’s a paradox to do both at the same time. But it is possible.
The easiest way to lose fat is just to starve yourself. Starving people are not fat. As you know, the problem with this approach is that during severe caloric restriction you lose about half muscle and half fat. Your body tries to hang on to the fat as long as it can so it won’t run out of energy. At the other end of the spectrum, it is pretty easy to gain weight if you just eat like a pig. There are very few people who can’t gain a lot of weight if they just eat enough calories. This is what the hoard of “weight gainer” powders out there are for. If you add 1,000 calories a day to your diet, you will gain weight. The problem, of course, is that if you just indiscriminately add calories to your diet most of them (probably about 75% by most estimates) will end up as fat. So we have to lose calories to lose fat, but if we cut calories half the weight which is lost will be muscle. And we have to add calories to gain weight, but about 75% of excess calories usually end up as fat. Genetically gifted bodybuilders may not have such a problem.
I’ve met several people who were quite strong and who looked like bodybuilders before they ever went into a gym. But these people are rare. Most of us are all too familiar with the scenarios described above. And this is why attaining that bodybuilding look is hard for most people. What’s the answer? How can the average person attain a really spectacular physique? Hard work, consistency, and dedication. These are the core principles of the Parrillo philosophy. If you can give me those, I can give you a great physique. Without those, all the information and training and supplements in the world just don’t matter. It’s really up to you. So how do you do it?Nutrient Partitioning The key concept is an idea called nutrient partitioning, which means directing ingested dietary energy toward the lean compartment and not to fat stores. The idea is to have your food energy go to build muscle while drawing on your fat stores to fuel activity. Achieving this requires two things. First is a very specific eating program which supplies energy in a way which supplies nutrients to build muscle but not providing calories which are stored as fat.
There are certain foods you should eat and specific foods you should avoid. Each meal must be structured according to fairly narrow parameters. The nuts and bolts of how to do this is described in the Parrillo Performance Nutrition Manual, which is the cornerstone of the program. The second requirement for nutrient partitioning is a training program. Training provides the stimulus to build muscle as well as activating the body’s fat-burning pathways. How does it work? What happens is the nutrition program and the training program come together to have certain effects on the body’s hormones. And these hormones control muscle metabolism and fat metabolism. If you follow the program faithfully you can actually modify the hormonal environment inside your body in such a way as to signal your muscles to grow and simultaneously signal fat loss. And by supplying nutrient energy in a specific pattern you can direct this energy to the lean compartment while at the same time burning body fat. If you read my articles over the last two or three years, you will have a virtual textbook on the science of how this works, down to the cellular and even molecular level.
So let’s say you want to do it. Where do you start? You start with the Nutrition Manual and a solid training program which includes lifting weights and aerobics. It’s virtually impossible to achieve the results of my program without the Nutrition Manual. Many bodybuilders on the advanced level are on this program, and that’s no exaggeration. You have to start there. I’ve spent over 30 years researching this area and experimenting with advanced level competitive bodybuilders. My approach has been to assemble all of the scientific information on muscle and fat metabolism, and then try different strategies in real athletes to find out what really works. The Nutrition and Training Manuals give you the benefit of 30 years of research and work right at your fingertips.
Are there any supplements that can help? Yes, definitely. One in particular that fits into this program is called Muscle Amino™. Muscle Amino™ is a pharmaceutical grade, ultra-pure, crystalline, free-form amino acid mixture of leucine, isoleucine, and valine. These are the so-called “branched chain” amino acids, because their side chain contains a branched carbon structure. The branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) are among the essential amino acids. Of the twenty amino acids common in human proteins, twelve of them can be made by the body and are called “nonessential” amino acids. The other eight cannot be made by the body and are called “essential” amino acids because it is essential they be obtained from the diet. Obviously, bodybuilders need to be attentive that their diet supplies all of the essential amino acids in the right amounts they need, because they are required for muscle maintenance and growth. There are two special things about the BCAAs: they are among the most abundant amino acids in muscle proteins (1) and they are heavily catabolized (broken down) during exercise, especially intense aerobic exercise (2). These two reasons plus the fact the body cannot make its own BCAAs increase the need for BCAAs by athletes, especially athletes concerned about achieving maximum muscle mass.
BCAAs seem to be preferentially taken up by muscle tissue and stored there, providing an anabolic effect as well as a nitrogen-sparing (anti-catabolic) effect (3). Muscle Amino™ is really the exact thing we’re looking for in a supplement. It is selectively taken up by muscle, so it will add to muscle mass and not fat mass. It provides essential building blocks which are used to build muscle protein, having an anabolic effect. And it blocks the break-down of existing muscle tissue during intense exercise. This is a perfect example of positive nutrient partitioning. Muscle Amino™ provides nutrient energy which is specifically targeted to building up muscle stores while not contributing to fat stores. You can see why I call it “Muscle Amino™.” Exercise induces changes in the body’s pattern of energy metabolism, and these changes are driven by energy needs, substrate availability, and hormonal regulation (2).
This change in the pattern of energy flow in the body is what brings about the change in body composition we seek. Energy to fuel the body is derived from oxidation (burning) of the carbon chains in carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The ratio of the fuel mixture which is oxidized depends on the nutrient ratio consumed as well as exercise type and intensity (2). In other words, whether you burn fat or carbs or protein for energy depends on what you eat and how you exercise. Bodybuilders virtually unanim-ously agree that they need extra protein. Most of them have the misconception that they need extra protein to supply the building blocks for muscle growth. The truth is that two or three extra bites of chicken every day will supply enough protein for your muscles to grow as fast as they can. The real reason bodybuilders and endurance athletes need more protein is that they burn more protein for fuel during exercise. If you don’t supply enough protein in the diet to make up for this increased demand then the body will actually break down muscle tissue to supply the amino acids to use as fuel.
This is your worst nightmare. Since the biggest demand for amino acid fuel is during aerobic exercise, it turns out that endurance athletes actually have even higher protein requirements than bodybuilders (2). Very few people realize this, including very few endurance athletes. This is why endurance athletes usually have a very thin (sometimes referred to as “stringy”) look - they burn more protein than they take in, so their muscles get catabolized as fuel. If endurance athletes would simply increase their protein intake they would become more muscular and stronger, and probably become better, faster athletes as well. Usually in a contest between two equally skilled athletes, the stronger one wins. When you eat a protein food, it gets digested in the stomach and intestine into individual amino acids and short chains of amino acids that are small enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Eventually all of the protein is broken down into individual “free” amino acids. These can experience two main metabolic fates. They can be used to build new proteins or they can be burned as fuel to produce energy. Not all of the amino acids are treated equally however. The branched chains are used as fuel more than the others (2). Muscle contains special enzymes called branched chain aminotransferase and branched chain keto acid dehydrogenase which permit the breakdown of the BCAAs for energy (2). This allows muscle to use BCAAs as fuel whereas the other amino acids are oxidized in the liver. So while exercise increases protein requirements in general, it especially increases BCAA requirements.
This coupled with the fact that the BCAAs are among the most abundant amino acids in muscle protein make it obvious why athletes have increased need for the branched chains. They use more for energy, plus they need more for protein synthesis. Virtually every book and article about supplementation for athletes suggest the BCAAs as one of the core supplements. Of all the supplements out there, Muscle Amino™ is certainly one of the most high-tech, because it specifically targets the metabolic problem at hand. By supplying more BCAAs to the body less muscle tissue is catabolized during exercise, helping to maintain positive protein balance and net gain of muscle tissue. This is a prime example of a low calorie nutrient which specifically
Parrillo BCAA
targets metabolic pathways to have a positive partitioning effect. Muscle Amino™ is selectively taken up by muscle where it acts to promote protein synthesis and prevent protein breakdown. Since it is taken up by muscle and not by fat, this is a way to supply nutrient energy which will be partitioned to the lean compartment. It should be emphasized that endurance athletes will benefit from this supplement at least as much as bodybuilders, if not even more.
To see a real noticeable effect from Muscle Amino™ you need to take a fair amount of it. At least ten grams a day, and twenty would not be too much. I suggest two to three capsules with each of six meals per day. Smaller amounts will have a smaller effect, but this is a supplement where the effects accumulate over time. It is best to take Muscle Amino™ with meals to increase absorption. There’s a lot more to be said about amino acid metabolism during exercise, and how to use exercise and nutrition to shift your metabolism into a muscle-building, fat-burning mode.
RefeReNceS
1. Rombeau JL and Caldwell MD. Clinical Nutrition: Parenteral Nutrition, Second Edition. W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1993.
2. Wolinsky I and Hickson JF. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1994.
3. Bucci L. Nutrients as Ergogenic Aids for Sports and Exercise. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1993.
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