Putting the Good Stuff On

Putting on Lean Body Mass can be a tricky task. Keeping yourself LEAN while adding muscles, makes the process much harder. If we wanted to put on muscle and did not care about putting on some body fat (through the process), things wouldn't be quite as hard. The key to building muscle is having an excess of nutrients by the end of the day.
Muscle Growth = CaloriesIn > CaloriesOut

So if you take in 2000 calories a day, and burn off 2500, leaving you in (-500) calories, your loosing weight (body fat) and not building muscle. Our bodies cannot be in an anabolic state while burning body fat. The surplus of calories is what helps rebuild the muscles fibers thicker and stronger. Extra Protein, Extra Fat, Extra Carbohydrates.

If we know that carbohydrates (CHO) are the key ingredient to making us fat, why don't we just cut the CHOs out? Our muscles are 20% sugar (glycogen) and so we need CHOs to help build them. Also, blood sugar controls insulin release, and insulin is also a storage hormone, telling your body where and what to do with the sugar circulating your body.. Do we use it for muscles or store it as fat?

We always talk about Insulin-Resistance.. We have insulin receptors in our muscles, think of them as Ears. Now think of Insulin as Loud-Music. Too much loud-music (insulin), too often results in inability to hear  properly (accept the sugar)..  So then all those carbs we eat end up getting stored as body fat. This is the deciding factor too staying lean while gaining muscle.

Eating clean can be hard while trying to get in maximum calories a day. You can end up spending a lot of money and having quite the full stomach (cramming down lots of vegetables and fruits, meats and nuts/seeds). But it is efficient in keeping you lean throughout the process.

People have put on up to 30lbs in a month by drinking a gallon of milk a day, in addition to their normal meals. This isn't exactly healthy, but it works; so it wouldn't be something that you'd do normally (more like 4-6weeks). Whats good about it? Milk is jam packed with Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates.. It can make certain that you're always in a surplus of calories/nutrients. The problem is, though dairy has a medium glycemic index, insulin magically spikes up higher than it should.. So it can start to build up some insulin resistance, and once your glycogen stores (in your muscles) are full, the rest of the calories (which could be a lot) is going straight to body fat for storage. This is also true for just going crazy and eating everything you can get your hands on (while trying to gain mass).

A lot of variables go into building muscle and even more into building muscle fast. The more obvious are your dietary and exercising habits. The less obvious are hormone levels. Some of these just require balancing, others can be manipulated by periods of fasting and/or post workout meals (or snacks), or even just eating foods that promote the release of more a particular hormone. Fasting can increase the amount of pulses that your body releases hGh (human growth hormone), helping in faster recovery rates (amongst other things). Like we discussed earlier, just balancing your insulin levels can help store nutrients in muscle, rather than investing in more body fat. Testosterone will help activate tissue growth, and eating oysters, eggs, beef, garlic, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, collards, cress, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, bak choy, radishes, turnip greens, watercress, spinach, and red or orange fruits and vegetables have been shown to help increase t-levels.

The nice thing about CrossFit is that, you're not on the treadmill trying to burn X amount of calories off every time you're here. Some workouts are purely strength, some are short (5-8minutes), some are long grinds. If you ate the same amount of calories everyday, some days you may end with a surplus of calories (good for muscle building, which also speeds up metabolism, burning body fat faster) and other days, you may end in a deficiency of calories--forcing your body to use body fat for energy (burning fat / loosing weight) and on rest days, you're going to end up getting full recovery.. This great process keeps you lean, while also building muscle (which in turn helps keep you lean). Win, win.