Positive and Negative Caloric Intake and Growth Spurts by Joe Merolle |
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| Positive and Negative Caloric Intake and
Growth Spurts Researchers have shown that you need a positive caloric intake to produce muscle gain. I highlight this, because most athletes do not understand it as it relates to adaptation. If we take an athlete (who is beyond the first year of weight training), and we want him to gain 10 pounds of muscle, we need to increase his caloric intake for a season. Please understand this important fact; a positive caloric intake is only a positive caloric intake until your body has regulated the intake. A conversion takes place from a positive caloric intake to a weight-maintaining caloric intake as the body fights to maintain stability. Someone e-mailed me the other day and asked if a 3,000 daily caloric intake would be enough to break a plateau. As you may have guessed, my answer was not what he wanted to hear. A person that adapted (maintaining weight) to a 2,000 calorie intake will grow on the new 3,000 calorie diet. However, due to the nature of a human defense designed to maintain stability, the body will quickly adapt to the new 3,000-calorie diet. When this happens, growth will stop 100% of the time. How quickly the body adapts depends on the individual, and how many times the body has seen the new caloric intake in the past. The first time around, the growth spurt will last the longest. For example, a person goes in the gym at 15 years of age and trains with a new caloric intake of 3,000 calories. He then gets lazy, gives up training and eating heavily and returns to his former 2,000-calorie diet. Then, five years later, he looks in the mirror, does not like what he sees, and returns to his original commitment of training and eating 3,000 calories. Yes, on his return, he will put on muscle; however, the length of the growth spurt will never be longer than his first time when he was 15 years old. Why, because the body remembers how to adjust to the instability threat and becomes efficient at overcoming it. When the body adapts to the 3,000-calorie intake, it needs another spike in calories to add additional growth. At this point, athletes start resorting to high-calorie shakes to keep the growth going. The only problem with consuming additional calories is the same positive caloric intake needed for muscle growth is also the same formula used to store fat. Most lifters, by the time they are 25 years old, have some muscle to show their effort. Unfortunately, layers of ugly fat discredit it. There is a way to keep the growth going, limit the fat accumulation, and keep the caloric intake from going through the roof. Cycling positive and negative caloric intake solves this problem. Some power lifters consider a negative caloric intake a curse. However, a negative caloric intake is required for growth in the future. It may be a breach of conventional wisdom, but a truth nonetheless, due to the laws of adaptation. When the lifter administers a negative caloric intake for a season, the body adapts to the new lower intake. This is great for multiple reasons. For starters, it is a chance that you can lose some unwanted fat. However, it is when the lifter returns to a normal high-caloric intake that the growth manifests. As your body starts to adapt to the positive caloric intake, a window of growth opens for a small timeframe, and will shut when your body readapts to the higher caloric intake. Without the negative caloric intake, it becomes nearly impossible to create a positive caloric intake (needed for growth) when you reach a certain level. Keep in mind, at a negative caloric intake, protein intake must remain high, or you run the risk of muscle cannibalization. Most beginners just keep increasing the calories only to realize they are creating a runaway train impossible to control. As a result, after the first three years of growing, growth ceases, they look the same from year to year, while their fat accumulation remains high. I would appreciate your feedback regarding this and previous articles of mine. My e-mail address is joe@breakingplateaus.com. Please title the subject “MCBB,” so I can reply as soon as possible. |
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