The Importance of Proper Nutrition for Skinny Guys Its all about the food.

For a skinny dude like you (and me), nutrition is the most important factor when it comes to bulking up. Weight lifting and intensive training alone does not effectively contribute to muscle building, instead it might even lead to muscle loss if there is not enough nutrients in the body to replenish any used up resources.

It doesn’t matter if you are just looking to build up a lean and strong physique or an extremely buffed up body, the principle remains the same, in order to look good externally, whatever that goes into the body must also be equally good. You reap what you sow, in this case, healthy and targeted eating produces much better results as compared to burgers and fries. In order to help your muscles to grow, you must help them by eating the right types of food to produce growth. So what indeed is the right type of food?

The answer: Protein.

Protein: THE muscle food

Protein makes up almost everything that you put into your mouth, and thus it plays an extremely important role in the body. It is found everywhere, nails, hair, muscles, skin, etc. Hence any protein deficiency will result in severe problems such as growth retardation and metabolism problems. The body works this way, whenever there is a lack of nutrients from normal intake, the brain will signal parts of the body to draw from primary bodily resources in order to make up for the deficit.

For example, if you are not taking in enough calcium, the body will draw upon the immediate calcium resource which is your bones until the deficit is made up. Conversely, when the intake of calcium is high, the body stores the calcium in the immediate resource pile again which is the bones.

This is how you get bone growth. Granted there are many other factors such as hormones and vitamins that convert nutrients into stored calcium, but simply put, that is how the body functions. Hence this is why people often stress the importance of having a healthy diet.

Applying the same principle to the intake of protein, when we use our muscles, e.g. daily usage, intensive training, we are in fact partially breaking it down and causing it injury. Daily activities would not break down your muscles that terribly but intensive training will.

Many people do not realise this, in order for your muscles to grow, you must first tear and injure it. Let me give an analogy. Have you ever noticed that a guitarist’s fingertips are often hardened with thick layers of skin? It is due to prolonged periods of time training and pressing against the hard steel strings on a guitar. In order to grow that thick layer, they must first injure their fingertips, making it extremely sore and sometimes to the point of bleeding in order for the body to realise that it must make up for the injury at that particular area.

Now applying this to muscle building, when you work out, you are effectively injuring your muscles, tearing it slightly to allow the body to repair and grow the particular muscle.

Now, this is where the importance of sufficient nutrition comes in. In order for the body to repair and grow the muscle, it requires, yes, protein. Imagine if you did not consume enough protein for repair, where would the body find its primary protein resource? If you guessed other muscles, you are indeed right.

Your body will then consume protein from another muscle which was not injured, causing the muscle to degrade to repair the muscle group that you had just trained on. There is zero growth effect and instead, other muscle groups will be severely affected. Now do you see the importance of sufficient intake of protein?

After each repair and growth session, the next workout session would not injure your muscles that bad and soon you would find that the current load that you are lifting becomes easier and easier. This is the body’s way of telling you that if can handle the stress placed on the muscles, and obviously a great motivation to you. As such, the more sessions and intensity of training you do, the more your muscles are subjected to injury and reparation and hence the more you should have to consume. What are the protein rich food that one can consume?

Basically most white meat (chicken and fish) and egg whites. These are the most common sources of protein that people take daily, although there are easily hundred more types of food that are high in protein. For an average skinny guy like me, chicken, fish and eggs will be good enough. If you’re terribly into body building or don’t like these kinds of food, protein supplements and powders might be more effective.

The Skinny Guy

As for us, the skinny guys, there is a high chance that you would be “blessed” with a higher than average metabolic rate and hence your body burns up anything you put into it like a putting paper into a fireplace. The definition of metabolic rate is the sum of all rates of chemical reactions occurring in the body. Well, that was a mouthful.

But essentially, unlike others, the skinny guy’s body eats up food like a hungry lion as compared to a normal dude’s body that functions like a squirrel, eating up some food and storing some for hibernation in winter. This is a basic fact that any skinny guy looking to buff up must remember. Therefore, in order for growth, your caloric intake must be more than your daily needs. Its simple math really.

You eat 1 chicken, your body’s daily consumption is 1 chicken. Hence 1 - 1 = 0. In order for growth to occur, you must eat more than 1 chicken. Now, You eat 2 chickens, your body’s daily consumption remains as 1 chicken. Hence 2 -1 = 1 That 1 chicken can now be put to use for growth! Simple?

All these information might be a little overwhelming right now, but here some pointers to round it off. 1) Protein is extremely important for muscle building.

2) Your muscles must first be injured in order for growth to happen.

3) If you do not consume enough nutrients, your body will deplete other resources such as muscles and bones to make up for the deficiency.

4) As a skinny guy, what you consume must be more than what your body normally requires to function.

Body building for skinny guys is no easy task when starting off as skinny guys will find increasing their food intake very difficult. However these things will take time to get used to and eventually you will find yourself looking forward to the next meal as your body adjusts to the increased amount of food consumption.