When it comes to muscle-building, protein always seems to steal the limelight. This famous macronutrient is what actually builds muscle right? Indeed it does, and those hoping to bulk up or achieve the body they crave routinely fill their diets with everything from steamed chicken to egg whites and all manner of shakes, bars, and supplements designed to provide as much protein as possible.
For most weight trainers, protein and calories are the two numbers they like to keep an eye on. Hit the daily amount, hit the gym, and you’re well on track – or so the wisdom goes. The wisdom isn’t incorrect; a high protein diet, steadily increasing in line with weight training is indeed the fundamental principle of muscle building. However, humble carbs, so often avoided by weight trainers, have a vital role to play in a muscle-builder’s diet. Ignore them at your peril.
Carbs Are Essential for Energy and Motivation
Motivation is one of the watch words of muscle training. Motivation is that mental energy that powers you towards your goal and ensures you turn up and do what’s needed to get where you want to be. But motivation is a fleeting thing, and when it goes – as it inevitably will – you need the discipline to make it through those periods. For sure, you’ll never always be motivated, but as it turns out, carbs could have a vital role to play in increasing mental motivation.
“If you feel fatigued after training, with heavy legs and low motivation,” says sports nutritionist Becky Stevenson, “it’s often because you’re in a carb-depleted state.” Indeed, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, the essential fuel for all exercise, vital for keeping blood sugar up and, importantly for weight trainers, aiding muscle recovery. But not getting enough carbs leads to far more than just a post-exercise energy slump. For one thing, glucose depletion will affect mental stimulation. Also, tryptophan – the amino acid that boosts serotonin – can only be activated by concomitant ingestion of carbs. A focused mind and a lifted mood are essential for mental motivation – that’s literally where the get-up-and-go needed to hit the gym comes from. Not getting enough carbs could therefore mean more than feeling excessively tired after a workout; it could mean losing the very will to achieve your goals. Considering the dedication that weight training requires, this makes carbohydrates an essential nutrient.
Carbs in Sports Nutrition Vending
With the self-fill option available from Nutrivend, any gym, sports centre or university can be instrumental in ensuring their vending machines provide exercisers with the carb intake they need. Purchased with full branding and installation, content can be controlled by the owner. An excellent choice for weight trainers might be chocolate milk, which a University of Connecticut study recently discovered provides the protein, fat and – yes – carbs that, when taken together, releases the insulin required to put the body into an anabolic muscle-building state after a workout. Just another example of the necessity of carbs!
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