Calories restriction in body building diets has been a source of constant controversy and misinformation for a long time now. In some instances, in recent years, high calorie diets have been recommended and advocated for by the body building fraternity as the only way to achieve optimal hypertrophy. The all over a sudden, the high calorie diets become forbidden, with a host of reasons to boot. Every dietitian worth the name rise up against high calorie diets and the body building literature rise in arms against the culture of ‘calorie impunity.

One thing for sure is that opinions about calorie intake for body builders are a hot topic of controversy and change. But when you look a little bit deeper than the conventional understanding of caloric control, facts emerge that are constant and reliable. This article highlights some of those unchanging facts about caloric control that every body builder should use as a foundation to a great body building diet program.

The body builder’s diet for one is not like any other diet, of athletes even. A body builder requires some key nutrients in huge amounts than any other athlete. We are talking about reinforcing and boosting growth of skeletal muscles, something the body does with a natural low drive when we are growing up. The diet must be out of the ordinary. Proteins in particular must be high, very high, if muscles will build up in the speed the body builder wants. The carbs must also be very high, given that unlike in cardios and aerobics, weight training burns up calories at a speed that is simply horrific.

So whatever is said by the media gurus, a body builder’s diet must be maintained at a high caloric level, especially in energy giving foods and in the proteins. If the carbs in your diet are kept low, like most dieting programs advocate for, and the fats are avoided at all costs, then you will be in a constant catabolic state the moment you hit the gym. Even the marginal proteins you eat, for most dieting programs have everything negative to say about high protein foods, will be burnt up for energy instead of building muscles. The end effect will be that your training program will be wasting your muscles away instead of building them up.

Unless your body building program’s goals are to reduce weight and burn all body fats, then controlled fats and maximal carbs ought to be in the diet. The only thing to be cautious of is that the intake of carbs is matched with the energy expenses. When we say go high calories, we don’t mean you get into an eating spree of everything and anything. Rather, we mean that you eat healthy complex carbs in a controlled manner such that your energy needs are met adequately and no excess foods are left for storage in the body as fat deposits.

If you intend to loose weight and body fats, eat less than you burn, but eat all the same. If you want to maintain your weight, then eat as much as you burn. If on the other hand you want to gain weight, eat a controlled excess of proteins, not carbs of fats though, than you burn. It is as simple as that. Those are the basics.

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