By GI Team Generation Iron
These foods could help or harm your gains.
Diet is paramount in bodybuilding. The food choices you make are responsible for whether or not you see you waistline shrink or grow. Choosing a fatty burger over a lean steak could mean that you’ll be putting on pounds in all the wrong places. Rather than having shredded abs, a chiseled chest, and ripped back you’ll have some man boobs and a muffin top for all your troubles. It’s the choices we make that shape us all and decide whether or not we’ll reach physical greatness or just be masses of gelatinous fatty tissue.
But sometimes making the right choices can still prove to do harm to your gains. Good food choices, if relied on far too often, can also prove to be just a bad for your muscle growth as some of the dirty food options out there waiting for you. Take a look at the list below for some foods that can can be great for you if eaten in moderation and could potentially kill your gains if your over indulge.
Pizza
At first glance this one would seem like a no brainer. After all, how could dough, cheese, and tomato sauce be any good for your gains? Well the truth of the matter is that pizza isn’t all that horrible, particularly the healthier variety with toppings of spinach, chicken, or salmon. The tomato sauce contains lycopene which may induce an anabolic reaction. That all goes out the window when you add extra cheese, sausage, or pepperoni as the fat content will skyrocket and turn all the positives to negatives.
Yogurt
With all the protein content and gut friendly probiotics you’d think that it’d never manage to end up on this list. However, you’d have to be eating plain Greek yogurt to reap all the benefits at least where the good stuff is concerned. The flavored version of yogurt can pack a tremendous amount of sugar which can make up the majority of the calories, which means bad news for your gains as your insulin levels spike.
Pasta
Pasta can be a great choice to fuel your workout with it’s powerful complex carbohydrates. The organic choices have been essential to many athletes’ diets and provided the fuel to push through a tough day of training. The biggest problem with pasta is that most commercial brands usually have less fiber content as well as the food being loaded with calories. Having a moderate to smaller portion coupled with a lean protein source could offset this however.
Fruit Juice
Juice can be a great source of vitamin C as well as a decent choice for a slow burning carb to consume before a workout. The slow burning nature will help provide you energy throughout your training. However, due to the lack of chewing, which sends a signal to the brain that your body is being satiated, juice could prove to be the key to opening the floodgates and potentially causing you to seek out other sugary snacks to tame your cravings. It’s the reason why fruit juice can be a dangerous choice as a snack.
Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is a pretty great food to enjoy. Not only is it easy on the palette, but the benefits it offers for muscle growth is pretty astounding. The testosterone boost, the promotion of growth hormone, the regulation of blood glucose levels with magnesium; it’s hard to see the negatives with peanut butter. But like we mentioned with pasta the commercial brands of peanut butter can contain some additives that prove to do more harm than good. The hydroginated oil added to it gives it a longer shelf life, but it also means transfats, an overabundance of which could be potentially detrimental to your gains.
Source: http://generationiron.com/foods-that-can-kill-your-physique/
