Foods To Avoid When Building Muscle. Today we show you the no-go foods par excellence because you work hard to improve yourself. You’ve been to the gym, you’ve had enough sleep – but if you’re not consuming the right foods, you’re slowing down your progress immensely.
You need to choose meals and snacks that your muscles can utilize and fuel your body. A balanced diet that does just that includes whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and low-fat dairy. Muscle also loves chain-chain amino acids (BCAAs), which are found in foods like lean meats, poultry, low-fat dairy, and peanut butter.
What Foods To Avoid When Building Muscle?
But aside from what helps you improve, there are also so-called no-go foods that can sabotage all your hard work. So which foods should you avoid?
Alcohol
Regular alcohol consumption can put a lot of strain on your body and temporarily lower testosterone levels significantly. The nutrients normally used for muscle recovery are used to metabolize alcohol instead.
So minimize your consumption of alcohol. However, if you do decide to have a drink, don’t overdo it and use it responsibly.
White Flour
Most cookies, cakes, bread, and other delicious “carbohydrate bombs” are made with white flour, which provides mostly empty calories. If you want to treat yourself, try resorting to confections made from high-fiber flours (e.g., oatmeal cookies).
Pre-Made Smoothies
If you like buying a smoothie on the go, you might want to reconsider your decision in the future. Most pre-made smoothies are high in calories (between 600 and 1000 on average) and overloaded with (fructose) sugar. Even a large amount of protein powder doesn’t make up for the masses of sugar you’re putting into your body.
Instead, you could use fresh fruit or make your own smoothie at home so you can keep track of the ingredients.
Ice Cream
On average, a serving of ice cream contains 137 calories, 7 grams of total fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, and 2 grams of protein. The amount of saturated fat in one serving is 22 percent of the recommended daily allowance.
Most people easily eat 2 or 3 scoops of ice cream at a time, putting saturated fat well in excess of the recommended daily allowance. Of course, this won’t help you get lean or build muscle.
Breakfast Cereals With High Sugar Content
Some cereals may seem healthy, but they can contain a lot more sugar than you think. If you see sugar in the top 3 of the ingredients list, alarm bells should be ringing that this granola is a sugar bomb.
Instead, choose cereals with plenty of fiber and ideally less than 5 grams of sugar per serving. You can even find some cereals with a reasonable amount of protein to help build muscle.
Granola Bar
Granola bars are a combination of oatmeal, dried fruit, nuts, and seeds with small amounts of fat and sugar. However, some granola bars also add chocolate, candy, or caramel. These bars may contain more calories, sugar, or fat than you realize, which can sabotage your muscle-building program.
Butter
Butter is made from cow’s milk and not obtained in a lab like most margarine. But a packet of butter contains a whopping 810 calories, 92 grams of fat, and 58 grams of saturated fat.
That’s 141% of the daily recommended amount of fat and almost 300% for saturated fat! Your muscles will cry when you’re stuffing all that artery-clogging saturated fat into your body on a regular basis!
White Bread
White bread scores extremely high on the glycemic index (GI), a system that ranks foods based on their effect on blood sugar levels. Foods with a high GI, therefore, have a greater impact on blood sugar levels. However, this does not mean that you have to reach for the next brown bread straight away.’
Make sure you’re getting the healthiest option by checking the labels. Companies often trick consumers by labeling bread with “grain” or “healthy flour” on the package. However, if you take a look at the nutritional value table, there is no trace of wholemeal flour, etc. to be seen.
Simply make sure that the proportion of wholemeal flour and plenty of fiber is as high as possible.
Dried Fruit
Fresh fruit contains vitamins and minerals and is high in soluble and insoluble fiber. Dried or dehydrated fruit may contain added sugar and sulfur to extend shelf life. Also, depriving the fruit of water can lead to overconsumption.
If you eat a fresh apricot, apple, or peach, you may feel full after eating. But with dried fruit, you can eat the whole box and ingest a tremendous amount of calories without even realizing it because the water has been removed. Also, the GI index for dried fruit is higher than for fresh food because the change in structure changes the way your body digests the fruit.
Diet Drinks
Aside from the fact that some of them are dangerous and have been shown to cause cancer in lab rats, artificial sweeteners are 100 times sweeter than naturally occurring sugars like fructose and sucrose. And because they’re so cute, the body starts producing insulin. A little bit of sugar doesn’t hurt anyone if you’re generally fit and eating well. But the fake sugar can cause the body to produce too much insulin.
Fried Foods
You can fry everything from cheese to meat. Frying food can improve flavor, but the extra calories will also help eliminate your flat center party.
Many of the oils used in deep frying are high in saturated fats. This particular type of fat, if consumed uncontrollably over years, can lead to diseases such as heart attack, stroke, or diabetes.
Premade Salads
Store-bought salads can quickly turn a healthy meal into a fat bomb when the side dishes and dressing are slathered on the greens. Check how many calories are in the salad. And then look at the calories with the included dressing. Sometimes it’s almost double!
Other side salads like bacon, cheese, croutons, dried fruit, and nuts can also add to the calorie count if not used in moderation.
Hot Dogs
These processed meats are chock-full of calories, sodium, and saturated fats. It also contains nitrates, a preservative that prevents bacterial growth and preserves the appetizing red color of the meat. Nitrites can lead to the formation of chemicals called nitrosamines, which have been linked to cancer.
Instead, choose lean cuts of meat whenever possible, and if you still feel like a sausage, go for a nitrite-free variety.
Donuts
Skip this popular pastry, which is made from wheat flour and deep-fried and contains absolutely no healthy ingredients for your growing muscles. Satisfy your sweet cravings with high-protein, fat-free Greek yogurt topped with fresh fruit and a drizzle of honey.
Conclusion
Diet plays a key role in muscle building. A healthy combination of macronutrients and micronutrients creates the ideal training basis for future success. However, you should also treat yourself to something from time to time and be allowed to eat no-go food. This way there is no frustration and you stick to your balanced diet.
