If you have no idea about the role of calories to build muscle, this article is for you to know what it takes for you to understand why calories are important in order to build muscle.
We’ve all heard it before, “I can’t gain weight no matter how much I eat.” This phrase is muttered by self-proclaimed hard gainers across the world.
Role of Calories to Build Muscle:
To know the role of calories to build muscle, we split the parts into two “the problem” & “the fix” for you to certainly know why calories matter.
Perhaps the biggest issue regarding this statement is that most people fail to realize how calories play a role in weight manipulation.
To do that, let’s first understand calories as a unit of energy.
Each individual has certain energy requirements to complete every day functions such as breathing, pumping blood, regulating body temperature, etc…
The total amount of energy required to do this for each individual is known as basal metabolic rate, or BMR for short.
BMR will vary for each individual depending on different factors (for example age, weight, body composition, gender).
In addition to knowing our own BMR we also need to account for our activity level.
Activity level can include things such as training, sports, leisure activities or even your job.
When combined with BMR we get what’s known as maintenance calories.
This is the amount of calories required by your body to complete all of these processes combined.
To put it in perspective, if we take in fewer calories than we need, our body will respond by using some of its stored energy to compensate.
In order to gain weight (in this case muscle), we would take in more calories (energy) to create a surplus.
This way our body can complete these building and maintaining processes with the caloric surplus.
Conclusion on Role of Calories to Build Muscle:
Of course this is an over simplified way to explain a very complex process.
The key take away from this portion is to understand that we all have specific caloric needs.
Once we’re able to determine what these needs are, manipulating weight is a simple matter of manipulating our total intake around these numbers.