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A Wilson
I am 6'3". I am 49 years old. I started working out at 19 after I read Arnold's book, The Education of A Bodybuilder. I wanted to be exactly like him. I did not want to be tall and skinny for my en...view moreI am 6'3". I am 49 years old. I started working out at 19 after I read Arnold's book, The Education of A Bodybuilder. I wanted to be exactly like him. I did not want to be tall and skinny for my entire life.
Since that time, I have enlarged/gained some muscle mass (and some fat).
As I have come to understand through theory and personal experience, muscle hypertrophy must come in 2 phases: temporal hypertrophy and permanent hypertrophy. Temporal hypertrophy is when you make your muscle fill up with more glucose (in the form of glycogen). More glycogen binds to more water inside your muscles. My muscles feel more bulgy to me when this happens and I believe that this explains why my muscles feel this way.
Permanent hypertrophy is when you make a permanent, deformational change to the muscle tissue that never really goes away. You increase your actual tissue in the muscle wall and/or you make it bigger. I think that I have not made such a "gain" for 21 years.
The cycle repeats till you run out of gains: if you cannot fill up the muscle with more glycogen for whatever reason, you cannot squeeze it hard enough to get a hard enough pump that "says" you went past the threshold to permanently enlarge some Type IIb fibers.
I believe that the gain process is a cyclic process: Temporal hypertrophy leads to permanent hypertrophy. Of course, there must be more details involved.
But ... I had a problem with bodybuilding. I love being big, love feeling my muscles bulgy--but my problem was: I was just always unwell when my muscles feel like this. My muscles felt amazing, but I didn't. I felt terrible.
Tired, heavy eyes, unhappy, sweating, high blood pressure, stomach nauseated ...
I am not sure why this happens. Here is my guess: I think that bodybuilding is about the growth of carbohydrate metabolism, not fat metabolism. I just think that the phrase "increase fat-burning from more muscle mass" is simply marketing hype and foolishness. It is not science; it is not physiology.
Read why I think so by downloading my book from Smashwords for free.
When you are enlarging your muscles, I think that a person is increasing carbohydrate metabolism faster than you are increasing fat metabolism.
You have lots of fat cells on your body so to increase your fat metabolism is a good thing because you can always chew away more fat from inside the fat cells. But you only have 4-6 grams of carbohydrate (sugar, glucose) in your entire blood stream, assuming you have 5 litres of blood in your body.
Doesn't it make sense that if you increase your carbohydrate metabolism, you are messing with that small amount of "sugar" in your blood. You are going to increase the rate that that sugar in your blood is utilized and used up. A higher carbohydrate metabolism is know by another name which everyone recognizes: stress. Stress is not just a state of heightened mental anxiety. It carries with it a checklist of concrete, reproducible physiological symptoms. I list these symptoms in my book.
You don't have to understand carbohydrate metabolism to bodybuild, but it would be a good thing to know if you have had health issues like me. You might want to know these symptoms then.
Eating more did not help me. It contributed to my muscles feeling amazing, but me feeling terrible. From books about hypoglycemia, I read that more carbohydrates thrown into a body that is "in stress" does not alleviate the stress: it exacerbates it! I do not have a hyperthyroid or hypoglycemia but I believe that I have gone into physiological stress because--by working out for bigger muscle--I am allocating more of my carbohydrate energy reserves into my muscles with less of those reserves running my other physiological body organs, including my mind. Muscle is a sac of carbohydrates and water.
I am not entirely sure why I cannot put the energy back by eating, but I can't. I really tried!
I think eating helps to a point; but there is a point when you pass certain level of physiological metabolic stress and then it works against you. Here is another guess that you can decide if you agree with or not: more insulin will be released but the hormone insulin suppresses fat-metabolism. Insulin is a great anabolic hormone to put carbohydrates into your muscles, but it is bad for fat-burning, since it suppresses the activity of certain enzymes inside your fat cells that participate in getting the fat out of the fat cells. When you are in stress, "losing" some of your optimal fat metabolism is the last thing you want to do. But eating a lot is what bodybuilding is about, right?
Why do people say that increasing muscle size increases fat-burning when a quick study of the effects of insulin--required for muscle size growth--totally flies in the face of that belief and conclusion! Plus...all the natural bodybuilders have a higher level of fat over their muscles in their natural state, and are not ripped to shreds. Muscles and "ripped to shreds" is unnatural; it is not nature; it is steroid-induced since steroids and thyroid hormone--which bodybuilders take--augment the lipolysis inside fat cells.
There is a very smart kid in America who said that when he was young, his parents thought he was autistic. He turned out to be brilliant instead. He said that the turnaround for him happenened when he "stopped learning and started thinking."
My book on Smashwords here is not about learning. I haven't learned everything It's about stopping the learning and starting the thinking: what metabolism is enlarged muscle mass actually ... augmenting. I believe that it is blowing up your carb metabolism because the drain of your muscles on your physiological body for more carbohydrates increases.
I stopped learning and started trying to think. When Icarus tried to be like a god, he fell. it's called failure. But failure leads to success because you have to think, "why did that happen to me, and what can I do differently the next time to succeed."
I was forced to think why I was unwell when my muscles got bigger. If you want to be big and you have high blood pressure--and don't feel well like I do when your muscles enlarge--read what I have written because I have written it for both me and you. If you are motivated enough, you will read.
I don't know why this happens to me. I can only guess that my genetics--the same genetics that makes it possible for my muscles to expand--also make me more susceptible to carbohydrate (stress) growth than other individuals. My guess is that the professional bodybuilders are very tolerant/invulnerable to carbohydrate metabolism (stress) growth.
I did my best to fix this, but I could not. To fix something, first you have to understand the problem. I think I understand the problem. You decide. God bless.
Special Note: The book in print is not the Icarus book. I have written two books to illuminate my understanding and the understanding of others who wish to here the truth, not marketing falsehoods about wildly increasing fat metabolism. Thanks to all who have bought and/or downloaded my books.view less