If you’ve been following my blog, you would know that I always emphasize and stress on nutrition. If you aren’t eating enough to build those muscles, nothing is going to happen. You’re going to be crunching out reps after reps, and becoming disappointed with your results. Your strength may not go up, weight may stay the same or you may end up losing (not in a good way), or any other type of discouraging act.
But on the other end of it, there’s the fact that some people push into the heads of newbs, that if they do not get their macros in, if they skipped a meal, or if they end up eating way below their calorie intake, they are going to be set back some and not see any gains.
I am just here to tell you, that that isn’t so.
Keep reading if you want to know why, and how you don’t need to be panicking if you had yourself a very hard and long day, where you didn’t get time to eat lunch or get in much calories.
If you do not get in your amount of calories, in a particular day, your gains will not be lost. Yes, nutrition is important but you have to understand how the body works. It’s not going to go into a hyper-metabolic state (wasting of muscle mass etc), in a short period of time. You will not be losing your gains, if you didn’t consume your protein intake for that particular day. It requires a lot more than 24 hours before your body gets into a catabolic (breaking down) state, in reference to muscles of course, which is what matters to weight lifters and bodybuilders.
To give you an idea, I have come across big strapping men, who are about over 6 feet and 200 plus pounds, who have only eaten the recommended 1500 calories per day, for a biological male. Now this is obviously on a day they had like 1 meal that’s 700 calories and had themselves maybe a sub or something when they got home. These massive men, didn’t suddenly go from 200 plus pounds, to 190 lbs because of not eating their required macro-nutrients and calories for the day.
Starvation mode, is where you’re going to have worries and since none of us are in a country where we cannot get a meal for days, we’re fine.
So please, as a beginner you may feel guilty and upset or even discouraged, that you did not get to eat your meals. That you skipped lunch because of a deadline and you need to make it up. It doesn’t make sense to consume 1500 calories in one sitting, just because you didn’t get your calories in. Instead, eat your dinner or the meal you had planned for lunch, and get back on track on the next day.
Now, please use common sense and recognize you cannot continuously do this, over long period of time (eg: days), and expect to make gains. You may not lose muscle, but you will definitely not be building any either.
A good suggestion if you find your days to be without periods to eat 5 to 6 meals a day, reduce it to 3 sizable meals. Or, get yourself on a maintenance diet and just go from there, until you have the times and means to get back on a muscle building diet.