Is It An Outdated Strategy To Ingest Whole Milk To Boost Muscle Size? August 27, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Milk. Good or Bad? Yay or Nay? Friend or Foe? The easy answer is – it depends. Let’s take a look at what affects whether milk will be good or bad for you.Let’s talk about milk and muscle building.
Milk is a widely popular ingredient for building huge muscles. Usually, the bigger guys will just tell you that all you need is squats and milk. For a lot of people, they’re not wrong. If you’re underweight and are trying to get bigger, milk will definitely help you load up on calories. Even the low fat variety still has a lot of protein. There’s 110 calories in a glass of skim milk. Milk will definitely help you quickly get the extra calories you need throughout the day. If you’re just looking to pack on a lot of mass, not worrying about fat, or if you don’t get fat easily, then milk is something you really need to include in your diet.
The other instance that you might consider it is just for overall fitness. If you’re not into all of those pre-mixed post-workout drinks or shakes, then milk is something you can incorporate into your post workout diet plan. In fact, milk, skim milk, to be specific, has a very high glycemic index. Glycemic index is just a rating on how fast a certain food’s sugar content will be absorbed by your body. A high glycemic index means it will spike your insulin levels and for post-workout, that’s very good. The increased level of insulin in the body causes anything you eat during the post-workout phase to quickly be absorbed by your muscles and it immediately increases the rate at which they are repaired and built to be stronger.
You may ask, what about those whose goal is to lose fat? Don’t drink milk. Milk has a lot of sugar in it, even if it doesn’t taste too sweet. Unskimmed milk contains a lot of saturated animal fats which you definitely don’t want entering your body. It’s basically a huge boatload of calories in liquid form. Taking in food or calories is huge no-no if you want to lose weight. Skim milk, though low in fat, as mentioned earlier, has a very high glycemic index which increases your insulin. If you drink skim milk any time other than immediately before or after a workout, you’re going to get that storage environment in your body talked about earlier which means more stored fat too.
If you are on a fat loss diet and you still want to use milk, you can pick up some sort of substitute. For example, there’s almond milk, which isn’t dairy in nature. If you haven’t tried it, it’s actually not bad tasting. There are some brands or varieties which have no added sugar and are low in fat. It’s only 40 calories per serving, roughly 1/3 of the calories in milk. If you’re used to regular milk, try almond milk or a similar substitute instead. Not only do you have less calorie intake, you also cut on sugar and, consequently, insulin. So it could be a good idea to use milk to build muscle size?
As a final word, the best time for milk is if you’re trying to bulk up, or as a post workout drink. Other than that, stick to the low-calorie substitutes.