@sabina42 The only energy (calories) you need extra are to perform the actual exercises themselves, you need extra energy (unless you sit still all day) to move your arms during bicep curls but you do NOT need extra energy to build muscles.
@sabina42 If you run around and use energy all day long then ye you need some extra calories but if you just sit still all day like a normal person in the 21st century, you don't need more than just a very small amount of extra calories.
It's way more important to supplement vitamins and minerals than it is to eat a bunch of excess calories (that just gets stored as fat anyways) if you want to increase muscle mass and get stronger.
For example Vitamin D3, which is literally a steroid hormone, will allow you to grow your muscles way faster.
@maggie321 If you dont eat sufficient fat and carbs, your body will use protein for energy, which it is not a good energy source (inefficient), so when trying to gain muscle mass you need sufficient fat, carbs, protein. Granted, it you far exceed your energy output in cals, or far exceed protein needs you will store the excess as body fat. This is basically the reason that people cycle bulking and cutting, when bulking you tend to accumulate fat as you are purposefully focusing on muscle gains, and then you cut - hopefully not so fast or drastically that you lose significant muscle. Doing this iteratively can work to increase size and reduce fat over time
@grapheme I was taking two naked vegan mass(1230 calories per serving) shakes a day to get my calories until I got the appetite to eat most of my calories. Just 3 ingredients. maltodextrin is the only shortcoming of shakes like this though.
