|
Peanut butter and bodybuilding, what am I talking about?
Well there is this myth going around some bodybuilding circles that peanut butter is some new miracle food for growing muscle. Why? Rumours and misguided attempts to eat the right bodybuilding foods.
Peanut butter is good for bodybuilding in certain circumstances, in other circumstances it is a terribly bad choice...
I have read reports of bodybuilders smearing peanut butter on their cooked chicken breasts, other bodybuyilders have been eating scoops of peanut butter before bed, other bodybuilders excitedly look for the latest peanut butter flavoured bodybuilding supplement.
What is the Internet hysteria about?
Peanut Butter And Bodybuilding - The Facts:
Peanut butter as most of you know it is garbage, eating it WILL make you fat, it is a terrible manufactured foodstuff that incorporates bad fats (inc. trans fatty acids), sugars, and added salt.
Natural peanut butter, made from peanuts and nothing else is reasonably healthy. Roughly half the content is fat and half is protein. The fats are mono-unsaturated fats, the 'good' fats, that are good for you.
Now the reason I belive that peanut butter got a name in bodybuilding is because there are more than a few dieticians and professionals whose advice is to not eat carbohydrates in your last meal or two of the day. Because at night you aren't burning energy then eating carbohydrates before you sleep will just cause the carbohydrates to be stored as fat. Sound advice.
This is why peanut butter is 'good' for bodybuilding. At night either as a last 'meal' or as a midnight snack if you wake up hungry you can eat peanuts or peanuts crushed up into a butter like consistency and get some muscle building protein and slow release energy from the good fats which will stay in your stomach longer than carbohydrates and help you keep a muscle building positive nitrogen balance throughout the night.
The slowly releasing peanut butter protein and fats will also help those like me who cannot go to sleep on an empty stomach as the fats help satiate hunger.
Also for bodybuilding peanut butter is a very easy to grab and eat protein source in the middle of the night with no preparation time. Eat a couple big spoonfuls of peanut butter, wash it down with a glass of milk (or water if you are dieting) and you can pop back into bed without hardly waking up.
That is it. For bodybuilding peanut butter has no magical ingredients, in fact there is no difference between eating it and eating peanuts, just that peanut butter sounds a lot nicer to bodybuilders who usually avoid fats.
Peanut butter and bodybuilding? Yes it does make sense if you eat it late with no carbohydrates, and only if the peanut butter is natural. Or you could just eat some peanuts.
|
