I used to have a very "bodybuilder" type mentality. I believed that in order to gain muscle, I had to eat every 2-3 hours. I believed that if I didn't eat protein at every meal, my muscles would vaporize. I believed that if I didn't get up at 2am in the morning to chug a whey protein shake, my entire body would go catabolic.
Man those were crazy days.
And as crazy as it sounds, there are thousands of guys out there today that believe the very same things I stated above. But what if I told you there was a way to build muscle without constantly eating. What if I said that fasting could actually help you build muscle. But before you understand how fasting can help you build muscle. You need to understand autophagy.
What is autophagy?
Put simply by Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat:
"Autophagy is a process within your body that is responsible for degrading damaged and defective organelles, cell membranes and proteins. Basically it's your body's internal 'maintenance system' where it identifies and discards damaged or malfunctioning parts of a cell.
Simply put, autophagy is the clean up that needs to happen before growth and repair can occur."
And guess what?
Fasting greatly enhances autophagy.
On muscle growth, Brad said:
"Autophagy is actually necessary to maintain muscle mass, and inhibition/alteration of autophagy can contribute to myofibril degeneration (degeneration of individual muscle fiber) and weakness in certain types of muscle disorders...
You wouldn't want autophagy on all the time (fasting for weeks on end is probably not the best thing you could do for your muscle), but you do need a healthy balance of autophagy and growth for the optimal functioning of the human body (Year-long bulking cycles are probably also a bad idea)."
So in a nutshell:
Eating every 2-3 hours is not necessary to gain muscle. Fasting every now and then, could potentially help you gain muscle. You can't constantly bulk and expect all those excess calories to help you gain muscle...you're just going to get fat. Hope that helps clear up some confusion!
