4 ms·

Have you tried eating more fat? I've heard that, by gram, muscles are made mostly of fat, then carbs, and then a little bit of protein.

imanaccount247 12y ago
By weight, muscle is mostly water.
vidarh 12y ago
Eating more fat makes meeting the protein goals even harder because fat also sate you. You need some fat - too little is dangerous - and I don't really bother care about my fat intake other than making sure it's comfortably into safe levels (getting too little is actually a concern for me when trying to maximize protein, but it's not hard) As for weight of muscles, the dry weight of muscle of someone who is fat will probably consist of more fat than protein, but muscle synthesis is driven by amino acids (the constituent parts of proteins), and the muscle fibres which is what gives you your strength is pretty much all protein. Everyone will store some fat in cells in/around their muscles, but getting more fat in your diet has very limited effect on your ability to synthesise muscle. You may appear to get bigger muscles due to added fat, but you won't get stronger (and you'll lose definition, which is more of a body builder concern). Basically you need amino acids, and while the body can synthesise a good chunk of the needed amino acids from other food-stuffs, if you want to add muscle there's nothing that's as efficient as getting protein, optionally supplemented with some amino acids (getting the optimal proportion of the "big three" amino acids for adding muscle - leucine, valine and isoleucine - from food sources is hard; once you get to advanced levels of lifting, you may be able eek out some tiny added benefits from branched-chain amino acid supplements that contain just those).
- tiglionabbit 12y ago
  I guess I was thinking about saturated fat and cholesterol helping out with connective tissue. I don't know the details though.

imanaccount247 12y ago

By weight, muscle is mostly water.

vidarh 12y ago

Eating more fat makes meeting the protein goals even harder because fat also sate you. You need some fat - too little is dangerous - and I don't really bother care about my fat intake other than making sure it's comfortably into safe levels (getting too little is actually a concern for me when trying to maximize protein, but it's not hard) As for weight of muscles, the dry weight of muscle of someone who is fat will probably consist of more fat than protein, but muscle synthesis is driven by amino acids (the constituent parts of proteins), and the muscle fibres which is what gives you your strength is pretty much all protein. Everyone will store some fat in cells in/around their muscles, but getting more fat in your diet has very limited effect on your ability to synthesise muscle. You may appear to get bigger muscles due to added fat, but you won't get stronger (and you'll lose definition, which is more of a body builder concern). Basically you need amino acids, and while the body can synthesise a good chunk of the needed amino acids from other food-stuffs, if you want to add muscle there's nothing that's as efficient as getting protein, optionally supplemented with some amino acids (getting the optimal proportion of the "big three" amino acids for adding muscle - leucine, valine and isoleucine - from food sources is hard; once you get to advanced levels of lifting, you may be able eek out some tiny added benefits from branched-chain amino acid supplements that contain just those).

tiglionabbit 12y ago
I guess I was thinking about saturated fat and cholesterol helping out with connective tissue. I don't know the details though.