Mass gainers: it's time to bulk up!
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Are you a bodybuilder, a fitness fanatic or simply a sports enthusiast who would like to shape your physique as you wish? If we talk about cycling phases, bulking and cutting, you will already know exactly what we mean.
Autumn and winter are the best time of year to organise your training and nutrition programme with the aim of increasing muscle mass. Traditionally, for aesthetic and socio-cultural as well as practical reasons, this part of the year is used by a great many fitness lovers, in search of their best physical shape, to increase their muscle mass in percentage, strength and volume.
Autumn and winter are the seasons in which nature deploys all its biological and evolutionary forces to preserve the species, gather as much energy as possible and store it to use sparingly during the months of scarcity. Many animals, for example, even before humans, regulate themselves to cope with the hardships of a long period such as hibernation. The human body, too, regulates itself differently depending on the season, through different hormone production.
To get to the heart of the matter, during the so-called “bulking” phase you need to eat more if you want to grow. Increasing calorie intake shifts the body's homeostatic balance which, given the increase in nutrients consumed, tends to store the excess and “stow it away” in adipose and muscle tissue, especially if this increase goes hand in hand with a specific training plan; this simplification could in fact lead to an increase in weight, and therefore in mass, which should however be directed towards lean mass rather than fat mass.
Certainly the increase in calorie intake, just like cutting calories during a weight-loss phase, should be done gradually and in small steps, giving the body time to get used to managing the new balance. From a dietary point of view, the composition of meals, as well as the quantities, also becomes important: besides increasing the overall and specific quantities of certain macros (protein, for example, might remain unchanged in this phase while carbohydrates see the biggest increases), the combination of different macros also has its own specific role.
For the same number of calories, in fact, it will certainly help more to eat meals that combine carbohydrates and protein, rather than meals with carbohydrates only or protein only, because of the increased post-prandial insulin levels linked to carbohydrates and therefore, in turn, the increased ability of cells to take up nutrients.
These theoretical and practical principles underpin the research behind the formulation of supplement products, in powder form (the well-known mass gainers or mega mass products, all names that refer to muscle mass and whose results should lead to muscle growth) or in bars, used in this phase.
People very often ask whether mass gainers or protein are better.
Concentrations of carbohydrates, especially complex ones in the form of maltodextrins, combined with high biological value proteins, are the ideal mix for optimising the nutritional process.
In this period, increasing calorie intake in favour of carbohydrates rather than protein could also limit the thermogenic effect of proteins which, given their greater molecular complexity, burn more calories during digestion than carbohydrates do, partly cancelling out the calorie increase itself.
The best mass gainer we have formulated is PROMEAL, developed precisely on the basis of these principles, with added creatine to improve muscle trophism. And that's not all: the addition of carnitine and ornithine significantly improves the ability to use fats and vascularisation, all with a view to better directing macronutrients towards lean mass rather than fat mass. Available in tubs and single-serve sachets, in many different flavours.
If, on the other hand, you prefer a more practical product to carry with you at all times, the PROMEAL ZONE bar range could be just right for you: balanced bars calibrated to specific, varied macronutrient concentrations.
Autumn and winter are the best time of year to organise your training and nutrition programme with the aim of increasing muscle mass. Traditionally, for aesthetic and socio-cultural as well as practical reasons, this part of the year is used by a great many fitness lovers, in search of their best physical shape, to increase their muscle mass in percentage, strength and volume.
Autumn and winter are the seasons in which nature deploys all its biological and evolutionary forces to preserve the species, gather as much energy as possible and store it to use sparingly during the months of scarcity. Many animals, for example, even before humans, regulate themselves to cope with the hardships of a long period such as hibernation. The human body, too, regulates itself differently depending on the season, through different hormone production.
To get to the heart of the matter, during the so-called “bulking” phase you need to eat more if you want to grow. Increasing calorie intake shifts the body's homeostatic balance which, given the increase in nutrients consumed, tends to store the excess and “stow it away” in adipose and muscle tissue, especially if this increase goes hand in hand with a specific training plan; this simplification could in fact lead to an increase in weight, and therefore in mass, which should however be directed towards lean mass rather than fat mass.
Certainly the increase in calorie intake, just like cutting calories during a weight-loss phase, should be done gradually and in small steps, giving the body time to get used to managing the new balance. From a dietary point of view, the composition of meals, as well as the quantities, also becomes important: besides increasing the overall and specific quantities of certain macros (protein, for example, might remain unchanged in this phase while carbohydrates see the biggest increases), the combination of different macros also has its own specific role.
For the same number of calories, in fact, it will certainly help more to eat meals that combine carbohydrates and protein, rather than meals with carbohydrates only or protein only, because of the increased post-prandial insulin levels linked to carbohydrates and therefore, in turn, the increased ability of cells to take up nutrients.
These theoretical and practical principles underpin the research behind the formulation of supplement products, in powder form (the well-known mass gainers or mega mass products, all names that refer to muscle mass and whose results should lead to muscle growth) or in bars, used in this phase.
People very often ask whether mass gainers or protein are better.
Concentrations of carbohydrates, especially complex ones in the form of maltodextrins, combined with high biological value proteins, are the ideal mix for optimising the nutritional process.
In this period, increasing calorie intake in favour of carbohydrates rather than protein could also limit the thermogenic effect of proteins which, given their greater molecular complexity, burn more calories during digestion than carbohydrates do, partly cancelling out the calorie increase itself.
The best mass gainer we have formulated is PROMEAL, developed precisely on the basis of these principles, with added creatine to improve muscle trophism. And that's not all: the addition of carnitine and ornithine significantly improves the ability to use fats and vascularisation, all with a view to better directing macronutrients towards lean mass rather than fat mass. Available in tubs and single-serve sachets, in many different flavours.
If, on the other hand, you prefer a more practical product to carry with you at all times, the PROMEAL ZONE bar range could be just right for you: balanced bars calibrated to specific, varied macronutrient concentrations.
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