Eat fish to boost your muscle growth

When it comes to the “best” bodybuilding foods, chicken and beef are usually ranked ahead of fish. Besides canned tuna, the protein found in fish isn’’t as highly regarded as other types of meat. But we think seafood should get its due, considering it not only helps build muscle, but it’s a great way to protect your health too.

You can choose among any virtually fat-free fillets, such as flounder and sole, or higher-fat versions like salmon—few foods on Earth are as good a source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids as salmon.

Now, we’re not saying that chicken and beef shouldn’t remain in your bodybuilding nutrition plan—they definitely should—but fish should play an important role, too, as it offers certain advantages over other sources of protein. Here are reasons seafood dishes should be a significant part of your diet.

Fish is lean

When you’’re dieting to shed bodyfat, you have to balance different objectives and cutting total calories, reducing fats and carbs, and simultaneously increasing protein consumption. Rely on lean fish as a staple of your diet because it meets all these objectives. Fish is also a great food to turn to during a diet when weight loss slows. Before cutting back further on carb consumption when you hit a plateau, try replacing much of your dietary protein which naturally contains fat with lean types of fish. Lean fish has less fat than most lean cuts of meat. You’ll be able to take in the same amount of protein, yet consume fewer calories. This will allow you to keep carbs at a relatively moderate intake level and you won’t feel too depleted. Switching to fish in the middle of a diet can help delay the necessity of lowering your carb consumption.

To get ripped, include the following types of seafood in your diet: sole, tuna, flounder, haddock, scallops, shrimp and crab. These are all extremely low in fat and high in protein.

Fish contains healthy fats

It’s absolutely no surprise that of all the sources of calories and— carbohydrates, protein and dietary fat and the one that is most “fattening” is dietary fat. That’s because fat is more efficiently stored as body fat than carbs or protein. But there’s an exception: healthy fats, such as those found in fish. The healthy fats in fish and— the omega-3 fatty acids are less likely to be stored as body fat than the fats from sources such as chicken legs, beef, egg yolks or vegetable oil. The fat consumed from fish is prioritized for important physiological processes and only after those jobs have been completed does it tend to exert an effect on body fat storage. These jobs include sparing the breakdown and burning of glutamine, the all-important amino acid that prevents muscle loss; supporting the production of growth hormone; and increasing the formation of muscle glycogen.

With respect to glycogen, fish fat helps funnel carbs into muscles, which not only contributes to muscle growth but also compromises the body’s ability to create body fat from carbohydrates. How so? When glycogen storage increases, the body’’s ability to make body fat from carbohydrates correspondingly decreases. One dieting secret is that the leaner you get, the more difficult it becomes to store fat from fish as body fat.

A precontest bodybuilder who has done his homework can get away with eating a lot of fish high in fat with little worry of adding body fat. This fat also prevents muscle breakdown and can enhance muscle growth.