Anabolic Foods

Anabolic is an interesting term. It is thrown around a lot with respect to training, diet, supplements, and foods, but not usually defined or at best loosely defined So what does anabolic mean?

With respect to exercise, especially bodybuilding, anabolic means muscle promoting. Anything that promotes (or helps with) muscle growth is by definition anabolic.

It can refer to exercise, food, and even rest.

The opposite of anabolic is catabolic. Catabolic refers to anything that breaks down muscle.

An example: weight lifting, in fact any resistance training unless carried out to the point of over training, is anabolic. It promotes muscle growth. We’ll skip over the detail that muscle growth actual occurs during recovery for now!

Running a marathon as well as training for it is catabolic. Any long duration endurance training and events are catabolic.
Weight lifters tend to be large and muscular, while marathon runners tend to be incredibly lean and have little muscle. Of course there are exceptions, but it would be fair to say that any remotely world class marathon runner is incredibly lean and carried little muscle mass.

When it comes to foods, we know that protein is anabolic. We tend to use the term anabolic referring to foods for healthy foods which promote muscle growth.

Now not all anabolic foods are necessarily protein rich, but most are. An example is spinach, much like Popeye ate. Research shows that spinach helps build muscles, although the mechanism of how is not understood.

The average body builder trying to improve their physique will concentrate on healthy and anabolic foods. Examples include eggs, egg whites, beans of almost any type, meat (preferably low fat and grass fed), protein powder and more.

Catabolic foods? Think unhealthy junk foods. Certainly potato chips, pasta, pizza, cake, candy, sweets, and many other foods that many of us love and crave. Eating in moderation, these foods are OK. In general they are catabolic because they fill us up and replace anabolic or healthy foods.

You may have heard the term anabolic cooking before, which is the healthy cooking of protein rich and generally low fat foods. Cooking of any type, including healthy anabolic cooking does not need to be difficult or hard at all. It requires a minimum of skill, cooking equipment, and food supplies.

Sometimes we can take a relatively unhealthy food, and make it anabolic by making small changes to the recipe. For example, in lots of baked goods (including super easy to make muffins), we can replace some of the flour with protein powder. You can find plenty of recipes and ideas online.

My recommendation to all body builders, regardless of how serious, is that they learn a few simple anabolic recipes they enjoy. These might include a killer chef salad, and egg and egg white omelet, and almost anything else.

When you are cooking, you have total control of what goes in your food, and that is very very good, especially if you want to be eating healthy and anabolic foods!

And besides, cooking is easy, saves money, and is fun once you get into it.