The real reason bodybuilding is difficult

Not everyone knows this, but I've started moderately-serious bodybuilding. That is to say, compared to real bodybuilders, not serious at all; but compared to the average guy on the street, pretty serious.

Diet is the most important part of bodybuilding. Not many bodybuilders will argue that fact: you have to eat properly or your body just doesn't put on muscle. For me to have the maximum chance of building muscle without the calories turning into fat, I need to eat about 3000 calories per day.

That's HARD. I never expected it to be so difficult to eat a LOT. Of course, I could just eat greasy, crappy food and get the calories from saturated fat and everything else, but there's two reasons not to. The first is that I want to maintain overall health while building muscle.

The second reason is turning out to be a nightmare. In order to give my body the right fuel it needs to build muscle without putting on fat, I need to eat 175 grams of protein a day. If you've never done this before, you should look around at how much protein is in the various foods you eat. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Anyway, because the weather was so unseasonably nice today, I decided to take my bike out and ended up riding 17 miles. Lovely day for it.

Since I burned an addition 900 calories and it's a lifting night so that's on top of another workout I have coming up, I figured I'd treat myself for lunch. I went to Steak-n-Shake, because I really dig those jalapeno burgers they make. And I figured, it's a burger, it's got lots of protein ... right?

Bull. Check it out, a Steak-n-Shake burger has 25 grams of protein and 700 calories. Which means that if I eat nothing but them, I'll have to eat 7 a day to get my required protein, but will also be hitting almost 5000 calories. This is why you hear stories about bodybuilders eating nothing but boiled chicken all day long. It's not that they're avoiding fat or anything like that, it's just that it's really hard to get all the protein you need each day without making yourself sick. I mean, even ignoring the calorie surplus, who the hell can eat 7 burgers a day without being ill?

Working out is difficult. To build muscle effectively you basically have to repeat a specific exercise until your muscles can not do any more, then somehow force your muscles to do one or two more (this overload is what triggers the growth response).

But (for me at least) eating in a way that gives my body the correct materials so that it can actually build muscle once that growth response has been triggered has been way more difficult. When I started, I figured that eating 3000 calories a day would be fun ... hell, I'll be eating all the time! Fact is, I am ... eating almost constantly, and sick of it.

So, between trying to eat more than my stomach thinks is wise, and trying to get enough of that food to be protein to be effective ... well, let's just say I'm challenged.