Sometimes, the information you receive turns out to be flawed. For a while, everyone thought eggs were going to kill people off one by one. Then, low fat diets were the best way to lose weight. After people got used to that, high fat and low carb diets were the weight loss trend du jour. It’s hard to rely on medical and diet advice. When you’re a bodybuilder, you need to know what kind of information to trust.
What might surprise you is that cholesterol is necessary for your body, your health, and your muscle building routine. If you believe everything you read, cholesterol is horrible for you and contributes to heart disease and high blood pressure.
Sometimes.
But, it’s not as awful as you think. In fact, you need it.
Cholesterol is important for your brain health. More importantly to bodybuilders, it helps your body create important hormones like testosterone.
Cholesterol + Testosterone = Bigger Muscles
Testosterone is more than a valuable sex hormone. It also triggers your muscle development. When testosterone is surging through your body, a number of things are happening. First, you’re energized. You have the motivation and the drive to keep working out. This flush of hormonal support provides a lot of physical and mental perks.
The extra testosterone also squashes stress hormones that can get in the way of building muscle. When your stress hormones have control, your body will be more likely to store fat and less likely to build muscle. So, you need that testosterone to keep your strength levels stable.
Testosterone will both protect your body against muscle loss and help you develop new muscle tissue. It triggers the reproduction of cells that are necessary to building tissue and strength. You can find testosterone supplements, but your body also makes it organically. With the right cholesterol levels, your testosterone levels will stay where they should.
In addition to making you stronger, cholesterol will also help you sleep better. It will keep you sharper and more focused. The surge in testosterone will also help you feel better about your performance in the bedroom.
How to Limit the Risks of Cholesterol
This isn’t to say you should ignore cholesterol warnings altogether. However, you don’t have to worry as much if you make a couple of lifestyle changes. Most of these things are part of your life already. As a serious bodybuilder, you take an athletic approach to living your life, and you don’t engage in unhealthy behaviors anyway.
Avoid problems with cholesterol by exercising regularly. You do this already.
Manage your stress and avoid smoking. The lifting you do will likely help you keep your stress levels lowered, and hopefully you care about your body enough not to smoke.
Finally, increase the amount of antioxidants you get in your diet so you can keep your heart health strong and protect yourself against heart disease and stroke.
Cholesterol drugs contribute billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies, so they’re going to keep pressing the news that cholesterol is dangerous. It can be dangerous in certain circumstances, but as a healthy bodybuilder who is serious about diet and exercise, you don’t have to worry about avoiding all foods that contain cholesterol.
Healthy foods that contain cholesterol include olive oil, beans, legumes, whole grains, fish that are high in omega-3 fats, and high fiber fruits. You don’t want to cut those things out of your diet. Eat your eggs.
When you’re watching what you eat carefully because you’re trying to create the body of your dreams, you have to be careful about the latest diet fads. It’s easy to believe a lot of the hype that’s out there, especially when they make it sound like you are in immediate danger. As a bodybuilder, you need to trust your body and your instincts. You know when you’re feeling good, and you know what works. Eat well and keep working out.