Say the word ‘calorie’ to the average person, and they picture junk food and obese people in poor health. Most people are not aware that a calorie is nothing but a measurements used for the amount of energy in food — energy in all food.
It probably strikes terror into their hearts then, when they learn that they have to increase their calorie intake in order to build muscle. The first thing that they are going to think is that more calories equals more fat. And it won’t. Not to somebody who isn’t training with weights, that is.
When you train with weights you create such a demand on your body to repair the damaged muscle tissue that fat storage is greatly reduced compared to somebody eating more calories but does not train with weights or burn the calories off. They will get fat.
The fact of the matter is, in order for anything to get bigger or more powerful, it needs more energy. This also goes for your body. Because calories are energy this means that you need to take in more calories in order to support muscle growth. You cannot build muscles greater in size without also taking in a greater amount of calories.
Of course, there are limits. Any excesses in calories not used up by the muscles to build themselves will be stored as fat. That is why it is the responsibility of the trainee to monitor exactly how much they are eating and to be wary of making any huge gains in weight over a short time which usually indicates a lot of fat gains.
If you do put fat on though, don’t worry. After you’ve finished gaining muscle mass you can then begin a cutting phase where you reduce calories just enough to retain muscle mass but burn off the excess fat. It just makes things far easier for you and far quicker if you keep fat games to a minimum to begin with.