Do you have questions about nutrition? Send them to us at comer@lavanguardia.es, our nutritionist Aitor Sánchez will solve all your doubts.
I am a man and I am 58 years old. Every week, I do three days of 8 km running and two of 1h strength. I would like to know what is the preferred diet to gain muscle mass. Also if I should take any supplements. Thanks and regards. (Luis Maron, reader)
Hi Luis,
First of all, I would like to remind you that in order to gain muscle mass, three essential conditions must be met within your diet and training:
1) that there is sufficient amount of energy
2) that there is sufficient amount of protein
3) that there is a muscular stimulus to generate this hypertrophy
From what you tell me about your physical activity, and although it would be necessary to go into more detail about it, the amount of strength training you dedicate per week could be insufficient to gain muscle effectively. It is true that two hours a week in very untrained people can trigger hypertrophy, but you would surely achieve your goal by spending more time on it.
It is also important that there is an excess of energy so that your body can store it in the form of muscle. Keep an eye on this because when training for a race we increase caloric consumption. It is far from recommended to lower the cardio sessions per week, in fact they will help you have an active recovery and alternate with your goals of gaining muscle mass, but I would focus more on strength training.
As for supplements, it makes no sense to recommend any without knowing what your diet is like, but you could consider taking protein or creatine monohydrate supplements with a nutritionist if you consider it consistent with your diet at the moment. Good luck.
Hello. I thought I read that some weight loss medication is being investigated, but I don’t know if it’s true. Do you know if there is any pill that helps to lose weight and that is already on sale? Thank you so much. (Mari Carmen García, reader)
Thanks for the question Mari Carmen. Weight loss drug research has been active for decades trying to find an effective pill that can have significant results. Nothing has yet been found that by itself is a guarantee, given that overweight and obesity are very complex situations and can never be addressed with a medication in isolation.
Even if this could be achieved in the future, we could not say that it is the recommended approach, in the end we should not consider being overweight or obese as a “reparable” condition, but rather as a consequence of habits over the years. If these habits are maintained, the health effects will continue to be pernicious.
Clarify you that where advances have been found have been in drugs especially aimed at reducing appetite. Other areas of research have been more controversial, such as those drugs that increase energy expenditure, but giving worse results and undesirable side effects.
Today the best strategy for healthy weight loss is a healthy diet and good physical activity habits.
