What is nutrient partitioning? at He's Fit

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What is nutrient partitioning?

Posted September 25, 2007 at 02:00 PM by Mark Scott

Section: In The News, His Health, Physical Health, His Nutrition, Healthy Eating

When on a bulking type of plan, trying to add lean muscle mass to your frame, one thing you particularly want to concern yourself with is nutrient partitioning.

Nutrient partitioning is basically what happens whenever you feed your body some food. As the food digests, the body will secrete a variety of hormones to take in the nutrients where they will either be used for energy, used to rebuild muscle and other bodily tissues or stored as body fat. The better nutrient partitioning you have, the more the calories will be used to rebuild any damaged muscle tissue or build up new muscle tissue rather than go straight to bodyfat.

Since when you are on a bulking plan you will be taking in a higher number of calories than you require per day to exist (in hopes of building new muscle tissue), you obviously want your partitioning level to be at its highest. This will help to ensure that most of the weight you put on is muscle as opposed to fat.

So what can you do to improve your nutrient partitioning?

The first thing you can do is trying to take in more of your calories right around your workout period. This is when your body is really going to be in need of carbohydrates and protein and will be most readily able to use them. Doing so will also help to provide you with a maximum amount of energy for your workouts so that you are better able to push yourself 100% when you need to be.

The next thing you can do to improve nutrient partitioning is make sure you get enough rest and sleep. If you don’t, your body is going to start secreting a higher level of cortisol (the stress hormone) and a high level of this will promote the storage of abdominal fat. If you are taking in excess calories this process will even be further enhanced and you could wind up looking very differently than what you were hoping for.

Finally the last thing you can do when trying to improve muscle partitioning is to keep some cardio work into your program. If you are trying to gain muscle you obviously don’t want to be doing large amounts of cardio as that will only hinder your progress, however small amounts should serve to keep fat levels at bay. Preferably you would do 2-3 sessions per week, keeping them to around twenty to thirty minutes. If you liked you could add one session of higher intensity interval training in (this is the best kind of cardio in terms of improving nutrient partitioning) however with that you really need to be sure to balance it with the rest of your workouts because if you don’t it could really lead to overtraining or the loss of muscle tissue.

So keep these factors in mind if you are about to increase your calorie level as winter approaches and work on building muscle. It is usually the approach most people take, use the winter as a time to build muscle and then the spring and summer as a time to lean out so you can look good for the warmer weather. With any luck though, if you make use of these tips your leaning out process will not be all that bad in the first place.

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Tags: fat mass gains, fitness, health, how to gain lean muscle mass, lean mass gains, men's health, men's nutrition, nutrient partitioning, preventing fat gain

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10 Responses to “What is nutrient partitioning?” (Leave a reply)

Zack B. Timmons said:

Nice informative article.
Keep up the good work.
September 25, 2007 at 10:32 PM
Vitamin Discussion said:

I really learned something about nutrition and how I should cook my food in order to keep the vitamins. Thanks!
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