Drink Milk For Muscle? Is it a Good Idea?

Should you drink milk for muscle gains? Roman does a great job explaining why in this video. Today we’re going to talk about one of the most frequently asked nutrition questions. It’s about something important, something that’s perhaps insidious, and something that you probably have in your kitchen. It’s about milk.

Milk. Good or Bad? Yay or Nay? Friend or Foe? To answer that question, milk is really good for two distinct types of people. We’re going to talk about when you should drink milk, and when you shouldn’t drink milk.

Drink Milk for Muscle – Popular Advice in Bodybuilding Forums

As you know, milk is often quoted on bodybuilding forums as one of the two components of building big muscles. Usually, the bigger guys will just tell you that all you need is squats and milk. For a lot of people, they’re not wrong. If you’re a skinny guy trying to pack on muscle, milk has a lot of extra calories. Even skim milk has some extra protein in it. There’s 110 calories in a glass of skim milk. So if you’re a skinny guy trying to pack on some mass and you want to take in 2000 extra calories throughout the day, drinking milk can get you on your way. If you’re really really thin and you don’t have a problem with fat storage or you’re not really concerned with it because you’re just trying to gain mass, milk can be your friend.

The other time it’s good is just for general fitness. If you’re not taking a dedicated post-workout supplement, milk can actually be really good. It’s very very sugary and if we’re talking about skim milk in particular, because the fat content is lower, the glycemic index is higher. The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly the sugars in a given food or drink will affect your insulin levels. A high glycemic index means it will spike your insulin levels and for post-workout, that’s very very good. It creates an environment suitable for storage and so all of the proteins and other nutrients you’re taking in post-workout are going to be shuttled a little bit more directly into your muscles where you need them and help offset some of the micro-trauma you’ve created during the course of your workout. So again, if you’re trying to gain mass in general or if you’re just a regular person who’s not trying to gain mass you can use milk, skim milk, or even chocolate milk post workout. Check out Alan Aragon’s blog, he had an interesting little post about chocolate milk post workout.

What about people who are trying to lose fat? For those people, nay. Don’t drink milk. Again, it is very very sugary, and you’re going to run into a few problems. If you drink full fat milk, obviously, you’re taking in a lot of saturated fat and it’s not the good kind of saturated fat. It’s basically a huge boatload of calories in liquid form. If you’re trying to lose fat, what you really shouldn’t do is drink your calories. If you’re talking about skim milk, now you’re running into that same problem that it’s very very sugary, it’s got that high glycemic index, spiking your insulin all over the place. If it’s any time other than immediately pre or post workout, that’s not what you want because again, you’re going to create an environment very very suitable for the storage of fat. You don’t want to do that.
If you are on a fat loss diet and you still want to use milk, what you’re going to want to do is to pick up some sort of substitute. Almond milk, for example, though it’s not really milk, is an almond non-dairy beverage. It’s made from soaking almonds and then grinding them up and then straining water with some cheesecloth along with some sorcery, etc etc. Anyway, they milk almonds, and it’s actually not bad. You can get them unsweetened and low-fat. It’s only 40 calories per serving. It has roughly 1/3 of the calories in milk. This is something that you could use to put in your coffee, or eating cereal (which is not recommended on fat loss diets by the way), you could use almond milk in the place of regular milk. You’re cutting down on your calories and sugar.

The only time that it’s probably ok to use regular milk is when you’re eating cookies. Because, fine, it’s a cheat day anyway. If you have cheat days, then go ahead and drink milk. Not sure if you’ve heard of the diet called “Cheat Your Way Thin.” If you haven’t heard of it, check it out.
To summarize, the two times to drink milk is if you are either trying to gain weight or for post workout. Other than that, stick to the low-calorie substitutes. So the “drink milk for muscle” advice sounds better in theory than in practice.

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