Muscle Building Diet

A proper diet is crucial the health, because by giving your body the necessary nutrients, you ensure its optimal health and development. That statement was never truer than for body building. During body building, a lot of strain is put on the body and therefore an increased need for proper nutrition becomes apparent. An improper diet can work against you when trying to build muscle, so it’s very important to be aware of what a muscle building diet consists of. Here are a few guidelines to show you what you should be eating when trying to build muscle.

There are two determining factors in any muscle building diet. For one thing, it’s very important to consume the proper amount of calories. If the intake is too low, your body will start suffering, and if the intake is too high, you will start depositing fat. For another thing, the percentage of carbohydrates, protein and fat in your diet must be appropriate to muscle building. With that in mind, before being able to plan a muscle building diet for yourself, you need to know what your necessary calorie intake is. Your necessary intake can be calculated quite simply through the following formula:

BMR (basal metabolic rate) + amount of calories used during activity + 10% TEF (thermic effect of food)
The basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy your body uses while at rest in a neutral environment and without the existence of any digestive processes, and is about 2000 calories for an average person.
That means 2000 (BMR) + 500 (activity) + 250 (TEF) = 2750
The result of this formula represents the required amount of calories needed to maintain the current weight, but when building muscle mass, your daily calorie intake must exceeded your required amount. Knowing that every pound is gained through an excess of 3500 calories, and assuming you want to gain said pound over the course of one week, you’d need to have an excess 500 calories every day for that week. As a result, your muscle building diet should consist of 2750 + 500 = 3250 calories daily.

A proper muscle building diet is based on 30% protein, 50% carbohydrates and 20% fat, so considering that a gram of proteins and carbohydrates each contain 4 calories and a gram of fat contains 9 calories, you can use that information to calculate the exact amount of each food group you should eat.

As such, 30% of 3250=975, which means 243.75 grams of protein, 50% of 3250=1625, therefore 406.25 grams of carbohydrates, and 20% of 325=650, so 72.2 grams of fat.

Muscle building diet proteins can mostly be found in milk and dairy products, meat and eggs, while cereal and potato based meals are carbohydrate rich, and oils, nuts, fish, avocado and olives are full of healthy fats. Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are also essential for any muscle building diet, but their benefits are not limited to body building and expand from helping blood circulation problems to anti-cancerous properties. Omega-3 and omega-6 rich foods are fish, flax and flax oil, eggs and poultry meat, as well as whole grain baked goods and vegetable oils.

The use of a specific muscle building diet is very important for the success of your body building and by following the guidelines we provided, you can create your own balanced diet to sustain your gym efforts.