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Muscle Building Nutrition 101
Shawn Lebrun asked:
Correct muscle building nutrition and a quality muscle building diet are often the most neglected parts of a weight training program.
Building muscle requires the right nutrition. Make no mistake, it’s an essential part of weight lifting and if you want to build muscle, you have to get it done. Bottom line — if you want to build muscle, you need to consume quality calories.
How many calories?
You need to consume more total calories in your muscle building diet than your body uses each day. It’s important to understand that the human body is constantly working, using and storing energy day and night.
It’s also very important to understand that in order to keep the machine rolling, you need to know what and how much to feed it. This is the single most important element in the muscle building process.
You need to feed your body a correct balance of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat. Complete muscle building nutrition is the key. If you can find this key, your muscle building efforts will sky rocket.
Complete muscle building nutrition leads to optimal nutrition and optimal results. Over supplementation of certain nutrients will lead to imbalances in overall nutrition and is damaging to your weight lifting diet and health.
It is very important that you understand the importance of nutrition when building muscle. Without good nutrition and diet, your muscle gains will be non-existent and at best, poor.
As a muscle builder, it’s important that you get your muscle building nutrition down to a science. Your success is dependent on a well-balanced and complete diet that includes your optimal nutritional intake.
Poor dietary habits will hinder your progress and may eventually lead to injury to muscles and bones because they are not supplied with the nutrients needed to support the added stress of weight lifting.
What builds muscle?
Protein builds muscle. Without an adequate supply of protein, your body will not support any kind of muscle growth. If you supply your body with the optimum amount of protein, you ensure optimal growth; it’s as simple as that.
After all, you want to build muscle and to do that, you need a steady supply of high quality protein. You must include an optimal amount of protein in your muscle building diet in order to build and sustain muscle growth.
So how much protein should you include in your muscle building nutrition for maximum performance and muscle gain? Each of us has very different body types and the amount of protein will differ from individual to individual.
Protein intake will also depend on the amount of activity involved and how frequently you do it.
Your muscle building diet should be comprised of 30% to 40% protein, or about 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. You will have to do a bit of experimenting at the beginning to find out your optimal protein intake.
What fuels muscle?
If you want to build muscle, you’re going to have to take in a lot of quality, complex carbohydrates. No question about it. You are going to have to fuel your body to handle heavy weight lifting.
You must include an optimal amount of carbohydrates in your muscle building nutrition program in order to fuel heavy weight lifting sessions.
Carbohydrates are a very important source of fuel for the muscles as well as the leading source of energy for your body. When you have a hard workout, your body draws on carbohydrates, which is stored as glycogen in the muscles.
Glycogen is the product of glucose, which comes from the breakdown of carbohydrates after the digestion of food. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscle.
During a long intense muscle building session, you can easily deplete your glycogen reserves. When your muscles cannot get enough glycogen, fatigue sets in and your body begins to lose endurance and performance drastically reduces.
However, there is a way to delay the onset of muscle fatigue. By taking enough carbohydrates each day in your muscle building diet, you are ensuring that the amount of glycogen stored in the muscles is being constantly replenished.
Every meal must have sufficient carbohydrates to sustain your hard intense workouts It is suggested that your muscle building diet consist of 40% carbohydrates. If you want to build muscle, you need quality carbs every meal.
If you don’t consume enough quality carbohydrates, your body will resort to other fuel sources such as protein.
Protein is a second rate energy source. Protein’s primary job is to build muscle, not fuel it. Therefore, keep your body filled with grade A fuel to support and maximize your hard, intense muscle building workouts.
If you use the tips written above in making your own personal muscle building nutrition, you’ll be a lot healthier and you’ll succeed in having the rock-hard body you’ve always wanted.
But this can happen only by having good muscle building nutrition.
Muscle Growth
Correct muscle building nutrition and a quality muscle building diet are often the most neglected parts of a weight training program.
Building muscle requires the right nutrition. Make no mistake, it’s an essential part of weight lifting and if you want to build muscle, you have to get it done. Bottom line — if you want to build muscle, you need to consume quality calories.
How many calories?
You need to consume more total calories in your muscle building diet than your body uses each day. It’s important to understand that the human body is constantly working, using and storing energy day and night.
It’s also very important to understand that in order to keep the machine rolling, you need to know what and how much to feed it. This is the single most important element in the muscle building process.
You need to feed your body a correct balance of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat. Complete muscle building nutrition is the key. If you can find this key, your muscle building efforts will sky rocket.
Complete muscle building nutrition leads to optimal nutrition and optimal results. Over supplementation of certain nutrients will lead to imbalances in overall nutrition and is damaging to your weight lifting diet and health.
It is very important that you understand the importance of nutrition when building muscle. Without good nutrition and diet, your muscle gains will be non-existent and at best, poor.
As a muscle builder, it’s important that you get your muscle building nutrition down to a science. Your success is dependent on a well-balanced and complete diet that includes your optimal nutritional intake.
Poor dietary habits will hinder your progress and may eventually lead to injury to muscles and bones because they are not supplied with the nutrients needed to support the added stress of weight lifting.
What builds muscle?
Protein builds muscle. Without an adequate supply of protein, your body will not support any kind of muscle growth. If you supply your body with the optimum amount of protein, you ensure optimal growth; it’s as simple as that.
After all, you want to build muscle and to do that, you need a steady supply of high quality protein. You must include an optimal amount of protein in your muscle building diet in order to build and sustain muscle growth.
So how much protein should you include in your muscle building nutrition for maximum performance and muscle gain? Each of us has very different body types and the amount of protein will differ from individual to individual.
Protein intake will also depend on the amount of activity involved and how frequently you do it.
Your muscle building diet should be comprised of 30% to 40% protein, or about 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. You will have to do a bit of experimenting at the beginning to find out your optimal protein intake.
What fuels muscle?
If you want to build muscle, you’re going to have to take in a lot of quality, complex carbohydrates. No question about it. You are going to have to fuel your body to handle heavy weight lifting.
You must include an optimal amount of carbohydrates in your muscle building nutrition program in order to fuel heavy weight lifting sessions.
Carbohydrates are a very important source of fuel for the muscles as well as the leading source of energy for your body. When you have a hard workout, your body draws on carbohydrates, which is stored as glycogen in the muscles.
Glycogen is the product of glucose, which comes from the breakdown of carbohydrates after the digestion of food. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscle.
During a long intense muscle building session, you can easily deplete your glycogen reserves. When your muscles cannot get enough glycogen, fatigue sets in and your body begins to lose endurance and performance drastically reduces.
However, there is a way to delay the onset of muscle fatigue. By taking enough carbohydrates each day in your muscle building diet, you are ensuring that the amount of glycogen stored in the muscles is being constantly replenished.
Every meal must have sufficient carbohydrates to sustain your hard intense workouts It is suggested that your muscle building diet consist of 40% carbohydrates. If you want to build muscle, you need quality carbs every meal.
If you don’t consume enough quality carbohydrates, your body will resort to other fuel sources such as protein.
Protein is a second rate energy source. Protein’s primary job is to build muscle, not fuel it. Therefore, keep your body filled with grade A fuel to support and maximize your hard, intense muscle building workouts.
If you use the tips written above in making your own personal muscle building nutrition, you’ll be a lot healthier and you’ll succeed in having the rock-hard body you’ve always wanted.
But this can happen only by having good muscle building nutrition.
Muscle Growth
Six “little-known” Muscle Building Tips Part 2
Vince Delmonte asked:
So you think you have heard everything there is to know about muscle building? If you have read everything, tried everything and heard everything about muscle building but still resemble the silouette of a Calvin Klien model instead of a buff fitness model than I promise these next three ‘little-known’ muscle building tips will accelerate your muscle gains immediately!
4. Never Train More Than 2 Days Consecqutively
But the bodybuilding magazines say to split up my program into 5 seperate days… Yes, I am more than familiar. I call these 5 day splits ‘drug programs.’ They treat your body simply as a ‘muscular system’ and neglect the other systems such as your central nervous system, hormonal system and immune system. Each of these systems have a unique part in muscle growth. Not to mention that these ‘drug programs’ only work if coupled with a few thousand dollars a month on drugs.
Just because you trained your chest on Monday does not mean your immune system, or hormonal system or central nervous system has FULLY recovered. What happens when you return to the gyn NOT FULLY recovered? Will you be able to lift more weight?
If you are not able to lift more weight than guess what happens to your level of fitness? It certainly will not go up because you will be depleting your energy reserves further into a deep, dark hole called ‘over-training.’ If you can not lift more weight or ‘out-do’ yourself from your previous workout than how do you expect to create any NEW muscle? It is literally impossible. Taking a full rest day every two days will minimize the chance of overtraining and ensure your energy reserves are replenished.
5. Go Home If You Are Not Stronger Than Last Workout
Multiple choice question:
Q. You train your chest on Monday and you averaged 4 sets of 8 with 225 pounds on bench press. This workout would be considered a personal best. Your following chest workout, let’s say five days later, you come to the gym with great anticipation to out-do your last workout. To your disappointment you discover that you can barely do 4 sets of 8 with 185 pounds this week. What happened?
A. Your body had not fully compensated from the previous workout and required a longer recovery period.
B. Who cares! You toughed it out and made the most of the workout.
C . Complain to the gym owner that his weight plates are messed up and you want a refund on your gym membership.
If you picked A than say hurray and pat yourself on the back. The rational decision would be to admit the recovery error, assess the factors that could of resulted from not fully recovering (did you take all your supplements, did you sleep enought, did you follow your nutrition plan etc) and plan for success next time. This is the ‘trial and error’ process.
The emotional and irrational trainee would take option B and slug it out. Consider what is actually happening when you take this approach to your workouts:
1) You will be using weights within your threshold so your muscles will simply laugh back at you because there is no new unaccumstomed stress on your muscles. Remember, your muscles only grow if you give them a reason to.
2) You will be training in the hole and prolong the period of time that it takes to come out of the hole and supercompensate.
3) You will have no new muscle to work with because you have not fully recovered or grown bigger so it will be literally impossible to lift more weight or more reps.
4) You will be using your precious energy reserves, that could be going towards building muscle, instead to fueling an useless workout.
5) You will lose motivation and grow frusturated and confused because of your lack of progress.
This is a very tough and mature training decision one must face. After commencing a workout, if you discover after a few sets that you are on tract for a crappy worout than I would suggest to drop the workout and go home. Plan to come back the next day. If your goals are to simply train to train, than you will probably not follow this rule. However, if your goal is to get huge muscles and pack inches of new muscle onto your frame than this is a critical training decision.
To ensure your trip to the gym does not go in complete vain – have a flexibility session to make use of the time and than try and pick up the cute receptionist phone number on your way out!
6. Find a mentor
What does this have to do with muscle building? Everything – finding a mentor can make all the difference in how much muscle you build! If you plan on becoming successful in the gym than surround yourself with someone who has already walked the path. Would you agree that the quickets way to achieve success is to find somone who has gone before you and done what you want to do – and model them.
So why do millions of fitness enthusiasts wander aimlessly following generic advice in text books, magazines or websites? Although these methods of learning can provide a theoretical perspective, they are absent in accountablity, a formal system, time and financial comittment and assessment of performance.
A wise mentor will guide you step-by-step of the way with a formal system that includes a higher level of comittment and accountablity on your part. You will be required to fulfill tasks, change habits, meet deadlines and perform at a higher level than you would without a mentor.
The premise of having a mentor is that he has been there and done that. He has walked in your shoes and will give you the appropriate advice in a timely fashion. If you do not perform and follow the advice than you are wasting the mentor’s time and he will ‘fire’ you! If you do perform and follow his advice than you will be successful and build the muscle you deserve in less time!
Serioulsly consider hiring a fitness coach, a personal trainer or anybody who has done what you wish to do and be prepared to elate the same results!
Muscle Growth
So you think you have heard everything there is to know about muscle building? If you have read everything, tried everything and heard everything about muscle building but still resemble the silouette of a Calvin Klien model instead of a buff fitness model than I promise these next three ‘little-known’ muscle building tips will accelerate your muscle gains immediately!
4. Never Train More Than 2 Days Consecqutively
But the bodybuilding magazines say to split up my program into 5 seperate days… Yes, I am more than familiar. I call these 5 day splits ‘drug programs.’ They treat your body simply as a ‘muscular system’ and neglect the other systems such as your central nervous system, hormonal system and immune system. Each of these systems have a unique part in muscle growth. Not to mention that these ‘drug programs’ only work if coupled with a few thousand dollars a month on drugs.
Just because you trained your chest on Monday does not mean your immune system, or hormonal system or central nervous system has FULLY recovered. What happens when you return to the gyn NOT FULLY recovered? Will you be able to lift more weight?
If you are not able to lift more weight than guess what happens to your level of fitness? It certainly will not go up because you will be depleting your energy reserves further into a deep, dark hole called ‘over-training.’ If you can not lift more weight or ‘out-do’ yourself from your previous workout than how do you expect to create any NEW muscle? It is literally impossible. Taking a full rest day every two days will minimize the chance of overtraining and ensure your energy reserves are replenished.
5. Go Home If You Are Not Stronger Than Last Workout
Multiple choice question:
Q. You train your chest on Monday and you averaged 4 sets of 8 with 225 pounds on bench press. This workout would be considered a personal best. Your following chest workout, let’s say five days later, you come to the gym with great anticipation to out-do your last workout. To your disappointment you discover that you can barely do 4 sets of 8 with 185 pounds this week. What happened?
A. Your body had not fully compensated from the previous workout and required a longer recovery period.
B. Who cares! You toughed it out and made the most of the workout.
C . Complain to the gym owner that his weight plates are messed up and you want a refund on your gym membership.
If you picked A than say hurray and pat yourself on the back. The rational decision would be to admit the recovery error, assess the factors that could of resulted from not fully recovering (did you take all your supplements, did you sleep enought, did you follow your nutrition plan etc) and plan for success next time. This is the ‘trial and error’ process.
The emotional and irrational trainee would take option B and slug it out. Consider what is actually happening when you take this approach to your workouts:
1) You will be using weights within your threshold so your muscles will simply laugh back at you because there is no new unaccumstomed stress on your muscles. Remember, your muscles only grow if you give them a reason to.
2) You will be training in the hole and prolong the period of time that it takes to come out of the hole and supercompensate.
3) You will have no new muscle to work with because you have not fully recovered or grown bigger so it will be literally impossible to lift more weight or more reps.
4) You will be using your precious energy reserves, that could be going towards building muscle, instead to fueling an useless workout.
5) You will lose motivation and grow frusturated and confused because of your lack of progress.
This is a very tough and mature training decision one must face. After commencing a workout, if you discover after a few sets that you are on tract for a crappy worout than I would suggest to drop the workout and go home. Plan to come back the next day. If your goals are to simply train to train, than you will probably not follow this rule. However, if your goal is to get huge muscles and pack inches of new muscle onto your frame than this is a critical training decision.
To ensure your trip to the gym does not go in complete vain – have a flexibility session to make use of the time and than try and pick up the cute receptionist phone number on your way out!
6. Find a mentor
What does this have to do with muscle building? Everything – finding a mentor can make all the difference in how much muscle you build! If you plan on becoming successful in the gym than surround yourself with someone who has already walked the path. Would you agree that the quickets way to achieve success is to find somone who has gone before you and done what you want to do – and model them.
So why do millions of fitness enthusiasts wander aimlessly following generic advice in text books, magazines or websites? Although these methods of learning can provide a theoretical perspective, they are absent in accountablity, a formal system, time and financial comittment and assessment of performance.
A wise mentor will guide you step-by-step of the way with a formal system that includes a higher level of comittment and accountablity on your part. You will be required to fulfill tasks, change habits, meet deadlines and perform at a higher level than you would without a mentor.
The premise of having a mentor is that he has been there and done that. He has walked in your shoes and will give you the appropriate advice in a timely fashion. If you do not perform and follow the advice than you are wasting the mentor’s time and he will ‘fire’ you! If you do perform and follow his advice than you will be successful and build the muscle you deserve in less time!
Serioulsly consider hiring a fitness coach, a personal trainer or anybody who has done what you wish to do and be prepared to elate the same results!
Muscle Growth
