Health and Fitness Vault: 5 Diet Tips to Help With Building Muscle

Building muscle requires more than just an intense workout at the gym every couple of days. In fact, the majority of your muscle gains are only accomplished through your diet. The reason for this is that you cannot gain muscle mass without gaining weight. Naturally, you will gain a bit of fat as well but you can go on a cutting diet to eliminate this and look more muscular than before.
These are five diet tips to help with building muscle will go a long ways with making your diet more effective for adding muscle mass to your body.

1) Eat above your caloric maintenance
The only way to gain weight is to have an excess of calories at the end of each day. To lose weight, you eat at a caloric deficit and this prevents muscle mass gain from occurring. As a result, you will want to make sure that you are eating over your caloric maintenance amount on a daily basis. You can calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate) to get an idea on what your maintenance calories are for any given day and then add 300-500 calories to that amount at first.

2) Focus on protein intake
There is no doubt that your protein intake will have a major effect on your body’s ability to gain and maintain muscle mass. When on a muscle building diet, it is suggested that you consume at least one gram of protein for every pound that you weigh. The next tip may help you make this possible if you were otherwise struggling.

3)     Consume protein shakes daily
Protein shakes are great as they provide a considerable amount of protein and they are easy to hide extra calories in as well. For instance, you can add oats and eggs into a protein shake and make it into a mass gaining shake. This would be comparable to a “mass gainer” product as it provides high amounts of protein along with high amounts of other macronutrients, and more importantly it offers high calorie amount to support growth.

4)     Macronutrient Breakdown
Your macronutrient breakdown mainly consists of the intake ratio for carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It is important as it factors into how much and how well the body stores muscle and fat. You should read this article to get a better idea on the importance of your macronutrient intake. That should give you a good idea on the basics of macronutrients, and then you can begin looking for ideal breakdowns for your muscle building diet. You can also customize the macronutrient breakdown according to your preferences and based on how your body responds to your dieting methods.

5)     Pre/Post Workout Intake
Your pre-workout and post-workout intake will both be very important. What you take in before a workout will factor into the energy your body has for the workout. If you have starved yourself all day then your muscle building exercises will end up breaking the muscle down. Your post-workout consumption is also important as it serves as your recovery for the workout and allows the muscles to not break down while resting.
Building muscle is not easy but it is not rocket science. The hardest part is actually creating a diet and workout program and sticking to it. The fundamentals are easy to understand though, and there is an abundance of information on proper dieting that you can find online. With that being said, it is recommended that you take the time to create a proper bulking diet so you are eating every day with foods that are highly effective at building muscle.

Ron Tidwell contributed to this article. He is a blogger who writes about fitness and nutrition.  Visit his site for more articles like this one.