Muscle Building Nutrition

Diet is an important and integral part of your muscle building plan. Foods serve as fuel to feed and repair your muscles. Without the proper and correct muscle building diet, it’s useless to have the perfect training.

Muscle building nutrition or muscle building diet plan need not be complicated as most people would have thought.

In a good muscle building diet, food to eat to build muscles basically should include 3 main components:

1. Protein:

What are the function of proteins?

Protein makes up the bulk of our body. Protein provides the necessary amino acids to build and repair muscle. It is also a source of energy. However, under normal circumstances, our body would draw on carbohydrates as the main source of energy. It would only depend on the proteins as an alternative when carbohydrates within the body is depleted.

Many studies show that when we are performing intense exercises, our demand for amino acids, which support muscle repair and growth, will increase. As such, protein is an important component in muscle building nutrition.

Just remember this simple fact when you are deciding on your weekly protein diet plan:

High protein diets build more muscle when incorporated with intense training. Low protein foods do not. Get at least 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight

2. Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates is your body primary source of energy. There are basically 2 types of carbohydrates, simple and complex . What your body needed most for your muscle building is actually complex carbohydrates which are able to provide long lasting energy needed for your training. These include the whole grains like rice, oatmeal, bran, wheat germs, barley, maize. Foods containing a good source of these complex carbohydrate include the following:

Pasta , Macaroni, Spaghetti, Brown rice, Potatoes, Other root vegetables, Wholemeal breads , Granary bread, Brown bread, Pitta bread, Bagel, Whole grain cereals, High fiber breakfast cereals , Porridge oats, All bran, Wheetabix, Shredded wheat, Ryvita crisp bread, Muesli, Cassava, Corn, Yam, Oatcakes, Peas, Beans, Lentils

3. Fats

It’s absolutely necessary to include fats in your diet if you want to gain muscle mass. Dietary fats play an essential role in hormone production, which in turn is responsible for growth and strength increases. There is a misconception that by consuming more fats, it would make you fat. The reason why most people are overweight is because they consume a diet high in simple carbohydrates and not because of eating fats.

If your diet is too low in fat, your body will actually make a point to store any fat it gets, because it doesn't know when it will get more. A low-fat diet will also lower testosterone levels, something we do not want when trying to gain weight because, testosterone is a muscle building hormone. You can train as hard as you can but with without sufficient testosterone level in your body, you would never build the muscle mass that you desire.

Post-workout meal

Wait a minute, before I finish on this topic of muscle building nutrition, I would like to draw your attention to the importance of a "post-workout meal".

As the name suggest, it's the meal that follows immediate after a One mistake that bodybuilders often make is that they often the need to eat as soon as possible after workout! Instead, they would take the time to travel back home, take a shower before tucking in to their meal. This could be a couple of hours past before your body get fed! Don’t commit this same mistake.

The reason is that when you’re finished with an intense workout, you’re entering a catabolic state where your muscle glycogen is depleted and increased cortisol levels are beginning to excessively break down muscle tissue. These conditions (if left to go too long) are not good and the only way to reverse this catabolic or breakdown state (and promote an anabolic or building state) is to consume a quickly digestible post-workout meal as soon as you can after training. The goal is to choose a meal with quickly digestible carbohydrates to replenish muscle glycogen as well as quickly digestible protein to provide the amino acids needed to jump start muscular repair. The surge of carbohydrates and amino acids from this quickly digested meal promotes an insulin spike from the pancreas, which shuttles nutrients into the muscle cells.

The post-workout meal should generally contain between 300-500 calories to get the best response. For example, a 120-lb female may only need a 300-calorie meal, whereas a 200-lb male may need a 500-calorie post-workout meal. Your post-workout meal should also contain anywhere from a 2:1 ratio of carbs:protein to a 4:1 ratio of carbs:protein. While most of your other daily meals should contain a source of healthy fats, keep the fat content of your post-workout meal to a bare minimum, since fat slows the absorption of the meal, which is the opposite of what you want after a workout.