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There is a common saying that the “Muscle building starts at your kitchen“.
Muscle building requires three things in place, Proper Nutrition, Better Workout routine, Adequate Uninterrupted sleep/rest.
If you miss on any of these parameter, then the muscle growth will be negatively impacted.
It doesn’t matter how hard you lift, If you don’t consume enough calories and get adequate Protein, Carbs and fats, You just don’t grow.
At the same time, If you consume too much of Protein, Unwanted processed carbs and saturated fat, you will still gain some muscle but it would be hidden under a thick layer of fat!
Our Goal is to gain Lean Muscle mass without unwanted body fat mass. To achieve this, You must evaluate your Food Intake and fix the Nutrition.
In this article, I would be sharing about how you can plan your meals to grow bigger and stronger muscle mass.
Meal Proportion for muscle building
Make the breakfast as your largest meal of the day, and the meals should get progressively smaller as the day goes on. This is because your metabolism is at its natural peak in the morning and then slows down as night approaches.
My breakfast usually contains about 30-35% of my total daily calories.
Macro Nutrient Planning for muscle building
Protein:
You should be eating protein every 3 – 5 hours. You never want to go more than 5 hours without eating protein, as studies have shown that the body’s anabolic response to protein consumption lasts only about that long. This means you’ll need to eat protein 4 – 6 times per day, and enough each meal to meet your dietary targets.
Carbohydrates:
Much of your daily carbohydrates should come before and after training, when your body needs them most. I eat about 10 – 15% of my daily carbs before training (Pre-Workout meal), and about 30 – 40% after, in my post-workout meal.
Avoid consuming complex carbs within 4 – 5 hours of bedtime.
The insulin created by the body to process and absorb carbs eaten stops the use of fat as an energy source. Your body naturally burns the most fat while sleeping, and so going to sleep with elevated insulin levels interferes with fat loss.
Fats:
You can spread your fats throughout the day. I like to start my day with 1 – 2 tablespoons of Olive oil or a Peanut Butter(All Natural Peanut butter without any hydrogenated oil), but you don’t have to buy this if you don’t want to. You can simply stick to the sources of healthy fat given earlier.
Pre-Workout Meal
About 30 minutes before training, you want to eat about 30 grams of high-GI carbs and about 30 grams of fast-digesting protein (such as whey).
The carbs will not only give you energy to fuel your workout, they will trigger the release of insulin, which counteracts the effects of cortisol and, increases blood flow to the muscles and protein synthesis.
The protein will get amino acids into your blood stream, immediately available for repair as you start to break down the muscle fibers by lifting weights.
Post-Workout Meal
Post Workout meal is as Important as Pre-workout meal.
Eating carbs and protein after intense weight training leads to greater development of lean mass, decreases in body fat, and overall improvements in body composition.
When you finish training, your body is in a highly anabolic state, and it will absorb glucose, glycogen, and amino acids at a higher rate than normal. However, if you waste this window and don’t feed your body, you will actually halt muscle growth and hinder fat loss.
Therefore, it’s vitally important to eat within an hour of finishing your weight training, and to eat a substantial amount of carbs, and a moderate amount of protein.
Pre-Sleep Meal
A slow-digesting protein should be the last meal of the night, and should be consumed immediately before going to bed. You can include egg whites, Low fat Greek yogurt or low-fat cottage cheese, Casein Protein powder.
This last bit of protein is important because your body is about to fast for 6 – 8 hours, and when the protein you eat before bed is fully digested and utilized, your body will start breaking down muscle. Thus, you want 15 – 20 grams of a slow-digesting protein before bed so that you can minimize or eliminate catabolism.
Cheat Meal
Cheat meals are included to increase the metabolic rate!
I would recommend, however, that you don’t go too overboard with your cheat meals—don’t eat 3,000 calories of junk food and desserts and think it won’t do anything.
Building a great body requires great eating habits, and you now know what that means: eating enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fats on the right eating schedule and drinking enough water, ensuring that your body has everything it needs to adapt to the intense training that you subject it to.
DIET PLAN
In order to diet properly, you need to know how to determine how many calories to eat each day and how many of those calories should be from proteins, carbs, and fats.
Cutting is when you adjust your diet and usually also add cardio to your training routine in order to maximize fat loss with the usual byproduct of minimal muscle growth.
Bulking is when you adjust your diet to maximize muscle gains with the usual byproduct of gaining some fat along the way. As a note, bulking does NOT mean eating everything In excess which leads to excessive fat storage. This not only makes you look like a fat, bloated mess, but it actually hinders muscle gains.
Maintaining is when you adjust your diet to enable you to make slow muscle gains without the addition of any fat.
Dieting for Maximum muscle gain
When you want to gain significant amounts of muscle (ten pounds or more), bulk until you’ve gained the size you want, and then cut to lose the fat. This is the fastest way to achieve the look you want.
What can turn guys off about this approach is the fat gained while bulking, but this is just part of the game. If you want to gain muscle as quickly as possible, you’re going to gain some fat too, simply because it’s going to require you to eat a surplus of calories each day (more than your body burns).
The good news is that if you’re bulking correctly, you won’t gain too much fat, and you’ll be able to lose it fairly quickly by properly cutting.
Many guys trying to both bulk and cut (build muscle and lose fat) make the mistake of not eating enough to grow quickly but eating too much to lose fat quickly, and then they wonder why they’re not getting much bigger or leaner. It’s because they’re essentially eating to maintain, and the most you can ask for from a good maintenance diet is slow muscle and strength gains with little or no change in fat levels.
So, if you want to gain muscle as quickly as possible, follow a bulking diet and don’t sweat the little bit of fat you gain. Once you cut and strip that fat off, you’ll look awesome!
My recommendation is to bulk to a size that’s a little bigger than what you want and then cut.
bulking diet requires that you eat a relatively large amount of calories every day and with moderate cardio.
Calculating your bulking diet is actually very easy. Let’s determine it.
Determine your bulking diet:-
• Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.
• Eat 2 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of healthy fat per 3 pounds of body weight per day.
That’s where you start! For a 160 lb male, it would look like this:
• 160 grams of protein per day
• 320 grams of carbs per day
• 50-55 grams of fat per day
This would be about 2,400 calories per day, which is the right place to start bulking for a 160 lb man.
You can use this as a reference and calculate yours as per your body weight!
(If you aren’t gaining weight or strength or your energy levels are low after a couple of weeks of bulking, you should UP your calories by about 300 per day for another week or two and see if that fixes it. The easiest way to add the calories is to eat about 70 more grams of carbs per day).
Get enough calories, protein, carbs, and fats and following the basic rules of dieting that you’ve already learned (how often to eat, what types of foods you should eat, etc.).
You can have a small amount of carbs after dinner as you’re not trying to lose weight when bulking
Eat about 30% of your daily carbs in your post-workout meal. This is about 80 – 100 grams for most of the guys.
Include 1-2 cheat meals per week, but I recommend that you don’t take bulking for granted and eat each and every junk food in large amounts. Sure, you can gain muscle like this, but you’ll also gain unnecessary amounts of fat. If you stick to healthy, high-quality foods, you’ll feel good, get bigger and stronger, and won’t gain too much fat.
Meal plan for a person who is 160-170 lbs who lifts heavy during bulking:
Target Daily Protein: 170 grams
Target Daily Carbs: 340 grams
Target Daily Fats: 56 grams
Target Daily Calories: 2,500
Meal #1 (pre-workout 6:30 am)
- 1 scoop of protein powder in 1 cup of rice milk (Blend the cooked rice with water)
- 1 orange
Nutritional Value = 285 Calories, 32 grams Protein, 35 grams Carbs, 3 grams Fat.
Meal #2 (post-workout 8:30 am)
- 1 serving of Baked Oatmeal with Dry Fruits
- 2 bananas
Nutritional value = 500 calories, 40 grams protein, 70 grams carbs, 8 grams Fat.
Meal #3 (12:30 pm)
- 150 grams of grilled chicken breast.
- Quinoa Salad with some veggies of your choice.
Nutritional value = 650 calories, 45 grams Protein, 80-90 grams carbs, 10 grams fat.
Meal #4 (3:30 pm)
- Protein Bar or 3 Eggs+Sprouts.
- Apple.
Nutritional value = 300 calories, 22 grams protein, 70 grams carbs, 10 grams fat.
Meal #5 (7:30 pm)
- Red meat or Salmon
- 1 serving grilled veggies and sprouts
Nutritional value = 480 calories, 35 grams Protein, 45 grams Carbs, 20 grams Fat.
Meal #6 (10:00 pm)
- 20 grams of casein or egg protein
Nutritional value = 80 calories, 20 grams Protein, 0 Carbs, 1 gram Fat.
Summary of this meal plan:
This meal plan provides 2,600-2,800 calories, More than 200 grams of protein, 350 grams of carbs, and 50-60 grams of fat, which is a great place to start bulking for a person weighing about 160-170 lb.
This calculation is just a rough estimate and you do not need to stress yourself by calculating the calorie intake every minute but it is good to know what to eat and how much macros your meal has.
Note : Try to get at least 50%-60% of your daily protein from solid food instead of relying on Protein Supplements alone.
Also, checkout my article on an affordable food to consume In order to build lean muscle by clicking here.