Eating Strategies....Muscle GAIN!

Eating Strategies for Muscle Gain

How do I incorporate eating with my exercise schedule so that I gain muscle? Regardless of what type of nutritional plan or diet you are on, you need to make sure you are eating ENOUGH or the RIGHT food at the correct TIMES in order to optimize muscle gain. Let’s talk about my basics to eating to gain muscle- note that when I say gain muscle I mean MUSCLE, not fat, not water weight. I'm talking about a well constructed solid muscle gain!

1. Eat more calories; Just as your body needs to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight or bodyfat, it will need to be in calorie surplus in order to gain muscle mass or size. Caloric surplus means you're eating more calories then your body burns off. To gain mass you'll need to be eating about 18 to 20x your bodyweight in calories. Your body will use the extra calories to repair muscle tissue that is damaged by heavy workouts and to build new muscle.
2. Eat more protein. Without protein your body will not be able to generate new muscle. Protein provides the necessary amino acids to build and repair muscle. To build muscle you'll need AT LEAST 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight, if not more.
3. Eat more often to gain muscle. To gain muscle you'll need to be eating A LOT more calories then you would otherwise. So for example, if your goal is 3,000 calories, there's no way you can cram that into 3 meals, so you'll need to look into eating several smaller meals spread out across your day. The body cannot handle that many calories in one sitting, typically it will store the excess as fat. To enable your body to assimilate and use the calories you'll have to reduce you meal size and increase your meal frequency. It typically takes about 2.5 hours to digest a meal so you'll want to be taking in another meal just as you finish digesting one. Shoot for every 2-3 hours.
4. Drink More Water! To make sure your muscle stay hydrated drink plenty of water. Dehydration can happen easily if you train hard. A dehydrated muscle takes longer to replenish itself then a hydrated muscle. Water increases your vascularity, rids the body of toxins, aids in healthy digestion, and helps keep your body from retaining excess water. Protein generates metabolic waste products that have to be dissolved in water, without enough water the kidneys cannot rid the body of this waste.
5. Learn to love healthy fats. Dietary fats play an essential role in hormone production, which in turn is responsible for growth and strength increases. Many people still believe that eating fat makes you fat. This is absolutely false. In fact, there is a very popular muscle gain diet that been around for years, called the "Anabolic Diet" that requires you to eat only fat! Butter, bacon, and heavy cream are all on the menu. Though quite extreme, this diet does work. Most people are overweight because of a diet high in simple carbohydrates, not from 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. Studies have shown that dietary fat has a direct relationship with testosterone production. An increase in dietary fat intake seems to bring on an increase in testosterone levels. The inverse is also true. A decrease in dietary fat intake is usually accompanied by a decrease in free testosterone levels. However, you don't want to increase your intake of saturated fats. Saturated fats are what cause disease and coronary problems. Though you will always have some saturated fats in your diet, your main focus should be to increase your intake of Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs).
   
   EFAs are unsaturated fats that are necessary for thousands of biological functions throughout the body. Because they cannot be manufactured by the body, the must be provided by your diet. These fatty acids not only help increase testosterone production, but they also aid in the prevention of muscle breakdown, help to increase your HDL level (good cholesterol) and assist in hormone production. To get your recommended amount of EFA's, I recommend supplementing your diet with either Udo's Perfect Oil Blend (which combines omega- and omega-6), or Cold-Pressed Flaxseed oil (which is mostly omega-3)
6. Take a multi-vitamin All of the other products on the market will help, but they are not essential. So, I will only touch on two vitamins supplements.Multi-Vitamins and Antioxidants.
   If you want to gain muscle, you must make sure that you are not deficient in any vitamin, mineral or trace element that your body needs. I know many people are going to disagree with me, but I believe that in this day, we absolutely need to supplement our diet with vitamins and minerals. I know that those who are against using vitamins are going to say that if we "just eat a balanced diet. . . ", You know the rest.
   Well first, eating a balanced diet is easier said than done. America is the most overweight country in the world. Most people don't even know what a "balanced" diet is. Balanced with what? Experts will continue to spout, "eat a balanced diet," while Americans feast on nutritionless fast food and sugar.
   Second, not only do our bodies have to deal with the ever-increasing external stresses of everyday life, they also have to combat nutrient-depleting exercise. Food today is, for the most part, nutritionless - almost totally void of the body strengthening vitamins and minerals it contained one hundred years earlier. Instead, we now ingest over-processed, fiberless meals, and under-ripened vegetables grown in barren, over-farmed soil, laden with pesticides.
   
   How healthy can that be? If you want to ignore the facts and continue on about "balanced diets," fine. It's your decision. But I, for one, eat a balanced diet, and I still take a multi-vitamin supplements. Many mult-vitamin manufacturers try to put "everything" in their product, but it's not necessary. At minimum, your multi-vitamin should contain the USRDA (recommended daily allowance) of vitamins A, B-complex, C, D, E, K and the minerals calcium, magnesium, zinc, iodine, selenium, and possibly iron (for women). Men should find a multi-vitamin without iron. You typically get more than enough iron from your food. Extra iron is needed only for menstruating women. It should also contain other essential nutrients like biotin, chromium, copper, manganese, molybdenum and pantothenic acid.
   
7. Develop food preparation strategies. I addressed this in another post in this blog
8. Take antioxidants! An antioxidant like Vitamins A, C, E, Glutathione, Glutamine, and Selenium are essential in preventing free radical damage, which is accelerated after the heavy trauma of weight training. Antioxidants protect other substances by being oxidized themselves.
9. Rest more frequently! Rest is the most overlooked "skinny-guy/girl secret". If you don't rest, you won't grow. Simple as that. Your body does not build muscle in the gym, it builds muscle while resting! The key to successfully gaining weight is eating enough calories, training hard and then resting. No diet adjustments will make up for lack of rest. If you train hard in the gym, then you should be resting your muscles as much as possible. If you do not give them time to rest and repair, you will not grow. Period.
10. Be Consistent. O.K., so you want the secret to gaining muscle mass fast? Well, here it is: CONSISTENCY. You can have the best diet, the best training schedule, join the best gym that has the best equipment, but without consistency it's all worthless. Over the past several years, I've talked to dozens of people who have successfully transformed their physique. Though most of them trained in totally different ways, there was one common denominator that appeared throughout each success story: Day in and day out, they followed their pre-determined plan, consistently, without fail. You must find the determination and drive within yourself to consistently put one foot in front of the other and see this through. If not now, then when?