Bodybuilding Diets For Lean Muscle Gain

Bodybuilding diets have been used by weight trainers the world over to increase the amount of lean muscle mass on their bodies and decrease the amount of ugly fat. While it is true that bodybuilding is responsible for fostering many unhealthy muscle gain habits, when it comes to the foundational principles of eating for maximum muscle growth, bodybuilding diets are a great place to start!

All well thought out bodybuilding diets are created with the end goal of increasing lean muscle mass without adding unnecessary globs of body fat. To make this happen, most bodybuilding diets focus on one of the most important muscle building nutients...protein.

Muscle Building Protein Is Critical
To All Bodybuilding Diets

Most bodybuilding diets recommend between 1 and 2 grams of lean protein per pound of bodyweight per day. While many nutritionists disagree with consuming that much protein, the scope of their focus is typically on sedentary individuals...not bodybuilders or strength athletes.

To put it in easy to understand form...the more muscle mass you carry (or wish to carry) on your body - the more protein you will need to eat. Aside from adding in muscle gain process, protein plays many important roles in your body. Listed below are a few protein facts:

	Nearly half of your body's dry weight is made up of protein
	Within six months, every protein in your body is completely broken down and replaced.
	Proteins aid in the growth and repair of hair, skin, nails, muscles and brain

Consuming too much of any nutrient, healthy or not will lead to an increase in overall body fat!

Eating excessive amounts of dietary protein for a prolonged period of time can lead to the build up of a highly toxic ammonia called urea. An excessive amount of urea in the body places a strain on your liver and kidneys and can lead to medical conditions like gout!

Because of this, I think it's a good idea to limit your protein consumption to the minimum amount that allows you to build muscle mass. A great place to start your bodybuilding diets is to begin consuming 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day. If you are training to stimulate muscle growth this should be enough to support muscle repair and growth.

The more intensely you train...the more protein your body will require to repair the damaged muscle cells.

If you are not seeing muscle gain results you would like after a few weeks, you may want to slowly increase your protein consumption until you begin to see muscle gain results. Whenever I increase my protein intake, I step it up gradually in increments of .2 grams per pound of bodyweight per week until I begin to gain muscle mass again. This ensures that I get enough muscle building protein in my bodybuilding diets, yet not an unnecessary amount.

Bodybuilding Diets And Carbohydrate Consumption

The next critical muscle building nutrient is the often forgotten (or at least downgraded) carbohydrate. With low carb and no carb diets hitting the main stream over the past few years carbohydrates have taken the role of bodybuilding nutrition's "red headed step child".

While it is true that low carb and no carb diets can be useful to shed body fat quickly, they are not ideal for muscle gain. In order to gain muscle mass, you must train intensely. If you cut out your body's best source of energy (carbohydrates), you will have a hard time getting through your intense muscle building workouts.

During a typical intense muscle building workout, your muscles need to contract to perform heavy free weight exercises. Most of the energy for this contraction comes from stored glycogen (carbohydrate), within your muscle cells.

Even if you're performing less intense free weight exercise, the majority of the energy for muscular contraction will come from sugar (carbohydrate) floating freely in your blood. Either way, you will need to have available carbohydrate to convert to usable energy to fuel your muscle building workouts and provide a stable source of energy for you throughout the day.

This means that...Eating the right amount of carbs is essential to muscle growth!

Most bodybuilding diets target between 50 and 60 percent of their caloric intake from carbohydrates. This is a good place to start with your own bodybuilding diet plan.

When targeting carbohydrates for your bodybuilding diets, you will need to take a look at the glycemic index. The glycemic index is a rating system that illustrates the potential for certain carbohydrate sources to produce the stable long lasting energy sources that are ideal for intense free weight training.

Consuming predominately Low Glycemic index foods will provide the more stable blood sugar and energy levels than training to build muscle mass requires. The main exception being your post workout meal. For this you will want to consume a decent amount of fast acting high glycemic index carbs to refuel depleted glycogen stores in your muscle cells.

The Role of Fat In Bodybuilding Diets

When it comes to adding fat to your bodybuilding diets, it is important to realize the role that fat plays in the muscle building process. While not directly involved in the muscle building process, dietary fat plays many important roles in your body that ultimately allow for lean muscle gain. Dietary fat is responsible for providing energy for muscle gain workouts. Fat serves as a secondary energy source during intense training sessions. The energy from fat becomes available after the carbohydrate stores in your muscles become depleted.

This is why increased fat consumption is a cornerstone of many low carb and no carb bodybuilding diets. You need to have energy from somewhere. If you are not providing energy to your body from carbohydrate sources, you can offset the negative energy balance by increasing your fat consumption. The downfall to this technique is that your body will resist switching energy sources from carbs to fats.

	Fat is essential for maintaining healthy skin and hair
	Fat acts as a transport mechanism for water soluble vitamins A, D, E and K
	Essential fatty acids (EFA's) help regulate blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

As with anything else in life, a good dose of common sense can go along way when deciding how much fat to add to your bodybuilding diets. Not all fats are created equal.

If you are focusing your bodybuilding diets to include predominately healthy sources of fat, it may be ok to consume more than discussed above. If you are going to get your dietary fat from animal and saturated fat sources, you will definitely want to eat less than 50 grams each day.

Designing Bodybuilding Diets To Pack on Lean Muscle Mass

With the information covered in this article, you now have the basic idea of how to structure your bodybuilding diet for maximum muscle gain. Listed below is the general structure that you should shoot for when designing your own bodybuilding nutrition plan.

Total Calories: In order to calculate your total daily calorie target, you will need to perform the calculation for Basal Metabolic Rate and Total Daily Expended Energy, and increase your calorie intake about 500 calories over your calculated T.D.E.E. value.

More information on how to calculate your BMR for your bodybuilding nutrition plan.

Protein: Consume a minimum of 1 gram of muscle building protein per pound of bodyweight.

Carbohydrate: 50 - 60 percent of your total caloric intake should come from a mix of low glycemic and high glycemic index carbohydrates. The majority of these carbs should be from low G.I. carbohydrate sources.

Fat: Remember that not all fats are created equally. Consume between 30 and 50 grams of healthy fat per day. Limit your intake of animal fats and other sources of unhealthy saturated fats.

Take the time to structure your bodybuilding diets in line with the principles of lean muscle gain. By doing this, you'll be able to gain more muscle mass without adding unnecessary body fat. 

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