More Muscle Gain Diet Help
Today I’m going to lay out a no nonsense plan for your muscle gain diet that will help you to build muscle mass without having to do get too complicated with your strategy. Sure there certainly are a bunch of tips and tricks that you can apply to your diet in order to gain muscle mass, the bottom line is that in order to make anything happen, you’ve got to have a really good muscle gain diet strategy in place. The everyday proven bodybuilding nutrition techniques that seem like they’re “old school” or outdated are typically the ones that will allow your body to pack on muscle mass and keep it on for a long time.
photo credit: Ron Dollete
If you neglect your bodybuilding diet, then you simply won’t be able to pack on any muscle mass at all. You have to figure out how to provide your muscles the foods that it needs in order to pack on new muscle fiber at the right times over the course of the day. If you can get good at this essential muscle building diet skill, then you will be putting yourself in a great position to really grow some new muscle mass. When you get good at feeding your muscles for new growth, you’ll be able to pack on muscle mass when ever you want to.
The lay out of your bodybuilding nutrition plan is the real key to making it work well for you. You need to take some time to think about your current lifestyle and also to think about the things that are important to your muscle gain diet in order for you to reach your goals. If you try to plan out a muscle gain diet that you really don’t like, then you will not be able to stick with it for very long. You will become frustrated and disappointed and over time give up on your goal of gaining muscle mass.
The design that I think works best for building muscle mass is to simply plan on eating 5 – 6 medium sized (but complete) solid food based meals each day spread over every 2-3 hours throughout the day. This will allow you to steadily replenish your body and supply your muscles with the nutrients that it needs in order to continue to repair damaged muscle cells and build even more muscle mass.
When it comes to your muscle building nutrition plan, these tips will take you a long way towards actually starting to achieve your goals without the inconvenience of having to put in a lot of time in the gym without anything to show for it. Just forget all of the distractions and crazy nutritional advice out there and construct a muscle bodybuilding diet plan that the fundamental nutritional techniques covered in this article, then you’ll be able to pack on more muscle mass than you ever thought you could.
Read MoreMuscle Mass Gain Diet Advice
If you want to start packing on lean muscle it’s critical that you design your muscle mass gain diet for maximum muscle gain over time. We all know that it’s certainly possible to build muscle mass without paying much attention to what you ingest, your chances of sustaining this new muscle growth diminish greatly if you don’t have a handle on exactly what you eat every day.
Many people think that your free weight workouts are the biggest piece of your bodybuilding program, but I disagree. I think that your mass gain diet is the really vital piece of the body building equation. If you understand the importance your muscle building diet right from the start, you will definitely in a position to jump ahead of all of the guys who don’t think it’s all that important. While they are struggling to pack on any muscle at all, you’ll be in a position to seriously build up your muscle mass.
Any well thought out muscle gain diet will primarily consist of a decent approach to body building nutrition that includes a decent quantity of all of the bodybuilding macro-nutrients spread out throughout the day. If you try to implement a nutritional strategy that requires you to really cut back on your consumption of any one nutrient, you run the risk of not giving your body all of the nutrients to build new muscle mass consistently. While you may be able to get away with a strict muscle mass gain diet in the beginning, but over time your lack of adequate nutrition will make it very difficult for you to pack on any more muscle at all.
One of my favorite muscle mass gain diet strategy is to make it a habit to eat 5 – 6 small meals each day that consist of balanced amounts of muscle gaining protein, high quality carbohydrates and veggies. I think it’s best to spread each of these small meals out every 2 hours throughout the day primarily because it allows me to have very stable energy levels even when I’m not eating a of calories. If you go about designing your muscle gain diet like this, your body will be constantly flooded with the nutrients that it needs in order to repair damaged muscle cells and build new muscle mass.
Another critical piece to your muscle gain diet is good old fashioned H2O. Without ample amounts of pure water your body just won’t be able to get the muscle building process started. It’s important to remember that muscle tissue is made up of a lot of water, it only makes sense that drinking a lot of of water each day is defiantly the way to go for sustained muscle growth. I like to remind people to drink somewhere around 1 – 2 gallons of pure water each day, spread out with each of your muscle building meals. This keeps your muscles well hydrated and allows your body to move nutrients into your muscle cells quicker than before.
If you really want to build some muscle mass this time around, then you should spend some time getting your bodybuilding nutrition plan structured for maximum effectiveness. Sure it can be a pain in the butt to have to sped a few hours of your life figuring things out before you even set foot in a gym, but this is ultimately what is going to give your the opportunity to build muscle mass.
Read MoreMuscle Gain Diet
A well structured muscle gain diet is critical to your success if you want to build muscle mass quickly and naturally. To be sure your choice of weight lifting workouts, your weight lifting exercise selection and your rest and recovery program are all valuable parts of the muscle building process, you won’t be able to pack on any lean muscle mass at all if your muscle gain diet plan is not in good order.
In this article I’m going to point out all of the important things that go into a well designed bodybuilding nutrition plan and show you how to put it all together for maximum efficiency. If you pay attention and figure out how to design your own bodybuilding nutrition program, you’ll be sure to gain some muscle mass, so pay attention!
Your Bodybuilding Nutrition Plan
If you’re ready to put together your ideal muscle building nutrition plan, there are a few things that you need to pay attention to. It’s critical that you understand that the entire muscle building process is dependent upon the amount of calories that you eat every day. If you don’t get this right your body just won’t be able to build any new muscle mass, so it’s important to get it all squared away from the beginning. If you’re just beginning your bodybuilding nutrition program, an important thing for you to figure out is learning how to calculate your ideal calorie value.
After you get your calorie target value all figured out, then you need to design some sort of outline to get the appropriate combinations of each of the bodybuilding nutrients into your body spaced over the course of the day. In order to design an effective muscle gain diet, you need to learn about the muscle building nutrients; protein, carbohydrate, fat and water. Any complete muscle building program will include each of these macro nutrients in the right amounts.
When you’ve got your caloric target all set and you have a good understanding of each of the muscle building components, it’s time to grab a piece of paper and list exactly how many muscle building meals you intend to eat each day, which foods are going to make up each of your meals, and when you plan on eating each of your meals.
In order to make sure that you are feeding your muscles the nutrients that it needs to repair muscle cells, it’s going to be important to make it a habit to eat between 5 – 6 bodybuilding meals each day. All of these meals should contain a decent amount of muscle building protein as well as some complex carbohydrates and fruits or vegetables along with a decent amount of water.
One technique used by bodybuilders looking to strip off fat and expose their abdominals is to make an effort to bracket your most energy extensive portions of the day with the biggest meals of the day. So if you know that you’re going to be going on a 20 mile hike through the woods, it might be a good idea to eat a bigger meal before heading off so that your body has the calories it needs to fuel your activity level.
If you’re serious about gaining muscle and gaining weight quickly and naturally, then put these time tested muscle gain diet strategies to work for you today. Not only will you start to gain muscle mass and increase your muscular strength, but you’ll also notice that your body fat will start to immediately decrease due to your updated nutrition program. If you stick with it and make your muscle building diet a lifestyle that you can stick with with, you’ll be able to achieve some amazing things with your body.
Read MoreLow Carb Protein Packed Chicken A La King
2/4/2010 – Arvada, Colorado USA
Nick Andrade’s Body Transformation Log – Day 11
Objective: To Burn Fat Gain Muscle And Transform My Body In 12 Weeks
photo credit: shaggyshoo
Today I really don’t have too much exciting stuff to cover as I decided to take the day off (as far as lifting goes anyway). I just wasn’t feeling it, but tomorrow it’ll definitely be back on the Muscle Mass Advantage bandwagon baby!
That said, I just couldn’t do nothing could I? No…I couldn’t help myself so I went for a 20 minute jog – nothing too fancy just a slow steady 20 minute jog. Whenever I get into training and body transformation mode, I always have an easier time sticking with my diet if I’m exercising. I’m not sure why, but I think that I feel like I’m letting myself down if I stray off course after training hard, but I’m really not sure. I just know that this is the way it works for me…Why fight it?
After my jog, I started thinking about what I was going to cook my family for dinner and I decided to give a new recipe a try. Instead of overloading everything with salt and other assorted forms of crap, I took a minimalist approach and simply followed the recipe to a T. Turns out this is a great way to produce a healthy and great tasting meal. The best part about the whole recipe was that I could even eat it and stay true to my anabolic diet approach – good stuff! Anyway, I thought I’d share the recipe with everyone. Trust me it’s really, really good stuff.
Healthy Chicken Ala King Recipe – Even Good For The Low Carb Anabolic Diet
Of course I added a bunch more boneless skinless chicken breast to this recipe just to pump up the protein levels.
- 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons canola oil, divided
- 10 ounces white mushrooms, quartered
- 1 large green bell pepper, diced
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- 1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup low-fat milk
- 1 4-ounce jar sliced pimientos, rinsed (you can leave these out if you want)
- 1/2 cup sliced green onions
Basically all you need to do is cut the chicken breast up into cubes or strips (your choice) and toss them into the flour. If you’re totally hard core with your diet, just leave the flour out completely. Then cook the chicken breast in 1 tbs of oil over medium high heat for about 5 minutes. Then take the chicken out add another tbs of oil and toss in the bell pepper and mushrooms, salt and pepper and cook them for 2 – 5 minutes. Next whisk the chicken broth and 1 cup of milk (with any left over flour if you used flour) and add that mixture into the skillet. Mix in the chicken pieces and simmer the whole thing until the sauce starts to thicken (about 5 – 7 minutes).
Each serving contains:
- 271 calories
- 8 g of fat
- 15 g of carbs
- 28 g of protein,
I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I was able to trick my kids into eating healthy food without too much effort. And it was really nice to actually enjoy the same meal that my family was eating for a change.
Here’s everything that I ate today…
- 1 cup of cottage cheese
- 1 cup of cottage cheese
- 3 cups of green tea
- 1 cup of cooked ground beef
- 1 cups of cooked ground beef
- 1 can of chicken breast meat
- 2 cups of chicken ala king (yum!)
- 10 spears of steamed asparagus
- 1/2 cup of walnuts
That’s all I’ve got for today’s update.
Your Friend And Trainer,
Nick
Read MoreThe Ultimate Bodybuilder Diet
2/1/2010 – Arvada, Colorado USA
Nick Andrade’s Body Transformation Log – Day 6
Objective: To Burn Fat Gain Muscle And Transform My Body In 12 Weeks
Today I want to talk a bit about the style of bodybuilder diet that I feel will help me to achieve my goal of packing on a ton of muscle mass while stripping off body fat at the same time. While this style of muscle building diet is extremely effective, it’s definitely not for everybody. Ok enough with the disclaimer – on to the diet…
When ever I need to strip off body fat and build muscle mass at the same time, I like to rely on carbohydrate cycling in order to make it all happen quicker and easier than it would otherwise. Specifically I like to follow along with Dr. Mauro DiPasquale’s Anabolic Bodybuilder Diet. His approach to bodybuilding nutrition is very simple on the surface but extremely effective for building muscle mass and burning body fat without having to resort to steroids or other dangerous substances.
The way that carbohydrate cycling works is simple. You limit your intake of carbohydrate to a certain value (which depends largely on the individual) and cycle the carbs in and out of your diet throughout the week in a systematic way. Now that said you need to focus on eating high quality low glycemic index carbohydrates anytime you eat carbs, but it’s critical while you’re carbohydrate cycling. If you ingest poor carbohydrate choices like white bread and sugar in excess anytime carbohydrate cycling or not, you’re just asking for trouble.
Now where the Anabolic Bodybuilder Diet differs from most of the other methods of carbohydrate cycling diets is in the fact that you have to restrict your intake of carbohydrates to 30 grams or less for 5 consecutive days. If you’ve never tried to restrict carbohydrates form your diet in this fashion before, you’re in for a shock. It can be really tough to stick with it for a few weeks, but after that it’s really easy to follow along with the plan. So on the anabolic bodybuilder diet, after the 5 day 30 gram carbohydrate restriction, you’re basically allowed to eat what ever you want for the remaining 2 days of the week.
If you can learn to work this out like I typically do, it will allow you to eat whatever you want on the weekends but require you to get it back on track during the week. In my opinion, this is a great way to go. While you’re out with your friends and family on the weekends you can drink beer, eat onion rings and basically live like a normal person and while you’re stuck in your cubicle for the rest of the week, you just need to make a few small sacrifices ( but it’s usually easy to do this because your focused on working and not partying).
All that said, even if you implement the anabolic bodybuilder diet into your life, you really need to make an honest effort to keep the boozing and partying down to a minimum or you just won’t be able to achive your goal of building muscle mass and burning fat. Remember that anything worthwhile in life requires some sort of sacrifice, so be prepared to make a few sacrifices along the way (especially if you have really aggressive goals). If you’re more laid back about what you’re trying to accomplish then you can let loos a bit more – just stick with the 5 days on 2 days off schedule and you will stay lean and muscular, just not as lean and muscular as you would if were really getting serious.
Here’s My Basic Anabolic Bodybuilder Diet Outline
It’s simple, clean and easy to implement but it is paired down a bit…
- Learn how to estimate your specific muscle building calorie requirement.
- Begin to track what you eat each day, paying attention to see if you’re consuming enough calories to build muscle mass.
- Begin to plan out your meals. Eat 5 – 6 meals spaced out every 2 -3 hours throughout the day. Take control of what you eat and when you eat it!
- Make every effort to consume a muscle building meal within 20 minutes of completing your weight training workouts.
- Eat a minimum of 1.5 – 2 grams of protein per lb of body weight per day.
- Limit your carbohydrate intake to no more than 30 grams each day for 5 consecutive days. (Typically weekdays)
- Make sure to incorporate vegetables and fiber into your diet. With only 30 grams of carbohydrates a day, nearly all of your carbohydrates will come from veggies. Here’s the exact breakdown: 40% protein, 60% fat, 30g carbs
- Drink a minimum of 1 gallon of water each day.
- After 5 consecutive days of eating less than 30 grams of carbohydrates, eat: 15% protein, 25% fat, 60% carbs for a 2 day period. (Typically the weekend) Use one of these days as your “cheat day”.
Like I said this is a really simple outline for following my version of the anabolic bodybuilder diet – not an exact copy of what is outlined in the anabolic diet book. This is how I’m going to implement carbohydrate cycling during the next 12 weeks. It’s a bit of a compromise as I’m allowing 1 day each week to eat whatever I want, in what ever quantity I want – After 17 year of training I just know myself better than to think that I can stay on a rigid bodybuilder diet 7 days a week for 12 weeks. It’s going to be hard enough to lay off the carbs during the week while my wife and kids gorge themselves on tortillas, chips and bread right in front of my face, I’m going to need a day to pig out and get it out of my system.
Your Friend And Trainer,
Nick
Read MoreWhy Is Egg White Protein So Good For Your Muscle Building Diet?
If you’re looking for a way to add additional sources of muscle building protein to your diet without having to choke down more cottage cheese, pork chops or whey protein powder, then egg white protein may be a good choice. While egg protein has been a staple of a well balanced bodybuilding diet for decades, for some strange reason it seems that egg whites has fallen out of favor in the muscle building community over the past 2 – 3 years. Really strange when you begin to look at the benefits of consuming egg protein.
photo credit: anotherloverholenyourhead
Is Egg White Protein High Quality?
Egg whites are definitely one of the most (and quite possibly the most) complete sources of bodybuilding protein. Combining at least 8 types of protein, you’d be hard pressed to find any other naturally occurring form of protein that can even hold a candle to the diverse protein arrangement of whole eggs. Just to give you an idea of how high the quality of protein found in eggs is, when every other form of dietary protein is analyzed in a lab for protein quality, it’s measured against the high quality protein profile found in eggs!
Aside from simply containing ample doses of protein, eggs and egg whites are an excellent source of vitamins including: vitamin A vitamin E, and vitamin K. As well as various B vitamins such as vitamin B12, riboflavin and folic acid.
Whole eggs also contain all eight of the amino acids which are essential to the rest and recovery process following heavy duty bodybuilding workouts. With high doses of bodybuilding protein being a high priority for everyone who wants to gain muscle mass, egg white protein and egg protein in general, may very well be one of the most complete and versatile foods around.
Why I Like Whole Egg And Egg White Protein
There are certainly a lot of choices these days for both high quality whole food protein sources and supplemental proteins. I always recommend to at least try to include as many different types of protein into your diet as you can. As far as whole eggs go, not only are they nutritious and easy to cook, but they taste great! Even when I’m in a cutting phase of a bodybuilding program, I always try to mix in some eggs in the form of omelets, scrambled eggs or simple fried or poached eggs.
As far as egg whites, I really like them because they are a very low calorie source of protein that is also flexible to cook with. Egg whites can be mixed into oatmeal, whipped into omelets, or hard boiled and incorporated into thousands of dishes easily. If I’m ever in a situation where I need to increase my protein intake but also cut calories, eggs are always my first choice.
What About Egg Protein Powders?
Egg white protein powders are a great way to incorporate the full range of proteins found in eggs without the hassle of actually having to prepare them beyond mixing them into a shake. Keep in mind that supplemental forms of protein can never live up to the nutritional value of whole food sources simply because they have been processed and refined into a powder.
That said, it’s awfully hard to find a more convenient way to get in some extra protein throughout the day. If you’re one of those people who just doesn’t like to eat eggs or mess around with the inconvenience of separating your egg whites each day, then egg white protein powders may be a good choice for you. I personally like to use egg white powders whenever I’m traveling or get too busy to prepare my meals. Whey protein and egg protein powders can be a lifesaver whenever you start to slip off of your bodybuilding diet.
If you’re attempting to throw together an efficient bodybuilding nutrition program and you understand the importance of incorporating different sources of whole food and supplemental protein powders into your diet, then whole eggs, egg whites and egg protein powders should get some serious consideration. Not only are they delicious and easy to prepare, but they are affordable and contain the “gold standard” of naturally occurring protein quality!
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