When it comes to muscle building nutrition, many people approach it as some intense science, calculating every single calorie out, determining exact protein timing and ratios, monitoring carbohydrate sources to make sure not a gram of sugar sneaks through and so on. Essentially, they turn it into a something that would almost require a Ph.D in nutrition to get right.
While it’s good to have a solid idea what you’re eating and where your calories are coming from, when it comes to muscle building nutrition, things can be quite a bit more relaxed than when it comes to fat loss nutrition.
Here’s why.
Muscle Building Nutrition Requirements
When it comes to building muscle, the two major goals you need to achieve to be successful at putting on muscle are:
A. A surplus of calories. If those calories are not high enough, you aren’t building muscle. Period.
B. Enough protein. If you don’t supply the building blocks for new muscle tissue, how do you expect to build it?
Note on point B, to build new muscle tissue, you actually require far less protein than many people are led to believe – somewhere around the 1-1.25 grams per pound of body weight will be plenty. You could probably get away with bringing this even slightly lower, but one gram per pound makes it easy.
Taking in 2-3 grams per pound of body weight is simply not necessary, and if anything, is just going to be damn expensive fuel.
Once these two goals are covered (and of course assuming you are also on a weight training program that’s at least half intelligent), then the rest is a little more flexible.
Total calories…. this will depend on how fast you want to build muscle and how much additional fat weight you are willing to gain.
Some people don’t care if they turn into a fatty – they just want that muscle mass and they want it NOW. They will eat whatever, whenever. They are on an all you can eat bulking buffet.
I wouldn’t particularly recommend this strategy because you do have to remember that dieting is not especially fun and that additional fat gained will have to come off at some point (assuming of course you don’t intend to stay a fatty).
If you’d rather take a more conservative approach (and in my mind better), you’ll take in a surplus of calories, but won’t go hog crazy. About 200-400 above maintenance should be plenty to get the muscle building process going.
Spending hours though over worrying about exactly how many fat grams you’re taking in, how many carbs you’re consuming, the timing of your meals, and so on is just wasted energy.
Hit the calorie total. Make sure you get your protein in. Then keep things under control so you don’t start gaining too much additional body fat (some will be gained, this is virtually a given, it’s how much that’s the question).
That is what you need to concern yourself with when it comes to muscle building nutrition.
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