Healthy Diets for Muscle Building
If you want to build muscle you need to do two things. You must lift weights and you have to eat a healthy muscle building diet. The weightlifting breaks down the muscle fibers. The healthy muscle building diet helps repair the damage and rebuild the muscle fibers stronger and bigger than before.
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Calories
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Healthy diets for muscle building require you to consume more calories. Of course this only applies if you are already fit and trying to gain muscle mass. It does not apply if you are overweight and trying to lose a few pounds. Your body needs more calories to repair the damage done to muscle fibers while lifting weights. These must be high quality healthy calories, not junk food and alcohol. For a rough estimate of daily calories you should consume for a muscle building diet, multiply your body weight in pounds by 20.
Types
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Healthy diets for muscle building are very specific about the types of food you eat. Protein intake must be increased. It should be between one to two grams of protein for every pound of body weight every day. These should be lean protein sources like tuna, chicken, fish, skim milk and eggs. Avoid fatty meats. Fats are also essential to healthy diets for muscle building, but these should be healthy fats such as olive oil, flaxseed oil and nuts. Keep fat intake to less than 30 percent of your diet. Carbohydrates should be from high quality sources such as multigrain bread, brown rice and oatmeal. About half of your diet should be from these sources.
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Water
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Drinking plenty of water is essential to healthy diets for muscle building. It is necessary to help metabolize the food you consume and facilitate the muscle building process. You should drink an eight-ounce glass of water for every 10 pounds of body weight every day. Cut out sugary drinks like soft drinks and alcohol. They contain a lot of calories with no nutritional value.
Eating Frequency
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Healthy diets for muscle building require you to eat more often. Instead of three meals per day, strive to eat six meals. This does not mean eat twice as much food. It just means keep the body fed and not hungry. Continual calorie ingestion keeps the body in an anabolic state repairing muscle. If you go too long without food, your body enters a catabolic state. It begins to break down your body to feed itself. This is why breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It comes after your longest period of not eating.
Supplements
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Many people find it difficult to consume the amount of protein that is needed for a muscle building diet. Muscle building supplements are sometimes added to the diet to compensate. There are many muscle building supplements on the market containing all sorts of chemicals claiming to build muscle. Consider these claims very carefully since they are not always true. It is often best to stick to protein powder. Whey protein powder is especially effective for muscle building and easy to consume. A scoop of whey protein dissolves easily in water or milk.
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