Diets that Build Muscle: How to Eat to Grow
What are the types of diets that build muscle?
Some say that nutrition is 70% of the game of getting bigger and leaner, some say 80%, even 90%. Well, I say it’s 100% Yes, 100%. And lifting heavy, overloading your muscles…that’s also 100% of the game. Being properly hydrated is 100%. Having the right attitude is 100% too. (Yeah, we’re at 400% so far…)
My point is this: The building blocks of a great body are more like pillars than puzzle pieces. Weaken one enough and the whole structure collapses when overloaded. That is, you can’t build any appreciable amount of muscle if you don’t train correctly. It’s very hard to build muscle if your diet is wrong. Muscle growth is seriously stunted by dehydration. Your gains will be lackluster if you don’t train with the right attitude.
Let the weak and undisciplined give only 60% in their training, 30% in their dieting, 40% in their attitude. They’re going to make you look like a god.
The nutritional aspect of fitness is incredibly powerful and it can either work for or against you, multiplying or dividing your end results. It is the series of toll booths along the highway of muscle growth, and if you don’t stop and pay each one, you don’t get to go any further. It’s that simple.
Proper diet and nutrition has nothing to do with loading up on the latest, greatest, “advanced muscle building” supplements that clutter the shelves of your local GNC. It is much more than eating a few good meals per day with some snacks here and there so you don’t get hungry.
It IS about following a calculated, regimented eating plan that consistently feeds your muscles the nutrients they need to take advantage of your heavy training and thus get bigger and stronger.
There are four aspects of nutrition that are of primary concern when trying to build muscle and lose fat. They are calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and water. Protein, carbohydrates, and fats are known as “macro-nutrients” (macro means “of great size; large”), and how you structure these in your diet is vitally important to your overall results. Of secondary concern success are vitamins and minerals, which are known as “micro-nutrients,” and these are essential for body’s performance of many different physiological processes connected with building muscle and losing fat.
Let’s talk more about each of these four aspects of nutrition.
CALORIES
A calorie is a measurement of potential energy in a food, whether protein, carbohydrate, or fat. Like an engine, your body needs fuel to function, and it gets it from food.
A gram of protein has about 4 calories, as does a gram of carbohydrate (regardless of the source, these numbers holds more or less true). A gram of fat contains about 9 calories.
Your body uses food energy to perform any and all physiological processes you can imagine. Your brain, lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys require energy to do their jobs. Your muscles require energy to contract and extend. Your body requires energy to build muscle and even to lose fat.
Several factors come into play when determining how much energy your body burns every day (and thus how many calories you should be eating, whether to lose weight or gain muscle). Body size, the amount of lean mass, body temperature, the thermic effect of foods, stimulants such as caffeine, and physical activity level all affect how many calories your body burns every day.
Knowing how to determine your body’s caloric needs and then how to translate them into specific amounts of protein, carbs, and fats is crucial to maximizing your muscle growth. As you can imagine, eating 225 grams of protein per day is much better in terms of achieving muscle growth than eating 100 grams of fat, even though they contain about the amount of calories.
PROTEIN
Your body needs protein for virtually every “growth” process it engages in. It uses protein to build and repair cells and to produce hormones and enzymes (which are substances that cause various chemical reactions in the body). Your body needs a healthy amount of protein to keep its immune system functioning optimally.
Weight lifting places considerable protein demands on the body, and as you gain more and more lean muscle, your body needs more and more protein to maintain it. Think of your muscles as protein reservoirs (because that’s how your body views them). What do you think happens if you build some muscle and then don’t provide your body with the protein it needs for its upkeep? That’s right—it eats the muscle away and thus reduces its need for protein.
Therefore, eating enough protein every day is rock-bottom fundamental to building muscle and increasing strength. I can’t overstate the importance of this, really, because many guys just don’t get it. They miss meals and figure it’s no big deal. They don’t ensure their body is never on empty and think it shouldn’t cause too much damage. Well, it does. Regularly not eating enough protein and not eating it frequently enough is the easiest way to ruin your gains, get stuck in a rut, and quit. I’ve seen it happen many times.
Now, as I just said, the daily quantity of protein isn’t the only important aspect—the frequency of eating protein is just as vital. As you know, your body breaks proteins down into amino acids and then your blood transports them around the body for use. In order to achieve optimal muscle growth, you want to have a constant supply of amino acids in your blood stream, ready to be used for repair, growth, and other processes.
If you allow too much to come in between your meals (that should always contain protein), your body will steal protein from its own muscles and you’ll get smaller and weaker. That’s why you can actually eat MORE protein than your body needs each day but plan it incorrectly and you’ll lose gains.
CARBOHYDRATES
The carbohydrate is probably the most misunderstood, maligned, and feared macro-nutrient. Thanks to the scores of bogus diet plans and suggestions out there, many people equate eating carbs with getting fat. While eating TOO MANY carbs can make you fat, carbs are hardly your enemy. They play an essential role in not only muscle growth but in overall body function.
Regardless of what type of carbohydrate you eat—broccoli or apple pie—the body breaks it down into two substances: glucose and glycogen. Glucose is commonly referred to as “blood sugar,” and it’s an energy source used by your cells to do the many things they do. Glycogen is a substance stored in the liver and muscles that can be easily converted to glucose for immediate energy. When you lift weights intensely, your muscles burn up their glycogen stores to cope with the overload.
Now, why is broccoli good for you but apple pie isn’t? Because your body reacts very differently to broccoli than to apple pie. You’ve probably heard the terms “simple” and “complex” carbs before and wondered what was meant. You might have also heard of the glycemic index and wondered what it was all about.
These things are pretty simple, actually. The glycemic index is a numeric system of ranking how quickly carbohydrates are converted into glucose in the body. Carbs are ranked on a scale of 0 to 100 depending how they affect blood sugar levels once eaten, with 55 and under considered “low GI,” and 56 to 69 as medium, and 70 and above as high on the index. A “simple” carb is one that converts very quickly (is high on the glycemic index), such as table sugar, honey, and watermelon, while a “complex” carb is one that converts slowly (is low on the glycemic index), such as broccoli, apple, and sweet potato.
It’s very important to know where the carbs you eat fall on the index, because eating a bunch of simple carbs all day is a surefire way to mess up your metabolism and gain weight (the body doesn’t work well when its energy levels constantly spike and plummet).
The amount of carbohydrates that you should eat every day depends on what you’re trying to accomplish: gain muscle or lose fat. Gaining muscle requires that you eat a lot of carbs, while cutting carbs and upping protein is the best way to lose fat while retaining muscle strength and size.
FATS
Fats are the most dense energy source available to your body. Each gram of fat contains over twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein. Healthy fats, such as those found in olive oil, avocados, flax seed oil, many nuts, and other foods, are actually an important component to overall health. Fats help your body absorb the other nutrients you give it, they nourish the nervous system, they help maintain cell structures, they regulate hormone levels, and more.
Certain fats are unhealthy though and can lead to disease and other problems. These types of fats are called saturated fats and trans fats.
Saturated fats are a form of fat found mainly in animal products such as meat, dairy, and egg yolks. Some plant foods are also high in saturated fats, such as coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil. Eating too much saturated fats can negatively affect cholesterol levels and should be eaten in moderation.
Trans fats are scientifically modified saturated fats that have been engineered to give foods longer shelf lives. Many cheap, packaged foods are full of trans fats (such as run-of-the-mill popcorn, yogurt, and peanut butter), as are many frozen foods (such as frozen pizza, pastries, cakes, etc.), and fried foods are often fried in trans fats. These fats are bad news and eating too much of them can lead to all kinds of disease and complications. They have no nutritional value for the body and thus should be avoided altogether.
Most people eat more fat than necessary (adding lots of unnecessary calories to their daily intake). When we work out your diet, it will include a small amount of healthy fats every day.
WATER
The human body is about 60% water in adult males and about 70% in adult females. Muscles are about 70% water. That alone tells you how important water is to maintaining good health and proper body function. Your body’s ability to digest, transport, and absorb nutrients from food is dependent upon proper fluid intake. Water helps prevent injuries in the gym by cushioning joints and other soft-tissue areas. When your body is dehydrated, literally every physiological process is negatively affected.
I really can’t stress enough the importance of drinking clean, pure water. It has zero calories, so it will never cause you to gain weight regardless of how much you drink (although you can actually harm your body by drinking too much water, but this would require that you drink several gallons per day).
I highly recommend that you drink at least one gallon of water per day. And make sure it’s filtered, purified water, not tap water (disgusting, I know, but some people do it). I have a $250 reverse-osmosis filter with a re-mineralization component at home that produces clean, crisp water. I fill a one-gallon jug at the start of my day and simply make sure that I finish it by dinner time. I then drink another half-gallon of water or from the time I arrive home to when I go to bed.
I highly recommend you spend a couple hundred dollars on a good water filtration system. There’s a big difference between drinking clean, alkaline water that your body can fully utilize and polluted, acidic junk from the tap or bottle (which is the case with certain brands such as Dasani and Aquafina). If you’re not currently drinking much water, you’re going to be amazed at how much better your body feels once you get up to 1-2 gallons per day.
VITAMINS AND MINERALS
The importance of vitamins and minerals is unknown to many. Guys will rush to the store to buy the latest super-advanced, muscle-maximizing powder that contains a “proprietary blend” of fancy-sounding snake oil compounds, but few pick up a multi-vitamin.
Well, the fact is your body needs a wide spectrum of vitamins and minerals to carry out the millions of sophisticated functions it performs every day. This is a basic need, like protein, carbohydrates, fats, and water. You want a continual supply of vitamins and minerals running through your body, supporting every growth and repair process that occurs.
Ideally, we’d get all vitamins and minerals we need from the food we eat, but this is nearly impossible with the ever-declining quality of soil and food (even in the world of organic). Thus, we need to supplement our food with vitamin and mineral pills. The easiest way to get all the essential vitamins and minerals is a good multi-vitamin product.
SUMMARY
Building a great body requires great eating habits, and you now know what that means: It means eating enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fats and drinking enough water, so that your body has everything it needs to adapt to the intense training you subject it to.
It really is that simple.
