Muscle Building – The Comprehensive Nutritional Guide To Building Muscle Mass

Muscle building & nutrition

It is a known problem: You want to be stronger, develop specific muscles or generally define muscles, and start intensive training. However, after weeks and months of hard work, the progress is not as hoped. The reason for this is, in most cases, a not optimal muscle building diet for the body.

In addition to the food quality, the optimal ratio of micro-and macronutrients in your diet is essential for successful muscle growth. You can determine the optimal balance with our BMI calculator. In the following, we will show you which aspects you need to consider in your diet to reward your hard training with the best possible results.

Muscle building basics

To build muscle, consider these 3 essential factors:

1. Strength training that enables you to make steady progress

Other forms of training can also stimulate muscle growth, but strength training, in particular, works in a targeted and efficient manner. Every muscle group you want to build should be challenged twice a week.

2. Sufficient and meaningful regeneration

Your body needs time to convert the signals it has received through training into building new muscle fibres. Typically, it takes a muscle group 1-2 days to recover. This time also depends on whether you support your regeneration (healthy diet, good sleep, minimize stress) or boycott ( alcohol, excessive partying, junk food ). During the time in which one muscle group is regenerating, however, you can quickly train another.

3. The proper nutrition

Your body needs a suitable building material to form new muscle fibres: a lot of protein for the cell structure – about 2g per kilogram of body weight per day – and some good fat for the cell membranes. It would help if you also had fats to have enough raw material for neurotransmitters.

These are the signal substances in your body that spread the message “muscle building”. Carbohydrates at the right time that is usually immediately after training, ensure faster regeneration and increase the output of the signal substance for muscle building.

While you should rely on complex carbohydrates before training and on non-training days, which increase blood sugar levels If, you want to improve it more slowly, you can use “fast” carbohydrates after exercise.

To get a little insight into a balanced diet for building muscle, we recommend our free nutrition plan for building muscle.

Also Read: Anabolic Diet – Muscle Building With Simultaneous Fat Loss

Last but not least: If you want to grow taller, you have to consume excess calories.

Otherwise, everything will be used up for your typical daily requirement! A rough rule of thumb is a calorie excess of 20% of your basal metabolic rate. Don’t you know your basal metabolic rate? The Benedict Harris formula shows you how you can determine your basal metabolic rate quite well:

Basal metabolic rate for men (calories per day): 66.47 + (13.7 x body weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)

Basal metabolic rate for women (calories per day): 655.1 + (9.6 x body weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)

You should take about 20% of the result of your calculation in addition to your daily requirement.

You can also calculate your daily requirement using the Benedict Harris formula. This is the approximate amount of calories you need to maintain your current status:

Multiply your basal metabolic rate by:

• 1.4 – for mainly sedentary work and little to no activity (e.g. office work, couch potato)
• 1.6 – for moderately strenuous, alternating sitting, standing and walking activity/activity (e.g. studying, assembly line work) or sitting activity with occasional sporting activity
• 1.8 – for activities with high physical effort (e.g. waiter, craftsman) or sedentary work and frequent sports activity
• 2.0 – for physically strenuous work (e.g. movers, construction workers, fitness trainers) or moderately severe activity and frequent sporting activity
• 2.2 – for activities with high physical effort and frequent sporting activity (e.g. professional athletes)

Are you tired of doing the math yourself?

No problem: In our calorie calculator, you can find out how many calories and which nutrients you ideally need every day to build muscles healthily and sustainably.

Also Read: With Training To A Flat Stomach: 5 Exercises For The Abdominal Muscles