Aside from a few essential tips which I will give you in this article, a muscle gain diet is not much different from any other kind of diet.
Here are 4 tips which if followed are all you will need to know about planning and following an effective muscle gain diet.
1. Eat more calories than your body needs normally.
Exercise burns calories, but your body trying to grow burns even more calories. That’s why you will need to eat more calories than you probably do a moment. Finding out how much you need to eat is simple. Or you need to do is train, and eat a little more than you normally would. If over the course of a week you gain weight then you have eaten enough.
2. Eat at last 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight
Muscle mass is mostly made up of protein and water so it is very important that you eat a lot of protein in order to repair and build muscle you have broken down from training. Without eating enough protein you will struggle to put on muscle mass.
3. Eat every few hours
It takes roughly 72 hours for a muscle to fully repair itself and on most training regimes there is not 72 hours rest. All the time your body needs nutrition to repair itself and grow the muscle you have broken down through lifting.
Having a small protein filled meal every few hours means that your muscles are never starved of nutrition and never stop repairing and growing.
4. Breakfast and post-workout are the most important meals of the day
In bodybuilding breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day. This is because while you have been asleep your body has been breaking down muscle tissue in order to repair itself, so getting nutrients into your system quickly is very important.
The second most important meal of the day is a post-workout meal. After a hard training session the body is very heavily fatigued and the muscle fibres broken down and very much in need of nutrition. Make sure that you get in a good dose of protein and carbohydrates. Also, your testosterone levels will have dropped so good dose of fat should help raise them again.