1.INCREASE YOUR CALORIE INTAKE.
The maths is fairly simple. If you eat fewer calories each day than you burn off through activity. you will lose weight. if you eat more, you'll gain weight. And if you eat more of the right things combined with a proper weight training strategy, you'll gain the weight as muscle rather than fat.
The average man needs around 2,500 calories a day just to stay at the same weight, so consider increasing this to around 3,000 caiories a day. Some of that extra will be burned off during your workouts, but the rest will go to growing your muscles, and you should see a steady weight gain of around lKg a month depending on your natural body type.
2. GET THE BALANCE RIGHT.
Nearly all your calories come from a combination of carbohydrate, protein and fats.
Carbohydrates are vital to provide the muscle glycogen that fuels your workouts and should make up about 60 per cent of your total calorie intake, which equates to around 450g of carbohydrates a day if your total calorie intake is 3,000.
Protein is required to grow new tissue in your body and is therefore of special interest to anyone building muscle. However, don't believe the gym myth that more protein equals more muscte. For most men anything over 180g of protein a day is largely useless. The optimum intake of protein for muscle-gainers is between 1.5g and 2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. So, if you weigh 80kg you'll require 120g-160g of protein a day, which will make up around 20 per cent of your daily 3,000 calories.
Fat makes up the final 20 per cent of your calories. Fats can heip you absorb vitamins, improve athletic performance and protect joints and tendons from injury. However fat is very energ dense, containing nine calories per gram compared to four calories for carbs and protein, so your dailiy 600 calories of fat weighs just 67g.
3. EAT THE RIGHT STUFF.
The simplest rule when deciding what to eat is: keep it natural. Processed foods biscuits, cakes, ready meals. fizzy drinks, crisps — tend to be high on calories but low on essential nutrients, so they are poor at fuelling workouts and rebuilding muscle but good at making you fat and sapping your energy reserves.
Carbohydrates come in many different forms, and many studies have looked at which carbs are best for fuelling and recovering from workouts. To keep things simple aim to make the majority of your carbs unrefined, unprocessed, low on the glycaemic index and high in fibre. This includes wholemeal bread and pasta, oats, beans, fruit and vegetables. These will release energy slowly and regulate your blood-sugar levels, ensuring you always have enough stored glycogen in your muscles for an energetic workout.
Protein-rich foods include lean fish, eggs, dairy produce and soya..- ' Lower quality protein can also be found in nuts, seeds and beans. Aim to eat a wide variety of protein-rich. foods to ensure you get the full range of muscle—buillding amino acids, but be wary of taking in too much fat, such as that found in poor cuts red meat and dairy items.
Fats come in four forms: saturates, found in meat and dairy products; monounsaturates, found in olive oil; nuts and seeds; polyunsaturates, found in vegetable oils and oily fish; and trans fats, which are produced by hydrogenating oils to make a solid fat used in cakes, biscuits and margarine. The simple ruie here is to keep saturates and trans fats to an absolute minimum, as they can increase the risk of heart disease, and stock up on monounsaturates and polyunstaurates, especially the omega 3 and omega 6 varieties. Omega 3 fats, as found in oily fish such as mackerel, tuna and sardines, have been proven to aid strength and aerobic training anti protect the body from injuries.
4. Time Your Meals.
when your goal is bigger muscles, the most important time to eat is immediatety after your workout. This is when your muscles have used up glycogen stores and are crying out for replenishment. Aim to eat a highcarbohydrate snack mixed with some protein within 45 minutes of finishing your last rep in the gym. Something like a bagel with cream cheese is perfect or a tuna and pasta salad.
For the rest of the day, eat small meals at regular intervals of two or three hours, with the aim of having some protein with every meal. This way you keep your glycogen leveis topped up and prevent your body from breaking down the proteins that you need for muscle rebuilding.
5. MORE WATER. LESS BOOZE.
It goes without saying that if you sweat a lot in the gym you're going to need to replace that fluid with water. The trick is to ensure that you hydrate yourself before you get thirsty, not afterwards. Dehydration will impact on your performance in the gym and can affect the way your body stores fat and repairs muscle owing to poor organ function. Take a water bottle with you to the gym and sip from it every few minutes rather than glugging it all down in one go [which will just make you want to pee more]. Over the course of a day you should aim to take in about three litres of water in total.
Booze, on the other hand, you can do without. Alcohol can have a catabolic effect on your muscles, meaning it prevents them from developing properly. If you are serious about gaining muscle mass, keep your sessions in the pub to a minimum.
6. THE SUPPLEMENT QUESTION.
Should you or shouldn't you take nutritional supplements? The answer is that they shouldn’t be seen as a alternative to a good diet. Despite the claims of some protein powders or of fat-burning pills, if you are eating properly and following the rules we’ve outlined above, there really is no need to take supplements. especially as these can prove to be expensive.
That said, if you find you're having a problem consuming the necessary calories each day, meal replacement drinks are an easy way to get extra protein and carbs without unwanted fat. Also, people who do a lot of exercise can often need extra vitamins C and E, so a supplement of these can be handy if you struggle to get enough in your regular diet.
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