Protein Rich Diet Plan for Muscle Building

How to diet for building muscle

My research process: I cite research when possible, but I don't blindly follow a study's conclusions. Not all studies are well designed, so I try to find multiple studies to support claims. I then experiment with findings and compare them against each other.

Eating and sleeping are as important as working out when building muscle. Not getting enough calories or sleep will cancel your muscle gains.

This page shares the complete science of how to eat. It's a master reference:

• How many calories to eat in a day
• How to design a meal plan that you can follow
• When you should eat

If you do just the following things correctly on a workout day, you should successfully see muscle gains:

• Complete all reps using proper form with heavier weights than your last workout.
• Eat enough calories to give your body the resources to build muscle. This page teaches this.
• Get enough sleep for your muscles to recover from workouts (study). To be safe, aim for the AASM and SRS recommendation for adults, which is 7 hours (study).

To repeat: If, on a given day, you nail a workout but don't eat enough calories, you risk gaining ZERO  muscle mass by the next morning. (You may still gain strength.)

Here's the implication: If you suspect you'll be unable to eat or sleep enough on a workout day, reschedule the workout to a day where think you will.

Meal calorie counts

On workout days, you have to eat enough calories to build new muscle. On non-workout days, you have to eat enough calories to avoid losing existing muscle.

If you don't reach your bodybuilding diet's daily calorie target, your body converts existing muscle and fat into energy. That means you lose the muscle you gained.

That's the annoying part of building muscle: dieting consistency.

The Rock claims to eat nearly 5,000 calories per day. Watch his bodybuilding diet:

Your personal daily calorie target is calculated from what's called your your basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is the amount of calories you burn just by being awake for a day; your body uses a lot of energy to perform basic functions like pumping blood and powering your brain.

This means if you eat precisely your BMR's worth of calories in a day, and you perform no physical activity (e.g. walking, running, weightlifting) to burn calories, you should get enough calories to prevent your body from breaking down your existing muscle.

However, since most of us aren't sedentary, plus we're regularly going to the gym, which itself burns calories, we must eat calories beyond our BMR to avoid being in a calorie deficit by the time we go to sleep.

Use the calculator below to estimate your daily target. The numbers outputted are how many calories you should eat on your workout and non-workout days.

Again, workout days require extra calories to make up for what you burn while exercising.

For the weight field, select what your scale says upon waking up (before eating). For the walking and non-weightlifting exercise fields (e.g. running, biking, swimming), enter how many hours of exercise you perform on average each week.

The Rock is 49 years old and weighs 260lbs (118kg). In an interview, he said he does 1 hour of cardio per day. We can input these numbers into the calculator above to estimate that he walks for 3 hours a day on average!

In the next section, we develop a bodybuilding diet framework for consistently achieving your calorie targets and muscle growth.

Off topic: This year, I got tired of overlong books and bad book summaries. So I made a newsletter that just shares the most interesting highlights from famous books. I distill each book's key lessons into short paragraphs. 50,000 people read it. Subscribe to see the first issue. I only email once per month.

All of this advice is recapped for you in the cheatsheet at bottom of this page.

First, there is no special "bodybuilding diet." There's just common sense nutrition and daily calorie targets. You can follow any diet you want: ketogenic, paleo, whatever. So long as you hit your protein and calorie targets, research suggests you're fine.

To consistently reach your daily calorie target, it's critical to develop a reliable muscle building meal plan based off what I call "core foods." These are healthy, high-calorie foods you should stock in your kitchen to form the basis of meals:

• 1 packet of plain instant oatmeal: 125 calories (easiest to cook)
• 1 5" sweet potato: 115 calories (cooks quickly in the microwave)
• 1 cup of cooked brown rice: 200 calories (this is the least healthy option)
• 1 can of black beans: 350 calories (easiest to buy canned)
• 1 cup of cooked quinoa: 220 calories (hard to find pre-cooked for a low price)
• 1 can of lentils: 350 calories (easiest to buy canned from the supermarket)
• 1/4 bag of Soylent powder: 500 calories (a meal substitute)

If your day's target is 2,000 calories, and you've chosen to eat the majority of your calories from brown rice (200 calories per can), that's 10 cups of brown rice to eat.

In practice, I'd vary it up a bit so you balance your nutrients. For most people, the intersection of ease, price, and taste makes brown rice, sweet potatoes, and oatmeal the go-to muscle building core foods.

Every day for as long as you want to build or maintain muscle, you must eat enough to reach your calorie target.

Decide which of the core foods you're willing to eat. Then buy a ton of them. Don't overlook the convenience of having these simple go-to foods on-hand. Otherwise you'll cave and eat out more than you should. When you eat out, it's tough to know how many calories you're getting. There's a lot of hidden oil and sugar.

Of course, you can also eat other foods beyond these core foods. You have a life to live, and who doesn't like dining out and making home cooked meals! That's no problem. But you'll need to develop a rough idea of the calories in the non-core meals you eat so you know how much of your core to avoid eating that day.

Keep in mind alcohol is a common sources of sneaky calories. They add up quicker than people realize. For example, a typical 250 ml bottle of fruit juice is 120 calories, and 1 can of coke or beer is 150 calories.

Now let's walk through a calorie counting example.

If you eat a 500 calorie restaurant lunch and a 1000 calorie restaurant dinner, subtract 1,500 from your 2,000 daily target to determine how many calories you must get from core foods. 500 remaining calories is 1.5 cans of beans or lentils we must eat. Hopefully we add some spice and veggies to keep it interesting.

To keep your calculations simple, you can make some assumptions when eating out:

• A small meal (e.g. chicken breast, vegetables, lettuce): 250 calories.
• A medium meal (e.g. small portion of turkey, heavy oil and sauce): 500 calories.
• A large meal (e.g. 8oz steak, sweet potatoes, beer): 750 calories.

These numbers are low-balled by 25-35% because we can't risk undereating. Failing to hit your calorie target will hinder or prevent muscle growth from that day's workout. (Yes, slightly overeating on workout days means you might gain a couple pounds of fat by the end of this program. But you can burn that off when you're done gaining muscle.)

If there are certain foods or meals you regularly eat, take the time to jot down the calorie counts listed on their nutritional labels. If you're eating a prepared meal that doesn't have a label, you can use MyFitnessPal to tally up the calorie counts for the meal's individual food items (e.g. steak, potatoes, gravy).

You don't have to constantly do this. The goal is just to have a rough idea of how many calories you're getting from non-core meals so you instinctively know how many cups/cans of core foods you don't have to eat that day.

If you're in doubt about hitting your daily calorie target, follow this:

• On workout days, eat a bit more than you think you need to.
• On non-workout days, eat a bit less than you think you need to. In my anecdotal experimentation, I've found that as long as you don't run a calorie deficit greater than 20% of your non-workout day target, you don't lose muscle. The page before this has a technique for measuring muscle gains. Try it and experiment for yourself.

As a reference, here's a sample meal plan for building muscle. Note how most of the calories come from beans and oatmeal (the "core foods"):

• 4 packets of plain instant oatmeal: 500 calories
• 2.5 cans of lentils/black beans (I can already smell the farts!): 900 calories
• 4 teaspoons of any oil: 160 calories
• 4 tablespoons of flaxseed: 160 calories
• 1 spinach + berry smoothie: 150 calories
• 1 4oz serving of salmon: 250 calories
• 8 tablespoons of protein: 320 calories
• 2,440 calories total

Below is an incomplete list of healthy foods. If you care about eating well—beyond what's necessary for bodybuilding—perhaps consider these too:

• Core — Lentils, black beans, quinoa, oatmeal.
• Meat — Most are fine, but doctors recommend limiting saturated meats (e.g. salmon and steak) to a few meals per week (study). Are you vegan? Don't worry. You don't need meat to build muscle.
• Nuts and seeds — Almonds, walnuts, flaxseed
• Fruit — Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, avocado
• Vegetables — All are acceptable except for white potatoes. Broccoli is great.
• Oils — Coconut in particular is great, and olive oil is good
• Leafs — Spinach, kale
• Beverage — Plain or sparkling water, green tea

The common workout advice is that you should drink 2.5-3 liters per day, but the research shows there's actually no benefit to chugging back water all day (study).

Just like you get protein from the normal foods you eat, you also get water from your food (article, overview). So even if you're required to get 2.5L daily, you wouldn't have to independently drink that entire amount.

Research hasn't reached a consensus on exactly how much water we need, but a rule of thumb is to drink two cups at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Two notable exceptions are if you live in a hot climate or sweat a lot, in which case you should be diligent about getting enough water to avoid dehydration.

To repeat, for the purposes of bodybuilding, I have seen no evidence that there's a specific or high daily water intake that will benefit your gains.

You now have what you need to know to build muscle. (If you landed on this page from Google, start at Page one.)

• Open iCal or Google Calendar and create an event set 90 days in the future. Invite a friend to the event—someone you respect who you wouldn't want to think of you as a quitter—and consider asking them to guilt you into your 90 day goal.
• Once you've created the event, go through the steps in Prep Week.
• Afterwards, get yourself into the gym. Start with three times a week for 90 days.

Cheatsheet

Below is the cheatsheet for this entire handbook.

If you enter your email below, the cheat sheet is emailed to you so you can easily reference it in your inbox. I will not send you any other emails.

Four principles of gaining muscle

• Eat your daily calorie targets (calculator link).
• Get ~7 hours of sleep the night before and after workouts.
• Lift heavier weights each time you go back to the gym.
• Measure your arm size weekly to confirm you're growing.

Workout plans

• Starting weights •Choose a weight heaviness that isn't overly challenging but also isn't so light that you can barely feel it. Once you've found this weight, do 7 reps then take a 3 minute break before increasing the weight to the next heaviness level. See if you can do 7 reps again. Keep incrementing weight and taking 3 minute breaks until you get to a heaviness you cannot lift the full 7 reps with. When you get to this last level, make a note of the level that came before it. This second-to-last level is your starting weight heaviness.
  
• Plan A (First 8 weeks) • Do each of the three workout days once per week. Rest at least one day between workout days. Resting longer isn't necessary but won't hurt. If you skip a workout, just pick up from the day you last missed.
  
• Plan B (8 weeks and beyond) • Scroll here for exercises.
  • You can do all three workout types on back-to-back days if desired. But you must take 4 days of rest before repeating a day type. (Resting longer is fine, but isn't necessary.) For example, you can do Day 1 on Monday, Day 2 on Tuesday, and Day 3 on Wednesday, but wait until Friday to repeat Day 1, Saturday to repeat Day 2, and Sunday to repeat day 3.
  •  Recalculate your calorie target since you'll weigh more by this point.
  • Never rearrange the order of exercises or the workout days.
• Maintenance Plan (when you're done growing) • You don't have to keep lifting heavier weights
  • Stop taking creatine and citrulline malate, but still take protein on workout days.
  • You must continue hitting your calorie targets.
  

How to work out

• Warmups and cardio •  Research suggests that stretching before working out and performing light warmup sets are unnecessary unless you have prior injuries or are still learning proper form for an exercise. (Any advice from your doctor of course overrides my suggestions.)
  •  Don't do more than 30 minutes of intense cardio (e.g. running, swimming, high-speed cycling) on workout days. You can do intense cardio on non-workout days so long as it's not running/biking after a leg workout and not swimming after a bicep, back, or shoulders workout. Those muscles will need time to recover.
• Form •  Refer to the exercise videos for proper form.
  •  Start with your non-dominant side for one-handed/one-legged exercises.
  •  Throughout the lifting and lowering motions, squeeze the target muscle and make sure it's the one doing the work.
  • Resist the lowering portion of any exercise so that you feel the burn on the way down too; don't let gravity do all the lowering work for you.
  •  Breathe out when you're contracting the muscle (the hard part), such as pushing a barbell or lifting a dumbbell, and breath in for the opposite direction. You may be unable to complete all your reps if you fail to properly and consistently breathe.
• Reps and rest time •  Do 8 to 10 reps on each exercise. This means it's okay if you vary between 8, 9, or 10 reps on each set. Do as much as you can, but stop one rep before failure.
  • Big, two-hand movements like chest exercises should take around 2.5s in each direction (raising and lowering). Small, one-handed movements like bicep curls should take around 1.5s in each direction. The exact timing isn't critical.
  • Rest as long as you need to between sets (typically 3–5 minutes). You want your muscle to feel fully recovered. At minimum, wait until your heartbeat calms.

Supplements

• Every day (at any time of day) • Creatine (optional): Take 1 scoop (5g) at the same time you take your protein.
  • Protein (whey or brown rice): Multiply 0.60 times your current bodyweight in lbs (or 1.32 times your bodyweight in kg) to get the total grams of protein you need to supplement from your protein powder. Break this total amount into 2 separate servings (e.g. a morning smoothie and an evening oatmeal and protein mix).
• Before your workout • Citrulline malate (optional): Take 4 scoops (8g/0.28oz) 60 minutes before working out. It is sour so take it like a shot with just a tiny bit of water.

Food

• Calories •  Eat as much food as is required to reach your daily target. If this is a workout day, remember to eat 300 calories more than your non-workout day target. If you have difficulty reaching your calorie target, try making a few high-calorie smoothies per day each packed with oil, oatmeal, fruit, and everything else you can throw in it.
  º  Try to get the majority of your calories from these healthy core foods: black beans, lentils, quinoa, oatmeal, and Soylent. Brown rice is also acceptable, although it isn't particularly healthy. Keep your kitchen stocked with core foods at all times:
  •  1 can of black beans: 350 calories
  •  1 can of lentils: 350 calories
  •  1 cup of cooked quinoa: 220 calories
  •  1 cup of cooked white or brown rice: 200 calories
  •  1/4 bag of Soylent powder: 500 calories
  •  1 packet of plain instant oatmeal: 125 calories
• Familiarize yourself with how many calories are in your common non-core meals so you can avoid overeating. Below are conservative numbers:•  A small meal (cup of brown rice, vegetables, fruit) is 200 calories.
  •  A medium meal (small bowl of chicken, rice, vegetables, sauce) is 500 calories.
  •  A large meal (8oz steak, potatoes, salad with dressing, beer) is 900 calories.
• Meals •  You don't need to eat unhealthy starchy foods like pasta and bread for the purposes of "workout energy." Eating healthy will give you just as much energy.
  •  Eat your normal 3 meals per day. Try eating both before and after workouts.
• Liquids • Try to drink 2 cups of water (or a healthy alternative) at every meal. This isn't a requirement for building a muscle; it's a health suggestion.
  • Be mindful of calories you drink: fruit juices, creamed coffees, and alcohol are appreciable sources of calories that you must count toward your calorie targets.

Overcoming plateaus

• Things to try if you're not getting stronger • Use magnet weights (get 1.25lbs and 2.5lbs) to increase weight by 2.5lbs if you can't go up by 5lbs.
  • Try resting much longer between sets. This won't impact your gains and will allow you to finish all your sets and reps (which is critical).
  • Sleep ~7 hours the night before a workout.
  • Sleep ~7 hours the night of a workout.
  • If you're on Plan B, don't re-arrange the exercise order.
  • Try resting an extra day between workout day types.
  • Watch exercise videos to verify your form is correct.
  • If you can't progress on chest exercises, try adding more weight to your front shoulder raises. Your shoulders need to be strong to work your chest.
  • If you can't progress on bicep/tricep exercises, try adding more weight to your forearm exercises. They need to be strong to work the rest of the arm.
  • Breathe out when contracting your muscle and breathe in when uncontracting.
  • Have a friend lightly assist by pushing the weight when you're lifting.
• Things to try if you're getting stronger but not bigger • Don't increase weight by more than the normal increment that's been producing gains for you, or you might overwork your muscle and cause it to shrink.
  • Don't do more sets than dictated by your workout plan or you'll overwork your muscles and cause them to shrink.
  • Rewatch the arm measurement video to check that you're measuring correctly.
  • Remember to take your measurement at least 30min after waking up on the morning after working out.
  • Try eating 300 calories above your workout day calorie target.
  • Sleep longer than usual on the night after a workout.
  • If you're still on Plan A after ~8 weeks, try switching to Plan B now.
  • If you're already several months into Plan B, you might be nearing a plateau where it'll take months instead of weeks to continue getting larger.

Protein Rich Diet Plan for Muscle Building

Source: https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/bodybuilding-diet

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