Best Diet for Building Lean Muscle Mass
Posted in: Diet and Nutrition
It’s all about the calories. If you have read other articles on my site or are familiar with the muscle building process you will understand that to build muscle you require a surplus of calories. Some people eat 500 more than they require and others who are trying to stay leaner while bulking eat less, such as 250-300 calories per day.
The less you eat over your maintenance level the less fat you will gain, thus the more so-called lean muscle you will build and the shorter your cutting period will be when you lose all of the fat you acquired while bulking. I prefer eating just over my maintenance level so that I don’t have to lose a heck of a lot of fat. This is what I call clean bulking.
The best diet for building lean muscle is therefore one which is carefully controlled and managed. It’s easy to plan to eat only 250 calories over your maintenance, but any number of foods or snacks can put you way over and in to the 500 calories surplus zone, whereby you will gain at least 0.5 to 1lbs of fat per week - or about 50lbs per year of fat, discounting the mass gains of course.
You should cut out most sugars and eat whole foods when embarking upon this approach and weighting everything by the gram really the only way of properly knowing you’ve eaten what you needed. If you are under your maintenance level on some days, this will hinder your gains therefore it’s imperative you know for absolute certainty your diet is putting you in to a calorie surplus.
There’s a lot of talk about eating and bodybuilding on low-carb diets to stay lean but the fact is, it doesn’t matter WHAT you eat (within reason) as eating low carbs but too much fat or protein will still add body fat if you’re eating too much of them.
If you’re a beginner than you shouldn’t really be trying to minimize your fat gains and I advise you stick to eating 500 calories over your maintenance level. You will have enough pressure as it is without the added stress of controlling your diet while you still aren’t familiar with the various aspects of bodybuilding.
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