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If you don’t handle your bodybuilding nutrition properly, your muscles won’t grow. Often, most attention is paid to the training, workout, split, and training hard and heavy. But if you don’t know how many calories you need per day and how much protein you should eat, you will never achieve the maximum result.
Bodybuilding Nutrition
To make muscles grow, you need to create a carefully composed training schedule as well as a carefully composed nutrition schedule. It’s not enough to just eat ‘healthy.’ Eating healthy is certainly not wrong, but achieving maximum muscle growth goes hand in hand with a few rules.
Calories
You must eat a predetermined amount of calories daily. Calorie intake should be high enough to allow the body to build muscles. Not eating enough is one of the most common reasons why people fail to achieve muscle growth. Sufficient calories mean that the body receives enough energy for all standard processes, which is the energy your body consumes at rest (Basal Metabolic Rate). In addition, this needs to be supplemented with the energy your activities such as work and training cost, and even eating itself costs energy. To determine how much you need based on your build (weight and body fat percentage) and activity level, use the nutrition calculator. This calculates how this energy should be obtained from the nutrients carbohydrates, protein, and fats.
Protein
You need to keep track of your protein intake. Increasing your daily protein intake during a good strength training schedule can contribute to an increase in lean muscle mass. The human body is constantly in a state of repairing and replacing muscle cells. To maximize this repair, you need to ensure an adequate intake of proteins, the amino acids of which act as building blocks.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates play two major roles in muscle growth, both to promote growth and to limit muscle breakdown. The first role is energy. Your body needs maximum energy to perform at its best. Secondly, insulin peak after your training. Insulin transports nutrients through the bloodstream to the muscle cells. When you finish your workout, your muscles are completely empty and in need of carbohydrates to repair and recover. Therefore, you need to provide them with energy and nutrients, and that’s exactly what carbohydrates do after your workout. If you have an energy deficit, besides fats, proteins in the muscles can also be broken down to provide energy. This comes at the expense of your muscle mass.
Fats
A “low-fat diet” is not always a healthy diet. The body needs healthy fats for multiple reasons. A deficiency in healthy fats can cause slower recovery and therefore overtraining.
Fats can roughly be divided into good and bad fats. Omega-3 and -6 fats are good fats and help create an anabolic environment for muscle growth. Make sure you get at least 40 grams of these healthy fats daily. These fats are found in (natural) peanut butter, nuts, seeds, salmon, olive and rapeseed oil, among others. MCTs are fats of a certain length, about which we have extensively written about their positive properties.
Fats should not be completely avoided in the growth plan. Fat provides a lot of calories, making it easier to get enough calories, but it is also necessary for the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. It also supports testosterone (the male hormone) necessary for muscle growth.
Examples of Bodybuilding Nutrition
Here’s an example of products that fit perfectly into the growth plan. You can replace items with similar products. You’ll make more progress if you vary a lot and don’t eat the same thing every day.
Breakfast
Whole wheat bread
Boiled eggs
Turkey
Chicken fillet
Peanut butter
Porridge
Lunch
Grilled chicken
Tuna
Pasta with olive oil
Salad without fatty dressing
Vegetables
Dinner
Steak
Lean beef
Chicken fillet
Turkey breast
Steamed potatoes
Pasta with olive oil
Vegetables
Snacks
Protein shake
Weight gainer
Low-fat yogurt
Curd
Fruit
Lean cold cuts
Before and after training
Simple carbohydrates and proteins, for example, banana and protein shake
