Packing a lot of muscle mass on your frame is a journey that is equally important as its goal. This goal can be achieved through simple mathematics – if you eat too little, you won’t make your dreams come true because you won’t be able to keep anything in your body, but the opposite is also true – if you eat too much, you will keep way too much and you will get fat instead of getting buff. Simple math can help you calculate how much you need to eat, and even what that food should include. There are a million calorie counting apps out there, but do you really need one to fulfill your potential? Let’s go through the steps and find out.
Step 1 – How Many Calories Should I Eat Per Day?
Your body utilizes calories to keep itself running – you need calories just to function. This means that even if you’re a couch potato all day and you do nothing but breathe and blink, your body will still need calories to keep its vital organs functioning. If you move one muscle, it will spend a certain number of calories. If you’re physically active, you will burn a whole lot more.
However, these calories have to come from somewhere since your body does not create energy by itself. Instead, they come from the food we consume. When you want to put extra muscle on your frame, you need to eat more calories than your body will spend, meaning you have to take into account your activity levels. The more you exercise, the more calories you spend, the more you need to eat.
Sounds really simple, right? Here’s a quick tip to let you check how many calories you need per day just to function, according to your body weight. Take your weight in pounds and multiply it by 18. If you weigh 200 pounds, you will need to eat 3600 calories per day.
Step 2 – What Should I Eat?
Even if it doesn’t matter how often you consume your meals, you still want to plan your diet meticulously. In optimum conditions, you wouldn’t eat more than 40 grams of protein per meal to prevent any problems with your stomach, but if you happen to eat more, it’s really no big deal. If you’re eating the necessary calories per day and you feel fine, all the while exercising and keeping your mind in check, you will be right on track. You can plan your diet yourself, or you can use this one:
(The amount of macronutrients (protein,carbs,fats) needs do be calculated according to your size, metabolism, calorie expenditure etc. How big the servings of each food are going to be, needs to be calculated for each person individually )
Meal #1
One bowl of oatmeal
10 egg whites
2 egg yolks
WPI Shake
Meal #2
A piece of chicken, turkey or white fish, according to your own preference.
Some brown rice, a sweet potato or some basmati rice, according to your own preference.
Meal #3
A piece of chicken, turkey or white fish, according to your own preference.
Some green veggies.
Some brown rice, a sweet potato or some basmati rice, according to your own preference.
Meal #4
A piece of lean beef or kangaroo meat.
Some brown rice, a sweet potato or some basmati rice, according to your own preference.
Meal #5
Some cottage cheese.
A handful of almonds.
A WPI shake.
Also, you need to keep track of the nutritional labels on the items you buy so that you know exactly how many calories you are eating. It’s important to know that each gram of protein and carbohydrates has exactly 4 calories, but each gram of fat has 9, which makes fat much more calorie-heavy, meaning you have to be more careful with it. 10 grams of carbohydrates or protein will give you 40 calories, while 10 grams of fat will give you 90 calories.
Step 3 – Should I Take Any Supplements?
If you want to have a little push in your path to a buff body, you may find supplements very helpful. I would suggest a decent whey protein isolate shake which will give you 100% pure protein that will help you build your muscles. Also, you might want to look at mass gainer protein shakes, creatine shakes and powdered carbohydrates for best performance. Also, these will help you recover more easily and will make your goals seem closer than ever.
Step 4 – How Do I Know if I’m Doing It Right?
When you plan your diet and your exercises right, you should experience a gain of 1.5 to 2 pounds per week. If, for some reason, you aren’t getting as buff as you would like, change your diet or exercise until you’ve got it right. If you are gaining more than two pounds per week, you will need to reduce your calorie count by up to 20% until you are putting on the right amount per week. Soon enough, you’ll be back on track.