A Muscle Building Diet: Foods that Can Help Create Muscle Mass
Your resistance training regimen and the muscle building diet choices you make as you train will both be influenced by your long term workout goals. If you’re trying to gain strength and improve your athletic performance, you’ll want to focus on blending resistance and cardio, lifting lighter weights, and increasing your reps. But if you’re working on building big muscles fast and you aren’t especially concerned about strength and agility, your workout regimen and your diet should both take this into account.
For big muscle volume, use the burn down method, which involves lifting heavier weights to the point of failure. Focus on lower reps, higher weights, and nutritional choices that can quickly rebuild overtaxed muscle tissue. Here are a few healthy workout diet tips for muscle growth and repair.
Muscle Building Diet Choices
- Load up on plenty of protein, but make sure you’re choosing the right proteins and avoiding the ones that can stand in your way. Look for lean meats like fish, chicken, turkey, and eggs. Nuts like almonds and walnuts can also help you build muscle fast without adding fat.
- Skip red meat like beef and pork. No matter how much fat has been trimmed off the edges, these meats are still loaded with fat, and it isn’t the good kind. Excess fat won’t help build muscle tissue and can actually contribute to the subcutaneous layer that, for example, keeps your six pack abs from showing. You don’t need to do more crunches; just lay off the cheeseburgers.
- Choose whole grain and unprocessed carbs, like oatmeal, whole grain bread, and legumes. Before you eat something from a package, take a quick look at the label. If you see more than about twenty ingredients, or if high fructose corn syrup appears at the top of the list, just put it back on the shelf and choose something else.
