Diet Planning for Bodybuilding
In order to add mass, you need to increase your daily calorie intake. This means you need to take more calories daily than your consume. Taking this into consideration, people increase their calorie intake drastically which eventually leads to increased body fat. You need to be careful while adding calories to your daily diet. The better way is to gradually add calories to your diet. My advice is to add 250 extra calories to your diet weekly. If your daily calorie requirement is around 2500 add 250 calories per week, till you reach your targeted daily intake for mass building. This addition will not result in increased fat storage as your metabolic rate will adjust accordingly.
Rules for mass addition are simple. Since 3500 calories equals 1 pound of body weight. If you intake 3500 calories in excess over a certain period of time you increase 1 pound of body weight. Same goes for weight loss. So if someone wants to add 1 pound per week and his starting calorie intake as per his maintained body weight is 2500 calories, then he should add 500 more calories to his diet. These 500 increased calories over the week would account for 3500 additional calories, which in turn will result in 1 pound increase in body weight. But remember you don’t need to rush. Follow the rule described above; add 250 calories per week till you reach your targeted calorie intake.
Rest of the section, will cover factors like - meal frequency, macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) intake, rest - that play an important role in mass building diet planning. This discussion will be followed by a free sample diet plan for mass building based on 3500 calories a day.
Meal Frequency
Follow the “6 meals a day” rule. Your muscles need constant supply of amino acids. So need to saturate your muscles with constant supply of proteins through out the day. Each meal should be a balanced one with right amount of protein, carbohydrates and fats. With 6 meals a day with 2-3 hour of break in between is the ideal meal frequency. Remember, this routine will increase the metabolic rate which inturn, with increased number of calorie intake, will result in tremendous increase in lean muscle mass.
Macronutrients
You have started the mass building routine and you have started eating every other junk food available. You think you can work off with this kind of eating habits since you are doing the hard work at gym. Soon you will notice the mass addition but that would be only on your gut. So need you need to have a balance, control and proper understanding of what you eat? You need to calculate the nutritional content of whatever you eat or at least should have an idea. Following discussion will describe the need and requirements for a good mass building diet. This information will help you to formulate a diet that will help you add leaner mass and to minimize fat addition.
