Building Muscle Through Your Diet

I could almost go to the gym for entertainment alone with all the skinny kids who come day in and day out, never lifting very heavy weight, performing the easiest lifts, and otherwise doing everything wrong. It's no wonder most of them disappear after a few months. The sad fact is that they just don't know what they are doing. It is clear that their objective is to get bigger muscles, but apparently it has never occurred to any of them to ask the big guys in the gym. Obviously they need to workout harder, be more focused, and do the hard lifts like squats and deadlifts, but I think one of the major problems for these folks is their diet. It doesn't ever occur to them that their eating habits have anything to do with it. They might understand that they need lots of protein, but often think that drinking a couple a few protein shakes is enough. It's not.

Contrary to popular sentiment, getting big requires some dead weight too. Those guys with huge rippling vein-filled muscles, did not get that way by watching what they eat. They got that way by eating everything they could get their hands on, and then dieting like crazy a few months before a contest or photo shoot. Remember how the fat kid was the bully in grade school? He wasn't necessarily the strongest, but he was the most dangerous because he had the most weight to throw around. The same thing applies in the gym. More weight on your body, more weight gets moved around, a more intense workout takes place, and bigger muscles result. It's that simple.

Now as far as what to actually eat, you still want a fairly balanced diet. Fruits and vegetables for fiber, antioxidants and sugars, carbohydrates for energy, and plenty of protein for muscle repair. Protein is particularly important, not so much because that is what additional muscle tissue is made of, but because your body will use up your existing muscle tissue if you don't have enough in your bloodstream. The last thing you want is to build a little muscle from a workout, only to lose it because you didn't eat enough protein, or eat it often enough. Protein should appear at least four times per day in your diet, NOT including post workout. And one of those times MUST be immediately before bed.

Diet is such a crucial part of how to get muscles that it cannot be done without it. You can do a perfect job of working out, take all the latest and greatest supplements, but in the end, you will fail.