10 Ways to Build Muscle That Just Might Surprise You

Do you think there are 10 ways to build muscle through what you eat?  In today’s world we are not eating properly.  We are busy with work, running errands, spending time with family, etc.  With our lives being so busy, we often result to fast food or frozen meals.

What most people don’t realize is that by making just a few small dietary tweaks, you can transform your body.  I’m going to discuss just a few changes you can make in your nutrition to boost your health, fat loss, and muscle gain.  There are 10 ways to build muscle and even lose body fat.

The Truth About Protein

Eating protein is an obvious way to build muscle.  Meat builds meat.  Protein help to keep blood sugar levels in control and wards off hunger and cravings. You will notice that you eat less when you include enough protein in all of your meals. Protein sources include; eggs, chicken, lean red meat, fish, cottage cheese, and protein drinks.

Get Your Fiber In

Fiber is a very important part of health, fat loss, and even building muscle.  Most people don’t eat enough fiber, just about 10-15 grams a day.  It’s recommended you should take in up to 25-35 grams of fiber a day.  This can be easily done just by eating a serving of fruit or vegetables with each meal.  The added fiber will help stabilize blood sugar levels to combat cravings and ward off body fat storage.

Eat Several Meals a Day

Eating a small, balanced meal, every 3-4 hours is essential to building muscle, and even losing fat. There has been controversy about this tactic in the last several years.  It’s said that as long as you get all your calories macros in by the end of the day, that’s all that matters.  Nothing could be further from the truth, especially if you are trying to build muscle or lose fat.

The reason bodybuilders eat several small meals a day, complete with protein is to maintain a positive nitrogen balance.  If you fail keep a positive nitrogen balance, you can rob your body of muscle gains.  Your body will literally breakdown its own organs and muscle simply to keep a balanced level of amino acids in the body.  If you want to build muscle, and even lost body fat, stick to old-school and eat several small balanced meals a day.

Don’t Avoid The Fat

Not all fat is bad.  Some fat is essential to health and life itself.  Healthy fat serves as an antioxidant to nourish brain function and build hormones. Include health fat such as various nuts, olive oil, peanut oil, flaxseed oil, coconut oil, and even Omega-3 products.  The amount of fat you consume is dependent on your diet plan.  A ketogenic diet requires more fat, while a diet higher in complex carbs needs about 30% fat.

Have a Drink

Drink up, but not alcohol.  While one glass of red wine with your dinner is fine, that’s not what you want to drink most of the day.  You need to hydrate.  Drink you water.  But, can you have other types of drinks?  Sure, drinks such as herbal tea and green tea are great.  Ideally, it’s good to avoid sodas, even diet sodas.  The chemicals in them are worse than the sugar in regular colas.

Green tea is great.  It’s a good antioxidant and it has a lot of health benefits.  Even so, continue to drink your water.  If you consume a lot of protein, then drinking a lot of water is importation for kidney health.  Protein isn’t hard on the kidneys.  A lot of protein with very little water is what is hard on the kidneys.

Eat From Whole and Natural Sources

A huge part of you muscle-building success will come in the quality of your food.  It’s highly suggested that you eat organic foods.  Organic food is free of additives and other chemicals.  While your body can process chemicals to some degree, it’s not designed to in the amount that’s in the commercial food supply.  That’s why people become overweight and toxic.  It’s due to eating an excess of foods loaded with an excess of chemicals and toxins.

Avoid the Carb-Scare

Carbs have a bad rap.  They are protein-sparing and provide fuel for working muscles.  Carbs are needed for muscle building because they increase glycogen stores that are needed for protein synthesis and anabolism.  Carbs also send amino acids and other nutrients to the muscles for rebuilding and recovery.  If your glycogen stores become depleted from lack of carbs, then your training and muscle growth will suffer.  Carbs are not evil as mainstream will have you believe.  They have their place in a bodybuilding diet when implemented correctly.

Log It

The successful bodybuilders log their process.  They log their diet and training.  If you don’t keep a record of what you are doing, how do you really know what you are doing?  Without a log, most people severely underestimate or overestimate the calories and macros.  After about 3 weeks of consistent dieting, you should be able to see some changes.  If you don’t, then you can look back in your journal and see where tweaks can be made.  If you can’t figure it out yourself, get guidance from a personal trainer.

Decipher Labels

Know how to read food labels.  The eye-catching front markings that read, added protein, 1/3 less fat, no added sugar, etc. are very misleading.  They are banking on you not reading the nutritional information and relying on the flashy catch-phrase.  Food companies are very savvy and keep up with the trending lingo.  Processed food is anything boxed or canned.  They are high in sugar and chemicals.  They do nothing for your body but increase hunger, cravings, and add body fat.

Post-Training Meal

This millennial age of bodybuilding has gone off the rails.  A post-training meal is essential if you want to build muscle.  When you weight train you create micro-tears in your muscles.  The muscles are damaged.  They need to be repaired.  Once they are repaired via nutrition and rest, then they will grow into a larger and stronger unit.  The faster you get nutrients to your damaged muscles, the better your muscle recovery will be and the better you muscle and strength development will be.

Here’s an example, and this is a true story.  One day I was cooking a chicken breast in peanut oil.  When turning the chicken, hot oil splashed on my finger, burning the crap out of it.  It was red and burned!  I ran cold water over it for a few minutes then immediately put topical vitamin E on the burn.  The burn healed quickly and didn’t leave a scar. If I had waited to the end of the day to treat my burn, the healing time would have been longer and there would have been a scar that would have taken much longer to heal.  I don’t care what mainstream media tells you.  A post-training meal is critical if you want to better muscle faster. You have up to 2 hours to get the meal in, but the sooner the better.

Keep in Mind…

This was 10 ways to build muscle via diet.  If this information is new to you, take your time and don’t get overwhelmed.  You don’t have to make all the changes overnight.  But, making one change a week is making steps in the right direction to building a better body.  If you want to really improve your muscle development and strength gains, I urge you to check out my FREE Guide Below…