If you have ambitions to bulk up your muscles, there is plenty that you can do about it. An obvious thing to do is get down to the gym and start pumping some iron. But you can also achieve a great deal through the food you consume as well.
This much should be obvious; eat a fatty diet and the pounds will pile on in the wrong way. Consume lots of cheese and dairy and your bones will be strong but you will also add flab. However, the right food for bulk will go a long way to assisting your muscle-building efforts.
A 7 day meal plan for muscle gain is the best way to achieve this. This does not mean you can achieve all your muscle-building goals in a week, although you can do a lot. What it does do, however, is provide a comprehensive schedule combined with the right kind of food to ensure that over the course of a week, you can get the maximum muscle-growth benefit while staying healthy.
As Healthline notes, muscle-building is not just about loading up on high-protein foods like red meat. It is also about combining protein with the rest of a healthy, balanced diet, so carbs and even some fats can be included.
That is why it has listed no fewer than 26 different kinds of food that a bodybuilder should have in their diet. True, it includes red meats like lean beef, jerky and pork tenderloin, but also white meats and fish such as chicken and turkey, salmon, shrimps and scallops.
Further elements include brown rice, cottage cheese, eggs, soya, milk, beans, quinoa and, of course, protein powders. Even chickpeas make the list, so hummus can still be in your diet. Where some things have lots of fat in them, like milk, cheese and red meat, at least the energy you are burning off in your workouts will compensate for it.
Of course, this list lacks fruit and green vegetables, which won’t help you bulk up, but should still be eaten as part of a healthy diet.
Balance is, of course, an essential element to eating the right foods to bulk up. Myprotein.com advised that there should be an overall surplus of 250-500 Kcal. This includes 1.6 g per kg of protein (20-25 per cent of your calorie intake), while carbs should make up 40-55 per cent.
That leaves around 30-35 per cent to be made up of fat. That might sound like a lot, but it needs to be understood these are not the kind of unhealthy trans fats one would fry chips in. Instead, it is good fats, the sort found in food like avocado, or omega 3, which you can get from fish like salmon, that will digest easily and provide important vitamins and other nutrients.
Getting the balance right over the course of a whole week is not easy. But that’s why a pre-packaged meal plan will enable you to enjoy the optimum diet. It should be tasty and varied, while at the same time giving you the best possible nutritional base as you get to work with the weights.