Maybe you’ve had sand kicked in your face. Maybe you’ve lost one too many attainable women to beefier guys. Or maybe you’ve read so much about weight loss that actually admitting you want to gain weight is a societal taboo. Whatever the reason, you want to bulk up. Now.
But forget about your alleged high-revving metabolism, says Doug Kalman, R.D., director of nutrition at Miami Research Associates.
“Most lean men who can’t gain muscle weight are simply eating and exercising the wrong way,” he says.
Here’s your fix: Follow these 10 principles to pack on as much as a pound of muscle each week.
1. Maximize muscle building. The more protein your body stores—in a process called protein synthesis—the larger your muscles grow. But your body is constantly draining its protein reserves for other uses—making hormones, for instance. The result is less protein available for muscle building.
To counteract that, you need to “build and store new proteins faster than your body breaks down old proteins,” says Michael Houston, a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech University.
As for when to eat it and what kind you need?
2. Eat meat. Shoot for about one gram of protein per pound of body weight, which is roughly the maximum amount your body can use in a day, according to a landmark study in the Journal of Applied Physiology. (For example, a 160-pound man should consume 160 grams of protein a day—the amount he’d get from an eight-ounce chicken breast, one cup of cottage cheese, a roast-beef sandwich, two eggs, a glass of milk, and two ounces of peanuts.) Split the rest of your daily calories equally between carbohydrates and fats.
3. Eat more. In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily
Read more:Adam Campbell, Fox News
