Build Muscle – Do You Need to Eat ‘Clean’ to Build Muscle

You already know what it takes to build muscle – more calories! It is impossible for the body to build muscle unless you are feeding it the raw ingredients necessary to assimilate new muscle tissue. Just as you would expect to build a house without bricks, you cannot expect to build muscle without food.

Now, with this point, many of those looking to build muscle get stuck in the frame of mind that all the food they need to eat must be absolutely ‘clean’. By clean, we mean as healthy as physically possible.

Sweetened cereal? – NO WAY! Hamburgers that have more than 20 grams of fat – NEVER! They may even opt to go with skim milk rather than 1% or 2% in order to prevent the accumulation of body fat.

While it’s good to want to be healthy, when building muscle, you really do not need to take it to this extreme.

Protein Intake

The absolute first thing you must consider in your diet is your protein intake. Are you getting enough? If not, you aren’t optimizing your results. Aim for one gram per pound of bodyweight – no less.

This will give your body amino acids to which they will create new muscle tissue out of.

Carbohydrates

Potentially the area where you can have the most ‘fun’ when it comes to your bodybuilding diet is with carbs. Do you think you must exist on rice, whole wheat pasta, all-bran cereal, dry oats, and the odd slice of whole grain bread? If so, you’re wrong.

The thing with carbohydrates is that while building muscle, you will be eating in a caloric surplus therefore hunger isn’t really going to be a big issue for you.

For dieter’s, yes they will want to stick with these types of carbs since they are released slower in the body and thus keep them from experiencing hunger. With you, the person who wants to build muscle, hunger is actually a good thing because that will help you get the calories you need in order to gain



weight.

Furthermore, getting in these calories gets increasingly hard when you’re trying to do it on oatmeal.

So, don’t be afraid to have some ‘bad’ carbs in there, especially during the post-workout period. One post-workout food that is highly recommend amongst the top trainers, including myself, is ice cream sandwiches. That’s right – ice cream. They are relatively low in fat and contain a good source of sugar, which is exactly what you need in the post-workout period.

Fats

Finally, the last micronutrient to consider is dietary fat. With this one, you do want to concentrate a little more on making sure you don’t take in too many trans fats, as these do have very negative impacts on your overall health.

Aiming for more poly or mono-unsaturated sources is a smarter plan in order to achieve optimal health.

With saturated fats, don’t completely shun them from the diet because some saturated fat actually helps boost testosterone, which is something you definitely need.

Just don’t take in loads either, as a diet high in saturated fat is also associated with heart disease and other serious illnesses.

So, next time someone invites you out to eat and you are worried about going because the food won’t be completely ‘clean’, stress less. As long as you’re meeting your protein needs and the food you are eating is generally pretty healthy, some ‘fun’ foods definitely will not harm your progress.

Source by Shannon Clark

via Paleohacks Paleo Cookbook Review http://ift.tt/1BynzFA