BY: ISSA     DATE: 2022-04-07

Reading Time: 5 minutes 43 seconds

Building muscle—both increasing strength and hypertrophy—requires more than just lifting weights and working out.

The truth is that any type of body composition change, like losing fat or gaining muscle, depends as much, if not more so, on diet as it does on a regular workout routine.

Your clients looking to bulk up, get stronger muscles, or build lean muscle may be gung-ho to get in the gym and lift, and that’s great.

But make sure those dedicated clients are focusing just as much on what they eat. Educate them about macronutrients, calorie intake, and specific foods to choose or avoid.

Muscle gains happen slowly, but with the right diet of healthy eating, your clients will hit strength goals sooner.

How Knowing What to Eat to Gain Muscle Leads to Better Results

If you’re trying to get muscles that are bigger and stronger, working out is key. Strength training breaks down muscle tissue (muscle protein breakdown). Muscle protein synthesis is the process of creating protein to repair that damage. During recovery that tissue rebuilds stronger and bigger.

But, your body can’t create that new muscle tissue out of nothing. To make gains you have to have the right nutrients in your body to construct muscle.

This means that what you eat, and how much, is essential in making muscle gains. Lifting and doing strength training without adequate nutrition, especially without enough protein, can actually lead to loss of muscle tissue.

Furthermore, if you aren’t eating right you won’t have the energy to do the workouts that lead to muscle gain.

To make the most gains in muscle mass and strength you need:

• Enough calories total, each day,

• And adequate protein to actually rebuild more muscle tissue.

If you eat a lot of protein but not enough overall calories, you’ll struggle to be able to workout to build more muscle.

If you eat enough calories but too much junk and not enough protein, your body won’t be able to build up muscle tissue and will gain fat instead.

How Much to Eat When Building Muscle

When building muscle, your body needs more fuel than when it’s maintaining body composition. This can be a difficult concept for some clients to grasp. They may resist, especially those worried about weight gain or gaining fat.

Help them understand that the extra calories will go into muscle development, not fat, as long as they are working out in the right way.

Exactly how many calories an individual needs per day when working out and gaining muscle varies. You’ll need to look at each client separately to recommend calorie intake during a muscle-building period. Generally, adding 20 to 30 grams of added protein per day is a good rule for a muscle building meal plan.

Protein—The Dietary Building Block for Muscle Growth

To be fit and healthy during any kind of workout plan, your clients should be eating a balanced, nutrient-dense diet. But, to focus on muscle gains, getting adequate protein is most important.

Muscle tissue is made up largely of proteins, which is why this macronutrient is essential. Protein is made up of amino acids. These are often referred to as the building blocks of proteins, and they are most importantly needed for growth and repair.

The body needs 20 different amino acids to function and grow properly. While all 20 are important, nine amino acids are considered essential. Essential means that they cannot be made by your body. Essential amino acids must be consumed via your diet. A complete protein is one that contains all nine essential amino acids.

How Much Protein Do You Need for Muscle Building?

Very few people in the U.S. have a hard time getting enough protein in their diet. This is because the typical western diet is rich in protein. Also, protein turnover in the body is pretty slow for sedentary individuals.

For active people, especially those looking to add muscle mass, it is important to look closely at actual protein intake and make adjustments if necessary. Here are some general guidelines from research and sports science and nutrition organizations:

• For sedentary individuals, about 0.81 grams of protein per kilogram of body mass is enough. That means a 150-pound person would eat about 55.5 grams of protein per day.

• The American College of Sports Medicine and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics both recommend 1.2 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of mass for active individuals. This translates to 95 to 136 grams of protein daily for someone who weighs 150 pounds.

• A recent study that analyzed 49 other studies determined that the ideal amount of protein per day for gaining muscle is 1.6 grams per kilogram of body mass. For the 150-pound client, this is 109 grams of protein per day. (1)

Learn more: Bodybuilding Nutrition – What to Eat for Bulking

Food for Muscle Building – Don’t Forget Carbohydrates

While focusing on protein intake, it can be easy to overlook the other macronutrients. A balance is important, and carbohydrates are especially necessary for fueling the tough workouts that help build muscle.

The body will struggle to absorb more than 35 grams in one sitting, so every meal and snack should include protein along with carbs and a little bit of fat.

Is Fat an Important Muscle Building Food?

Fat is important but it’s not as necessary to track. If you are eating enough protein and carbs, you likely have adequate healthy fat in your diet. Plus, fat is easier to store in the body, so it’s hard to be deficient. In general, try to skip trans and saturated fat. Unsaturated fat is considered the more healthy fat.

Choosing Foods for Muscle Gain

Help your clients fuel their muscle gains with the right muscle building foods. They’ll need lean proteins, foods that are high in protein as well as micronutrients, and complex carbohydrates.

15 of the Best Muscle Building Foods

Choose high-quality protein-rich foods, those that also contain other nutrients. It’s also important to eat a variety of protein sources:

• Eggs. One egg has about six grams of protein along with healthy fats and B vitamins.

• Chicken. Choose chicken breast for a lean source of high quality protein, about 26 grams per three ounces.

• Lean beef. Beef is a good protein choice as long as you stick with lean cuts. In addition to protein, it contains creatine, known to improve athletic performance and have other health benefits.

• Cottage cheese. Depending on the type, cottage cheese can have as much as 25 grams of protein per serving, plus calcium.

• Salmon. This fatty fish is rich in both protein and omega 3 fatty acids, which may contribute to muscle growth.

• Beans. Black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and other varieties are a great lean protein source with 15 grams per cup. They also contain a lot of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

• Tofu. Made from soybeans, tofu is an important source of protein for vegetarians and vegans and is also rich in calcium.

• Tempeh. This fermented soybean product is less processed than tofu and so retains more micronutrient while also providing vegan protein.

Learn more: What to Eat to Build Lean Muscle Mass

• Greek yogurt. Yogurt is a great snack and smoothie ingredient, but choose Greek yogurt for more protein. 

• Tuna. This is an easy protein to reach for as part of a meal or snack. It offers a lot of vitamins and 20 grams of protein in three ounces.

• Protein powders. While whole foods are always best, protein powders can be a good way to add in extra grams per day. Whey protein powder is a great choice, as is pea protein powder for vegans.

• Quinoa. This ancient grain contains about eight grams of protein per cup as well as 40 grams of complex carbs.

• Brown rice. Brown rice has not been refined like white rice, so it contains more nutrients and protein.

• Peanuts. This nut-like legume has 17 grams of protein in a half-cup.

• Nuts and seeds. Add a variety of nuts and seeds, including almonds, cashews, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and others, for protein, carbs, and micronutrients.

Knowing What to Eat to Gain Muscle Also Means Avoiding Junk

When trying to build muscle and not increase body fat, getting the right balance of nutrients and calories is essential. Your clients will have little room for so-called empty calories. In other words, they need to avoid junk food.

In addition to the protein-rich foods and complex carbs, like brown rice and quinoa, have your clients fill out the rest of the day’s calories with mostly vegetables. Some fruit is good too, especially before a workout. The kinds of foods that won’t help with muscle gain and that should be avoided include:

• Alcohol. These are truly empty calories with almost no nutritional value. Also, drinking can make it hard to work out the next day.

• Added sugars. Natural sugars from fruits and vegetables help fuel workouts. Added sugars in processed foods only promote fat gains.

• Fried and processed foods. These kinds of junk foods may have protein, but the fats and additives can increase inflammation and support putting on fat, not muscle.

Gaining muscle is a long-term goal. If you have clients interested in putting on muscle, help them get there more efficiently and effectively with a great workout plan and a healthy, protein-rich diet.

BY: ISSA

DATE: 2022-04-07

References

1. Morton, R.W., Murphy, K.T., McKellar, S.R., Schoenfeld, B.J., Henselmans, M., Helms, E., Aragon, A.A., Devries, M.C., Banfield, L., Krieger, J.W., and Phillips, S.M. (2018). British Journal of Sports Medicine. 52(6), 376-84. Retrieved from https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/6/376

Whether you love them, hate them, or are indifferent to them, meal kit delivery services are here to stay. Over the past decade, these services have been growing, evolving, and improving. Whatever your dietary requirements are, chances are you can find something that fits. For example, maybe you need a vegan meal kit delivery service. So the question on everyone’s mind is—are they worth it?

The overall value of any purchase is subjective and varies person-to-person. Some people are willing to pay premiums for certain things. In contrast, with others, nothing out there warrants a premium, and thriftiness trumps all. For these reasons, we can’t provide an answer to whether or not meal kits are worth it that everyone will agree with. But, we can highlight all the points to consider before you subscribe to a service so that you can make your own informed decision.

The Price of Meal Kit Delivery Convenience

There’s no denying that putting in the legwork yourself to buy your groceries at the supermarket will be cheaper than a meal kit delivery service. That’s because there are a ton of things that food service professionals do for you.

• They develop recipes that can be prepared by anyone yet are still creative and delicious.
• They source the ingredients, which are often organic.
• They portion out and package the ingredients to minimize food and packaging waste.
• They monitor and operate a supply chain that delivers the meals to your doorstep.
• They employ a customer service team to help if you have any questions or anything goes wrong.

All of the things mentioned above are just a few of the overall daily operations of meal kit delivery services that they must oversee and fund. All while providing a delicious meal well below the cost of an equivalent one at a restaurant. After all that, it’s a wonder how these companies retain enough profit to stay in business.

So is the convenience worth it? That all depends on how you feel about finding recipes and going to the store to buy groceries. There is definitely no shortage of recipes online. However, for some, the pandemic has made grocery shopping more stressful than it needs to be, for more than one reason. There are obviously health concerns, but lingering supply chain issues can make finding the right ingredients tough as well.

When you subscribe to a meal kit delivery service, you don’t have to worry about either of those things. Also, some companies take it a step further by prepping meals or partially cooking the meals for you. In those cases, you have even less work to do, bumping up the convenience premium.

Meal Kit Delivery Service Quality and Taste

Because of all the competition out there, meal kit delivery services can’t afford to send low-quality or spoiled foods to their customers. So, that happens very rarely. However, we’re all human, and mistakes can happen. But, these companies work diligently to source quality ingredients from reliable suppliers. So, in our experience, ingredient quality has never been an issue.

We all hold different standards in terms of taste. Those who are well-traveled and have experienced many different cuisines by acclaimed chefs probably hold food to a higher standard than those who are perfectly satisfied by a diner meal. The same goes for people who have some professional cooking experience. The recipes could seem too basic or bland.

In terms of taste, it’s essential to take meal kit delivery services for what they are and curb your expectations. You’re getting the convenience of a pre-portioned (or in some cases pre-made) meal. It’s not going to be a Michelin-Star-level experience. Also, in general, the recipes must be able to be made by novice and intermediate-level home cooks. So, there are limitations in that area as well.

That’s not to say that the meals aren’t going to be tasty, but some might not blow you away—which is okay. The beauty of a meal kit delivery service is that you get a pool of go-to recipes over time. With all that considered, we believe that meal kit delivery services deliver in both quality and taste.

Meal Kit Delivery Flexibility

While some meal delivery services offer plans that can cover almost every meal of the day, many do not. Meal kit delivery services are primarily intended to be periodic breaks from cooking. If you never cook at home on your own, then they’re designed to bring you into the kitchen and let you take a break from eating out.

When meal kits first started, a significant barrier to people utilizing the services was the commitment. What if you happen if eat out a lot one week, or maybe you go on an impromptu vacation? The fear of getting a meal kit and not being able to cook it in time was real. Companies listened to their customers, and now almost every service lets you pause or skip a week as long as you do so far enough in advance.

Subscriptions became more flexible by having the customer pay per shipment, not via an upfront subscription fee. The downside to this is if you maintain a subscription, it can become burdensome to remember to pause or skip weeks, especially if you subscribe to more than one service.

A good way to avoid this problem is to choose the fewest meals per week option. Even if you forget to skip a week and get the delivery, it’s not such a chore cooking two meals within a week or 10 days (which is the typical window before ingredients go bad).

Are Meal Kit Delivery Services Eco-Friendly

Many people think that the convenience of meal kit delivery services is not worth the toll it takes on the environment. That might have been the case in the beginning. But over the years, companies have come to realize how important sustainability is to their customers and have made considerable efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.

While the packaging for meal kits can be extensive, most of it is recyclable. But, in terms of environmental impact, it’s not the packaging that matters most. A meal kit delivery study from the University of Michigan found that meal kit delivery services vastly cut down on food waste, a massive contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Also, although it might not seem like it, supply chains are way more efficient than the overall food distribution system. That means fewer emissions from food transportation. So if reducing GHG emissions is important to you, incorporating just a couple of meals delivered to your door per week can be helpful to the environment.

Final Thoughts

Soup to nuts, there’s not much to complain about when it comes to meal kit delivery services. You get delicious meals conveniently delivered to your doorstep at a reasonable price. They’re also flexible and don’t require that much of a commitment. And while the packaging can be overwhelming, especially if you do a lot of online shopping, the service is actually beneficial to the environment. So, in a word, yes, we think meal kit delivery services are totally worth it. It’s up to you to decide if you agree.

By Steven Johnson July 5, 2022