Muscle Building Diet: How to Eat to Lose Fat and Build Muscle

If you are looking to build lean muscle while shedding fat, a muscle building diet should be at the center of everything you do. Beyond getting the right amount of exercise and rest, a muscle building diet can make or break your ability to build strength.

Here, we’ll discuss calorie intake, answer the common question “How much protein should I eat to gain muscle,” and other important elements of a healthy diet that will help you build muscle and strength.

The Relationship Between Diet and Exercise

Which do you think is more important to building a body you want, your diet or your workouts?

Many say it’s 80% diet and 20% working out. As an experienced personal trainer, I say it’s 100% each. To get the results you want, your diet must align with your workouts.

A bad diet will translate into a sub-par workout, which will not give you the energy and intensity you need to get results. By eating a healthy diet, you can train hard in the gym and recover properly to build muscles.

Likewise, you can eat 100% clean and healthy, but if you’re not training in the gym multiple times a week with enough intensity, then you won’t be stressing your muscles enough to get them to grow.

Your Calorie Intake

The holy grail of body transformation is to be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. We are inspired by those amazing transformations we see on the internet, and we think everyone achieved their results by transforming a fat cell into a muscle cell.

Successful body transformations start with understanding a little bit about how your body works.

For fat loss to occur, you must burn more calories per day than you eat. When your fat cells start shrinking, your body will metabolize the excess fat, leaving you reduced body fat.

Building muscle happens when you eat excess calories. The extra calories will help to increase the size of your muscle fibers so that you gradually get stronger and increase your overall metabolism.

You may be asking how you are supposed to lose fat and build lean muscles at the same time, and the honest truth is that you can’t. They are opposing metabolic processes.

If you want to lose fat and build lean muscles, pick one to start with. My recommendation is that if you’re a woman with more than 30% body fat or a man with more than 20% body fat, your first goal should be to lose fat.

Having a layer of fat will often mask the muscle gains you reap from the gym. It’ll look as if you’re just getting bigger and softer rather than leaner and more defined as you add muscle to your frame.

In addition, as you eat a high-calorie diet to build muscle, you will inevitably be gaining weight through fat. It’s just the nature of building muscles, unless you are extremely meticulous about your calories.

To lose fat, calculate how many calories your body is burning, and cut out 10-15% of the calories to start the fat loss process.

To build muscle, add an additional 10-15% of the calories of your current caloric burn to your muscle building diet. Monitor your weight and body fat to ensure you’re not packing on too much fat during this period.

Protein: The Muscle Building Macronutrient

Adding more protein in your muscle gain diet can benefit you in multiple ways, as listed below:

Increase Satiety

A big reason why people fall off the diet wagon and quit their diets is because they’re hungry all the time. With food restrictions and calorie restrictions, the mentality of feeling deprived every day leads to an increase in hunger. Adding a substantial amount of protein to every meal will leave you feeling satisfied and keep hunger at bay.

Boost Your Metabolism

Out of all three macronutrients—protein, fat, and carbs—protein has the highest thermogenic effect. Everything you eat takes energy to digest, store, and absorb the nutrients, and discard whatever is left. The digestion of protein takes the most energy out of all three, so about 30% of the protein you eat gets burned off in the digestion process, increasing your metabolism.

Build and Retain Muscle Mass

Muscle itself is metabolically expensive to maintain. It costs a lot of energy and calories not just to build muscle but also to maintain it, because it’s active tissue.

Protein is a macronutrient that your body cannot store. This is why it is vital that you eat protein around the clock to support muscle growth and repair. Without protein, your body will be unable to build new muscles that you are breaking down in the gym.

How Much Protein Do You Need To Gain Muscle?

Many people find themselves asking, “How much protein should I eat to gain muscle?” Like most things in life, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but there are some guidelines that can help when it comes to muscle building foods.

How Much Protein Per Day?

The recommended dietary requirements (RDA) for daily protein is at a modest 0.8 g/kg of body weight per day^[1]. This means if you weigh 130lbs, optimal protein intake would translate to eating a minimum of 47g of protein, or about 2 small chicken breasts a day as part of a muscle building diet.

This RDA requirement is the bare minimum of protein consumption and is based on the average sedentary individual. If you don’t exercise and also sit for 8+ hours a day, then the RDA recommendation is perfect for you, and there’s no reason why you need to eat more protein.

How Much Protein Per Day to Build Muscle?

I have found from training clients that a higher protein intake translates to faster fat loss and a higher metabolism versus a lower protein intake, even if you don’t do strength training. Adding more protein to your diet causes you to eat less, which results in weight loss.

For building muscle and fat loss, I would recommend about 40% of your total calories come from protein, or about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.

If you are new to eating that much protein with a lean bulk diet, start by adding about 25 to 30 grams of protein per meal, and work yourself up to including protein snacks or even whey protein shakes to meet your daily requirements outside of your meals.

Good Sources of Protein

As you’re wondering what to eat to eat to gain muscle, you can start making a dent in your protein intake by eating a big breakfast if you’re looking into how much protein to build muscle is needed. Most people eat lots of carbs for breakfast, like oatmeal, a bagel, a smoothie, or a muffin and find themselves hungry well before lunch.

Instead, swap out your breakfast with high-protein choices like eggs, Greek yogurt, or smoked salmon, or throw a scoop of protein powder in your smoothie or oatmeal.

Animal protein sources are complete protein sources and will be the best-quality protein for your diet because they contain high sources of lysine, which is the essential amino acid to build muscles. Make sure to get your protein from different sources so you’re getting different micronutrients and minerals^[2].

For someone who is vegan or leans towards a vegetarian diet, there are still plenty of options, but it will be more challenging because most plants are not complete sources of protein. Soy and its products like tofu, tempeh, and edamame are examples of a complete plant protein.

Other examples of vegetarian sources of protein are quinoa, beans, and nuts. Again, you want to vary your sources of protein so you get different vitamins and minerals from your food.

Should You Take Supplements?

The most popular question that comes up when people think of building muscles is what type of protein supplement to buy.

My recommendation is to try your best to get protein from food sources first because they are a natural source of amino acids, minerals, and micronutrients. Eating the protein versus drinking the protein will help to keep you full longer because your body needs to break down the food.

However, there are times where you’re on the go, and you simply do not have time to sit down and eat. In that case, a protein shake would be a good option.

Do your research on a protein supplement before you buy so you get the best one for your needs. Below are recommendations of what you should look for in a healthy and clean protein powder:

1. 3rd Party Inspected

The first thing you should research is if the protein supplement you are considering has been inspected by an independent third party company. This will tell you if the protein per serving on the nutrition label is accurate.

At the same time, the inspection will also check for contaminants and heavy metals that could be present and harmful to your health.

2. Amount of Protein (g) per Serving Is Close to Serving Size (g)

You also want to make sure that you’re paying for a protein supplement and not a meal replacement that is full of carbs and minimal protein for your muscle building diet. You can check by looking at the nutrition label.

Often, the grams in a serving size are much bigger than the grams of protein in the serving size. This happens when there is excess filler in the form of coloring, flavors, and sugar additives.

For example, one serving may be 30 grams, but it only has 23 grams of protein, with the other 7 grams being miscellaneous filler. This means with each scoop of protein powder, 25% of your money is going towards paying for filler ingredients.

It’s also important to make sure a serving size actually has a gram amount listed, otherwise you will have no idea how much protein you’re drinking in each serving, which is deceptive marketing.

3. Minimal to No Fillers

Extracting pure, quality protein is an expensive process. To reduce costs, companies will add fillers, such as natural and artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, and other components to make the powder mix nicely with whatever you blend it with.

If you’re consuming a protein shake or two every day, it also means you’re drinking these artificial fillers, which are unhealthy and do nothing to benefit your muscles. Do your best to look for a high-quality protein, and use your dollars to pay for protein versus fillers and flavoring.

Summing It up

Body transformation journeys are exciting, life-changing moments to really showcase your health and body potential. They can really bring out the best in you when done right.

Pairing the right workout with a muscle building diet full of healthy food and good macronutrient ratios will help you get results in a shorter time. By following the recommendations in this article, you will be well on your way to building muscles and losing fat.

Featured photo credit: Alonso Reyes via unsplash.com