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I’m starting a series today on how you should eat in order to gain more muscle mass. This will be a 3-parter that I’ll finish throughout the month. Here’s the outline:
- Why your eating habits are more important than your lifting habits if you want to get bigger (naturally)
- Why skinny guys stay skinny – plus, the fastest way to gain muscle from your diet
- How to eat more to gain more muscle and actually lose fat at the same time – plus, I’ll also include some sample menus ( keep in mind that entire books are written on menus so I’m only offering some examples!)
Today let’s tackle the importance of eating habits compared to lifting habits. Next week we’ll dive into #2 and the week after that we’ll conclude with the third topic.
Why Eating Is More Important Than Lifting
- pic: Good eating, with good weight lifting, equals bigger and better physique
You want to get bigger, huh? Join the crowd.
You might just be thinking “a little” bigger. Or maybe you are thinking “a lot bigger”. And maybe you just want bigger shoulders, or pecs, or glutes, or whatever.
The point is, we’re talking physique here and we all have different ideal images of what our target physique should be. If you are reading this, then chances are high that part of your desired physique means bigger muscles.
So weightlifting is the most important part of getting bigger muscles, right?
Wrong.
Now before you start writing me hate mail, I’m saying “most important”. That’s a relative term. Meaning, that of course lifting matters! If you want to get bigger muscles, instead of just a bigger gut, then you’ve gotta lift.
But I’m saying that a great eating plan with a mediocre lifting routine will do more for your physique than a great lifting routine and a mediocre eating plan.
(I’d like to write that previous sentence in all caps, but that would just annoy you, right?)
A Simple Example
Let’s walk through a very simplified analysis of 5 cases…
Muscles need stimulation, nutrients, and rest. That combination triggers growth. How much growth depends on the quality and quantity of the stimulation, nutrients, and rest.
No stimulation, no growth. Ditto for rest. And of course, no nutrients (food), no growth.
Since this article series is about how eating impacts muscle growth, let’s assume for now that you are on a pretty good lifting routine. It’s not the best, but it’s not the worst. (So, you can extrapolate from this and assume that results will be better/worse in relation to your lifting routine.)
Case 1: Let’s say you are doing your “adequate” lifting routine, but not eating at all. What would happen? Your body would go into starvation mode, burning muscle first, then fat, and then you’d die. Obviously, no muscle growth in this scenario.
Case 2: Now, instead of eating nothing, imagine you eat a small quantity of junk food. Let’s assume total calories are just enough to prevent starvation. But your muscles need protein (in the form of amino acids) to heal after you’ve stimulated them with your adequate workout. And so just junk food doesn’t give the muscles what they need to grow. Result: no muscle growth.
Case 3: Moving on, let’s assume you’re still eating the junk, but you add in some good food too. Enough so that you are taking in excess calories every day but most of your food is still junk. The good news is that you now have protein. What happens in a simple scenario of excess calories, including sufficient protein? Your muscles grow! Oh, and you also grow fat because of the high quantity of junk. So, overall, your physique probably isn’t much better (depends on the mix of junk vs good, exactly how many total calories, your age, what your workout is like, etc. etc.). Nonetheless, with enough protein and excess calories from carbs and fats, you achieve muscle growth from your lifting efforts.
Case 4: Next, let’s just cut out the junk. So you are eating some good healthy food, very little junk. But remember that junk is calorically dense – lots of calories per bite. Most healthy food isn’t so calorie-dense and so you have to take many more bites to get the same total calories. In this example, let’s assume you didn’t know that, so you are actually eating fewer calories than you need. Despite the fact that it’s healthy food, and despite your good lifting routine, you still won’t gain (much) muscle. [This is a good plan if you already have a lot of muscle but need to get rid of a layer of bodyfat.]
Case 5: To round out the simplified example, now imagine that you’ve reduced the junk and eat a lot more healthy food – protein, veggies, good carbs, etc. – and you have an excess of calories – enough extra calories to fuel your workouts, plus even more. What happens then? Your muscles grow! And depending on a ton of other factors, you might be able to avoid fat gains (that’s what we’ll explore in part 3 of this series).
Eating Before/After Your Workout
What you eat in the “workout window” of time is the most important for gaining muscle. I’ve written before about what to eat before and after your workout, so I won’t repeat all that here. Click that link to go reread it now. But the highlights are:
- Never train on an empty stomach
- Eat protein and carbs about 1 hour before your workout
- Eat protein and carbs about 1 hour after your workout
- Avoid high fiber meals before and after your workout
- Avoid high fat meals before and after your workout
- Concentrate most of your starchy carbs of the day to be near your workout
- And if you are skinny, you need to eat a lot more!
Why Skinny Guys Stay Skinny
Next week you’ll learn why skinny guys stay skinny, plus, how you can gain the most muscle from your diet!
Just starting out with weightlifting? Want to get bigger muscles this winter?
Get my full-body lifting routine here: FullBodyAttack!
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January 15th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Been a while since I’ve made a comment on an article. But I saw something on this one I just had to point out…
Pre/post workout meals….
Number 3 states that you should eat within one our of workouts.
I’m glad you told them to use a blend of protein and carbs. Without the carbs that you take in your body will choose to use the protein as fuel instead of repairs. It will choose survival everytime. (I hate how the body is so smart.) However, the one hour part is where it concerns me. Research shows that there are anabolic windows during and after workouts that show when the body absorbs the most nutrients for the muscles. And yes, while one hour is fine it’s honestly more towards the end of the window. You are better off 15-30 minutes. However, most people can’t eat 15 minutes after they workout. The two main reasons are that you have no food…. (This is why they make workout supplements.) Or second they will lose their cookies all over the floor. For that I reccommend starting 30-45 minutes after, then working down. But yes, one hour still technically works.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:55 am
I want to gain at least 10 pounds in muscle. I want to do this using nothing but two 20 pound weights and eating more of certain foods. Will doing over a thousand reps of 40 pounds per week help me gain muscle in my arms and chest? Also, do you have any recommendations for foods that will assist me?
January 16th, 2010 at 7:37 am
@roger4 – You’re not going to like the answer: you might not be able to. I’ll talk about the lifting here, but Parts 2 and 3 of this article series will talk about example foods. So watch for those.
I’m guessing you are male, which gives you a better chance than a woman, but it’s nearly impossible to gain 10 pounds of muscle using just 40 pounds. See, muscle grows only in response to a true need. When people lift heavy weights (like squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull-ups, etc.) on a regular bases, it’s telling the body that this is the “new normal”. So it responds by growing. (It’s of course more complicated than this, but I’m simplifying.)
Now, by doing “a thousand reps” of anything isn’t actually teaching the muscles to grow. It’s teaching them to endure (as in, “endurance”). While runners get picked on unfairly by weight lifters, you can see an obvious fact: the runners who do the most reps (run the farthest, with each rep being a footstrike) usually have the skinniest legs and bodies.
My main advice: join a gym, lift really heavy weights in compound exercises with reps of about 6 reps per set, and eat a lot of healthy food – tons of good calories (more than you think you can eat).
If you can’t join a gym, then find a place to do chin-ups (for your back and arms) and do decline pushups (with weights on your back if you can) and then do squats and deadlifts (full range of motion) with a lot more than your 20 pound dumbbells – find a couple suitcases you can fill with heavy stuff or get some sandbags or do overhead squats with an old tire. Or move to single-leg squats.
There are many things you can do to improvise, but there’s no way around the fact that your body will only grow if it thinks it has to be able to handle heavy weight. If you have never lifted before, then you just might eek out 10 pounds of muscle growth with those light dumbbells, but I wouldn’t count on it.