So you want to gain some muscle, right?
Well workout hard and eat a lot, right?
Maybe maybe not.
It is true that no matter what kind of goal you have, as far as, gain size or lose weight, you need a proper nutrition plan to go with it.
So how can we gain LEAN body mass?
To gain lean body mass, you need a calorie surplus. The biggest dietary reason most people fail to gain lean muscle is that they’re simply not eating enough. Many times when they come off a fat loss program, they are completely paranoid about “losing their abs.”
Of course, that’s a legitimate concern because it’s VERY easy to lose your abs if you get lazy with your diet or you think that a muscle gaining diet means eating everything in site. To gain muscle and stay lean it takes continued discipline and dietary restraint, but the fact is, you just can’t gain any muscle if you’re afraid to eat more.
The trick in gaining lean muscle without fat gain is to select a
small calorie surplus. Overeating, even on clean, bodybuilding foods is going to make you gain fat along with the muscle.
Gaining fat and muscle weight at the same time is commonly known as “bulking up” and that’s the old school approach to building muscle and not all of us want to do that. The whole idea is to Feed The Muscle and build Lean body mass only.
MORE CALORIES
A typical male maintains on about 2700 calories per day and a typical female at about 2100 calories, but it’s good to plug your stats into the formulas to individualize, and you need to recalibrate calories anyways after you come off a long fat loss phase.
What I would recommend for lean gains is to add a 10-15% calorie surplus on top of your maintenance level as your starting point. You will probably need a second increase in calories after a few months or after you’ve begun to add some lean mass in order to keep the lean gains coming.
PROTEIN
The other main thing I would recommend is protein!
If you are trying to pack on some serious size, while staying lean, you should be eating 1.5-2 grams a protein per pound of body weight if you are a "hard-gainer" (ME!) Even if you are not a "hard-gainer" protein is very important.
HOW MUCH CARDIO
Weight gain programs require more carbs in the macronutrient mix and less cardio. Endomorph types (the natural big and sometimes softer) may need to keep 3 days of cardio in the mix to avoid losing their abs. In some cases for ectomorph “hard-gainer” body types, they should cut the cardio completely during the muscle gain phase.
For the endomorph body type who tends to gain fat easily, I recommend continuing to use a carb or calorie cycling method even for the muscle gaining phase. The difference is in the number of calories.
For fat loss, I typically recommend a carb cycle with a 20-30% caloric deficit for 3 days, followed by one full day at maintenance or even maintenance + 5-10%, with ALL the caloric increase coming from carbs.
For lean muscle gain with out fat gain, I’d recommend a cycle with 3 days at a 15% surplus, followed by 3 days at maintenance or a small caloric deficit of 5-10% below maintenance.
These are just guidelines. They are not written in stone. I have seen all types of calorie cycling variations work for different people. Any non-linear calorie approach is superior, in my opinion, for keeping the gains lean.
It’s not that hard (it is true, believe me) to put on the first 10-12 pounds of lean muscle. After that, gains tend to slow down a bit.
These types of gains can be achieved completely natural - and in fact, natural is the only way I’d ever recommend you do muscle gaining programs.
Hope this helps a little. We will continue to discuss this in more detail as we post more articles.
Feel free to leave comments and ask us any questions you would like.
