A nutrition plan for building muscle is as dependent on your consistency in adhering to the plan as it is on how you portion your intake of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat throughout your meals. Exercising without a diet to ensure muscle building can limit your results and defeat your attempts at gaining muscle mass.
Increasing Metabolism
The Muscle and Strength website recommends eating at least six meals a day to increase your body's metabolism while maintaining a steady exercise regimen. The key is to increase your intake of calories to add muscle mass without contributing to a greater amount of body fat. A faster metabolism prevents your body from storing excess fat, because it is constantly using energy.
Foods to Eat
Include foods rich in complex carbohydrates and protein with every meal. Muscle and Strength recommends eating 30 grams of protein with each meal. Foods such as whole-meal bread, brown rice, oats, whole grains and potatoes are a healthy source of complex carbohydrates. Healthy sources of protein include chicken, egg whites and fish. Avoid simple carbohydrates from sugary foods such as honey and soft drinks. Excessive amounts of sugar can be detrimental to your body's metabolizing of insulin, as well as contributing to fatigue and excessive fat.
Limiting Fat
Lower your intake of dietary fat to between 5 and 10 g per meal, according to Muscle and Strength. The website recommends eating foods such as fish, olive oil and peanut butter for healthy fat. Avoid foods that contain excessive amounts of fat or salt. These foods can include butter, junk food, soda and vegetable oil.
Timing
Eat a small meal that contains protein and complex carbohydrates between 30 minutes and one hour before exercising, according to Muscle and Strength. Protein contributes to muscle repair during a workout, while complex carbohydrates provide you with energy. Consuming a meal or protein shake within one hour after exercise raises your insulin levels and encourages the release of growth hormone throughout your body. "Muscle and Fitness" recommends including between 40 and 60 g of protein with each meal, as well as between 40 and 80 g of carbohydrates.
Considerations
"Muscle and Fitness" recommends increasing the amount you eat at breakfast and after exercising in order to gain muscle mass, because those are the times of the day when your muscles lack nutrients and can absorb them easier than at other times. Eating at these times can prevent an increase in body fat, because your body will burn the energy it receives. Avoid eating an excessive amount of carbohydrates on days that you do not exercise. Your body will not burn carbohydrates as quickly as it would on days you exercise, which can contribute to greater amounts of body fat around your stomach and lower back.
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