A healthy, balanced diet provides you with energy to do resistance training and build muscle mass. While diet alone cannot build muscle mass, combining it with regular aerobic and anaerobic exercise helps create lean muscle, which in turn helps you look and feel healthier.
Food Types
A balanced diet consists of carbohydrates, protein and fat. Carbs provide you with the energy you need for strength-training exercise, and protein helps build and repair muscle following a workout. You commonly thought that you need to eat a high-protein diet to build muscle. Protein is indeed important when weight training, but balancing your food and having enough energy is more important.
Caloric Intake
If you want to gain muscle, you need to boost your daily caloric intake by 500 to 1,000 calories each day, depending on your physique and metabolism. The Navy and Marine Corps' Public Health Center recommends introducing high-calorie, healthy snacks throughout the day, such as peanut butter sandwiches, or increasing your regular portion sizes.
Amounts
According to AskTheTrainer.com, 55 percent of your total daily calories should come from healthy carbohydrates such as fruit, vegetables, whole-grain bread and brown rice. Thirty percent of your calories should come from fat, and 15 percent from protein. If you choose to increase your daily protein intake, make sure it does not exceed your daily carbohydrate intake.
Considerations
A diet that overemphasizes protein could have a negative effect on your health. Excess protein does not help build muscle faster, but can contribute to the likelihood of developing certain health problems. Dr. McDougall's Health and Medical Center's newsletter explains that too much protein can cause bone loss, kidney damage, osteoporosis and arthritis.
Warning
Do not increase your daily caloric intake for muscle weight gain if you are overweight. Doing so can cause you to gain weight in the form of fat rather than muscle, and can increase the risk of weight-related health issues such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke or cancer. Consult a doctor or nutritionist for advice on your diet when weightlifting if you do not build lean muscle mass after eating a healthy diet and strength training.
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