If you're aiming to bulk up your muscles through weight lifting, you may think you need to build plenty of extra protein into your diet to feed those growing muscles. However, that's a myth: if you eat a fairly standard American diet, you already get more than enough protein, and you don't need any more to produce buff muscles. However, you do need to watch your daily intake of all nutrients, sculpting your diet so that you can sculpt your muscles. Along with your daily protein requirements, your total number of calories, fat and carbohydrates matter as you work on building muscle.
Protein Needs
Your muscles need protein to function properly. But protein, by itself, does not build muscle mass; instead, you build more muscle mass by using your muscles. If you're a weight lifter -- especially if you're trying to bulk up your muscles -- you need about 80g of protein for every 100 lbs. of your body weight, which is about twice as much protein as an inactive person. Still, if you normally obtain about 15 to 20 percent of your diet in the form of protein, you're already getting enough of that nutrient.
Sources of Protein
To translate your daily protein requirements into servings of food, it can help to conceptualize protein servings in the size of decks of cards, according to the University of California at Berkeley. For example, one serving of chicken with about 20g of protein looks about the same size as a deck of cards. The same approximate formula applies to beef. Therefore, if you weigh 200 lbs. and you need 160g of protein per day, you'll need to consume about four card deck-sized servings of chicken or beef.
However, as you calculate your daily protein needs, keep in mind that foods such as dairy products and whole grains also include some protein. Don't rely only on meat for your protein requirement; instead, obtain some protein from beans and whole grains. Those don't contain saturated fat, and they provide needed fiber.
Nutrient Balance
As a weight lifter, you shouldn't cut back too severely on fat -- in fact, the University of California at Los Angeles reports that up to 35 percent of your calories can come from fat. If you want to build up your weight and muscles, you'll need to consume extra calories -- and fat can help you do that. In addition, your body burns fat as readily as it burns carbohydrates, so you're in fact helping to improve your performance as a weight lifter by consuming fat. Ideally, you should obtain up to 20 percent of your calories as protein, up to 35 percent as fat and the remainder as carbohydrates.
Considerations
Never fall into the trap of thinking that because some protein helps your body perform well, eating more protein will help your body perform even better. Excess protein can hurt, not help, your weightlifting efforts. Your muscles rely on fuel provided by carbohydrates, and when you replace carbs with protein in your diet, those muscles can't function as efficiently. A diet too high in protein can lead to fatigue and muscle soreness. In addition, eating too much protein can place a strain on your kidneys and liver, which have to dispose of the byproducts produced when your body converts protein to energy.
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