Are you ready to start your fitness journey and build some muscle?

While it seems that building some muscle is all about lifting heavy weights, there’s a lot more involved in the process. If you’re ready to change your body, you came to the right place.

Follow these tips for gaining muscle and make your goals come true

1. Don’t Skip Breakfast

As you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it’s especially more important when you want to gain muscle. Not only will it give you the necessary energy boost, but it will help you set trends to start eating healthier and wholesome meals.

Ensure you eat a wholesome breakfast that includes macros such as protein and carbs to support your muscle gain.

2. Multi-Joint Exercises

If you want to build more muscle mass, you should focus on performing multi-joint exercises to target more than one muscle group at a time.

Some examples of multi-joint exercises include squats, bench press, pull-ups, lunges, and more. Although you will perform more than these exercises, these are the base exercises.

3. Eat About Every Three Hours

Your body needs food to help your muscles recover and grow. To get started, you should eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. By eating your regular meals every day, you will provide a good base for you to get your nutrition.

Next, you also need to add two smaller meals before and after your workouts. You need to have a snack that will fuel you with energy before your workout, and a snack after will help your muscles recover.

If you eat frequent meals throughout the day, you won’t be as hungry. When you don’t eat for long periods of time, you will tend to overeat when you get your hands on food.

Don’t allow yourself to get hungry when you’re trying to build muscle, or you will end up eating an unhealthy snack.

Eating smaller meals during the day will also help decrease the size of your stomach, which will help you see a leaner waistline.

Before your workout, you should eat these foods:

• Nut Butter with fruit
• Greek yogurt with granola and berries
• Dried fruit
• Rice cakes with nut butter
• Oatmeal with fruit
• Lean meat with brown rice, and roasted veggies

After your workout, you should eat as soon as possible to replace the calories you used during your exercise. Once you’re done with your workout, you should eat some of these meals:

• Quinoa
• Brown rice
• Nuts
• Tofu
• Beans
• Fish
• Whole wheat bread

4. Eat More Protein

As we mentioned in the previous point, you need to eat more frequent meals, but you also need to get enough protein.

Protein is essential when you’re lifting weights because it allows your muscles to repair, recover, and promote muscle growth. Protein carries essential amino acids, also known as the building blocks of protein, which are essential to rebuilding your muscles.

If you plan to meal plan, you should aim to eat about 20 grams of protein with every meal. This amount should give you the sufficient protein you need in a day.

For every person, the amount of protein they need to eat in a day varies depending on body weight. To calculate how many grams of protein you need to eat, you should take 0.5 to 0.9 grams of protein and multiply it by your body weight.

For example, if you weight 125 lbs and you want to aim for 0.9 grams of protein, you should aim to eat 112.5 grams in a day. If you want to want to get a little more help, you can also take peptide supplements, check it out.

5. Increase Your Calories

If you want to build muscle, you have to increase your calories. Eating on a deficit might help you lose weight, but it won’t help you gain muscle mass.

To figure out how many more calories you need to consume, start by calculating what your calorie baseline is. Start by calculating your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which will help you determine how many calories you burn in a day.

Let’s say you need to consume 1300 calories a day to keep your body performing its regular functions. In order to aid your body to build muscle, you should add 300 calories to help your muscles recover.

However, the number of calories you need to consume will depend on the intensity of the workouts.

6. Give Your Body Time to Recover

As we mentioned in previous points, nutrition is very important when trying to build muscle. However, you also need to allow your body time to recover.

Aside from working out regularly and eating well, you also need to allow your body time to recover. Without recovery days, you won’t give your body the chance to recover.

Your muscles don’t get stronger by working out alone, and it’s essential you have recovery days. It’s important you put the weights down at least two days a week to allow your muscles to heal properly.

Don’t worry, you can still stay active during your rest days by performing light activities such as walking, hiking, or yoga.

7. Increase Weights Slowly

If you’re new to weight training, then you know you can’t start trying to lift really heavy right away. You need to start with a weight you can lift, but it will also challenge you.

You need to keep in mind that weight training is about balance and the ability to push yourself. Once you feel comfortable with a weight, you need to increase it. If you don’t increase the weight, you will plateau.

If you increase weight too fast, you run the risk of injuring yourself.

8. Get Plenty of Sleep

Getting enough sleep is essential when you want to build muscle. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body cannot synthesize protein properly, which is what grows your muscles.

Try to get at least seven hours every night.

Follow These Tips for Gaining Muscle

Now that you know about these tips for gaining muscle, you’re ready to start your journey. Remember to add enough protein, get plenty of sleep, perform multi-joint exercises, add weight gradually, and allow your body to recover.

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