This Healthy Diet Plan To Gain Muscle is a great dieting guide for anyone. It will help you with daily food choices, calorie tracking and exercise routines to help you build lean muscle mass.
The following healthy diet plan is designed to help you gain muscle mass. A good diet for gaining muscle will include both a calorie surplus and protein-rich foods that allow your body to recover from workouts. Learn how to gain weight and build muscle effectively with this free PDF guide!
The best diet plan to gain muscle is one that focuses on eating the right amounts of protein, carbs and healthy fats. Choose lean meats, vegetables and whole grains to reach your daily nutritional requirements. In addition, make small changes with each meal so your body has time to adjust.
Healthy Diet Plan To Gain Muscle
Bodybuilding Nutrition: Foods to Eat and Avoid
Like training, diet is a vital part of bodybuilding.
Eating the right foods in the appropriate amounts provides your muscles with the nutrients they need to recover from workouts and grow bigger and stronger.
Conversely, consuming the wrong foods or not consuming enough of the right ones will leave you with subpar results.
Here are foods you should focus on and foods to limit or avoid:
Foods to Focus On
The foods you eat don’t need to differ between the bulking and cutting phase — usually, it’s the amounts that do.
Foods to eat include (7Trusted Source):
Meats, poultry and fish: Sirloin steak, ground beef, pork tenderloin, venison, chicken breast, salmon, tilapia and cod.
Dairy: Yogurt, cottage cheese, low-fat milk and cheese.
Grains: Bread, cereal, crackers, oatmeal, quinoa, popcorn and rice.
Fruits: Oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, pears, peaches, watermelon and berries.
Starchy vegetables: Potatoes, corn, green peas, green lima beans and cassava.
Vegetables: Broccoli, spinach, leafy salad greens, tomatoes, green beans, cucumber, zucchini, asparagus, peppers and mushrooms.
Seeds and nuts: Almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, chia seeds and flax seeds.
Beans and legumes: Chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans, black beans and pinto beans.
Oils: Olive oil, flaxseed oil and avocado oil.
Foods to Limit
While you should include a variety of foods in your diet, there are some you should limit.
These include:
Alcohol: Alcohol can negatively affect your ability to build muscle and lose fat, especially if you consume it in excess (8Trusted Source).
Added sugars: These offer plenty of calories but few nutrients. Foods high in added sugars include candy, cookies, doughnuts, ice cream, cake and sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda and sports drinks(5Trusted Source).
Deep-fried foods: These may promote inflammation and — when consumed in excess — disease. Examples include fried fish, french fries, onion rings, chicken strips and cheese curds (9Trusted Source).
In addition to limiting these, you may also want to avoid certain foods before going to the gym that can slow digestion and cause stomach upset during your workout.
These include:
High-fat foods: High-fat meats, buttery foods and heavy sauces or creams.
High-fiber foods: Beans and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower.
Carbonated beverages: Sparkling water or diet soda.
Bodybuilding Supplements
Many bodybuilders take dietary supplements, some of which are useful while others are not (10Trusted Source, 11Trusted Source).
The best bodybuilding supplements include:
Whey protein: Consuming whey protein powder is an easy and convenient way to increase your protein intake.
Creatine: Creatine provides your muscles with the energy needed to perform an additional rep or two. While there are many brands of creatine, look for creatine monohydrate as it’s the most effective (12Trusted Source).
Caffeine: Caffeine decreases fatigue and allows you to work harder. It’s found in pre-workout supplements, coffee or tea (13Trusted Source).
A multi-vitamin and mineral supplement may be helpful if you’re limiting your calorie intake in an effort to reduce body fat during your cutting phase.
SUMMARY
Include a variety of nutrient-rich foods across and within all the food groups in your diet. Avoid or limit alcohol, foods with added sugars and deep-fried foods. In addition to your diet, whey protein, creatine and caffeine can be useful supplements.
One-Week Sample Menu
The diets of bodybuilders are commonly described as restrictive, repetitive and boring.
Traditional bodybuilding diets typically contain limited food selections and little variety among and within food groups, which can lead to an inadequate intake of essential minerals and vitamins (14Trusted Source).
For this reason, it’s important to incorporate variety into your diet to ensure your nutritional needs are being met — especially during a cutting phase when you eat limited calories.
Each meal and snack should contain 20–30 grams of protein to optimally support muscle building (15Trusted Source).
When you’re in a bulking phase, your food intake will be much higher than when you’re in a cutting phase.
You can enjoy the same foods in the cutting phase that you would when bulking — just in smaller portions.
Here is a sample one-week bodybuilding menu:
Monday
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with mushrooms and oatmeal.
Snack: Low-fat cottage cheese with blueberries.
Lunch: Venison burger, white rice and broccoli.
Snack: Protein shake and a banana.
Dinner: Salmon, quinoa and asparagus.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Protein pancakes with light-syrup, peanut butter and raspberries.
Snack: Hard-boiled eggs and an apple.
Lunch: Sirloin steak, sweet potato and spinach salad with vinaigrette.
Snack: Protein shake and walnuts.
Dinner: Ground turkey and marinara sauce over pasta.
Wednesday
Breakfast: Chicken sausage with egg and roasted potatoes.
Snack: Greek yogurt and almonds.
Lunch: Turkey breast, basmati rice and mushrooms.
Snack: Protein shake and grapes.
Dinner: Mackerel, brown rice and salad leaves with vinaigrette.
Thursday
Breakfast: Ground turkey, egg, cheese and salsa in a whole-grain tortilla.
Snack: Yogurt with granola.
Lunch: Chicken breast, baked potato, sour cream and broccoli.
Snack: Protein shake and mixed berries.
Dinner: Stir-fry with chicken, egg, brown rice, broccoli, peas and carrots.
Friday
Breakfast: Blueberries, strawberries and vanilla Greek yogurt on overnight oats.
Snack: Jerky and mixed nuts.
Lunch: Tilapia fillets with lime juice, black and pinto beans and seasonal veggies.
Snack: Protein shake and watermelon.
Dinner: Ground beef with corn, brown rice, green peas and green beans.
Saturday
Breakfast: Ground turkey and egg with corn, bell peppers, cheese and salsa.
Snack: Can of tuna with crackers.
Lunch: Tilapia fillet, potato wedges and bell peppers.
Snack: Protein shake and pear.
Dinner: Diced beef with rice, black beans, bell peppers, cheese and pico de gallo.
Sunday
Breakfast: Eggs sunny-side up and avocado toast.
Snack: Protein balls and almond butter.
Lunch: Pork tenderloin slices with roasted garlic potatoes and green beans.
Snack: Protein shake and strawberries.
Dinner: Turkey meatballs, marinara sauce and parmesan cheese over pasta.
SUMMARY
Vary the types of foods in your diet and consume 20–30 grams of protein with each meal and snack.
Things to Keep in Mind
For the most part, bodybuilding is a lifestyle associated with several health benefits, but there are some things to know before doing bodybuilding.
Low Levels of Body Fat Can Negatively Affect Sleep and Mood
To prepare for a bodybuilding competition, competitors achieve extremely low levels of body fat, with men and women typically reaching body fat levels of 5–10% and 10–15%, respectively (14Trusted Source, 16Trusted Source).
This low level of body fat, combined with the low calorie intake, has been shown to decrease sleep quality, negatively affect mood and weaken the immune system in the weeks leading up to a competition and even several weeks after (1Trusted Source, 17Trusted Source, 18Trusted Source, 19Trusted Source).
Consequently, this can decrease your ability to function each day, negatively affect those around you and leave you more susceptible to illness.
Risks of Anabolic Steroid Use
Many, but not all, muscle-building supplements are advertised by bodybuilders who use performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids.
This misleads many bodybuilders into believing that they can achieve the same muscular look by taking the advertised supplement.
In turn, many bodybuilders, especially those at the beginning of their journey, develop unrealistic expectations of what can be accomplished naturally, which may lead to body dissatisfaction and eventually the urge to try anabolic steroids (20Trusted Source, 21Trusted Source).
However, anabolic steroids are very unhealthy and linked to several risks and side effects.
In addition to being illegal to possess in the US without a prescription, using anabolic steroids can increase your risk of heart disease, decrease fertility and result in psychiatric and behavioral disorders like depression (22Trusted Source, 23Trusted Source, 24Trusted Source, 25Trusted Source)
SUMMARY
When preparing for a competition, make sure you’re aware of the possible side effects. Also, understand that the physiques you see in supplement ads may not be realistically achieved without the use of anabolic steroids, which are very unhealthy.
The Bottom Line
Bodybuilding is judged on muscularity and leanness rather than athletic performance.
Achieving the desired bodybuilder look requires regular exercise and special attention to your diet.
Bodybuilding dieting is typically divided into bulking and cutting phases, during which your calorie intake will change while your macronutrient ratio remains the same.
Your diet should include nutrient-dense foods, 20–30 grams of protein with each meal and snack, and you should restrict alcohol and deep-fried or high-sugar foods.
This ensures you get all the important nutrients your body needs for building muscle and overall health.