Along with most other things in fitness, nutrition for muscle building has been largely overcomplicated. 

Before discussing anything on this topic, it is essential to note that the one non-negotiable factor for building muscle is training. The only way to force your body to put on muscle mass is by striving to progressively get stronger—nutrition can only support the response elicited by training. So your first priority is to make sure that you are training consistently (you only need one session per week if you do it right) and constantly aiming to get stronger. Once you’ve got that covered and you want to know how to best support that process with your diet, read on. 

The single most important nutritional factor – Energy balance 

Your body cannot produce muscle mass out of thin air. It cannot defy the laws of physics. 

It can, however, if it needs to (as dictated by your repeated efforts over time of pushing the amount you can lift) convert some of the energy from your food into muscle tissue. For this to happen, it needs that energy to be available. So in simple terms, in order to build muscle, you need to consume enough food.

To put it more precisely, you need to eat in a slight energy surplus, so that after accounting for your body’s normal daily expenditure, spare energy remains in your system to be used – enough to cover your body’s protein synthesis (muscle building) needs, but not so much that an excessive amount is stored as body fat.

Getting this balance right can seem tricky at first, but in reality it’s quite easy. Let me explain.

Your appetite is the only calorie tracking tool you need for gains

Compared to fat loss, there are several factors that make energy balance for muscle building difficult to track. Firstly, muscle building takes time, much longer than fat loss. In beginners it can be faster, but for intermediate/advanced trainees, ~1% of bodyweight per month is the most that can be reasonably expected to be gained (i.e., less than half the rate of fat loss). This means that the total energy surplus needed is only a fraction over normal maintenance calories, somewhere around 100-300 calories per day. Secondly, once those energy needs for muscle growth are covered, further changes in diet will not further enhance results. Eat in a steeper calorie deficit and you can lose fat quicker, but eating in more of a surplus will only lead to fat gain, not extra kilograms of muscle. 

For these reasons, I generally don’t advise counting calories when in a strength gaining phase (i.e., any time you’re not actively losing fat, so preferably 9 months or more of the year). Unless you are really struggling to get enough food in, it is just not accurate enough to be useful. Thankfully,  as our genes have evolved over millions of years of evolution, your body is much smarter than you need to be in matters such as food intake. Listening to it can serve you far more reliably than any attempt at precise calculations. What I therefore suggest, based on experience, is that instead of obsessively tracking calories and trying to hit a number that probably won’t be quite right for you anyway, you simply listen to your appetite and use it as your ultimate guide. 

Now, what does this mean practically? Well, we know that our goal is to eat a little bit above maintenance calories (say by about 100-300 calories). If I am 80kg and need 2700 calories to maintain my weight, and I start training properly to build strength and size, then I therefore would want to eat something like 2900 calories a day on average. (If you want to estimate your maintenance calories, multiplying your bodyweight in kg x 33 will get you pretty close.) So in order to go about achieving that, here are the basic guidelines I would follow:

  1. Never intentionally restrict yourself. If you are still hungry, eat more. When you are in gaining mode, you are in gaining mode. Realise that fat loss can come later (and it will, when you’re ready), and THAT is when you can efficiently cut as much fat as you like. But trying to do both things at once is counterproductive – you’ll do neither properly. So get it clear in your head that the foreseeable future (e.g. the next year) is dedicated to strength progress. If you’re at a stage where this is the main thing you need, you’re only going to look better as you progress. 
  2. If in doubt, lean towards overeating rather than under-eating. Remember, you are aiming for a hypothetical average surplus of ~100-300 calories per day on top of what you used to normally eat. So if you are unsure where you are at on a given day, just lean towards more. You shouldn’t ever need to force food down, but give yourself the benefit of the doubt when you don’t know what your appetite is telling you. If you don’t want more food, don’t have any. But if you think you do, help yourself. 

Your appetite is an incredibly smart system, and if you are training properly and striving to progress your strength, your body will cue you pretty damn well as to how much to eat. There’s no need to think too much about it, just eat plenty and you’ll make progress.

Other factors that will help

Protein

The amount of protein you need has been a bit over-exaggerated in the fitness realm but it is essential to include in your diet, and requirements are higher when you’re aiming to build muscle or lose fat than they are for the sedentary population. We generally need somewhere between 50-150g per day, with 1.8g per kg of bodyweight per day being about bang on the peak that you will benefit from when strength training. So aim for that number and you will have your protein needs covered. Remember, protein is important, but total calorie intake is still the number one nutritional factor for growth – sufficient protein without enough calories is not enough.

Example: Our 80kg male would aim for 145g protein per day (80 x 1.8) to cover his needs and maximise muscle and strength gain. This would equate to about 700g of meat or fish. 

Real Food

Where you get the rest of your energy from doesn’t so much matter in the sense that as long as energy and protein is there, you will make gains. However, having a healthy, well-nourished body will only enhance your ability to recover and grow. For this reason, try and eat as much actual food as you can. I will elaborate on this more on this in other posts but for now, include vegetables in your diet and you’ll be off to a good start.

As far as carbohydrate and fat balance, don’t worry about it. Include plenty of both, and you’ll cover your bases. Food should taste good, so learn to make meals from combinations of real food that are satisfying (protein, fats and carbs combined), and that will be a pretty good indicator that you’re getting the balance. 

Summing Up

In order to gain muscle:

  1. Progress in your strength training is the #1 overall factor. Food simply supports this.
  2. The #1 most important dietary factor is energy balance. Aim to eat in a slight calorie surplus by obeying your appetite and fuelling yourself as needed.
  3. Try to consume 1.8g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day to maximise results.

Follow these guidelines, focus on your training, and 99% of the progress you could make will be made. These are the bread and butter and they work. Don’t overcomplicate, execute. 

Happy gaining.

Learn more about strength training here.