Muscle Building Diet Plan | How To Diet To Gain Muscle

YouTube, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. And I'm sorry for the little bit of sun glare on my whiteboard here. You know me, I'm very, very high tech over here with my whiteboard and my markers. But I'm sorry for the slight glare. But in this video, we are gonna be covering the best diet for building muscle. Because very recently I put out a video on a workout plan for building muscle, which if you have not listened or watched, I guess, watch that video. It'll be somewhere up here above, so if you want to check it out, please feel free to check it out. But in this video, we're now going to cover the best diet for building muscle. And before you ask me, the very first thing I'm going to cover is if you can lose fat and build muscle at the same time, because I know that is going to be your first question. That's why I put it first. Next, we're going to talk about something you might have heard before, which is you need to eat more calories in order to build more muscle. We're going to talk about if that's true, if that's not true. And some nuance to that right there. We're then going to talk about the calories and the macros that you would potentially need in order to build more muscle. And this part is really important because we're going to talk about how you can build muscle without putting on extra body fat, because I know a lot of people struggle with the concept of that. I'm going to give you 3 top tips after we talk about calories and macros. I'm going to give you 3 of my top tips that can help you with your diet for muscle building after we've learned, you know, all that we have learned up to that point. And then last but not least, and this is actually really important because you need to understand this, we're going to talk about what happens if even if you have the best diet, something still might not be able to happen. And we're going to talk about why at the end of the video. But without further ado, let's dive into the first point we're going to talk about, which is Can you lose fat and build muscle at the same time? If you're actively trying to lose body fat and, you know, obviously eat in a calorie deficit because that's the only way to lose body fat, can you do that while still building muscle? And there's 3 main scenarios you are going to be able to have this happen. Number one, if you are a brand new beginner to following a real strength training program. And I say a real strength training program. I've also once again done a video, I'll link it somewhere here above, but I've done a video on the difference between something like P90X versus a HIIT boot camp versus Orange Theory versus, uh, you know, Beachbody, all of those style of workouts. Again, nothing inherently wrong with them, they are just not a real strength training program. If you want to find out why they're not, you can go ahead and check out that video after this one is done. But if you are somebody who is first now actually getting into following a real strength training program, you, my friend, will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. And when I say beginner, I normally mean roughly around the first 6 to 12 months of you following said strength training program. The second scenario is going to be if you have taken an extended period of time off from following a strength training program. So usually about 2 to 3 months. If you have taken 2 to 3 to, you know, obviously 3+ months off from following a real strength training program, you will be able to get some— again, it's called body recomp, which is losing fat and building muscle at the same time. You will be able to get some body recomp to you. And really quickly, people ask me this all the time. They're like, oh, Eric, well, if I train for 9 months straight and then I take 3 months off and then I train for 3 months and then I take 3 months off, and just keep doing that over and over, am I always a beginner? No. I like that you're trying to like game and cheat the system. Trust me, I can appreciate it, but that's not how this works. But let's say you're somebody who, you know, you've, uh, you're maybe an ex-athlete, for example, and you, you know, in college you played sports, but you haven't done anything in 10 years and now you're getting back into it. You know, you might be somebody who, yes, you can lose fat and build muscle at the same time. Number 2, if you're somebody who, let's say you recently had a child and you had to take a year off from working out, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same But not like if you're like intensely training and you like take 3 months off to like reset to beginner stage. That's unfortunately not how this works. So that's the second scenario. And the third scenario is it kind of goes right in line with the other 2, but if you are somebody who has a lot of body fat to lose, if you have 50, 60, 70, 80 pounds you are looking to lose, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time as well. But those 3 scenarios are the 3 main scenarios where with your nutrition, because you're talking about now eating in a calorie deficit, deficit. With your nutrition being in a calorie deficit, yes, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. And the reason for this is either when you are a beginner to following a real strength training program, or you've taken an extended period of time off from following a program, the stimulus threshold that you need to hit in order to basically tell your body, hey body, this stress that is being placed upon us is Enough to elicit the adaptation response that we're looking to elicit, which is again, you building muscle. So when you're a beginner, you're so new to it and your threshold is so low. So let's say for example, if you're a beginner, you need 10 points of stimulus in order to basically trigger your body to say, hey body, we got to make a change. Like you need 10 points. Myself personally, I've been lifting weights with a program for almost 11 years now. Let's say my points that I need to hit in order to then trigger that adaptation response is 100 points. So you need 10 points. I need 100 points as somebody who's more advanced in the strength training game. So because your stimulus threshold is so low, it doesn't really matter where your calories are. Obviously, if you eat like next to nothing, it's going to be very hard to build muscle. But assuming you're like eating in a healthy calorie deficit, and we can talk all about that, you know, here in a second as well, but assuming you're eating in like a relatively, you know, moderate calorie deficit, you're going to be able to build muscle because your body doesn't need as much stimulus, which means it also doesn't need that much extra calories and extra energy to go around to then recover and adapt to that stimulus. And so no matter what, like, You'll see progress and you'll build muscle no matter what. The second reason is usually because when you are a beginner or you're just getting back into it, a lot of like the muscle building gains that you're going to see, yes, it's coming from you building muscle, but it's also coming from like you getting better at the skill of lifting weights. Because if you have never, or you know, if you haven't followed a real strength training program in a very long time, or if ever at all, when you first start, a lot of the gains you are going to see is from Skill acquisition. It's from finally doing movements properly. It's from finally having enough rest time in between your workouts. It's from finally doing enough volume in your workouts. It's from finally following a proper training split over the course of a week. Like your body is going to be new to all of these things. And so you will be able to see progress essentially no matter what, as long as you're following a somewhat smart strength training program. Now what happens over time is, which kind of bleeds us into that next point, which is going to be— notice how I said if you were a beginner and you need 10 points of stimulus. I am somebody who's been training for 11 years. I need 100 points of stimulus. Over time, the more advanced you get, the more stimulus points that you need in order to, you know, kind of elicit that adaptation response. And I alluded to this earlier as well, but the more stimulus points that you need, the more recovery points that you need as well. And think of like recovery points as, again, for the sake of this conversation, think of recovery points as calories. And if you've followed me for any amount of time now, you will know that there's 3 stages for you to actually see your body change. Your body needs to go through 3 things. It's the stress or the stimulus that we just talked about. So you need to make sure your training is hitting that stimulus. Once you've hit that stimulus though, the next point you need is recovery. And with recovery, if you can recover from your workouts, the next step is going to then come adaptation, which is where you actually build muscle. So this is why after you get out of that beginner stage, your body is going to need more stimulus, which means it's going to need more recovery. And again, recovery comes in the form of calories. Here's what you have to understand about more calories equals more muscle. The answer is mainly yes, and here's why. Every single cell inside of your body requires energy. Energy comes in the form of calories. So every single cell in your body, every single function, every single process, everything requires Energy. Once you get past the beginner stage, for your body, building muscle is like the last thing on the totem pole that it is worried about, because your body likes to maintain something called homeostasis. Homeostasis just means staying the exact same. It doesn't want to lose weight, it doesn't want to gain weight, it doesn't want to lose muscle, it doesn't want to gain muscle. Your body wants to stay exactly where it's You want to build muscle. Your body, it doesn't want to build muscle because that means it's more work that your body has to go through. Your body's just worried about keeping you alive in the safest, most efficient way possible. It does not care. Unfortunately, I wish it did, but it's very unforgiving and it just doesn't have much of a feeling to it. It just wants to stay the exact same. Doesn't care about you wanting to build muscle. You want to build muscle. So the reason this is important to understand is because Every single cell in your body needs to return back to baseline energy, basically maintenance energy, before it even starts to think or worry about building new muscle on your body. And again, it was building new muscle on your body before during the beginner stage because it was so new. Your body had to respond to the stimulus because the stimulus threshold was so low, which means the recovery needed was so low. But also it's just, It's such a new stress. Your body had to recover from it. But as you get more advanced, your body does not have to recover from it because it realizes, hey, we have some more important things to take care of, like your reproductive process, like your sleeping, like your thermic effect and digestion of food, like every single function that goes on inside of your metabolism. So every single one of these cells in your body has to return to baseline first. Before your body can even think about building more muscle. Because remember, building more muscle is an extra function that you are trying to get your body to do. It's not necessary for survival and it does honestly, it does not want to. So you need to give your body a reason to say, hey body, I know I'm putting the stress on you by working out, following a proper training program, all of these great things. I know I'm following that. portion of it. But hey, I'm also giving you an excess amount of calories in order to— and again, calories are energy, right? Because every single function in your body, every single cell needs energy, including the process of building muscle. Again, that's an extra process you're trying to get. So you're giving your body more calories, extra calories, and then it can say, okay, we have hit our maintenance baseline threshold. So again, we can refer this back to your maintenance calories. Let's just say your maintenance calories are 2,500 calories. Let's say you give your body 2,500 calories. Your body then says, okay, cool, we're at baseline. This is pretty cool. This is pretty good. All of our cells are good. All of our functions are good. Everything is two thumbs up, good to go. And then let's say you give your body a little bit more calories. You, you like throw your body, throw your metabolism a bone here. When you give your body more calories combined with You following a real strength training program, those 2 things are then going to end up being, okay, well we have these extra calories, we have this extra energy floating around. What are we going to do with it? Well, we could just store it as body fat because you know, if you intake extra calories and there's nothing to do with it, your body's going to store that energy for later, which is how you end up storing body fat. But if you are training properly, your body will say, oh, okay, well there's this stress that our body is being placed under. Again, your body doesn't know whether you're being chased by a mountain lion or you're trying to lift weights and build muscle. It just knows stress, but it knows stress and it knows it has to recover and adapt to that stress. And so your body's going to say, oh shit, well there's this stress. We have this more energy, which means more recovery that can go around. Sure, we will put this extra energy towards this process, the adaptation process of recovering and adapting to The stress. And that right there is how and why if and when you eat more calories in a slight calorie surplus, you are then going to add more muscle and give your body the reason it needs in order to build more lean muscle mass. And again, this all just comes back to simple energy in, energy out. Everything requires energy inside of your body. So if you give your body enough to not only get back to baseline, But then go beyond that and, you know, use those extra calories for the muscle building process, which I said earlier, it requires energy. Now that you have this extra energy, your body will then be able to put those calories towards building more muscle. So yes, more calories equals more muscle. Now, how many calories and what should your macros look like and all these kinds of things? So here's what I'll say. I have done an entire video here on YouTube. I'll link it here above. Laying out exactly what your calories and your macros should be. So I'm not going to go over that again in depth in this video because it's in that video above. Just feel free to check it out. I'll also put it in the description below if you want to check it out there as well. Again, I go over exact macros and everything you need, but essentially you want to put yourself in roughly, usually about a 200 to 300 calorie surplus in order to give your body Enough energy in order to fuel the muscle building process. And remember, I know a lot of people get like scared about eating more calories and they think, especially if you're somebody who has lost weight in the past, you're probably very scared to gain all of that weight back, which I can completely understand and empathize with. But remember, you're eating in a roughly 200 to 300 calorie surplus. Think about if you were eating in a 200 calorie deficit. Are you really going to end up losing that much body fat? No, you're not, because it's only a 200-calorie deficit or a 300-calorie deficit. That would mean you're losing like 0.5 pounds per week on average on the good end side of things, right? So it's the same thing with the calorie surplus. You're eating in a 200 to 300 calorie surplus. And again, remember, this is why I explained to you the process of you actually building muscle and putting on new lean muscle tissue is unlike fat loss, because fat loss As long as you eat in the calorie deficit, like, you'll lose the body fat. If you weren't training, if you weren't working out and you were eating in a calorie surplus, if you were eating 200 to 300 calories in a calorie surplus and not training and following a proper program, yeah, you're not going to build muscle and you're just going to store extra body fat. But because obviously we're under the assumption you're training properly, or why else would you be building muscle in the first place? Under the assumption you're training properly, again, that process, that function of you actually, you know, recovering from your workouts, repairing muscle, building new muscle tissue, building new muscle cells, doing all of these things like getting out inflammation from your muscles, you know, recovering from the damage from the workouts. That process, it takes energy. And so the extra energy you are giving to your body is being put towards building muscle. So please understand, it's not like you're going to be packing on a shit ton of pounds. We can actually talk here about in a second. I don't think I wrote this on here, but I should have. I will write on, we'll talk about it. We can talk about what a good rate of weight gain is in order to make sure you are building optimal lean muscle mass while minimizing your fat gain. So give me one second and we'll talk about that. But really quickly, with that 200 to 300 calorie surplus, remember your macros have to be in check and I encourage you strongly to go watch that video because this is another way where if your macros are in check, you will minimize the amount of body fat that you are gaining while you go into a calorie surplus, and you will maximize the amount of lean muscle mass you are gaining while you go into that 200 to 300 calorie surplus. And the reason for this is there's 3 macronutrients: protein, carbs, fats. Protein, damn near impossible to store as body fat, especially if you are somebody who is training hard and working out. Carbohydrates, damn near impossible to store as body fat, especially if you are training and working out, because carbohydrates Carbohydrates and protein both get used for that muscle building process that I was telling you about. The carbohydrates get used to fuel your workouts. The protein gets used to help repair muscle tissue, spike muscle protein synthesis, all of those good things. So your protein and carbs are going to be highest in your calorie surplus, and your dietary fat is going to be lower in your calorie surplus because number one, your dietary fat just doesn't do much in order for you to actually build new lean muscle tissue. And number two, dietary fat, it's already fat, so it's easy Easier to end up storing as body fat because it's already fat. So if you set your macros up correctly like I talk about in the video— watch it after this video, please— if you have your calories correctly and your macros correctly, you will minimize your fat gain and maximize your lean muscle mass gain. Now I said minimize. When you go into a calorie surplus, you may store some extra body fat, and that— not may, you will. You will store some extra body fat, and that is normal. But remember, it's not like you're going to be packing on just pounds and pounds and pounds of body fat every single month. A good rate of weight gain when going into a calorie surplus and eating more food to make sure you are maximizing lean muscle mass gains and minimizing fat gains is going to be roughly about 1 to 3 pounds per month. So there might be a little bit more in the beginning, like once you first start going into a calorie surplus, And that would simply just be because number one, you're eating more carbohydrates, which when you eat more carbohydrates, you are going to store more of something called muscle glycogen. Just think of like muscle glycogen as like energy for your muscles. And so you're giving your body, again, through the carbohydrates, you're giving your body more energy, which means you're going to push harder in your workouts. You're going to push closer to failure, lift heavier weights, and end up building more muscle. But when you store more muscle glycogen, you're also going to store a little bit more water weight. As well. This is not like a, oh my God, I'm going to be so bloated water weight. This is like in your muscles, you're going to be storing more water, more glycogen, which is a good thing if you are trying to build muscle. So in the first like 4 to 8 weeks, maybe this number might be a little bit higher, but after that kind of settles out roughly 1 to 3 pounds per month on average. And so if you're gaining roughly 1 to 3 pounds per month, That is a phenomenal rate of muscle gain while minimizing fat gain when going into a calorie surplus. And remember, for those of you out there who are like scared to gain weight, you have to understand if your body fat levels stay the exact same and you do not gain any body fat at all whatsoever, but you gain 5 pounds of muscle, the scale is going to go up 5 pounds. And that is because Drum roll please. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. The composition is different. Muscle is more dense than fat, so muscle takes up more space on your body, but a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. It's a fucking pound. They're both a pound. So if your body fat levels stay the exact same or very, very slowly, you add 0.25 pounds per month of body fat while you're gaining 2 pounds a month of muscle, That would mean the scale would go up roughly about 2.25 pounds in that month. But 2 of those pounds is lean muscle mass, which is fucking— that would be literally phenomenal progress. Like if you gain 2 pounds in a month, I would be very fucking jealous of you. So if you're gaining 1 to 3 pounds per month and your workouts are getting stronger, you're lifting heavier weight, you're doing more reps, all of those good things, you are absolutely maximizing muscle gain, minimizing fat gain. All right. Now, there's 3 tips I wanna kinda throw in here on top of just the calories and macros as well. The first one is gonna be eating protein roughly every 2 to 5 hours. And the reason this is important is because this is gonna optimize something called muscle protein synthesis. For the sake of this conversation, just think of muscle protein synthesis as like your body's signal To build muscle and your body's signal to also like repair and recover from your workouts. And so those are the 2 main things that helps you build muscle. So if you are eating protein roughly every 2 to 5 hours, that is going to optimize your muscle protein synthesis, which is then going to optimize obviously your lean muscle mass building. This is why I'm not a fan of like, if you're somebody who's really trying to build muscle, I'm not a fan of you doing like one meal a day or 2 meals a day. Because that's not optimizing your muscle protein synthesis and you're leaving gains on the table you could potentially be making if you were eating protein roughly every 2 to 5 hours. And really quickly, it's not because you've probably heard this before, like, oh, eat 6 small meals a day to boost your metabolism. That doesn't happen. That's not a real thing. I'm telling you to eat protein every 2 to 5 hours because it's going to help muscle protein synthesis, which helps you build more muscle. The next tip is going to be pre and post workout, so roughly about 30 to 90 minutes pre-workout and roughly 30 to 90 minutes post-workout, you want to be having roughly about 20 to 40 grams of carbs with about 15 to 30 grams of protein, both again before and after. Before is because you want to be able to, number one, get carbs in your system because carbs are literally the fuel for your body for that workout. So if you give your body more fuel, you are going to have better workout performance. performance, which means lifting more weight, doing more reps, pushing closer to failure, which again is going to help you build more muscle. And then number 2, you want the amino acids in your bloodstream as well to once again help with your workout performance. So it's important to get that before your workout. If you're somebody who's like, I wake up really early and I work out early in the morning, I understand. I do the same thing. At that point, I would just say try to have something small. Like for example, even if it's just like a Greek yogurt and a banana. Like that would be a great pre-workout if you wake up super early or like a protein shake and, you know, a banana or an apple or, you know, whatever the case may be. Have something small that it will really help you or just make sure your dinner is very high in protein and very high in carbohydrates. So that's pre-workout. For post-workout, you might've heard this before. We're like, oh my God, you gotta have a protein shake after your workout. Otherwise the workout's a failure and it's a waste and you didn't build muscle. That's not true, but there is some merit and there is some research pointing to if you do have protein and carbs again roughly 30 to 90 minutes post-workout, it can kind of like help kickstart the recovery process, kickstart that muscle protein synthesis process to help you recover and repair your workouts, your muscles from the workout, which again we just talked earlier about the only way you're going to build muscle is by recovering from your workouts. And so if you are getting that post-workout Workout nutrition, it'll start that recovery process quicker, which then also means by the next time you get around to your workout, whether it's the next day or the day after or whatever, you're going to be more recovered heading into that workout, which if you're more recovered heading into that workout, your workout performance is going to increase again like we talked about earlier. And if your workout performance can increase, lifting more weight, doing more reps, all of those good things. And so for both those reasons right there, it's not like do or die, but I really would encourage you to get your pre and post workout nutrition down. 'Cause I think it'll help you a shit ton. Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you that tip. And the final tip here for extra little nutrition tips beyond just calories and macros is carb sources. There's various different carb sources. You have your things like your fruits, right? Where like, without going too in-depth here, there's different glycogen storage. So fruits, for example, when you eat fruit, that glycogen— remember we talked about how glycogen is kind of like energy for your body? That glycogen is going to get stored in your liver for the most part, right? But when you eat something, or like for example, if you're eating like fucking Twizzlers or something like that, like, or Sour Patch Kids, or I'm trying to think of other, like, just like, I don't want to call it like junk food, but you understand hopefully what I'm saying. When you eat those kinds of foods, those normally get stored as liver glycogen if your body doesn't use it right away. But the carbohydrates that are like white rice, That are like oatmeal, that are like sweet potatoes, that are like Rice Krispie treats, Rice Krispie cereal, you know, those kind of more like starchy carbohydrates kind of deal. A lot of those carbohydrates will get stored as muscle glycogen inside of your muscles instead. And so when you're thinking about, you know, what carbohydrate sources you wanna work in, I'm not telling you don't have fruit. I just talked earlier about how like I would definitely include fruit into your— That would be a great protein source. pre-workout. I eat fruit, 2 servings every single day. And I'm not saying you can't eat those other foods, whether it's Sour Patch Kids or cookies or Twizzlers or whatever it is, but for the majority, I would say, of your carb sources you are eating, trying to make them— again, my main carb sources are white rice, Rice Krispies, the cereal, because again, it's just puffed up rice, so it's really, really— that's why I love Rice Krispies. Rice Krispie Treats. I also like cream of rice. and rice cakes, all rice if you can't tell. Sweet potatoes is a great one. Oatmeal is a great one. Quinoa is a great one. Regular potatoes are a great one. So all of those carbohydrates can help you actually store more muscle glycogen, which is going to help promote your workout performance that much more. So those are my 3 tips. And then last but not least, just really quickly before we wrap the video up, I just want to say, remember, even if you have the best diet, you could literally be doing every single thing on this whiteboard right here to a motherfucking fucking T. Macros could be dialed in, calories are dialed in, you know, protein every 2 to 5 hours. You could be doing every single thing we just talked about, but you have to understand, unless you're actually following a properly designed training program, all of this for a muscle building perspective will be for nothing. You will not be seeing the results you want to see if your workout program is not dialed in. And I'm saying this because I don't want you to get frustrated that you're not seeing progress. Because unlike fat loss, like I talked about earlier, fat loss is just like eating a calorie deficit, you'll lose body fat. Like, that's really all you have to do. Muscle building— you don't build muscle from your nutrition. You can lose fat from literally just changing your nutrition. You don't build muscle from just changing your nutrition. The only way you are going to build muscle is by giving your body that stimulus that you need to hit in order to create The adaptation response. If you're not following a properly designed program— and again, I'm not just saying like going into the gym and doing random machines, I'm not just saying doing Beachbody or Orangetheory or HIIT boot camps— like, that's once you get past the beginner stage. And even if you are in the beginner stage, you're not going to optimize it. But especially once you get past the beginner stage, it's not going to cut it. You're not going to be able to build muscle from following just like a fucking makeshift, randomly made up workout program. So just remember, you have to make sure you are following a properly, intelligently science-based design workout program if you actually want to build muscle. And again, like I said earlier, I just did a video recently on the muscle building workout plan too. If you want to go check it out, check it out. Or if this video helped you and you want to get some more help from me and my team, I'll link both of our coaching options here below. We have one-on-one coaching, which is like obviously one-on-one personalized individualized coaching, or you can look into joining something called my clubhouse. My clubhouse is where I make A new workout program every single month where I give you exact reps, exact sets, exact rest time, exact days per week, literally every single thing that you would need to know about a workout program. It literally has it all right in there for you. So I'll link both those here below. If you want to check them out, feel free to. Beyond that, hopefully you enjoyed the video and you learned something. If you did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment below to let me know what you learned. And I hope we'll chat soon. Bye.