VERIFIED CONTENTAuthor: Maciej Szukała
Mass diet is used by people who train during the period of building muscle mass. Many people associate this time with loosening the strict eating habits used so far. Is it really possible to eat everything and always while building muscles? Or maybe there is a universal diet that will ensure your dream figure?
People who regularly exercise in the gym often divide the calendar year into building muscle mass and a reduction period, i.e. sculptures. Months devoted to the development of the figure are often associated with a total loosening of the dietary regime. It turns out, however, that a caloric surplus alone is not enough. In order for muscles to grow, you need to provide the body with appropriate nutrients in certain proportions.
When do muscles grow?
It has been known for years that muscles do not grow during exercise, but only after their completion. The process called supercompensation consists in repairing damage caused in the muscle fibers and building their structure so that during subsequent training they are ready to take the increased effort.
Depending on the intensity of the training and, as a result, the degree of muscle damage, the full regeneration of the body may take up to 72 hours (when training large muscles such as the back or legs).
Supercompensation is divided into four stages:
- causing exercise stress that disrupts homeostasis,
- lowering the form,
- proper supercompensation, i.e. building a surplus,
- disrupting the new level of homeostasis with another training.
Remember that the next training stimulus should only be introduced when supercompensation is at its peak. Exercising too late will prevent the benefits from being as great as they could be. Exercising too early will make the body, instead of carrying out another build-up, lower the level of homeostasis because it will not be able to adapt to the new training stimulus.
What does this have to do with food? Regular supply of appropriate amounts of macronutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates, as well as vitamins and minerals) makes the regenerative processes run more efficiently, and the supercompensation - and the increase in muscle mass - appearfaster.
Simply put, you can say that if you eat a lot and eat well, your muscles will grow faster than when you are cutting.
How much do you really need to eat?
Of course, building muscle is not about consuming calories without moderation. Even eating only he althy foods, but in uncontrolled amounts, will lead to loss of control over weight gain. If you want to consciously build muscle mass, you need to consume as many calories as you burn plus a small amount.
It is this margin above the requirement that causes the increase in muscle mass. The body then has enough ingredients to build muscles, not just support them.
The question is, how big should this margin be?
In the theory of sports nutrition, the range is from +100 to +600 kcal in relation to the daily requirement. In practice, choosing an excess of more than +300 kcal will already result in the accumulation of larger amounts of fat mass. Of course, such an excess of calories will not provide spectacular results, but they will be durable and, above all, qualitative.
Remember that it is not an art to increase your caloric intake by several thousand calories overnight. You will surely notice your rapid weight gain. However, you can be sure that muscles will only make up a small percentage of the weight gain.
How to calculate the caloric requirement?
To work out the amount of calories you should be consuming, you should know how many are actually consuming them. There are many calculators on the internet that can guide you. Sports watches with a calorie counting function will also be useful. An effective, although quite expensive solution is body composition scales.
If you want to calculate the caloric demand yourself, you can use two example formulas - more and less complicated.
Simpler formula
Multiply your weight for 24 hours. Your daily requirement is the product of the result of the first multiplication and the physical activity index given on a scale from 1.0 to 2.0.
The lowest value means sedentary work and no physical activity. On the other extreme, we have hard physical work or daily training. Most of the people who train as amateurs are in the vicinity of the 1.4-1.5 multiplier.
More difficult pattern
The version for more ambitious athletes includes several components that should be added up. They are:
- BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate) - basic metabolism for women is (9.99 x your weight inkilograms) + (6.25 x your height in centimeters) - (4.92 x age) - 161; for men the formula is almost the same, you just need to change the last ingredient from "-161" to "+5".
- TEA (Excercise Activity Thermogenesis) - these are calories burned during physical activity; TEA ranges from 5 to 10 kcal / minute for aerobic exercise, and 7 to 9 kcal / minute for anaerobic exercise.
- TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) - the thermal effect of food is 6 to 15% of the total energy requirement.
- NEAT (Non-Exercise Active Thermogenesis) - energy spent on daily activities; can range from 400 kcal if you sit at the desk all day, to 2000 kcal for a day trip in the mountains.
Ultimately, Total Daily Energy Expenditure will be: BMR + TEA + TEF + NEAT.
Unfortunately, all formulas have a greater or lesser error threshold and in each case it will be necessary to experiment for several days and observe the weight. Once you have found your energy requirement level, you should add this energy surplus to it.
Macronutrient distribution in the diet and muscle mass
Of course, the amount of calories you consume is one thing, but their source is just as important. If it wasn't, all bodybuilders would build their muscles on sweets and fast food, and yet it is different. It is assumed that the correct distribution of macronutrients should be as follows:
- carbohydrates should account for 50-65% of calories,
- protein is 20% of calories (no more than 1.4-1.7 g / kg body weight)
- fats are the remaining 15-30%.
Why does the proportion of carbohydrates have to be so high? First of all, sugars (simple and complex ones) are energy material. They are easily available and it is from their resources that the body will draw energy to work in the first place.
High carbohydrate consumption keeps insulin levels high. This is important because this hormone has an anabolic function comparable to testosterone or GH growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor IGF-1.
That's not all. Insulin also makes it easier for muscle cells to catch glucose and amino acids from the blood. As a result, the phenomenon of myofibral hypertrophy occurs, i.e. an increase in muscle fibers per volume.
Remember that too high a proportion of protein will paradoxically inhibit the growth of muscle mass, so try to keep a lower limit of the given range, and supplement the lack of calories with carbohydrates. Why? Excess protein forces a higher onethermogenesis and the greater use of energy to break down proteins. It also makes you feel full, so you simply won't be able to eat enough other foods.
Now that you know how many calories you should eat for your muscles to grow, and how much each macronutrient contributes to the total energy pool, you can easily calculate how many calories you need to eat per day from carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
Can supplements accelerate muscle growth?
Many bodybuilders believe that the consumption of certain nutritional supplements (especially creatine and gainer carbohydrate or carbohydrate-protein supplements) can make muscle mass grow faster. Is it really so?
The answer may seem perverse, because no dietary supplement by itself causes an increase in muscle mass.
As for creatine (regardless of its chemical form and administration form), it causes a faster rate of body protein synthesis and the renewal of ATP. However, you still need to cause microdamages in your muscles through training and provide the right amount of macronutrients.
In turn, gainers are nothing more than powdered fractions of proteins and carbohydrates combined in various proportions. They provide condensed energy in a liquid meal of a small volume. This makes it much easier to provide large amounts of calories when your stomach no longer wants to eat traditional food.
There is no doubt, however, that well-chosen and wisely used supplementation can facilitate the building of muscles.
Ideal diet for mass
You already know how much you should eat, but what should the energy come from? Of course, the more valuable the source of macronutrients, the more lasting and satisfactory your work will be. Although there is no one universal diet for the growth of muscle mass, there are food products from which the body will be able to effectively draw energy and building blocks.
Carbohydrates
The best sources of carbohydrates include:
- rice and groats (in all their varieties),
- wholemeal pasta,
- oatmeal,
- regular and sweet potatoes
- and whole wheat bread.
Of course, they have a simpler structure of carbohydrates (white rice, white bread), they should be consumed in the pre-workout period, especially after exercise, when the body is particularly eager to absorb energy.
Fat
Try to keep most of your fat intake from unsaturated fats. Their excellent sources are:
- fish (especiallyoily),
- olive oil,
- unrefined rapeseed oil,
- nuts
- and all kinds of seeds and seeds (e.g. pumpkin and sunflower seeds).
Contrary to popular belief, saturated fat also matters as long as you don't consume it excessively. You will find them, among others in fatty meat, eggs or butter.
Protein
The basic building block of muscles. It is important that the consumed protein has the highest biological value. This guarantees the availability of amino acids contained in the food and faster assimilation of proteins. The best sources of protein in the diet include:
- eggs,
- lean meat,
- fish,
- cheese tofu,
- offal.
Remember that monoculture in diet and training is never good. Changing the training plan, individual exercises, but also the sources of individual macronutrients is necessary for the body to be surprised by stimuli and be able to adapt.
As you can see, there is no perfect diet that will help you build your dream figure. However, if you follow the simple rules mentioned above, you can be sure that the increase in muscle mass will be a matter of time.