Build Muscle Without Weights

What’s the secret to losing fat and gaining muscle? It’s simple, and it’s powerful: it’s 80% diet, 20% training.

Read that again. 80% diet. 20% training. It’s all about consuming the right muscle building foods. This is especially true if you want to build mass with bodyweight exercises. Let’s say you workout like an animal for an hour, four times a week. You bang it out, rock your form, push until you’re pumped and dumped to death. And then when it’s over, it’s over.

Now how many hours a day would you estimate you digest food? 12 hours? 15 hours? Big difference!

Not only does your body spend far more time processing meals, but the composition of your diet will determine the success of the biochemical reactions (recovery) that give you the quick muscle gain you’re looking for. And to achieve this, you’ll need mental discipline every time you go grocery shopping, rent a movie and order food delivery, walk into a party, or sit on a bar stool. Because if you slack off, your muscles will, too.

The Program

In a nutshell, the best nutrition for building muscles is a diet composed of 3-5 meals a day of high protein, moderate fat, low starch, and high fiber carbohydrate. You’ll be spacing meals 3.5 – 4 hours apart to keep a steady supply of key nutrients available for repair and remodeling. But like everything, the Devil’s in the details. Read on…

Protein

In order to build muscles and decrease body fat your diet needs to provide adequate levels of high quality protein: 30-50g per meal every three to four hours. To determine how much you need, multiply your body weight in pounds by .8 and you’ll get the total daily intake in grams. Here are my figures:

195lbs. x .8 = 156g / day (156g / day) / (5 meals / day) = 31g / per meal.

Stick to organically produced eggs, milk, chicken, turkey, ostrich, beef, and seafood.

Carbohydrates

There’s a lot more room for debate here. Many fitness and diet authorities like to point to the Glycemic Index as a way to choose superior carbs, but unless you’re eating a “mono-meal” of carbs-only, this Index – a scale of the time it takes glucose to appear in the bloodstream – is not too valuable. Why? Because you’re going to be eating a mixture of foods at each meal; adding protein and fat to carbs slows their digestion and absorption rates to a level that’s perfectly acceptable to build muscle.

There is also some controversy surrounding how much carbohydrate you need. After years of working with clients and reading research studies, here’s my answer: you need just enough carbohydrates to fuel exercise, a quantity that is far less than you think – that is, if you’re interested in building muscle and not fat. A good rule of thumb: cut your starchy carbs into 1/3 servings, and eliminate them altogether after 10am (read: eat them for breakfast only). The exception to this rule: you can replenish a workout within two hours with starchy carbs without worry, but again, as long as you stick to 1/3 your “normal” portions.

Breakfast (or post-workout) Carbs: whole grains, pasta, potatoes, yams

All-Day Carbs: all fruit except dried fruit; all vegetables; all beans.

Fats

Here’s where a lot of people are surprised (and stoked!). Your body needs fat to grow your muscles bigger. Fats are critical to hormone production (testosterone, hGH), as well as being key in preventing the overeating of carbohydrates. New research also shows that some nutrients in vegetables cooked in fat are more bio-available. Translation: eat a little cheese, spread a bit o’ butter, and leave on that chicken skin. The principle here is moderation and common sense: don’t hollow out your bagel only to fill it in with cream cheese! Stick to modest portions to eat and cook with, eat small amounts of dairy, and you’re good to go.

Muscle-Building Fats: Organic butter, cheese, and yogurt (especially Greek yogurt, like the Fage brand); olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil; avocado.

And there you have it: a comprehensive, scientific program of muscle building foods which, if followed religiously, will help you push through any plateaus to support the bigger muscles that come from hard core workouts!

Until next time, keep bangin’!