7 Nutrition Tips to Build Muscle and Burn Fat
Everyone likes to talk about the newest training programs and all the latest supplements, but the most important part of building muscle and burning fat is your diet. Most people who fail to build muscle or lose fat do so because they fail to follow a healthy diet.
Part of the trouble is the amount of misinformation and contradictory statements being made about nutrition. There are so many fad diets and so called research studies that it can be quite confusing. Take for example, the low fat diets, the no carb diets, the low carb diets, and the “don’t eat anything” diets.
Although there is a lot of contradictory information out there, nutrition experts agree on several key points. I’ve summarized these key points, into the following 7 nutrition tips:
- Eat every 2-3 hours. You should aim for 5-6 smaller meals everyday. Not only does eating often help increase your metabolism, but it also helps you avoid cravings by keeping you full throughout the day.
- Eat breakfast. After sleeping for 8 hours, your body needs fuel to start the day. A good breakfast will wake you up and make you more alert throughout the day. Studies have shown that eating breakfast can also increase your metabolism.
- Only drink non-calorie containing beverages. The healthiest beverages are water and green tea. To keep yourself away from soda and other calorie-dense beverages, try keeping a water bottle or thermos with you at all times. I also find it convenient to keep a water bottle on my desk at work.
- Eat lean protein with every meal. You need protein to build muscle and recover from strength training. Protein is also thermogenic and can help increase your metabolism. A good rule of thumb is to try and get 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So a 160 lb man would want to aim for 160 grams of protein per day. Good sources of protein are meat, fish, poultry, eggs, egg whites, milk, and cottage cheese.
- Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Avoid heavily processed foods. Processed foods contain trans fat, corn syrup, and preservatives.
- Whole food sources include fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, eggs, meat, fish, poultry, and oats.
- Processed foods include chips, bagels, pizza, canned meat, and frozen dinners.
- Eat healthy fats. Try to get at least 25% of your daily calories from healthy fats. Good sources of healthy fats are meat, nuts (such as almonds, cashews, and walnuts), peanut butter, olive oil, avocados, flax seeds, fish, and fish oil. You want to avoid trans fat, vegetable oils, and corn oil.
- Consume fruits and vegetables with every meal. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Some of the healthiest are spinach, broccoli, carrots, oranges, apples, and berries.
Your goal with these 7 tips is to follow them 90% of the time. If you are eating 6 meals per day (which is 42 meals per week), then you can cheat on 4 meals per week. The same is true for drinks. Try to drink water and green tea 90% of the time and save soda and alcohol for the other 10%.
Most people can achieve their health and body composition goals by just following these tips. If you are just getting started, spend a few weeks implementing the basics with these tips. After you have followed these recommendations for at least 3 months, then you can look into more specific diets and nutrition systems.
6 responses so far
nice healthy post.
This is very good. I have been eating this way for many years. It works! I especially like the 90% principle. I occasionally pig-out on all kinds of “unhealthy” stuff. So what? Most of the time I do not. I am 50 years old, 170 lbs, 9% body fat, and very active. Enjoy food!
Tim,
Thanks for the comment. I agree, health is important, but it needs to be balanced with some enjoyment.
Yep, i totally get one night a week to eat WHATEVER I want, the rest of the week Im ultra-health conscious. I find on my “splurge” night I rarely ever make it past 2 pieces of pizza before I start to feel ill anyhow, then get reminded why I don’t eat that way any more. When i was really eating bad I can remember having to lay down after every meal because I felt liKe I was going to throw up.
Great post!
There are a few points that I just wanted to add…
First, with the part about non-calorie beverages - I think it’s important to exclude diet sodas or other artificially-sweetened beverages. There are studies showing that you’re more likely to gain weight by drinking such beverages. The reason this happens is because your body will end up separating “sweet” from “nutritious”. In other words, when drinking an artificially sweetened drink, such as a diet soda, you’re taking in sweet ingredients without also getting any nutrients. Although it helps you feel full for the time being, your appetite increases when you actually do eat a meal. This is your body telling you that you need nutrients - basically, diet sodas trick your body into thinking it’s getting something useful when it’s not.
The other thing is that I respectfully disagree with the protein intake - 1g per lb of body weight is way, way too much. This is still far too much even if you’re a bodybuilder. For a less-active individual, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) is 0.8 g protein/kg of body weight. To make it easy, multiply your body weight (in lbs) by 0.364. So, if you’re 160 lbs, as in your example, you would only actually need ~59g of protein per day.
On the other hand, if you’re a weight lifter or any sort of athlete, you can increase this number slightly! Instead of the 0.8g/kg body weight, increase it to between 1.2 and 1.8 g protein per kg body weight (if your 160 lbs, that’s between 87.3 and 130.9g of protein per day). The upper number is for the serious weight lifter while the lower is more for an endurance athlete like a runner or soccer player.
If you take in more protein than you need, as you promote in your article, all the extra protein is either excreted in the urine or stored as fat (proteins are more easily converted to fat than metabolized for energy). Furthermore, taking in more protein than you need doesn’t do anything for muscle development. Even after you finish a workout! Taking too much is detrimental (it’ll slow your progress in the weight room) while taking too little will cause muscle wasting! There’s a balance that should be achieved.
Furthermore, chronically (or over a long period of time) taking in too much protein can have detrimental effects on the kidneys later in life. There’s no actual “proof” of this as of yet since we haven’t been on these high protein/low carb diets for long enough to follow the long-term results. But, studies to indicate a decline in kidney function and the development of kidney stones and dehydration.
A lot of this probably wasn’t what many people want to hear, but it’s just the scientific truth. I’m a medical student that’s taken 4 years of chemistry courses along with a few years of medical biochemistry, so I’ve studied this stuff for long time. I just really hate to see people following the high protein models, since it’s obvious (to me at least) that it doesn’t really help at all. The key, as you said, is to follow a balanced diet and get some exercises!! This is simply the bottom line.
I set up the link above to take you to a page that I wrote all about the macronutrients - on the right side of the table you’ll see some links to different protein topics…check them out if you want some more info!
Great post!!
Ryan,
Thanks for the informative post. I agree with you about diet sodas and other artificially-sweetened beverages. The only time I recommend diet soda is when a someone drinks a lot of soda throughout the day. If they can’t go “cold turkey” and cut out all the soda at once, I allow a few cans of diet soda throughout the day. This is only a temporary step until they can fully stop drinking any type of soda.
I will have to disagree with you about the protein intake. First let me just mention that these articles are aimed at those who are into strength training. So the protein intake should be higher than the RDA amount.
Second, I have consumed various amounts of protein on various diets. Everything from the RDA to 2g/lb body weight. I found that anything over 1g/lb body weight is not needed. But I did notice that my muscle size and strength increases peaked at 1g/lb body weight - anything more was just a waste. That’s why I recommend it.
For more information about protein intake check out Dr. John Berardi’s article:
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/proprejudice.htm
Also, see JB’s article on protein and kidney function:
http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/kidney.htm
Thanks again, Ryan, for taking the time to post.