Four Essential Muscle Building Tips

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I’m rested, recovered, and ready to take on the week.

We got our Christmas tree up which, honestly, in my parents’ house, has been a few years! But it’s beautiful nonetheless and fun having a little Christmas spirit to inspire some delicious meals.

Today’s Monday so that means What Runs U answers on health, nutrition, and exercise. If you have a question you’d like answered, ask away! Today we’re looking at a few essential tips to help reinforce and promote healthy muscle building. And no, these tips aren’t just eat meat, eat meat, eat meat, because is not the answer. And if you do just eat meat all day and think you’re helping your body stay lean and healthy, you’re doing the exact opposite after a certain point.

Anyway, enjoy!

Question: What are your tips on muscle building? What is the most effective way to help put on muscle?

Increasing your muscle mass helps to keep body fat down, increase metabolism, decreases stress and works to improve your overall health. If you have been working out for a while and not seeing the results you want, try these tips to gain muscle (aside from actually exercising).

1. Eat Often and Eat Enough: To build muscle you need to have adequate calories intake. Figuring out your caloric needs is one thing, but making sure you’re consuming those calories is key. Eat to fuel your body and kick up that muscle building! And don’t go longer than 4 hours without eating something. The second your blood sugar drops too low, is the second your cravings for unhealthy foods starts to increase. Keep your metabolism going and your mood and blood sugar at bay- at a meal or snack every 3-4 hours.

2. Eat Healthy Snacks and Meals: Like I mentioned above, you’ve gotta eat to feed muscle and what you eat is just as important as the actually eating. Enjoy healthy foods geared to feed muscles such as high-fiber carbohydrates, vegetables (along with as many leafy greens as you can consume), healthy fats, and lean protein. A great idea of what to take in would be lean animal proteins, beans, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, coconut oil and avocados.

3. Rest: Believe it or not, when you are NOT in the gym is when you’re actually repairing and growing muscle. Lifting weights or doing any kind of resistance training will tear those muscles (what we want!) but those tears needs to repair themselves to create larger, stronger cells (recovery). Do your thing in the gym and then allow for adequate time between workouts or muscles worked to recover and grow.

4. Be Consistent: You know all those beers or glasses of wine you drank or all that somewhat unhealthy foods you noshed on, that may have gotten you into bigger size jeans than you wanted? That didn’t happen overnight. It took consistent eating or drinking. Same thing goes with exercise and eating right, oh and rest! Consistency is the key to everything in life that you’ll ever want or achieve. Starting an exercise program will work if you give it time to work. A nutrition program will work if you give it time to work. Be consistent and see results. And hopefully a smaller pant size.

These tips, along with believing in yourself and having the willpower to succeed, will help improve body composition by building muscle mass and living a long and happy, healthy life. Results can be guaranteed. 🙂

Tomorrow’s post will be feeding off of this one, pun intended. Tomorrow are ideas for a Paleo breakfast!