If you’re someone who’s involved in highly athletic training, it’s really important that you’re constantly taking a look at what you’re doing with your health meal plans and making adjustments along the way.
Many athletes often run into the problem that they’re continuously losing weight when really they’d rather be gaining weight – lean muscle mass, that is.
If an athlete doesn’t fully understand the concept of eating to build muscle, success will never be theirs and it really will only be a matter of time before performance starts to take a turn for the worse.
Someone who is so athletic and participating in higher volumes of activity will need to tweak his healthy meal plans a lot more than the average Joe to get a diet that’s working correctly for him or her.
Let’s take a look at three things an athlete should be doing so that they can have success with both performance and adding more lean muscle mass to their frame.
Step One: Assess Your Calorie Intake
The very first step to get past the problem of always losing weight when you’d rather be gaining is to figure out your desired calorie intake. Since you are so active, you’re going to have to use what’s referred to as an ‘activity multiplier’ to get yourself into the right range.
You should use a specific formula known as the Harris Benedict Formula to figure out your basal metabolic requirements without exercise, and then use the higher end of activity multipliers of 1.5-2.0 depending on how often you exercise. If you’re exercising twice per day in some cases or performing six very intense workout sessions, you’re likely going to need that 2.0 activity multiplier.
Here is the equation to calculate your basal metabolic rate:
English BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )
Metric BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )
Step 2: Increase Your Calories Beyond That
Now, keep in mind the number you just figured out is going to provide you with your maintenance calorie requirements. If you want to build muscle, you need more than that to build this muscle out of.
For that reason, you now want to add 250 calories more to your total daily calorie intake. Eat this level for two weeks and then assess your progress. If you still haven’t gained any muscle weight, take in another 250 calories further for a week and see how that goes.
Continue doing this until you’ve found the ‘sweet spot’ where you’re gaining more muscle without adding excess body fat. For a great recipe to add in some extra calories, check out my delicious recipe for Homemade Protein Bars. Click the video link on the left to get the recipe.
Step 3: Carb Load Before Heavy Activity Days
Finally, the last step that you must make sure you’re doing so that you can successfully gain muscle mass is be sure to fully re-saturate your muscle glycogen stores on the days you’re especially active.
If you have a very hard training day in your schedule or are playing multiple games in a tournament for instance, start loading up on extra carbohydrates a few days beforehand.
This will ensure that your high-energy stores of fuel in the muscles are ready to go to power you through all this exercise. It’s important to consider doing this about two days prior to when you’re going to be doing all this activity otherwise you may have trouble getting in sufficient volumes of carbohydrates on the actual day you’re being so active.
Then after that day is finished, be sure to continue to take in another high dose of carbs in the few hours following to replenish your depleted stores once again.
So there you have the main tips to remember if you’re an athlete looking to build muscle. You have very different nutritional needs than someone else who is more sedentary and your diet needs to reflect this if you hope to see results. Structure all your health meal plans around the tips in my article and you should get on track to some serious gains.
What’s your toughest challenge as an athlete that you have (or that you can remember having)?
Hey Dave and Karine, Congratulations on the engagement!!
Surely if you can get through writing a book and website together, marriage will be a breeze
Thanks Kylie
Congrats on the engagement, Dave!
A piece of advice for athletes needing to consume a high number of daily calories…
Try adding healthy fats to your meals such as olive oil, or snacking on peanuts in between meals. Fats contain over 2 times the number of calories per gram as carbohydrates and proteins allowing you to get more calories from less substance. Healthy fats also promote endocrine system health. The body’s endocrine system is responsible for the production of muscle building hormones, among other functions, which can help athletes to pack on additional lean muscle mass.
Thanks Craig
Good comment as usual!
Congrats Dave n Karine. We expect best from the both worlds in the times to come
Debrata B
Thanks Debrata
Congrats on the engagement Dave!
Thank you Carl
Congratulations on the engagement !
Thanks Andrew!!
What about us hardgainers ? With a general work out 3 days a week , and 2 days heavier. Do we need to pump up our intack past the 250 increase ?
Hi Gary! It’s something you’ll have to figure out, find your “sweet spot”… a biweekly 250 calorie increase is the safe way… you can definately go with 500 calories, even 1000 calories if you’re an extreme ecto.
Congrats on the engagement!
Thanks Dani
Congratulations on the engagement.
So, now I’ll read the rest.
Thank you my friend
Hey Dave Congrats Mate!
My biggest problem is that I work long hours fixing heavy machinery. A normal day would have me walk up to 10 miles just around the work site, then I’m pushing my muscles hard for the rest of the day repairing these big heavy machines. Its a hot place where I live too, I wish I could eat more
Thanks Steve!
Look at Craig’s comment above. You might have to get more fats that are more calorie dense (9 cals per gram), that’ll help you with getting enough calories.
Great article, congratulations on the engagement!
Thanks Anna!
CONGRATULATION ON THE ENGAGEMENT, even when the post is about gain muscle in training still, CONGRATULATION I KNEW IT I KNEW IT, IT WAS MEANT TO BE.
Thanks a lot Esther
Congratulations Dave and Karine
May you both have a wonderful and prosperous journey together
God bless you both
congrats to you two! can’t wait to see when you have Dave ruel jr. take over! good luck.
Congrats on the engagement!! Best Wishes!!
Have a blessed life with your other half! I’m sure she feels like to have an awesome other half that is supportive to her like you are