Learn How to Determine Daily Calorie Intake for Gaining Muscle
Nutrition is the most vital part of any bodybuilding program. Without adequate calories it is impossible to gain any muscle weight. Find out just how many calories you need per day to gain lean muscle mass with the formula given below.
Muscle building programs revolve around optimizing daily caloric needs to your specific requirements. Eating more can make you gain fat, not muscle. And eating less can make you never gain the bulky muscles you wish to build. Here is the four part formula:
1) Lean muscle mass calculation: Measure your body fat percent with the help of a skin caliper. For instance consider it is 10%. If you weigh 140 pounds, 10% of it is 14 pounds. This is the amount of your fat mass. Subtract this number from your total body mass (140 minus 14) to get your lean muscle mass - 126 pounds.
2) Finding your resting metabolic rate: This is the number of calories you need to just keep yourself functioning. The formula to calculate resting metabolic rate is: RMR = Lean muscle mass x 10 + 500. In our example RMR comes to 126x10+500=1760 calories
3) Calculation of daily maintenance calorie intake: How many calories would you require to stay the same weight as you are now? Multiply your RMR by your Activity Index to find out. Activity index = 1.2 for sedentary lifestyles, 1.4 for moderate lifestyles and 1.6 for active lifestyles.
Consider that you have a moderate level of activity. Therefore you'll need 1760 x 1.4 i.e. 2464 calories each day to maintain your weight.
4) How much more to gain muscle? Consume 500 more than the number of calories you have just calculated, which should be the optimum intake to gain muscle not fat. Cut 250 if you seem to be putting on fat and add 250 if you are not building muscles at a good rate.
Make a 15 day nutrition plan and see whether you are progressing in the right direction. If you hit the right plan and also exercise and rest correctly, there's no stopping you from turning into a hulk in weeks.
To find out more about natural body building, read Cecil Kelly's excellent articles on bodybuilding.