Alex Ram

Nutrition is of prime importance in all muscle gain programs. To build lean muscle mass you need to consume enough good calories each day of the week. To find out exactly how much, use the formula given in this article.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--0 pounds, 10% of it is-- pounds. This is the amount of your fat mass. Subtract this number from your total body mass (140 minus--) to get your lean muscle mass - 126 pounds.2) Resting metabolic rate calculation: Multiply lean muscle mass by 10 and add 500. This will give you the resting metabolic rate or RMR, the number of calories required just to breathe and let the organs perform their activities. In our example RMR = 1760 calories.3) Calculating calorie intake to maintain current weight: To find out how many calories you need per day to maintain your current weight, multiply your RMR by Activity Index. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, your activity index is 1.2. If you lead a moderate lifestyle, your activity index is 1.4. And if you lead an active lifestyle, your activity index is 1.6.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) Positive calorie intake to gain muscle mass: To gain muscle not fat, you need to eat about 500 more calories per day than the number you have calculated in the previous step. If you are indeed gaining fat you should cut down your intake by 250 calories and see how it goes. While if you are not building muscle it is essential to consume 250 additional calories.Try out your nutrition plan for two weeks before deciding whether to add or subtract calories. Work out with intensity and take adequate rest to put yourself firmly on the path to muscularity.To learn more about muscle building, read Cecil Kelly's excellent articles on bodybuilding.