Summer body day 13 - building muscle food

Building toned, lean muscle means eating plenty of whole foods that build muscle. You can workout like crazy, but your gains will be minimal if you’re not supplying your body with the right foods.

Muscles need food to grow. More specifically, muscles need protein to grow. Your diet should contain a lean source of protein in every meal.

Without an adequate protein supply, your body will not be able to rebuild and repair the damage you did in your last workout. A palm size portion of lean (and preferably wild or organic) protein at least 2-3 times a day helps. Some muscle building proteins include:

• Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast
• Tuna (water packed)
• Wild Fish (salmon, sea bass or scallops)
• Prawns
• Extra Lean Ground Beef, Venison
• High Quality Protein Powder
• Eggs
• Good quality Beef Tenderloin(Filet Mignon)
• Ground Turkey

This is not to say that you should exclude other important macro-nutrients like complex carbohydrates and healthy fats. These play a very important role in your muscle building diet as well.

Complex carbohydrates provide the energy you need to power through your workouts and help with the digestion of proteins and fats. Most of your daily meals should include complex carbohydrate sources as well as protein based foods.

Some complex carbs are beans (black, navy, kidney, pinto, chick peas), sweet potatoes, and brown rice foods (brown rice bread, brown rice pasta, long and short grain brown rice).

Some goods fats are organic butter, raw nut butters, raw nuts, cod liver oil, krill oil, flax seeds, flax seed oil, coconut products.

You should also include lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables per day. The more colourful…the better!

To maximize your muscle building and training efforts, you should include a high quality protein shake, or source of lean protein within 30 minutes of your workout.