You can spend two hours in the weight room, hammering out set after set, but it won’t mean much if you aren’t eating a muscle-focused diet.
Size gains come from two foundation principles: Tearing the muscle down with training, and building it back up with nutrition. I know that nutrition isn’t the most entertaining part of your fitness journey, but it’s essential.
Let me make things a bit easier for you by providing you with a list of the 10 best foods for muscle growth you can enjoy after your muscle mass workout.
Eat More Than You Burn
Before I jump into the list of muscle-building foods, I’d recommend taking a minute to figure out how many calories you need each day.
To build muscle and gain size, you must be eating more calories than you burn – the opposite of a fat-burning diet. An easy way to calculate your daily caloric needs is with an online calorie calculator.
Based on your goals and current physical activity level, you’ll be given a caloric range to achieve each day. This number is usually 200 to 300 calories more than your caloric maintenance or how many calories you must eat to stay at your same weight.
Here are some quick tips to help you eat to grow by including bodybuilding foods into your diet:
- Calculate your daily calorie needs: Determine your daily caloric needs based on individual factors like your current size and activity levels. Since you want to add muscle, you’ll want to consume a greater amount than your daily maintenance intake, so your body has energy to fuel growth.
- Incorporate protein-rich foods: Eat an adequate amount of protein, this is the nutrient that provides the amino acid building blocks your body uses to create new muscle.
- Don’t skip your carbohydrates: Carbohydrates are important for providing energy for your workouts and they can help spare protein after a workout. Basically, they help fuel and recover from your toughest workouts.
- Add healthy fats to your diet: Fats help regulate hormones, including important anabolic ones that promote muscle growth.
- Monitor your food intake: Use a food journal or app and keep track of how much food you’re eating. A big mistake that hard gainers make is that they don’t consume enough calories to fuel their muscle building goals.
- Fuel up before and after workouts: Aim to consume pre and post workout meals rich in protein and carbohydrates to provide your body with nutrients to support training and recovery.
- Consider smoothies: One hack that you can do if you are struggling to consume enough muscle building foods is combining several of these top body building foods into a blender and making a delicious shake.
Top 10 Muscle-Building Foods
Since protein-rich foods contain the most amino acids, the building blocks of muscle tissue, I’ll focus on the healthiest foods with the highest protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving. Many of these foods will also contain heart-healthy fatty acids, digestion-supporting complex carbohydrates, and micronutrients such as zinc and magnesium.
Here are 10 animal and plant-based muscle-building foods that you should start incorporating into your diet.
1. Chicken Breast
Is there any food more associated with bodybuilding and muscle growth than the chicken breast? Cost effective, easy to prepare, and packed with protein, chicken breasts are the ideal muscle-building food. I recommend buying a large pack, cooking them in bulk, and dividing them up for lunch and dinner meals throughout the week.
- 32 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
2. Hemp Seeds
Many plant foods must be mixed to form a complete protein; for example, eating brown rice with peas. Hemp seeds are an exception, giving you 32 grams of completely bioavailable protein per 100-gram serving. Take note of the fat content: This same serving has almost 50 grams of healthy fats.
- 32 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
3. Lean Pork Chops
Back to animal sources, we have lean pork chops. Just like with chicken breasts, you can cook these in bulk and interchange them throughout the week for lunch or dinner meals.
- 31 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
4. Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin seeds like hemp seeds are a complete protein source. Also high in fatty acids, pumpkin seeds are an excellent snack throughout the day.
- 30 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
5. Canned Albacore Tuna
Another bodybuilding staple, canned albacore tuna is another cost-effective and convenient option to support your muscle-building goals. I highly recommend only buying brands associated with responsible and sustainable fishing practices to avoid dangerous levels of heavy metals. A few examples include Safe Catch, Wild Planet, and Trader Joe’s.
- 27 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
6. Wild Salmon
Famously high in omega-3 fatty acids, wild salmon also contains 25 grams of protein per 3.5 ounce serving. Wild salmon is recommended but farmed salmon is okay too. Just be sure to limit your consumption of farmed salmon.
- 25 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
7. Eggs
One egg contains around 6 grams of protein along with zinc and healthy fats. If you’re like most people, you eat more than one egg, so the protein count quickly adds up. Opt for brown eggs over white eggs.
- 13 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
8. Soybeans
Back to protein-rich plant foods, soybeans have been shown to support cardiovascular health. I highly recommend only consuming fermented or sprouted soybeans; avoid the processed stuff.
- 13 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
9. Greek Yogurt
Free of carbohydrates and packed with protein, Greek yogurt will quickly become a favorite muscle-building snack.
- 10 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
10. Chickpeas
Another plant protein, chickpeas are great on their own, as a side dish, or blended to make hummus.
- 10 grams of protein per 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving
BONUS - WHEY PROTEIN
While diet and exercise are the foundation to building muscle, supplements such as protein powder also play an important role in your results. Whey protein is a component found in milk, that’s rapidly digested and well absorbed.
Whey Sport: Cellucor Whey Sport contains 30g of high-quality whey protein to help turn recovery time into muscle-growing time, and is ideally formulated for however you move by being gluten and soy-free and low in carbs, fats, and sugars.
COR Performance Whey: Every two scoops of COR-Performance Whey Isolate Protein Powder is packed with 24g of fast-acting whey protein and digestive enzymes so that you can satisfy your protein needs anytime of the day.