Is your muscle growth falling short of your body transformation dreams? Often times, the focus on losing weight takes precedence over building your muscle mass.
So, if you’re looking forward to more defined muscles, check out these tips:
Building Muscle
According to an article from Medical News Today, when you work your muscles through exercise or strength training, the muscle fibers experience trauma. Then the muscle fibers fuse together to fix the damage resulting in increased muscle mass.
Therefore, giving your muscles time to rest is essential to muscle growth and prevention of injuries. Strength training and cardio training encourages muscle growth, and when you’re new to an exercise routine, rest allows your muscles time to heal.
Foods that Support Muscle Growth
In addition to an exercise routine, eating the right foods increases muscle growth.
Here’s some food to encourage optimal muscle growth:
Proteins: According to WebMD, “protein is an important component of every cell in the body” and is used to “build and repair tissues.” Therefore, a high-protein is a crucial element of your diet when you’re looking to build muscle. Foods like chicken breast, salmon, eggs, almonds, turkey breast, lentils, and peanuts help you maintain a healthy diet and build muscles.
Vegetables: In a protein-rich diet, don’t forego the produce aisle. Vegetables offer a wide range of nutrients that keep your body healthy and performing at the optimal level. Vegetables that help you build muscle mass include spinach, peppers, soybeans, edamame, sweet potatoes, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.
Dairy: Dairy products contain fast and slow-digesting proteins making it a great dietary option when you’re looking for muscle growth. However, take into consideration the types of dairy you are consuming. For example, greek yogurt contains much more protein than regular yogurt but also has a higher caloric content as well.
Healthy Fats: While dairy products are full of healthy fats that are essential to the hormone production that increases muscle growth, there are other foods that contain healthy fats that you can incorporate into your diet. For example, avocados and coconut oil are full of healthy fats.
Another tip! When you’re making your exercise plan, make sure to include and progress compound movements like the squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead shoulder press that work multiple muscle groups, giving you more bang for your buck. It ensures that you hit every important muscle group while saving you time in the gym!
English