Do you find yourself trying to get six-pack abdominals, or get your lean muscles looking ripped and angular but you just can't shift that final bit of body fat? Do you find that you're always hungry, and just can't get rid of the hungry feeling for more than a couple of minutes whilst the food goes down? When you put on muscle mass, do you also find yourself getting fatter? It seems obvious, but this is likely to be something as simple as fine tuning the nutrients in your diet so that your body is satisfied with what it needs to rebuild your muscles after a workout, and get bigger and / or stronger.
First of all you need to get the right balance of good quality calories, good quality protein, and good quality fat.
These nutrients will allow your muscles to continue growing, and if in the right quantities, will also not lead to your putting on body fat.
In fact if done correctly, you can actually burn fat off.
Another reason for being hungry all the time might be something simple, such as you are not consuming low glycaemic index (G.
I.
) foods, or already processed foods, which makes you hungrier sooner.
Generally speaking, natural foods, such as fruit and vegetables, meats such as beef, chicken, fish, wheat, oats should all lead to your being fuller for longer.
You may also be consuming the right amount of food, but not often enough, so that your body starts to go into survival mode, and will no longer burn body fat.
This can be something as simple as increasing the frequency of your meals, or timing them to fit in with when you train.
Another problem that is associated with increasing meal frequency is that you might then be consuming too many of a particular food type, and therefore your body may store this as fat.
There are also differences in requirements between body types - one size does not fit all.
If for example you already have some body fat, and you need to get rid of it, your diet is going to be quite different to someone with a very low body fat percentage who wants to build up mass.
These are the extremes, you need to tailor what you eat to your body type, and to what your muscle building goals are.
It is also important to realise where you are along your journey of muscle building; if you have a lot of fat to burn, you are going to require a different diet to if you have a relatively low body fat percentage, but are trying to build stronger more dense muscle.
Ultimately you will want to have the right amount of food types and nutrients present in your diet so that your diet does not hold you back when trying to build lean muscle.
On the other hand you also want your diet to make you store fat on your body whilst you build muscle, as this will hide all of your hard work!