5 Tips For Growing Lean Muscle Mass

Check out 5 tips for growing lean muscle mass to improve your health and fitness levels.

Lean muscle mass is what most people strive for. This is the weight of your muscles, not counting body fat percentage. The more lean muscle mass you have, the stronger you are. However, it is important to know that lean muscle mass, or lean body mass, can confuse people to make them think that some muscles are not lean, which is not the case. Muscle is muscle and fat is fat.

Nevertheless, you click on this article because, in the end, you want to get stronger and want to discover how to do that.

These 5 tips for growing lean muscle mass were shared by Jessica Isaacs on Bodybuilding.com. She is a dietitian who worked closely with athletes in the NBA and the bodybuilding community to improve their performance and nutrition. Bodybuilding.com is a website focused on all-things gym related and a YouTube channel with over 5.5 million subscribers.

5 Tips For Growing Lean Muscle Mass

1. Increase Calorie Intake

That’s right. It might be obvious, but maybe you are not doing it properly. If you want to build muscle, you need to increase your calorie intake by 300-500 daily, if you are not gaining any lean muscle mass.

The bottom line is that you need to be above calorie balance to build muscle, otherwise there is a good chance you are losing muscle together with body fat.

According to Isaacs, 0.5lb to 2lbs gain per week is reasonable.

2. More Protein

As well as increasing your daily calorie intake, you must ensure you are eating enough protein. What seems to work best for most people is:

0.7-1g of protein per pound of body weight each day

Protein is the macronutrient that supports muscle building. Also, don’t eat all the protein in one meal and nothing for the other ones. Spread out protein intake throughout all your meals during the day.

10 Protein-Packed Foods You Had No Idea About

3. Half of the Plate Should Be Complex Carbs

Third, in our list of 5 tips for growing lean muscle mass, is to consume complex carbs.

Complex carbohydrates should make up half of your plate as your body uses carbs as energy and not having enough energy means you won’t be doing your best in the gym to get stronger.

Isaacs recommends having half the plate of complex carbohydrates, a quarter of protein and the other quarter with vegetables or fruits.

4. Supplement with Creatine

Creatine monohydrate is one of the most well-researched supplements in the market and it helps even further to build more lean muscle mass on top of a healthy eating habit.

How to Use Creatine to Build Muscle Faster

5. Rest and Recover

Lastly in our list of 5 tips for growing lean muscle mass is simply to take a step back, rest and recover properly. Sleeping is as important to building muscle as going to the gym and cranking out a few more reps on the bench press.

Research suggests a minimum of 7 hours of sleep, with some athletes needing up to 10 hours (elite-level athletes). Make sure you are not overtraining the same muscle group two days in a row, allow 24-42 hours of recovery in between exercises.

And those were 5 tips for growing lean muscle mass from Jessica Isaacs. If you want to see her explaining even further each topic, click on the video below.