High Protein Diet for Fitness Enthusiasts

How to increase lean muscle mass.

To increase lean muscle mass, you must start by working out. Working out means you must stress your muscles to the point of failure. You know you have achieved muscle failure when you find that you can't do another repetition in good form. When that happens, stop the exercise. If you continue to force your muscles, you may sustain injury.

Why must you stress your muscles to the point of failure? When you do so, you are sending signals to your muscles that your body will be undergo similar stress in the future. Hence, your muscles starts to respond and grow. After a workout, the repairing process will begin. But a very fascinating thing starts to happen. Your muscles won't simply grow to its previous state. It will outgrow its previous state in an attempt to prepare for similar stress levels in the future. Hence, you achieve net muscle growth.

Bodybuilders and athletes repeat this "break down and grow" process countless times.

After your workout, you must remember to feed your body so that your muscles can repair and grow. The nutrient for muscle growth is protein. Protein can already be found in our daily diet. You can find it in fish, eggs, poultry, soy beans, and so on.

In my opinion, working out is the easy part. It's the dieting part that most people fail in. You need to sit down and work out the amount of proteins you need per day. As a general rule, most bodybuilders consume about 1g of protein for every 1 pound of weight. That's assuming you are working out intensely. For example, if you weight 120 pounds, you should be consuming about 120g of proteins per day.

It's a balancing act that most people find difficult to handle. You can't eat too much protein, for the excess protein can be converted into fats. Besides, most foods contain fats besides proteins. So you are eating all that fat together with your proteins, which just cancels out the net growth result you are trying to attain.

There is a simple rule to follow though. Plan for high protein diets, and cut down on sugar and fats. That doesn't mean your food will become all bland and tasteless. For instance, you can explore new recipes on how to keep the calories to the lowest. Use vegetable oils instead of animal oils for cooking. Or if you lead a busy life, you can always use protein supplements to increase your protein intake without having to worry about calories.

A high protein diet plan can boost your immune system, and improve your general health.