6 Meals a Day for Quick Muscle Gain

If your aim is to gain muscle weight as fast as possible, the traditional three daily meals are not going to provide you with the fuel you need. Your three meals when accompanied with rigorous exercise will cause your metabolism to fluctuate, increase your body fat, and make your belly growl like a hungry tiger!

Most dieters get stuck in a vicious cycle between starving themselves and purging themselves. Dieting exemplifies how our metabolism works; starvation causes weight loss, and purging reinstates the weight. Metabolism is the sum of all chemical reactions that occur in the body. Its function is to promote growth, maintain our bodies, and help facilitate the general operations the body performs. More specifically, metabolic processes help import nutrients into our cells, and eliminate the waste products that have accumulated there. Metabolism plays a key role in tissue growth, which is important to note if your intention is to build muscle mass. Metabolism also works closely with the nervous system to send messages that the body is hungry, thirsty, full, or deficient in minerals, to the brain.

When you continually starve your body in a conscious way, fuel is still needed to keep the organ systems working. Muscles will atrophy to provide fuel for the body, and eventually, the tissue in the body will also be cannibalized until death occurs. So, it could be argued that your metabolism is what keeps you functioning until you find some food for it to work with!

By halving the three big meals you usually eat, thereby creating six small meals you will enhance the effectiveness of your metabolism and learn to use it to your benefit. Not only will you feel like you have more energy, your concentration will be better, and you won’t experience any more of those mid-afternoon slumps. In addition, if you switch your regular carbohydrates to the complex variety, they will burn slowly – providing a continuous supply of energy, and leaving the additional protein you have consumed for the purposes of building and repairing your muscles. This is what will increase your muscle mass.

Six meals a day provides optimal conditions for your metabolism, but you need to carefully decide what constitutes a meal. If you are a bodybuilder in training, your caloric intake will be much higher, but the small, even, nutritious meals will satisfy your body without overfilling it.

Preparing six meals every day can be a daunting and often inconvenient task. If you take the trouble to plan these meals before the fact, you will find that you can fit them in around your job, lifting, and family life.

Here is a sample of what a six meal day could look like:

* Breakfast – ½ cup of oatmeal, small glass of orange juice, a whey protein shake, and dietary supplements

* Mid-morning snack – 1 glass of water and a can of tuna and reduced fat mayonnaise

* Lunch – 8oz chicken breast and ¼ cup of boiled brown rice

* Pre-workout snack – whey protein shake and banana

* Post-workout meal – Post workout shake. 40+ grams of protein

* Dinner –8oz chicken breast, salad, veggies

* Night Snake - Cottage cheese and an apple

The progression of the meals shows the highest amounts of carbohydrates are consumed early in the day. By supper, there are no carbohydrates in the meal whatsoever. The rationale behind this, is that you do need to provide your body with enough slow-burning fuel to last the day, but an overload before you sleep will see the excess get stored as fat.

This new diet regime may not look as exciting as what you would usually eat, but on the other hand, the payoff will be that you have far more energy than you would usually have. You will also be taking big strides towards your goal of becoming a bodybuilder and gaining muscle weight fast.

The diet plan is meant as a guide only. At some point you will cheat, and the occasional flavorsome meal will not be especially detrimental to your new routine – it will probably be good for your mental health! You can research and substitute other complex carbohydrates for the rice, and other high protein cereal for the oatmeal to kill the boredom with this diet. You will find that your body will adapt to this new way of life quickly, and the gains you make will be worth giving up the fast food for!