A Guide To Muscle Building And Fat Loss Diets

Muscle building and fat loss require a well thought out eating approach. You can train hard in the gym, but if you aren’t eating properly, it will be hard to pack on muscle mass. The same goes for fat loss; all the cardio and crunches in the world won’t help you get ripped and get that six pack if your diet is working against you.

This article will attempt to explain popular muscle building and fat loss diet and eating approaches. You will also find advice on meal preparation and meal timing, and practical tips that will work for even the busiest of lifestyles.

Please understand that just because an eating approach is listed in this article doesn’t mean it’s right for your goals. If you have further questions, please visit the Muscle & Strength forum. Each specific approach to eating will be referred to as a diet in this article. Consider the word diet to mean an eating lifestyle, and not necessarily a fat loss program. Many of the diets that follow are used for building muscle, and will will not result in fat loss.

How To Determine Your DCML

For most diets, you must have some idea of the amount of calories you can eat each day without gaining or losing weight. This is known as your daily caloric maintenance level, or DCML.

There are two ways to determine your daily calorie maintenance level, or DCML:

1. Calculator – You can use a calorie calculator, which takes into account several factors including age, height, weight, sex and activity level, and suggests how many calories you should be eating each day to maintain your current weight. Once such popular formula is the BMR calorie calculator, which can be found here.

2. Trial and Error – One semi-accurate way to determine your DCML is to keep a food log for the next 2-4 weeks. Detail every calorie you eat per day, and find your daily average. Weigh yourself first thing in the morning at the start and end of this period. For each extra pound you gained, you have eaten 3500 too many calories. For each pound you lost, you have eaten 3500 too few calories. Total up any calories from weight loss or weight gain, and divide them by the number of days you kept a log. This will provide you with an average number of calories you under ate or overate. If you overate, subtract this number from your average to find your DCML. If you under ate, add this number to your average to find your DCML.

Trial And Error Example

Let’s say you logged your food intake for 30 days, and found that you gained an extra 3 pounds while eating an average of 3000 calories per day. Multiple this 3 pound gain by 3500 calories, to find the total amount of calories you overate.

3 pounds x 3500 calories = 10,500 calories that you overate. Next, divide this amount by the number of days in your logging period, in this case 30 days. this will provide you with an average amount of daily calories that you overate.

10,500 extra calories divided by 30 days = 350 extra calories per day. What does this mean? If you cut back your daily calorie intake by 350 calories per day, you wouldn’t have gained weight. You ate 3000 calories per day and gained 3 pounds. If you would have eaten 2650 calories per day, theoretically your weight would have stayed the same.