How much nutrients do you need to intake daily for building muscle?

[OliaParticipant]

How much protein, carbs and fat do I need to intake for building muscle and losing body fat?

[Viktoriya WolffKeymaster]

Many people who want to lose some body weight jump to the conclusion that Carbohydrates (Carbs) are bad and they need to be limited in their diets. This is not true. Not only do Carbohydrates provide you with rapid energy during exercise, they also help to increase your glycogen stores to increase your endurance for your next workouts. Read more about Carb and Carbohydrate Loading.
General Daily Carbohydrates Recommendations:
For General Training- 5-7g/kg of body weight
Endurance Athletes – 7-10g/kg of body weight
Ultra-endurance Athletes- 11 g/kg body weight
Let’s calculate the amount of Carbs that is needed for general training for a person that is 132lbs. First we have to convert pounds to kilograms 132/2.2=60kg. Then, 60kg multiply by 6g (5-7g Carbs) which is 360g of Carbs/day. When multiply 360g by 4 = 1440 Cal, which sounds a lot-but it is not. Forty percent of Carbohydrate will supply your body with energy when it is at rest, such as heart beating, breathing and other important body functions.
Carbohydrate needs usually are greater for training than competition.

Recommended pre-exercise meal:
Pre-exercise meals provide energy when the athlete exercises hard for 1 hour or longer. Pre-exercise meals, such as shakes, increase blood glucose to provide energy for exercising muscles.
It is recommended to consume 1g Carbs/kg of body weight for each hour of exercise or 30-60g of Carbohydrate every hour as food or fluid.

Fats play many important roles in the body: first of all it is body’s primary energy reserve, it helps to maintain body’s temperature, protects vital organs, aids in delivery and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and many other important functions.

Dietary Fat Intake Recommendations:
- 25-30% of total energy
- limit Saturated fat intake (solid fats) to less than 10% of energy intake
Let’s calculate: if your total energy intake is 2200 Cal, than .25 x 2200 Cal is 550 Cal of fat is recommended and less than 220 from those fats are recommended to be solid fats, such as from butter or sour cream or meat and any other animal sources.

Protein is probably one of the most important nutrients when talking about building muscle. Because after hard exercise, muscles are broken and amino acids are required to build more muscle.
Protein Requirements are:
Sedentary Individual older than 18y/o- 0.8g/kg of body weight/day
Endurance Athlete- 1.2-1.4g/kg/day
Resistance Athlete- 1.6-1.7g/kg/day
A gain of 2 lbs of muscle/week would require an additional 50g/protein/day for a 70 kg athlete or 1.6g/kg/day.
So, let’s calculate: Let’s say you do general training and your needs are about 1g/kg/day, at 60kg of body weight it is 60g of protein per day. Sixty grams of protein (60 x 4) equals to 240Cal from protein per day. Ingestion of about 0.1g/kg body weight of protein after resistance exercise helps to increase skeletal muscle net protein balance. But it must be done withing 1 hours after exercise.

Hope this helps.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by  Viktoriya Wolff.
• This reply was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by  Viktoriya Wolff.

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