Find out How to Determine Daily Calorie Needs to Rapid Muscle Gain

Nutrition is the most vital part of any bodybuilding program. Without adequate calories it is impossible to gain any muscle weight. Find out just how many calories you need per day to gain lean muscle mass with the formula given below.

Calculating the exact daily calorie needs is the first step in muscle building programs. Consuming more calories than necessary leads to accumulation of fat while consuming lesser calories than necessary leads to lesser development of muscles. Let us look at the 4-part formula:

1) Lean muscle mass calculation: Measure your body fat percent with the help of a skin caliper. For instance consider it is 10%. If you weigh 140 pounds, 10% of it is 14 pounds. This is the amount of your fat mass. Subtract this number from your total body mass (140 minus 14) to get your lean muscle mass – 126 pounds.

2) Resting metabolic rate calculation: Multiply lean muscle mass by 10 and add 500. This will give you the resting metabolic rate or RMR, the number of calories required just to breathe and let the organs perform their activities. In our example RMR = 1760 calories.

3) Calculation of calorie intake to stay the same weight: Now let us find out your daily caloric intake by taking into consideration your level of activity. Multiply RMR by your Activity Index to calculate how much you need to maintain your current weight. If you are mostly sedentary, your activity index is 1.2. If you are moderately active, your activity index is 1.4. If you are very active, your activity index is 1.6

Consider that you have a moderate level of activity. Therefore you’ll need 1760 x 1.4 i.e. 2464 calories each day to maintain your weight.

4) Optimizing additional calorie intake: Add 500 calories to your calculations so far and this should be your ideal calorie intake to gain muscle not fat. If you feel you are gaining fat and not muscle, cut down by 250 and if you are not gaining any muscle at all add 250 more.

Make a 15 day nutrition plan and see whether you are progressing in the right direction. If you hit the right plan and also exercise and rest correctly, there’s no stopping you from turning into a hulk in weeks.

To learn more about natural body building, check out Cecil Kelly’s excellent articles on weight training.

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