Optimal Meal Frequency For Muscle Gain

If you are an aspiring bodybuilder and you are wanting to put on pounds of lean, hard muscle, chances are you have tried almost every single type of diet that exists to build your muscles. There are so many different types of diets  you could possibly try out including low carb, high carb, super high calorie, intermittent fasting, frequent feedings, the ketogenic diet, the anabolic diet, and the carb backloading diet and this is just to name only a few that are some of the more popular ones you can find. One of the most interesting and affective, yet often overlooked aspects of these diets is meal frequency — how many meals a day you eat.

When looking at what diet you might want, people often look at things like the calorie content, the protein, carb and fat breakdown and the different types of food prescribed in these different bodybuilding diets, but meal frequency often goes surprisingly untouched, despite how important it is.

Traditionally, bodybuilders have always been advised to eat a little amount of food often, with the theory being that small meals boost your metabolism.

Whenever you eat any food, your metabolism has a mini-surge, as it jumps up a gear in an effort to digest what you have just put in your mouth. This metabolic boost (known as TEF, or the Thermic Effect of Feeding) will result in a higher calorie burn. Therefore, dietitians, nutritionists and bodybuilding coaches seemed to  have decided that eating little and often was the best approach to gaining muscles.

It is not quite as clear cut as that though.

While it certainly is true that you burn calories whenever you eat something, the number of calories you will burn is also relevant to the size of the meal you just consumed. Say for instance you just had a 500 calorie meal, you might burn a certain number of extra calories due to the rise in TEF, but if you ate a 1000 calorie meal, you would, unsurprisingly, get double the rise.

How about going to the other end of the spectrum, what about fasting?

Fasting diets have rapidly gained popularity in the recent years, firstly in terms of just improving your general health, as researchers and nutritionists noticed that many Eastern cultures employed fasting principles as a common practice and appeared to gain increased longevity and wellbeing from it.

Proponents of fasting style diets for bodybuilding argue that fasting puts your body into a super efficient nutrient partitioning mode. Nutrient partitioning refers to what happens to the calories and macronutrients when you eat them. When your blood sugar levels and protein levels are low due to you fasting, your body is supposedly extremely effective at picking up the protein and delivering it to your muscle cells for recovery, and shuttling carbs and fat to be used for energy, rather than being stored up as body fat.

However, the number one problem with fasting is that it is not anabolic. ie. It does not actually build up your muscle mass.

Whenever you’re not feeding your body with nutrients, it isn’t growing.

With the two most popular types of bodybuilding diets seemingly debunked, you may be wondering what really is the optimal meal frequency for muscle gain.

Balanced Nutrition Plan Will Work For Building Muscle

It’s safe to say that any well constructed, balanced nutrition plan will work for building muscle, provided you have a few key elements one hundred percent nailed.

However, it’s one thing for a diet to work, and another for it to be optimal.

Firstly, each individual is different, and what works for one may not work for someone else, so it’s important to recognize than an optimal approach may only go so far. That being said, it appears that the optimal meal frequency for building muscle is around every four to six hours.

There are numerous benefits to this feeding schedule, as it avoids many of the pitfalls associated with frequent meals and fasting.

If you’re in a meeting and it’s coming up to two hours since you’ve last eaten, there’s no need to bust out your Tupperware box full of chicken, rice and broccoli and start munching it in front of clients or work colleagues as you’d have to with the six to eight meals spaced two hours apart strategy.

Likewise those following fasting diets often can’t socialize around food. If you’re going out for breakfast, or even lunch, you often have to pass on food, and just sit there glumly drinking your water, or if you’re feeling slightly frisky your diet coke or black coffee with sugar-free syrup.

Eating every four to six hours also means you won’t ever feel bloated. You have enough time for your food to go down between meals, unlike with frequent eating, and you avoid the sugar-coma and pregnant belly that can come with big meals after a fast.

Considering many bodybuilders consume in excess of 5000 calories per day, getting all of these in during a four or five hour window after a fast can be nigh on impossible. To get the calories in without feeling like you’re about to explode often results in fasting bodybuilders downing bottles of soda, spooning butter out of the tub or demolishing whole chocolate cakes in an attempt to get their required calories down. Hardly the way to go about a healthy bodybuilding lifestyle now is it?

A more conservative schedule however means you’re probably just about hungry enough to eat another full meal after four to six hours, yet not so bloated you feel sick and wonder how on earth you’ll keep anything down, or so ravenous that you’ll eat anything in sight.

Having a steady supply of protein in the bloodstream and muscle cells is important for muscle growth. Eat too often and much of the protein will go to waste, and eat too infrequently and you could be in a catabolic (muscle wasting) state.

The number one most important issue in building muscle is your calorie intake, very closely followed by the macronutrients you eat, then comes quality of your food choices, and meal frequency finishes fourth.

That’s not to say that meal frequency isn’t important, as it does have a vital role to play, and if you want the best results, you’ll consider meal frequency very carefully. However to reach your goals you must first ensure you’re eating enough calories to support growth, but not so many you get fat, have a good balance of proteins, fats and carbs, and are basing your diet around healthy foods. Then think about meal frequency.