Building Muscle - what you really need!
Lately, we’re noticing a growing interest among women who want to increase their muscle mass, and we couldn’t be happier!
It’s exciting to see women shedding concerns about “getting bulky” and deliberately working toward muscle gain. It’s even more exciting to see women embrace the strength and confidence gained through resistance training — along with the physical changes that reflect those gains and their hard work.
Before we talk about how to build muscle, it’s important to understand a bit about the physiology behind muscle growth.
You may have heard that skeletal muscle (the type of muscle to which we’re referring when we talk about building more muscle) is made up of special types of protein, primarily actin and myosin, and their subtypes and supporting proteins. These muscle proteins, and other bodily proteins (such as enzymes, and hormones), are created and repaired from the available free amino acids floating around in the bloodstream.
These free amino acids are known as the free amino acid pool and are derived from dietary protein — foods like chicken, meat, fish, eggs, whey, and dairy — but your body can also supply them by breaking down its own proteins when dietary protein intake is inadequate.
Skeletal muscle protein is in a state of constant metabolic turnover.
This means that throughout the day, the body is constantly breaking down muscle (known as muscle protein breakdown — MPB) and rebuilding it (known as muscle protein synthesis — MPS). This process is a normal part of daily energy expenditure (commonly known as resting energy expenditure — REE) and is necessary for maintaining and building strong, healthy muscle.
Muscle breakdown happens while you are in a fasted state (such as overnight, while sleeping), or when amino acids (from protein) are not readily available between meals.
Muscle is also broken down during exercise. Though that might sound like a bad thing, it actually isn’t. Muscle protein synthesis is enhanced in the post-exercise period.
Food intake slows muscle protein breakdown and initiates muscle protein synthesis; exercise augments this effect. As such, eating food (especially protein foods) and exercising, (especially strength training) are important aspects of building more muscle.
If your goal is to develop more muscle mass and get stronger, pay attention to the following:
An optimal muscle-building diet must contain adequate protein.
Strength training women should aim for 1.7 to 1.8 grams protein per kilogram of bodyweight each day.
For a 140-pound woman (63.6 kg), this equals approximately 115 grams of protein.
More specifically, this protein should come from complete protein foods like those from animal sources (meat, dairy) and/or complete vegetarian sources like pea or hemp. The reason complete protein sources are so important is because only essential amino acids which are found abundantly in complete protein, stimulate muscle protein synthesis and halt breakdown.
The only way to build muscle is with serious strength training.
Even though the post-exercise period stimulates muscle protein synthesis, it's not enough to overcome the muscle breakdown that also occurs. This is where proper nutrition comes in.
Strength training works synergistically with optimal caloric and protein intake to repair and build muscle protein, resulting in muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth).
The emphasis of this article is on nutritional considerations for muscle hypertrophy, so I'll limit the discussion of resistance training here, and instead focus on the importance of dietary protein, as well as the impact of adequate calories, carbohydrates and creatine supplementation, because those are major factors that support muscle growth.
How Much Protein Does It Take?
For decades, research has been conducted to determine the ideal quantity of protein needed for muscle protein synthesis. Historically, the majority of this research has been performed in men. The limited science looking at differences between men and women indicates that men may have a higher protein requirement than women because they oxidize (burn) more amino acids at rest and in exercise.
Because accurate information pertaining to women is hard to come by, you can choose to follow these guidelines exactly, or modify based on your own personal experiences.
With regards to total amount of protein, the recommendation of 1.7 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, appears to apply fairly accurately to women.
Some people feel that more protein than this is even more effective, but researchers have shown that the muscle-building effect tops out at 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram per day. The benefits of a higher intake of dietary protein extend beyond muscle hypertrophy:
Protein is more thermogenic than carbohydrates or fats, so it may help burn more calories in a meal.
Protein is more satiating, so it helps control appetite, and is less likely to be stored as body fat than carbohydrates or fats when total calorie intake is not excessive.
Protein is an energy source for exercising muscles, not as much as carbohydrates and fats, but if carbohydrates and fats are not well-tolerated, protein can be used as fuel.
Protein can help prevent blood sugar spikes or dips because it converts to glucose more slowly than carbohydrates.
Research has suggested that there is a ceiling for how much muscle protein can be synthesized per gram of protein eaten per meal — termed the “muscle full effect.”
Researchers found that 20 to 30 grams of protein in a meal is all the body can use to stimulate protein synthesis.
How Do You Know If You’re Eating the Right Amount of Calories?
You may be wondering, “Well, how many calories do I need to eat to build muscle? What’s the magic number?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Everyone’s metabolism is a different, and individual energy needs will vary from person to person.
What About Carbohydrates?
Contrary to popular belief, there is no essential carbohydrate requirement. In fact, your body can make all the glucose (the breakdown product of carbs) you need from amino acids and fatty acids through a process called gluconeogenesis.
Nevertheless, it does use large amounts of carbohydrate for exercise energy expenditure. Carbohydrates are stored in your muscle tissue in the form of glycogen, which your muscles breakdown during exercise to create ATP/energy.
The majority of the ATP production in your body (about 80 percent) comes from glycogen breakdown, not protein or fat oxidation.When your body is low in glycogen, such as when you follow a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet, you may feel very lethargic and weak when you exercise. Some people adapt to this low-carb state as their bodies switch to using fat as a fuel source (stored in the muscle tissue as triglycerides), and energy production from dietary protein is upregulated.
However, unless someone has an intolerance to carbohydrates, which occurs in people with diabetes and metabolic syndrome, most fit and healthy people benefit from carbs in the diet to maximize exercise and athletic performance.
The rationale for still including carbohydrate in your post workout meal is to help replenish glycogen used during training. Carbs provide the glucose, which gets stored in your muscle as glycogen, and insulin directs glucose there.
The menstrual cycle can also influence the body’s responses to dietary macronutrients. In the first 14 days of a woman’s cycle, her body will use and respond more favorably to dietary carbs. In the latter 14 days, her body uses more dietary fats.
As such, using your cycle as a guide for tailoring your carbohydrate intake may be something to consider.
Overall, some women may do better with less than three grams of carbs per kilogram per day during some times of the month, or just in general. Listen to your body and experiment with what works best for you.
By now you have a better understanding on how your body builds muscle and which dietary nutrients help maximize your body’s response to strength training. For best results, in addition to performing resistance training workouts, follow these four nutrition guidelines:
Consume adequate protein daily, at every meal, and ensure that you’re consuming a complete protein after each workout, especially one rich in leucine, like whey protein.
Take in adequate daily calories, and ideally achieve a positive caloric balance.
Select whole-food carbohydrate sources to replenish muscle glycogen and prevent protein breakdown.
I want to emphasize one more thing: while these goal-specific nutrition strategies will support muscle building, the most important aspect of this process is resistance training. You can’t build muscle without applying external resistance.
So go forth, lift heavy, eat well, and watch those muscles grow!
Shannon 💪🏼
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