Lean muscle is important since it helps promote weight loss by increasing your body’s metabolism. Unfortunately, many individuals just starting out are unaware of how to build lean muscle effectively through diet and exercise. To build lean muscle you will need a balanced diet, portion control, weight training and aerobics all to slim down in a healthy and efficient way.

Build Lean Muscle with Lean Muscle Diets

Exercise is not enough to build lean muscle. If you are looking for how to build lean muscle you need to focus on just as much of what you eat as well as what you do in the gym. When done properly, you can build up your body’s natural metabolism, store less fat and ultimately lose weight faster. The most important thing to remember is to not cut down your calories dramatically. Not only does this deprive your body of nutrients, but can actually reverse the effects of your metabolism – thus, making you gain weight faster.

Find your specific guidelines for how many calories you should consume based on your body weight. Then, rather than cut, remember you need to add in a couple hundred extra calories to build lean muscle.

Example: A person on a 1,500 calorie per day diet may need 300 to up to 500 extra calories for their lean muscle diets.

A few other guidelines to abide by when you are trying to build lean muscle include:

• Ensuring no more than 20% of your intake is protein
• Protein should come from low-fat origins such as fish, poultry and other low-fat protein options
• Never fry your proteins
• Do not consume more than 70% of your calories in carbohydrates
• Avoid simple sugar items such as candy or chocolate sweets
• Introduce complex carbohydrates into your diet (i.e. vegetables and whole grains)

Building Lean Muscle with Weight Building

You cannot build muscle without a little weight building in your workout routine. During your weight lifting, avoid any isolation workouts which increase the muscle mass only in one specific region of your body. For example, triceps or biceps exercises. Use a compound routine that uses multiple-joint areas during your weight lifting routine instead to build lean muscle all over, rather than concentrated areas.

Building Lean Muscle with Aerobics and Cardiovascular Training

Cardiovascular training and aerobics help burn fat and make way for your body to build muscle. These will also improve your lung function and heart health, which are important for an overall healthy body. Try doing two cardio or aerobic sessions per week that are at least 30 minutes long and achieve your target heart rate at the same time.

Never push your body beyond its limits while you are trying to build lean muscle. If you are new to working out, start with a moderate routine rather than a high-depth routine. Injuries can be severe enough to not only prevent working out in the future, but prevent weight loss as well. Only you know your body’s limits; therefore, ensure you are only pushing your body to a desirable limit. You can increase the intensity of your workouts each week until you are slowly achieving your goal. The bottom line to remember is it is not how fast you go about it, it is how you build lean muscle that counts.

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