Increasing Lean Mass: Foods and Tips to Help You Define Your Muscles

“Mens sana in corpore sana” wrote Juvenal in the 1st century AD to state that there were only two goods worth calling on the gods for: health of the mind and health of the body. Today this phrase is something of a mantra for all athletes, because it has been scientifically proven that keeping the body fit helps brain health, helping to prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A concern for many athletes is the care, definition or increase of lean mass (that is, muscle mass), which of course, to ensure an optimal state of health as well as an enviable physique, must always be higher than fat mass. Naturally, here too nutrition can work wonders, but beware: no, and again no, to do-it-yourself diets or eating programs! Every body works differently from the next and needs to be studied and guided through a genuine path of rebalancing and definition. The support of a nutritionist will therefore be essential to ensure an even more defined and targeted program.

Usually the diet for increasing lean mass is normocaloric or hypercaloric, depending on the physical activity you do.

From a practical and applied point of view, the food choices are the same as for a good, healthy diet. It must provide:

• All the essential molecules (amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals) in sufficient amounts;
• More protein (depending on the individual and body composition) than a traditional normocaloric diet, evenly distributed throughout the day;
• About 25-30% fat calculated on the requirement of the normocaloric diet, even when applied in hypercaloric regimens
• Carbohydrates in amounts sufficient to support overall energy needs and distributed so as to take advantage of the anabolic power of insulin (stimulated by them) without overdoing fat storage.
• Reaching, by the end of the day/week, the amount of macronutrients called for by our requirements.

IMPORTANT: Choosing a hypercaloric diet involves a time limit beyond which it would be advisable not to continue; this depends above all on how the body responds to the diet in question and on the level of fat accumulation reached (which should never be > 15%). It is important, in fact, for the diet to be flexible and sustainable over time. With no rush and with the right nutrition advice, the dream of a more toned, defined body is not so far away!