High Calorie High Protein Diet

A high calorie/high protein diet is used to promote muscle growth and gain weight. It is beneficial to body builders during bulking and to hard gainers, people who are very thin and have difficulty gaining weight. The food you eat on this diet should complement an exercise routine designed to facilitate muscle growth by promoting the production of hormones used to build muscle.

Calories

• According to Anthony Ellis, a leading fitness consultant for hard gainer body types, you need to eat 15 to 20 times your body weight in calories to build muscle. These calories must be from nutritious whole foods, not junk food like potato chips and ice cream. Further, 30 percent of those calories should come from protein, another 40 percent from carbohydrates and 30 percent from fat. Eating in this way promotes growth hormone and testosterone production, which help your muscles grow and decrease the amount of insulin produced so that calories aren't turned into fat. A sample meal consisting of this kind of protein-carb-fat ratio would be a 5 ounce chicken breast combined with 11/2 cups of brown rice.

Protein

• Protein intake is the most important factor in this type of diet and essential for building muscle. Protein is used to repair the tears that are created in muscles when working out; if your body doesn't get protein from your diet it will take it from your muscles. If this happens, you will lose muscle mass instead of gaining it, and if you're on a high calorie diet, you'll end up gaining fat. According to Hugo Rivera, a bodybuilding nutrition specialist, you should eat at least 0.8 grams of protein and up to 1.5 grams for each pound of body weight every day. This means that if you are 150 pounds, eat 120 to 225 grams of protein each day. This doesn't mean that you have to eat a steak at every meal. Supplements, such as whey protein, can be used to replace a protein source at some meals. When on a high calorie/high protein diet, it is beneficial to space your meals out, eating less per meal, so that you eat up to six times a day. This combats insulin production and the storage of fat. Eating 120 grams of protein spaced throughout the day on this type of diet could work like this:

  Meal 1: Protein drink
  Meal 2: Protein drink combined with juice
  Meal 3: Chicken breast with rice
  Meal 4: Four eggs
  Meal 5: Steak with green beans
  Meal 6: Protein drink with juice