Design Diet Plan For Lean Muscle Gain And Fat Loss

Brief Answer:
reduce carbohydrate intake

Detailed Answer:
Hello,

let me start with this: diet alone is not enough to make sure that you're going to develop your muscles. Exercise is very important in this regard.

To achieve fat loss, the carbohydrate content of the food should be minimized as much as possible. Then your body may turn to protein and fat stores for energy consumption. Protein can be retained in muscles with regular exercise. High-intensity exercise (>70-80% of maximal muscle power) will result in muscle hypertrophy (more protein in muscles). Medium intensity (50-70%) exercise will induce less hypertrophy. Aerobic activity (low-intensity exercise) is good to increase caloric expenditure but it's not equally good for muscle hypertrophy. It can be bad regarding muscle hypertrophy for a trained athlete, without concurrent high-intensity exercise.

Diets high in protein intake may be helpful although the long-term consequences of such diets remain uncertain. Paradoxically diets with high fat intake may also reduce body fat as long as you stay away from carbohydrates. The same applies to the long-term consequences of such diets - we don't really know if they're healthy or not.

So if you'd like to achieve muscle hypertrophy and fat loss, the most important thing in the diet is to reduce the carbohydrates: sugar, too many fruits, baked goods, rice, potatoes, spaghetti, etc. You can achieve high protein intake with poultry, meat and fish but other sources of protein may help as well (mushrooms for example). You should always make sure that the total caloric intake is not high enough to result in fat accumulation. The recommended caloric intake depends on your body size and physical activity. You'd better consult a dietitian for a detailed approach.

Before anything else make sure that your primary care physician agrees with your goals. Certain disorders may affect your efforts towards protein gain and fat loss. Diabetes, hypothyroidism are some of the most common ones. In some cases it may even be dangerous to adopt a restrictive diet without medical supervision, so please make sure that your doctor is OK with that.

I hope I've answered your question. Please let me know if you need further assistance.

Kind Regards,
Dr Panagiotis Zografakis,
Internal Medicine Specialist

---