Free healthy meal plan for muscle gain for beginner

Free healthy meal plan for muscle gain for beginner

When you build muscle and add size to your frame, your diet is the most require factor to get right.

When your diet is optimized for muscle growth, it will enable you to perform that much better in the gym and physically recover and progress that much faster.

Despite all of the confusion and common misconceptions around this topic, by no means does it require you to explicitly stick to eating chicken, broccoli, and brown rice every day.

If you want to maximize muscle growth while minimizing excess fat gain, then you have to ensure your intake of enough calories.

Therefore, I’d go with the recommendations of multiple researchers within the field, which is slowly gaining roughly two to £4 per month, depending on your training experience.

You can use researcher Lou McDonald’s recommendation and multiply your body weight in pounds by 15 and then add 200 to 400 calories to this.

Although this likely won’t be spot on initially, you can start with this and adjust your calories based on how your weight gain progresses.

As for protein, again, more is not necessarily better, but there is an optimal range that you want to hit, given that it plays a vital role in muscle recovery and growth.

Based on this 2018 meta-analysis from the Journal of Sports Medicine intaking roughly zero point 73 to 1 gram/lb of body weight seems to be optimal for muscle growth.

The literature recommends to intake of roughly zero point 25 to 0.5 grams of fat per pound of body weight and then the remainder of your calories coming from carbs.

Let’s take a look at what a typical day of eating could look like for you. And given that the average person needs roughly 2500 calories to maintain their weight, we’ll aim for an intake of around 2800 calories.

That intake is spread across four main meals throughout the day. as shown in Brad Schoenfeld’s 2018 study, which is optimal to maximize muscle anabolism.

Table of Contents

Overview

So sticking to cost-friendly stores like the ones on this list and some other notable ones like Aldi will be wise to minimize additional costs.

The meal plan will consist of four main meals with at least 20 grams of protein within each meal to keep our muscle protein synthesis levels elevated throughout the day.
So we’re going to aim for a daily total of roughly 2700 calories and 160 grams of protein.

But after you run through it, I’ll provide you with some guidance on how to implement the Free healthy meal plan for muscle gain and customize it to best suit your body.

Meal-1

We’re making a smoothie that takes just five minutes to whip together.

A third of a cup of oatmeal
one frozen banana
two cups of 2% milk
two tablespoons of peanut butter
a scoop of whey protein

Just blend this all together shipped. The total item comes up to just $1.70 and provides a great return in terms of convenience, calories, protein, and nutrients.

Meal-2

Ingredients

3 whole eggs
1/2 a cup of uncooked brown rice with a chicken stock cube thrown in there for some additional flavor
1/2 a cup of diced carrots,
1/2 a cup of diced celery,
1/2 a cup of diced cabbage,
some soy sauce and garlic powder

How to make

Give your rice a good rinse and throw it in a pot or rice cooker.
Use a finger hack to cook the rice. By lining up the water with the first line of your index finger, this Asian hack guarantees perfect rice consistency without fail.
Then throw in your chicken stock cube and let cook.
Scramble your eggs in a pan.
Once that’s done, throw your veggies in a pan with some garlic until the veggies are cooked.
Add in your rice and soy sauce and give it a nice mix for a few minutes.
Take it off the heat and add in your scrambled eggs.

Give it a taste, and then add whatever additional seasoning or sauce is needed.

Meal 3

1/2 a cup of uncooked brown rice with a chicken sauce cube
4oz of uncooked chicken breasts
one green pepper
one sweet onion
one cup of canned pinto beans
half a cup of salsa
Some paprika and salt.

How to make

All right, time to get cooking. So we’re using the same rice cooking process as a previous meal. As your rice is cooking.

Throw your chicken, green peppers, and onions in a pan and season with paprika and some salt.
After a little bit, throw in your canned pinto beans, mix it all up, and you’re ready for plating.
Add the mix beside your cooked rice and top with salsa if you prefer for some additional flavor and there you have it.
A third of the price of a chipotle bowl, yet just as tasty and packed with a ton of protein and nutrients.

Meal-4

some ground turkey with a side of roasted sweet potato and green beans.
4 and 1/2 ounces of raw ground turkey
8oz of chopped sweet potato
a handful of green beans
a tablespoon of olive oil

a mix of different seasonings.

How to make

Chopped sweet potato on a baking sheet,
Season with salt and pepper.
Drizzle over a tablespoon of olive oil, and then give it a nice mix.
Roast for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.
Cook up your ground turkey in a pan with some salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika.
In a separate potter pan, steam your green beans by adding a bit of water, covering it, and then letting it steep until cooked to your liking.

If you’ve got some extra change to spare, feel free to top this meal with some cinnamon or ketchup for extra flavor.

Meal prep

So now that we’ve gone through the Free healthy meal plan for muscle gain, let’s go over some important information as to how to implement it.

First, let’s cover how to prep it. What I’d recommend is meal prepping the three meals, but not the smoothie, and instead just making that fresh as it takes just five minutes to do so and will taste a lot better.

I’d also recommend prepping these meals to be good for three days, since if you prep for the whole week, some of the components will start to get a little bit off tasting and looking by the end of the week.

You can alternatively cook a week or even two weeks’ worth of meals in advance, freeze them, and then just take them out as needed if you’re short on time.

You cook enough of each ingredient I’ve gone through to last for three days worth of meals.

So, for example, when you’re cooking the rice in our meal plan, we use it in two of our meals every day, and we use half a cup of uncooked rice each time.

Meal Swap

Next, let’s cover how to add some variety to your meal plants so you’re not sick of eating the same meals every single day.

It is done by just swapping out some of your protein, carb, or fat sources in your meal for an equivalent amount of another budget-friendly food source.
These swaps will provide a similar amount of calories and nutrients as the original but can help just add some variety whenever you need it.
In addition to this, just experiment with different seasonings, sauces, and veggies for each dish as well.

Macros

You want to prioritize aiming for around 1 gram of protein per pound of your body weight and a calorie intake of your body weight and pounds multiplied by around 15 to 17 as these two factors are what’s most important.

Once you have these two targets set, you can simply increase or decrease the portions of the meals in this plan as needed.

So for example, if you require less than 2700 calories, simple tweaks to the carbs and or fats, such as reducing the serving size of the rice in one meal by half, can lower the calorie total quite significantly.

Carbohydrate Intake Calculator