During my journey of building a healthy lifestyle, I've not seen many blogs that put everything you need to know under a single canopy. As a beginner, there is still much noise, confusion, and many niches to discuss when it comes to this topic.
I wanted a method that was scientifically sound and yet easy to follow.
This is a breadth-first view of all the learnings that I've accrued. Look out for the references at the end to get more depth of the topic.
Basically, this is the blog that I wish someone handed me when I first started out. It's a little lengthy but I’ve tried to keept everything quite actionable.
Word of caution, this is based on my experience and what I've learned so far, although I've ensured that everything is backed by solid scientific facts and good resources I'm NOT a physician, I'm just a guy, who's passionate about getting fit.
Your meat machine needs the energy to work, and you get that energy as calories from the food you eat.
The bigger you are the more calories you need to get through the day.
The body burns calories even when you're not working out, even when you're sitting idly, even when you're sleeping.
How many calories does it burn 🔥? That would depend on your build and metabolism.
Calculate how many calories you need to consume per day to maintain your current body weight.
For gaining lean muscles or "bulking" you need to eat +300 to +500 Cals more than your maintenance calories.
For example, if your maintenance calories are 2100 Cals you will need to consume around 2500 Cals each day.
Now, the catch is, those 2500 Cals should come from healthy food and not from junk fast food, cake, sweets, etc. This is how those 2500 Cals would result in lean muscle mass.
The bottom line is, eat as healthy as possible.