The Male Ectomorph Building Muscle Diet

You are what you eat as the old saying goes. Don't go around eating professional bodybuilders though i hear they don't take kindly to bite marks!

Seriously though what you eat has a massive impact on your body's health and muscle growth. Certain foods are packed with all the right nutrients while others are simply pollutants to your body and have nothing but empty calories.

Here is a quick list of things you should be including more in your ectomorph muscle building diet.

• Egg Whites - Great source of protein without fat
  
• Skinless chicken breast - Lauded as one of the best bodybuilding foods you can eat.
  
• Lean Rump Steak - A close second to chicken breast. Both are loaded with complex proteins.
  
• Salmon Fillet - Another great source of protein and also comes packed with unsaturated fat (the good kind of fat you need!)
  
• Sweet Potato - Enough talk about protein, this is a great food to get your carbohydrates without too many simple fast acting carbs. This will give you energy all day.
  
• Broccoli - One of the best vegetables a bodybuilder can get. It promotes testosterone production which is your main hormone for building muscle.

Here is a quick list of what you should be avoiding to give yourself the best chance at serious muscle growth.

• Processed Carbohydrates - Things like cereals, fruit juice, white breads are all converted to sugars too easily and stifle muscle growth along with generally being bad for your health.
  
• Processed Meat - Salami and bacon and all processes meats loaded with sodium are of little nutritional value and are just plain bad for the heart.
  
• Cookies & Crackers - Snacks like these are full of salt and sugar but have little in the way of calories, protein or complex carbs ... leave them be.

Now you have a basic idea of what you should be eating and avoiding you need to roll that into a weekly meal plan that helps your body gain lean muscle mass.

There are two other things to know for this apart form the "what to eat" as detailed above. You need to know how many calories you need and how often you need to eat.

How much - For this you need to calculate how many calories your body burns just living and performing all the usual body functions as well as how much you spend exercising, working and playing.
This is your maintainence level of calories needed to stay the same weight. You now need to add many MORE calories on top of this to have a surplus of energy the body will use to anabolise (build muscle).
As an ectomorph your metabolism is very high meaning your resting rate of burning calories will be very high. You may find the amount of calories you need will be very high but this should not put you off eating that amount as it is the only way to build muscle.

How often - This is an important part of a good building muscle diet for ectomorphs. Your body will quickly burn through calories and overloading each meal will just cause bloating and actually increase your metabolism. It is better to divide your meals into about 5 or 6 pr day rather than our usual standard 3 meals.
This will keep the body fueled and stop catabolism where the body destroys fat and muscle for more energy.

Using these concepts you can create a meal plan for each day where each meals is roughly equal to the others in terms of calories consumed. Some like to put an extra emphasis on breakfast but non should be snacks either.

For more information on Male Ectomorph Building Muscle Diets as well as every other aspect of bodybuilding for skinny guys follow the link below and discover how you can go from hardgainer to fastgainer!