5 important dieting tips to help you build muscle

Many people think building muscle only involves exercising and lifting weights. In reality, diet is an integral part of building strong muscles.

The list below offers five important tips that will help you choose foods that can build muscle and increase strength.

It's common knowledge that protein is essential for building muscle. The more protein your body stores in your muscles, the bigger and firmer they get. However, your protein supply is depleted by normal body functions. Your body uses protein to do important things like creating hormones and repairing damaged tissues. Eating foods high in protein, such as meat and legumes, boosts your body's protein supply, ensuring that you'll have enough to help your muscles grow.

Vegetables are often overlooked by people trying to build muscle because they don't contain much protein. However, what many bodybuilders don't realize is that eating vegetables helps your body digest and process the protein you consume. Vegetables are high in fibre, which ultimately helps your body access the protein you consume more effectively.

Eating healthy fats is perfectly acceptable for anyone who wants to build muscle, although eating too much fat slows down the body's digestion process and makes it harder for you to digest food. When your diet is high in fat, your body expends more energy to digest food, which can leave you feeling sluggish at the gym. If you want to build strong muscles, limit your fat intake to healthy fats, like avocado and olive oil.

Berries are one of the foods that are highest in antioxidants, which are important for fighting the free radical cells that break off when you exercise. Free radicals are cells that are malformed or volatile. These cells can be harmful and can even cause damage that may eventually lead to cancer. Foods high in antioxidants, like berries, help get rid of free radicals.

Bedtime is an especially important time for anyone who wants to bulk up because it's the time of the day that the body builds muscle and repairs the damage you've done in the gym. Consider eating a small protein-filled snack before bed to ensure that your body has a protein boost to optimize the muscle-building process while you sleep. A good before bedtime snack is a handful of nuts, trail mix or a small protein shake.