subject: How To Gain Muscle Mass On 3 Meals A Day [print this page] Three square meals a day...breakfast, lunch and dinner. Can a person achieve great muscle-building results with just three meals a day?
Absolutely...and I'll tell you how.
It's all about meal timing and quantity.
Before I get started, please note it IS very true that you're better off eating smaller, more frequent meals, both for muscle building and fat loss. I'm not going to argue with that.
The problem arises because many people simply CAN'T get more than 3 meals day.
Here's my solution...
1. Plan to train in the late afternoon/early evening, if you can. For our meal timing, this will be the best option. This usually tends to work pretty well for those who work a "normal" workday as well.
2. Have a moderately large breakfast...eggs, oatmeal, broccoli...whatever else you normally eat. Breakfast is the second most important meal of the day (for our purposes here, at least) and it's not going to be your biggest. Not to say it should be a good size, though. You should still make sure it's a pretty substantial meal. It's just not going to be your biggest meal of the day!
3. Have a medium-sized lunch...at this point, you're looking to not load your digestive system with food (you already did that with breakfast) because you'll be training fairly soon. You want the meal to be pretty much gone by the time you train.
4. Do your workout and have your post-workout shake as you normally would. Generally speaking, I recommend about 30 to 50 grams of protein (whey is good for this) and about the same in simple sugars (I use just normal sugary drink mix for this - you don't have to get super-fancy).
5. DINNER is going to be your biggest meal of the day. Because your body is primed to take full advantage of whatever you eat after training THIS is the time to load up. You should get at least half your days calories or more in this meal...overloading calories like this is extremely anabolic and your body will thrive on it.
6. Next day, repeat.
That's the plan! It's nothing complicated, of course, but I've been using this type of eating and training schedule for a long time and it's been extremely effective for me.
If you can squeeze in a few small snacks during the day, go for it! But if you don't have time for 5 or 6 meals a day, don't stress about it. Your body can cope and you can definitely still make great progress!
