Shaker Cups

The maths is fairly simple.

If you eat fewer calories that you burn off in a day you will lose weight. If you eat more calories you will gain weight. And if you eat more of the right things combined with a proper weight training strategy, you will gain weight as muscle rather than fat . The average male needs 2,500 calories per day just to stay at the same weight, so consider increasing this to around 3,000 calories per day.  Some of that extra will be burned off during your workouts, but the rest will go towards growing your muscles, and you should see a steady weight gain of around 1kg a month depending on your natural body type.

Get the balance right

Nearly all of your calories come from a combination of carbohydrate, protein and fats.  Carbohydrates are vital to provide the muscle glycogen that fuels you’re your workouts and should make up about 60 per cent of your total calorie intake, which equates to around 450g of carbohydrates a day if your total calorie intake is 3,000.

Protein is required to grow new tissue in your body and is therefore of special interest to anyone building muscle. However, don’t believe the gym myth that more proteins mean more muscle.  For most men anything over 180g of protein per day is largely useless. The optimum intake of protein for muscle-gainers is between 1.5g and 2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight and you can get 150g of protein delivery from the new Core 150 potein shake shaker.  So, if you weigh 80kg you will require 120g-160g of protein a day just to maintain you body composition, which will make up around 20 per cent of your daily 3,000 calories.

Fat makes up the final 20 per cent of your calories.  Fats can help you absorb vitamins, improve athletic performance and protect joints and tendons from injury. However fat is very energy-dense, containing nine calories per gram compared to four calories for carbs and protein, so your daily 600 calories of fat weighs just 67g.