What Should Women Eat To Build Muscle

If you’re looking for information to help you build muscle, you’ve come to the right place. At Girls Gone Strong, we believe that what is "right" for you is entirely up to you, and that the ultimate way to empower you is to give you the space to make all of the decisions you want about your life and your body, from how you choose to exercise, to how you want to look and feel in your body. Lately, we’re noticing a growing interest among women who want to increase their muscle mass, and we couldn’t be happier! It’s exciting to see women shedding concerns about "getting bulky" and deliberately working toward muscle gain. It’s even more exciting to see women embrace the strength and confidence gained through resistance training - along with the physical changes that reflect those gains and their hard work. Before we talk about how to build muscle, it’s important to understand a bit about the physiology behind muscle growth.



You may have heard that skeletal muscle (the type of muscle to which we’re referring when we talk about building more muscle) is made up of special types of protein, primarily actin and myosin, and their subtypes and supporting proteins. These muscle proteins, and other bodily proteins (such as enzymes, and hormones), are created and repaired from the available free amino acids floating around in the bloodstream. These free amino acids are known as the free amino acid pool and are derived from dietary protein - foods like chicken, Prime Boosts Supplement meat, fish, eggs, whey, and dairy - but your body can also supply them by breaking down its own proteins when dietary protein intake is inadequate. Skeletal muscle protein is in a state of constant metabolic turnover.1 This means that throughout the day, the body is constantly breaking down muscle (known as muscle protein breakdown - MPB) and rebuilding it (known as muscle protein synthesis - MPS).



This process is a normal part of daily energy expenditure (commonly known as resting energy expenditure - REE) and is necessary for maintaining and building strong, healthy muscle. Muscle breakdown happens while you are in a fasted state (such as overnight, while sleeping), or when amino acids (from protein) are not readily available between meals. Muscle is also broken down during exercise. Though that might sound like a bad thing, it actually isn’t. Food intake slows muscle protein breakdown and initiates muscle protein synthesis; exercise augments this effect. An optimal muscle-building diet must contain adequate protein. Strength training women should aim for 1.7 to 1.8 grams protein per kilogram of bodyweight each day.3 For a 140-pound woman (63.6 kg), this equals approximately 115 grams of protein. More specifically, this protein should come from complete protein foods like those from animal sources (meat, dairy) and/or complete vegetarian sources like pea or hemp. The reason complete protein sources are so important is because only essential amino acids which are found abundantly in complete protein, stimulate muscle protein synthesis and halt breakdown.



The only way to build muscle is with serious strength training.1 However, considering that you’re reading a site called Girls Gone Strong, chances are you’re probably already doing some of that. Even though the post-exercise period stimulates muscle protein synthesis, it's not enough to overcome the muscle breakdown that also occurs. This is where proper nutrition comes in. Strength training works synergistically with optimal caloric and protein intake to repair and build muscle protein, resulting in muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth). The emphasis of this article is on nutritional considerations for muscle hypertrophy, so I'll limit the discussion of resistance training here, and instead focus on the importance of dietary protein, as well as the impact of adequate calories, carbohydrates and creatine supplementation, because those are major factors that support muscle growth. How Much Protein Does It Take? For decades, research has been conducted to determine the ideal quantity of protein needed for muscle protein synthesis.



Historically, the majority of this research has been performed in men. The limited science looking at differences between men and women indicates that men may have a higher protein requirement than women because they oxidize (burn) more amino acids at rest and in exercise.5 Because accurate information pertaining to women is hard to come by, you can choose to follow these guidelines exactly, or modify based on your own personal experiences. However, as noted by Philips et al, 20154, these dose-response studies have been limited to lower-body resistance exercises, thus it remains unknown whether or not the absolute dose of protein required to maximally stimulate hypertrophy following upper and lower body exercises is greater than 20 to 30 grams (in other words: research isn’t perfect and does not represent every person in the population, so this "limit" per meal may not be factual). Philips et al have found, with further whole-body resistance training research in men, that the maximum increase in protein synthesis was achieved with a protein dose of 0.25 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per meal.