Bodybuilding Calories

How many calories should you have a day?

I am getting ready to start bodybuilding but need to know all the the do’s and don’ts. However i need to know how many calories a day should be consumed and also how to find out how many you do take because alot of packaging just has everything else other than calories i.e fats, protien…..etc?
Any other info that maybe some use please let me know.

An average adult male looking to maintain their weight requires around 2500 calories per day. However, if you are currently maintaining your weight, you can find how many calories your body currently needs by keeping a food diary for the next week or two, counting the calories overall and dividing them by how many days you kept the diary.

Because you will not be maintaining your current weight you will need to eat more so that your muscles can get bigger. The way to do that is to add 50 calories to your daily calorie intake for every extra pound of muscle you gain. So if you gain an extra 5 pound of muscle, you will need another 250 calories ontop of your current diet.

Just so you know that the weight you have gained is muscle and not fat or water, you will need to buy or have access to some weighing scales that can measure your body composition. A body composition tells you how much of your body is fat, water and other, the other is your organs, bones and muscle. If your fat and water stay the same or go down but you are actually getting heavier, then you are clearly gaining muscle. It won’t be too hard to workout how much muscle you are gaining once you get used to the scales. Another way to find out how much you should eat is to simply eat more or eat less in order to maintain the same sized layer of fat on your body. It is less scientific but more tailored to you.

The extra calories that you consume once you start to gain muscle should be consumed half an hour before your workout and should be made up of protein and carbs to both fuel your muscle growth and to give you the energy to perform your workout. Something like a bit of meat and some bread or a handful of pasta.

IMPORTANCE OF CALORIES TO BUILD MUSCLE AND GAIN WEIGHT

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