Now that I’ve finished my transformation program (a.k.a. “Lean Lance-Making”), I have to move on to the next stage of my life. For me, personally, this is going to mean putting some muscle on my frame.
However, that’s far more easily said than done. Most people seem to think that muscle growth is about putting time in at the gym. While that’s a component of the truth, there are two pieces that are far more important: recovery and nutrition. Muscles grow at night, and only if they’ve been properly fed.
For me, the sleep is easy. For 4 months I have consistently gotten 8 hours of sleep, not varying my schedule almost at all, and I intend to stick with it. However, my nutrition needs to change, as I’ve been eating at a caloric deficit in order to lose fat. You cannot build muscle effectively at a caloric deficit; my goal was to avoid losing the muscle I had, as much as possible. So now it’s time to figure out how much more I need to eat. Eat too much, and I’ll simply throw that fat back on. Eat the wrong foods, and I might not have the right ingredients for muscle growth, or I may feel exhausted / overly hungry, etc. So how do I get this right?
