You’ve probably heard that in order to gain muscle you must eat right. Protein – the patriarch product for procuring pounds – is the greatest component of a muscle building diet, but you also need carbohydrates, essential oils, certain sugars, and a host of other foods that conspire to catch your body up with what you are putting it through during a workout.

During your workout the targeted muscles are essentially ‘damaged’. The stress of the weights combined with repetitions tears the tissues that make up a muscle. Those ‘damaged’ tissues then send off for help, pulling on all the nutrients brought into your body through a healthy diet. When your body is topped up with a surplus of calories it can afford to repair stressed muscles in a somewhat permanent way.

Michelle Schoffro Cook, DNM, DAc, wrote in her recent book that “the health of muscles depends on the quality of nourishment they receive. Well nourished muscles are less likely to develop spasms or cramps that lead to pain.”

So the healthier a diet, the better chances for building muscle.

It is widely agreed that in order to gain weight a person must consume more calories than are being burned off. The concept is perfect, other than its one flaw: the absence of information regarding the types of calories that are good for you.

In response to an inquiry regarding weight gain, Dr Dee, of Drdaveanddee.com, wrote, “all calories are not created equal. In other words, some types of calories are not equal to others for gaining weight. For Example, if I said that you need to eat 2,000 calories per day to gain weight and you eat 4 bags of chips each day, do you think you would gain muscle? Not likely.” He then goes on to explain that while certain foods like potato chips are high in calories, they are empty, totally nutritionless calories.

Finding the right diet is vital to gaining muscle. And while you try to eat as many healthy calories as you can, you might find that introducing the amount needed to create a surplus each day is difficult. Luckily there are supplements designed to assist you in gaining weight. AstroNutrition offers a wide range of protein powders specifically formulated to help you gain the desired muscle. They help bring the building blocks of nutrients to your body and give you that extra caloric intake needed to push further.

For a complete list of the various top quality muscle building products offered by AstroNutrition, click here.