What’s the Ideal Calorie Surplus for Muscle Growth?

If you’re trying to build muscle, but you’re not quite sure how many calories you should be eating, then give me a few minutes and I’ll explain more about it in this article.

If you want a short and simple answer to the question, aim for somewhere between 250 and 500 calories per day over and above your maintenance calorie requirements.

The exact amount will vary from person to person depending on how fast you’re capable of building muscle, which in turn is affected by your training age, your physical age, how well your training program is set up, whether you’re on gear, as well as the genetic blueprint you were handed at birth.

But for most people, 250-500 calories per day should be enough to cover it.

How Many Calories Does It Take to Synthesize One Pound of Muscle?

Although estimates vary, the amount of energy required to synthesize one pound of muscle is somewhere in the region of 2500-3000 calories per day.

However, this isn’t a subject that’s been studied in any depth, and that number is nothing more than an educated guess.

Maybe it’s a bit more and maybe it’s a bit less, but let’s assume it’s there or thereabouts. 

Let’s say you’re gaining muscle at the rate of one pound per month. That’s going to require around 3000 additional calories per month, which comes to just 100 calories per day.

In other words, gaining muscle is unlikely to require a calorie surplus in excess of 500 calories per day. In many cases, it’s going to be a lot less.

That might not sound like much, especially when you compare it with some of the 5000 calorie dirty bulking diets out there. But you can’t force your muscles to grow faster simply by stuffing yourself with food. All that’ll happen is that you get fat.

The size of the calorie surplus required to support muscle growth will decline in tandem with the number of years you’ve been training. That’s because the greater your training age (i.e. the number of years you’ve been training with weights), the slower the gains are going to come.

Someone in their first few months of training might be able to gain muscle relatively quickly, and will need a higher calorie intake to support that rate of growth.

But if you’ve been training for several years, the rate at which you can gain muscle will have slowed down. So you’ll need to adjust your calorie intake to compensate.

There’s no point taking in a large calorie surplus designed to support a rapid rate of muscle growth if you’ve been training for two years and simply can’t build muscle that quickly.

To calculate your daily calorie surplus, the first thing you need to do is calculate your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE for short. This calculator will crunch the numbers for you.

TDEE is a function of several things, such as your metabolic rate (which in turn is affected by the amount of lean body mass and fat mass you have), your activity levels, and so on.

Once you have an estimate of your TDEE, you just add 250-500 calories to that number.

The number you’re left with is meant as a guide to what your daily calorie intake should be, rather than a rigid prescription that’s set in stone.

Treat it as a simple starting point. It’s not 100% accurate, but nor does it need to be. It’ll need to be adjusted over time, based on how your body responds to the diet.

Weight Gain vs Muscle Gain

When they say they want to gain weight, most people want the majority of that weight gain to come in the form of muscle rather than body fat.

That said, it’s perfectly natural to gain some body fat when you’re focused on adding muscle. Guys who try to stay lean during a period of weight gain are often the ones who struggle to make any appreciable gains in size.

However, you shouldn’t get to the point where your rate of fat gain exceeds your rate of muscle growth.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll gain 100% muscle mass and 0% body fat. Chances are it’s going to be more like 80% muscle and 20% body fat, or even 60% muscle and 40% body fat.

It is possible to build muscle in a calorie deficit, meaning that you’ll actually lose fat at the same time as gaining muscle. But in most cases, muscle growth in a calorie deficit tends to happen a lot more slowly than muscle growth in a calorie surplus.

Building a decent amount of muscle while in a calorie deficit is a phenomenon that’s generally limited to people who are very overweight and have never lifted weights before, or those who are returning to exercise after a layoff, where muscle memory comes into play.

During any period of weight gain, you’ll need to pay close attention to what’s happening to your body.

If, after a few weeks, you see that you’re gaining excess fat, then reduce your calorie intake by 100-150 calories per day. The decrease should come from carbs, fat or a combination of the two.

But if you’re not seeing any weight gain, increase your calorie intake by roughly the same amount.

That increase should come primarily from carbs, although some additional fat isn’t going to hurt. If, after 7 to 10 days, your weight hasn’t changed, do the same thing again.

How Many Meals a Day Should You Eat?

To gain muscle mass, aim for at least 3 meals a day. Each meal should contain 20-40 grams of protein.

Ideally, you’d have a dose of protein within the first few hours after waking up, before a workout, after a workout, and before going to bed.

That protein can come from whole foods, such as chicken, tuna or turkey, or a few protein shakes. In many cases, the addition of 1-3 protein shakes to your regular diet is an easy and convenient way to get the extra protein you need to maximize the speed at which muscle is gained.

Although you can lose fat quite easily eating just one meal a day, I don’t think such infrequent meals are ideal as far as building muscle is concerned.

In total, your daily protein intake should be around 0.7 grams of protein per pound (1.6 grams per kilogram) of bodyweight.

There’s no good reason why you can’t eat more. If anything, I’d rather err on the side of eating a little too much, rather than not enough. But, for most people, 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight will do the job.

Are There Any Foods You Should Avoid?

Not really. As long as you’re hitting your protein and calorie targets for the day, there are no specific foods to avoid.

Although a lot of people are still worried about eating foods high in fat, dietary fat does have a number of perks for anyone wanting more muscle mass than they have right now.

For one, some folks tend to burn off a lot of calories throughout the day, and have a hard time eating enough to maintain their current size, let alone gain weight.

That’s where the addition of some high fat meals can help. Because fat contains roughly twice as many calories as carbs or protein, you don’t need to eat as much to get the same amount of energy.

Adding an avocado to your salad, putting nut butters (such as peanut butter or almond butter) in a protein shake or smoothie, or chomping on a high fat snack like pistachio nuts, is a simple and easy way to bump up your daily calorie intake.

What’s more, fat also has a number of interesting benefits in the muscle-building department.

In one study, a post-workout drink containing whole milk was found to be more “anabolic” than fat-free milk.

Although both drinks led to an increase in protein balance, it was the high fat whole milk that delivered the greatest results.

In another trial, eating whole eggs did a better job of boosting muscle protein synthesis – a key driving force behind muscle growth – than eating just the white, even when protein intake was identical.

While you don’t want too much of the stuff, fat isn’t something to be feared, just as long as your overall muscle building diet is set up properly.

Final Thoughts

A diet designed to maximize your rate of muscle growth requires eating more calories than your body needs to maintain its weight. That means being in a calorie surplus, rather than the calorie deficit required to lose fat.

However, you’re not going to need a surplus larger than around 500 calories per day. In many cases, particularly for those who have moved past the beginner stages of training, it’s going to be nearer 250 calories a day.

Eating too much will just lead to excess fat being gained, which you’ll then need to spend time and effort getting rid of. Rather than eating too many calories and having to burn them all off again, it makes a lot more sense just not eating them in the first place.