Here are a few simple tips to gain muscle.

1) Diet: eat clean. To gain muscle and a minimum amount of fat, you need to eat a good lean quality protein source. About 1 – 2 grams per pound of lean body weight must be divided over 5 – 6 meals per day.

Carbohydrates: Complex fibrous carbs in the form of fresh vegetables are best for gaining lean weight. Potatoes and other starches should be eaten early in the day so they can be burned off while you’re active, preferably as a post workout meal.

Good fats need to be taken in at each meal: olive oil, flax oil, Udos essential oils or fish oils. Eating wild-caught salmon 2 or 3 times a week is a good way to get your fish oils.

For every meal you have – even if it’s a snack – must have good fats, carbohydrates and protein. Stay away from sugars. If you have to take them, then eat them in the form of whole fruit early in the day.

Make sure to get your nutritional calories from foods, not liquids.

Make water your main drink, and drink enough each day. Here’s a simple rule of thumb to determine your basic water needs. Divide your body weight in half and turn that figure into ounces. That is the figure you need to start with, you may need more if you are really active. Example: you weigh 100 lbs. 100 / 2 = 50 ounces of water.

A few exceptions to the rule include fruits, vegetables and protein shakes.

These can be great snacks, post workout meals or even meal replacements when made with the right ingrediants. Precision nutrition has a whole section on these types of shakes with a lot of recipes and they are categorized as either anytime or post workout shakes.

You will need to determine your caloric needs to maintain your present mass, and then add about 15% – 20% more calories to that to increase your weight and gain muscle.

Muscle gaining tips for exercise:

Go for the big compound lifts to get your body to burn more calories. These would be: Clean and jerks, squats, deadlifts, squat presses, benches; flat and incline, dips and pull-ups. Always get your big lifts done before going into your isolated lifts.As far as reps go, vary it. Some days go for strength with heavier weight and lower reps. Other days go for more reps with a lighter weight. Keep the intensity high always, and you need to be flirting with failure on every working set. I like to do one warm up set and 3 – 4 working sets.

Get in get your workout done, if you’re spending more than an hour you are doing too much and/or you are not working intensely enough. Not training enough can equate as much damage as overtraining. Remember that training provides the stimulus to get the muscle to recover and grow. During rest, the muscle actually recovers and grows. So get your 8 hours of sleep in and don’t overtrain.

To sum it up, the muscle gaining tips are:

1) Eat clean and get enough lean protein.

2) Exercise intensely enough to stimulate the muscle to grow without injuring yourself

3) Make sure to get plenty of rest to allow your muscles to get better and grow.

4) Rinse and repeat. KISS (keep it simple, stupid)

Many women believe that the only way to tone flabby arms or any other part of their bodies is to work out for hours in the gym every week. For anyone who has an extremely busy life, this is impossible and unnecessary. It would be great to have toned and sexy arms and bodies, but not if it affects our home and social life.

You will be pleased to know that you need not work out for hours in order to achieve your dream body. Below we will bust apart three of the most commonly held myths about building muscle.

Mistake Number. 1 – You have to workout for hours to make any difference
Even working out for more than an hour can start to have an adverse effect on the body. This is because over excercising can cause problems such as injuries, pain, and increase stress on the body. This can cause you to feel anxious, lethargic and exhausted.

The key is to keep your workout short, but intense. An intensive workout for 20 minutes is just as effective. Keep your intensity high for the whole 20 minutes and try and get a sweat going within the first 5 minutes. It is certainly easier to fit in 20 minutes of intense exercise into your routine than longer sessions.

Myth No. 2 - Lifting weights will make you look big and bulky
Even when women work out with heavy weights, they still have lean and toned bodies. They aren't big and bulky and look like a professional bodybuilder! It is a complete myth that using weights will increase bulk – if that were so then you wouldn’t carry heavy shopping bags, pick up your children or do push ups for fear of creating bulky muscles.

It would be a mistake to not use any weights as this will stop you from building muscle, raising metabolism and burning calories efficiently. The solution is to use weights that are as heavy as you can lift for 6-12 repetitions. It is only by using heavy weights that you can develop lean and sculpted arms.

Myth No. 3 – low or medium intensity workouts are better

When you work out with heavy weights at high intensity, you force your body to increase the amount of calories it burns during your workout, which last for the rest of the day. Imagine that you could be burning calories even whilst sitting watching TV. This is called the after-burn effect. This doesn't happen if you only do low or medium intensity workouts.

In order to take advantage of the after-burn effect, you should work out at a high intensity for at least 20 minutes and make sure every minute count. Lift weights, that are as heavy as you can lift safely, for between 6-12 repetitions only. You can do a couple of minutes skipping to keep your heart rate going between repetitions and have a 30 second rest before carry on.

We hope this has busted the most common myths about building muscle. If you want to know more about how to tone flabby arms then visit my tone flabby arms website for a complete program that takes less than 90 minutes per week. That sounds great to me!