Many people are more and more interested in building a lean muscular and athletic physique for several reasons. You might be interested to stay healthy, to boost your self-confidence and self-esteem or to impress the opposite sex. Either way, developing lean muscle mass can only benefit you. To achieve your goal, it's not as simple as just doing exercise like weight training or free hand exercises. There are additional factors to consider and nutrition is one of them and it's fundamental to reach your objective. Nutrition is by far the most important factor for building lean muscle mass. Here are a few rules to follow:

(1) Eating every 2-3 hours

Maybe you've heard it before, or read it somewhere that you need to eat regularly like every 2-3 hours to build muscle mass. It's not false. By supplying your body with vital nutrients constantly, you enhance your metabolism and stimulate muscle building in your body.

(2) Eating 4-6 small meals per day

Forget about the three big meals if you plan to build muscle. Eating too much in a single sitting makes your body more proned to fat storing because your body can only assimilate a certain number of calories per meal. So the rest will be stored as fat. Instead, it's recommended to eat smaller meals around the day like 4-6. This also elevates your metabolism and promotes fat loss.

(3) Post workout nutrition

When you are training either with weights or with just free hand exercises, it's important to have good nutrition after your session, if not, all your efforts will be wasted. Immediately after your workout, take some easily digestible protein like a whey protein shake to give your body an instant supply of energy and also to rebuild muscle tissues. Then after around 1 hour, you can have a solid meal.

(4) Focus on quality foods

It's of no use training hard and neglecting the right kind of foods to eat. Your main focus should be on complex carbohydrates, lean protein, vegetables, fruits and essential fatty acids and of course drink lots of water to hydrate your body.

Here are a few sources of quality foods:

Complex carbohydrates - whole wheat bread, brown rice, sweet potatoes, whole grain oatmeal

Lean protein - egg whites, skinless chicken/turkey breast, salmon, tuna, lean beef, cottage cheese, kidney beans, tofu, low fat milk/skim milk

Vegetables - cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, spinach, green beans

Fruits - orange, banana, grapefruit, kiwi, strawberry

Essential fatty acids - olive oil, canola oil, fish oil(available in capsules) or you can also get it directly from oily fishes like salmon, herring, trout, sardine, mackerel, anchovy. These foods are rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids which are very beneficial for the heart and overall health.

So if you are training hard and not seeing encouraging results, you can be neglecting your diet, so pay attention to the above 4 factors for building lean muscle mass.