What if you could gain more muscle with less training? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, what if you could retain all that muscle with less training? And most of all, what if you could actually gain and retain more strength with less training? All of that is indeed possible. The key is nutrition.

I’ve seen the same behavior in a lot of individuals: people train hard but they disregard their nutrition. If you do that, you are essentially wasting most of the time and effort you spend on training.

The best option is training smart, meaning it’s important to keep in mind how to balance your workouts with nutrition to make optimum gains of strength and fitness. This is essential for everyone, whether your goal is overall improved fitness or gaining muscle.

To help you with this, I’ve listed down the 4 foods I mainly rely on for building muscle.

1. Lean Beef

Lean beef is a key part of nutrition if you wish to gain more muscle. Why so? This is because it packs all things that are conducive to growth of muscle. On average, roughly 3 ounce serving of this item contains 154 calories, while providing as many as 10 essential nutrients, such as B-vitamins, zinc, and iron. More importantly, it offers you high quality protein as well as amino acid in high levels to work with insulin for promoting muscle growth.

Interestingly, the same 3 ounce serving of this item gives almost the same quantity of protein as compared to 1 and a half cups of beans, at HALF the calories.

2. Skinless Chicken

Similarly to beef, skinless chicken is also one of the best sources of high quality protein. Not to mention, this type of protein is extremely essential for weight maintenance, bone health, as well as muscle repair and maintenance. The best part is that there are several ways in which you can prepare chicken. A visit to the grocery store will help you conveniently find skinless chicken meat which can be quickly cooked and seasoned.

3. Cottage Cheese

You may not know this, but cottage cheese consists of pure casein protein. Now what is casein protein? Well, for starters, it is a slow digesting type of protein which is ideal for muscle maintenance. This is significantly useful for people that have to go long hours without eating. Apart from that, cottage cheese is also an exceptional source of calcium, vitamin B12, as well as several other essential nutrients. I advise you to get the low-fat/non-fat version of cottage cheese.

4. Eggs

Last but not the least, eggs also contain some serious high quality protein, on top of vitamin D, choline, as many as 9 essential amino acids, and healthy fat. And overall, eggs are definitely value for money. I suggest you incorporate a healthy dose of eggs somewhere in your daily diet.

These are all foods I incorporate into my diet and I highly recommend them to anyone looking to improve their overall fitness and add lead muscle.