Ok, a few things:
The first is that even if you are eating a lot of protein and working out faithfully and hard, muscle takes a while to build. A long while. People tend to say things like "oh you didn't lose weight this week because you built muscle" ... 90% of the time it's not so. You simply cannot build muscle that fast. You haven't said how long you've been doing this, but it will take several months to see visible results for most people.
Also if you're overweight at all, then it's going to take longer to see the changes in your muscle. You might be building strength but that padding of fat (no matter how thin a padding) will hide the "cut" look that you'd get if you weighed less.
Next you say that you're going to the gym a lot ... but what are you doing AT the gym? Weight lifting? Cardio? Circuit machines? Body resistance? Building visble muscle takes specific types of exercise (and you may already know this so if I'm being too basic, just skip over this part!
) and just going to the gym alone is only a small part of it. If you could give more detail about your plan, that would help a lot in being able to figure out why you're not seeing the results you want.
Finally .. the protein question. You say you "may" not be eating enough. The question is how much are you getting? Until you know what you're getting, then you won't really know if you're getting enough or not. I'd say the first step is to start tracking your protein intake to see how much you're getting now. Most people get enough protein to build muscle. The USDA guideline is 1 gram of protein to every 1 kilogram of body weight. In pounds that would be about .45 grams of protein for every pound of body weight.
That said, those people who are really working to get a specific look will eat more protein. A lot of weightlifters and bodybuilders eat 1:1 protein to bodyweight. In general consuming protein w/in an hour of a weight lifting workout will boost muscle healing and increase strength gains.
How you get that protein is really a lot of personal choice. When I decided to start really raising my protein intake, I started using protein powder. I already get between 80-90 grams of protein from my diet, but I'm really aiming for around 120-130 grams per day. So I add a scoop of EAS vanilla protein powder to my morning yogurt, and generally make a post-workout protein drink with orange juice and another scoop of powder right after the gym (the orange juice combined with the vanilla powder tastes like an Orange Julius to me!
).
One thing i would recommend is avoiding the protein bars. They're usually (IMO) too high calorie and carb and too processed for my taste. I'd rather take a basic scoop of powder and add it to fresh juice or make a smoothie.
Hope that helps some!
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