Macros — per serving & per 100g
Nutrient	Per serving	Per 100g
Energy	820 kcal	164 kcal
Protein	58.0 g	11.6 g
Carbohydrate	65.0 g	13.0 g
— of which sugars	3.0 g	0.6 g
Fat	36.0 g	7.2 g
— of which saturates	15.0 g	3.0 g
Fibre	4.5 g	0.9 g
Sodium	~0.55 g	~0.11 g

Recipe · Bulking / Beef / High-protein

High-Volume Beef and Rice Power Bowls

Name: Ribeye, Rice and Broccoli
Yield: 1 serving
Cuisine: High-protein
Ingredients: Ribeye steak trimmed — 250 g 8.8 oz; Jasmine rice dry weight — 80 g 2.8 oz; Broccoli, in florets — 150 g 5.3 oz; Garlic, crushed — 2 cloves; Olive oil to sear — 2 tsp 10 ml; Butter to baste — 1 tsp 5 g; Fresh thyme optional — 2 sprigs; Sea salt — to taste; Black pepper — to taste

Lean beef, a proper mountain of rice, and a heap of veg in one big bowl — about 62 grams of protein and 780 honest calories. This is the bowl I build when I want to eat a lot, recover hard, and not feel like I’m forcing it. Easy to make, easier to eat.

By Magnus Olafsson Updated 28 June 2026 Tested 60+ times

GoalBulk

Total time30 min

Servings2 big bowls

Protein / serving62 g

Calories / serving780 kcal

A big bowl of seasoned lean beef over jasmine rice with steamed vegetables, plated under cold light

This bowl got me through my first proper off-season, the winter I finally accepted I was too small for the classic-physique class I wanted. I’d come off a long cut, I was tired of weighing every gram of broccoli, and I needed a meal I could make half-asleep that still put real food and real calories in front of me. So I started building these bowls: a pan of lean beef browned hard, a generous scoop of rice, and whatever veg was in the fridge piled on top. Big, warm, filling. The kind of plate you sit down to after a long session and feel genuinely looked after.

What I love about it is the honesty of the numbers. You get 62 grams of protein and a real load of carbs to refill the tank, all from food you can buy anywhere. No powders standing in for a meal, no sad little portion you have to talk yourself into. Just beef and rice doing what they’ve done for lifters for a hundred years, with enough veg to keep your gut happy through a high-calorie phase.

I eat this most when I’m building — post-training, when my body’s asking for fuel and I want to give it plenty. But I’ve also handed this recipe to friends who just want one good, balanced bowl that fills them up and keeps them full till morning. It does both. Cook it once, learn the rhythm of it, and you’ll have it in your back pocket forever. I’ve got you on this one.

01Who it’s for & when to eat it

This is a high-calorie, high-protein base that flexes to your goal. The beef and the seasoning stay the same; you change the size of the rice scoop and the splash of oil. Here’s how I steer it.

On a bulk

The default plate

Full rice portion, a teaspoon of oil in the pan, beef and veg piled high. Big, calorie-dense, easy to eat a lot of. My go-to post-training meal when I’m trying to put size on through the winter.

On a cut

Pull it back

Drop the rice to a fist, cook the beef dry, and double the veg. You keep all the protein and most of the satisfaction for far fewer calories. See the variations below for exact numbers.

On TRT

Steady fuel

A moderate rice scoop, lean beef, a real handful of veg. Balanced carbs and protein that keep you full and support recovery without overshooting. A solid main meal any day of the week.

Timing: this is a post-training bowl through and through — protein to recover, carbs to refill what you emptied. It also reheats beautifully, so I’ll happily eat it for a midday meal straight from a prep box.

02Ingredients

Makes 2 big bowls. Scale every line in proportion if you’re feeding more — the beef-to-rice ratio is what makes the macros work, so keep them moving together.

Servings 2 · adjust on the live recipe card

Lean beef mince 5% fat400 g · 14 oz
Jasmine rice dry weight150 g · 5.3 oz
Broccoli, in florets200 g · 7 oz
Red bell pepper, sliced1 medium
Garlic, grated3 cloves
Soy sauce low-sodium2 tbsp · 30 ml
Olive oil1 tbsp · 15 ml
Smoked paprika1 tsp
Black pepperto taste
Saltto taste (go light)

Swaps I actually use: if you’re chasing more size, step up to 10% beef and add another tablespoon of oil — easy extra calories without more bulk on your plate. Want it leaner for a cut? Use 5% beef, cook it dry, and skip the oil. No jasmine? Basmati, long-grain, or even white rice all work; the macros barely move. Swap the broccoli for green beans, courgette, or whatever’s in the drawer.

03Step by step

The rice

Get the rice going first

Rinse the jasmine rice until the water runs nearly clear, then cook it the way you trust — pan, rice cooker, whatever. It needs the longest, so start it before anything else and let it sit covered while you handle the beef.

Magnus says: rinsing washes off surface starch so the rice comes out fluffy, not gluey. Worth the extra minute.

Jasmine rice rinsed and cooking in a pot

Prep the veg

Cut everything before the pan gets hot

Break the broccoli into even florets and slice the pepper. Grate the garlic so it melts into the beef instead of leaving raw bites. Steam or boil the broccoli for three to four minutes so it stays bright and has a little bite left.

Broccoli florets and sliced red pepper prepped on a board

Brown the beef

Sear it hard, don’t stew it

Heat the oil in a wide pan over a high heat. Add the beef and press it flat — leave it alone for a minute so it browns rather than steams, then break it up. You want colour on the meat; that’s where the flavour lives.

Magnus says: a crowded, cold pan stews the mince grey. Hot pan, leave it be, then stir.

Lean beef mince browning in a hot wide pan

Season

Garlic, paprika, soy go in

Once the beef is browned through, drop the heat a touch and stir in the grated garlic and smoked paprika. Give it thirty seconds until it smells good, then pour in the soy sauce and let it bubble down so it coats every bit of the meat.

Garlic, paprika and soy sauce stirred into the browned beef

Bring it together

Fold the pepper through

Tip the sliced pepper into the pan and toss for a minute or two — you want it warmed and a little softened but still with snap. Taste, add black pepper and the lightest pinch of salt; the soy is already doing most of the seasoning work.

Sliced pepper tossed through the seasoned beef in the pan

Build the bowl

Rice down, beef and veg on top

Scoop the rice into two big bowls, pile the beef and pepper over it, and tuck the broccoli in alongside. A little extra splash of soy or a squeeze of lime over the top finishes it. Sit down and eat it warm.

Magnus says: stir the bottom of the pan into the rice — all that browned flavour is too good to leave behind.

The finished power bowl with beef and veg piled over rice

04The spec sheet

Real numbers, calculated — not guessed. The recipe makes 2 big bowls, around 1040g of cooked food total. Here’s what one bowl (about 520g) and a flat 100g actually give you.

Macros — per serving & per 100g
Nutrient	Per serving	Per 100g
Energy	780 kcal	150 kcal
Protein	62.0 g	11.9 g
Carbohydrate	78.0 g	15.0 g
— of which sugars	5.5 g	1.1 g
Fat	20.0 g	3.8 g
— of which saturates	6.5 g	1.3 g
Fibre	5.5 g	1.1 g
Sodium	~0.85 g	~0.16 g

Calorie density

150 kcal / 100g

Moderate, and that’s deliberate. On a bulk you want food dense enough to hit big calories without a bowl the size of your head — the rice does that quietly.

Protein per 100 kcal

7.9 g / 100 kcal

A lifter’s metric. Lower than a cut meal, as it should be — you’re carrying carbs here for a reason — but still a serious protein hit in every bowl.

Key micros (per serving, approx.)

Vitamin C~130 mg · 144% DV
Zinc~10 mg · 91% DV
Vitamin B12~4.5 µg · 188% DV
Iron~5 mg · 28% DV
Selenium~30 µg · 55% DV
Vitamin B6~1.1 mg · 65% DV

Macros are calculated from standard food-composition data and will shift a little with your exact ingredients and brands. Micronutrient figures are estimates against general adult Daily Values. Numbers are for guidance, not medical advice — see our Nutrition Disclaimer.

05Bulk / Cut / TRT variations

One base, three jobs. The beef stays the same — you move the rice, the oil, and the veg. Macros below are for a full serving (one bowl built as described).

Bulk

Build it up

Full 75g dry rice per bowl, 10% beef, and an extra tablespoon of olive oil through the meat. Finish with a spoon of crushed peanuts for crunch and calories. Easy size, all real food.

950Kcal

64G Protein

32G Fat

Cut

The lean version

Drop the rice to a fist (about 40g dry), cook the 5% beef dry with no oil, and double the broccoli. You keep the full protein hit and the volume while the calories come right down.

520Kcal

60G Protein

9G Fat

TRT

Steady & balanced

A moderate 60g dry rice, lean beef with a teaspoon of oil, a real handful of veg. Balanced carbs and protein that keep you full and recovering without overshooting your day.

650Kcal

60G Protein

16G Fat

06Meal prep & storage

These bowls were made for a Sunday cook-up. I’ll brown a kilo of beef and cook a big pot of rice at once, then box them off for the week. The beef holds its flavour better than almost any prep protein I know.

Fridge

4 days

Box the rice and beef together once fully cooled. Keep the broccoli a touch underdone so it doesn’t go to mush when you reheat.

Freezer

3 months

Beef and rice freeze well together. Cool fully, bag flat, and thaw overnight in the fridge before reheating.

Reheat

3 min

Microwave covered with a splash of water over the rice to bring back the steam. On the hob, a hot pan with a little water revives it nicely too.

For meal prep I box one full portion of beef and rice per container and keep the broccoli in a corner so it reheats evenly. Five minutes of cooking on a Sunday buys you a week of proper post-training food.

Free · the 7-day “Get Fed” plan

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07Common questions

Can I use a leaner or fattier beef? +

Both work; just know the trade. 5% mince keeps the bowl leaner and is my pick for a cut or a balanced plate. 10% gives you more flavour and easy extra calories, which is handy when you’re bulking and trying to eat enough. The protein stays high either way — only the fat and total calories move.

How do I push this higher for a hard bulk? +

Add carbs and fat around the edges. Step the rice up to 90g dry, add a second tablespoon of oil, and finish with crushed peanuts or a drizzle of tahini. That’ll carry one bowl past 950 calories while keeping it real food. See the Bulk variation above for the numbers.

Can I swap the rice for something else? +

Of course. Basmati, long-grain, brown rice, even quinoa all slot straight in. Brown rice and quinoa add a little fibre and protein; the calories barely change. Use what you’ve got and what your gut likes.

Is this too much sodium with the soy sauce? +

It’s moderate, and I use low-sodium soy to keep it sensible. If you’re watching water before a shoot, cut the soy to one tablespoon and lean on garlic, paprika and a squeeze of lime instead. The flavour holds up fine.

Can I make it without a wide pan? +

Yes, but brown the beef in two batches so the pan stays hot — a crowded small pan steams the mince grey instead of searing it. Take your time, get colour on it, then combine. That browning is most of the flavour.

From my 7-day Bulk plan

This bowl lives inside a full week of meals.

This power bowl is one plate in my 7-day bulking plan — seven days of high-protein, calorie-dense meals with the macros counted and the grocery list written. You pick the goal; I do the maths.

See the bulking meal plan →

The 7-day bulking meal plan laid out as portioned meals under cold light

08Pairs well with

Sliced ribeye over a bowl of rice with steamed broccoli, plated under cold light

About the author

Magnus Olafsson

I’m Magnus — twenty years under the iron, from a cold gym in Stockholm to the classic-physique stage, and now mostly in my kitchen in a pink apron. I’ve cut for shows, bulked through winters, and I’ve been on TRT since I was thirty-five. I know what it takes to eat for the body you’re chasing, and I know it shouldn’t come with a side of shame.

Everything here is food I actually cook and macros I actually count. I don’t diagnose, I don’t promise, and I never make a number up. I just feed you well and tell you the truth.

NPC Illinois NPC Classic Physique On TRT since 35 20 years training

Slim Diet Era shares recipes and general nutrition information. It is not medical or dietetic advice, and we do not provide guidance on obtaining or using any controlled substance. See our Medical Disclaimer and Nutrition Disclaimer.

I cook for men who train, and the ones who surprise people most are the ones past fifty. Building muscle after 50 isn’t a consolation prize or a “stay mobile” program. It’s the same job it was at thirty — put a load on the muscle, feed it enough protein, recover — done with a bit more care and a fair bit more food.

I’m Magnus. I’m 40, I competed back in Sweden, and I’ve been on TRT since I was 35, so I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what testosterone does for a man. But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell every big man in his fifties who leans over the counter and asks me if it’s too late: it isn’t, and the fix starts on your plate, not in a vial.

The men over 50 I lift near don’t lack effort. They lack food. They eat like they’re still trying to shrink from their forties, and then they wonder why the muscle won’t come. So let’s fix the eating. Calories, protein, how to lay out your meals, what a real week looks like, and an honest word on TRT at the end.

Yes, you can build muscle after 50

Let me kill the doubt first, because it’s the thing that keeps good men soft. Muscle building after 50 is not only possible, it’s well documented. In a pooled analysis of 49 resistance-training studies in adults aged 50 and older, older lifters put on an average of 1.1 kg of lean mass — real muscle, not water — and the higher-effort programs built more.^[1] That’s an average across ordinary people, many of them beginners, many well past sixty.

Your body at 55 still reads the same signals it did at 25. Lift something heavy enough to be hard, give it protein and rest, and it grows. What changes is the volume knob on how loudly your muscle hears that signal. Turn it up on purpose, and you’re back in business.

Magnus’s rule

Age doesn’t close the door on muscle. Under-eating does. Nearly every “I can’t build muscle anymore” I’ve heard turned out to be an “I’m not eating enough to” once we counted it.

What actually changes: anabolic resistance

Here’s the one piece of science worth understanding, and then we cook. As you age, your muscle gets a little deaf to protein. Researchers call it anabolic resistance: an older muscle needs a bigger dose of amino acids to kick off the same muscle-building response a younger muscle gets from a smaller one.^[2]

How much bigger? In a clean comparison of younger and older men, the younger group maxed out their per-meal muscle protein synthesis at about 0.24 g of protein per kg of bodyweight. The older men needed roughly 0.40 g/kg — about two-thirds more — to hit the same ceiling.^[3] Same plate, less result, unless you make the plate bigger.

Chart comparing protein per meal needed for building muscle after 50 versus younger men, 0.40 versus 0.24 grams per kilogram

A big part of that dose is leucine, the amino acid that flips the muscle-building switch. Older muscle wants more of it in one sitting to get going, which is why “a bit of protein spread thin all day” fails men past fifty.^[2] You want proper hits, not sprinkles. Good news: this is a kitchen problem, and kitchens are where I live.

Two more things worth knowing, then we cook. First, a lot of what looks like aging is really inactivity stacked on top of it — a muscle that hasn’t been asked to do much in a decade gets deaf faster. Second, the same lifting that builds the muscle also sharpens its ear for protein. Train the muscle and it listens better; the anabolic resistance eases the moment you start giving it a real reason to grow.^[2] Food and training aren’t two separate fixes. They’re the same fix from two sides.

Protein needs for men over 50

So how much? The old RDA — 0.8 g/kg/day — is a floor for a sedentary body to avoid deficiency, not a target for a man trying to grow. For older adults, an expert group (the PROT-AGE panel) put the healthy baseline at 1.0–1.2 g/kg/day, and higher for anyone who exercises.^[4] For men who train hard, the sports-nutrition consensus lands at 1.4–2.0 g/kg/day.^[5] The protein needs for men over 50 who lift sit at the top of that range, not the bottom.

Let me put it in real food for a 90 kg (198 lb) man, because grams-per-kilo means nothing over a stove.

Who you are	Protein target	For a 90 kg (198 lb) man
Sedentary, just avoiding deficiency (RDA)	0.8 g/kg/day	~72 g
Healthy older adult, not training^[4]	1.0–1.2 g/kg/day	90–108 g
Man over 50 who lifts^[5]	1.6–2.0 g/kg/day	145–180 g

If you weigh more, scale it up. If you’re carrying a lot of extra fat, base the math closer to your goal weight so you’re not chasing an unrealistic number. For most training men over fifty I’d point at roughly 1.8 g/kg and call it a day. That’s about 160 g for our 90 kg man, and it’s more than almost anyone eats by accident.

Kitchen math

160 g of protein sounds like a lot until you plate it: 4 eggs and a steak (~40 g), a chicken bowl (~45 g), a tub of cottage cheese or a shake (~30 g), a salmon fillet (~40 g). Four honest meals. That’s the whole trick.

Where that protein should come from

Not all protein hits the same. For an older muscle, the quality of each dose matters more than it did when you were young, because you’re leaning on it to punch through anabolic resistance. Animal proteins — meat, fish, eggs, dairy — carry the most leucine per gram and the fullest set of amino acids, so they do the heavy work with less on the plate. Roughly 35–40 g of a good animal protein gets you the ~2.5–3 g of leucine a meal wants.^[2]

I’m not telling you to eat meat at every meal, and plant proteins absolutely count — you just need a bit more of them and a wider mix to land the same leucine. Beans and rice, tofu, a scoop of whey stirred through oats: all fine. The point isn’t animal versus plant, it’s making each meal’s dose big enough and complete enough to matter. A slow-digesting protein at night helps too, which is why cottage cheese and casein have a place before bed for men over fifty holding onto muscle overnight.

Calories: eat enough to actually build

Protein is the building block. Calories are the permission slip. You cannot build much muscle in a real deficit, and the men who stay stuck are almost always eating too little across the day, not too much.

To grow, most men over 50 do well with a small surplus — a couple hundred calories over what holds your weight steady. Not a bulk, not a free-for-all. Enough that the scale drifts up slowly over months while the mirror and the barbell tell you it’s mostly muscle. If you’re also carrying weight you’d rather lose, you can hold calories at maintenance, push protein high, and let training recomposition do slow work. It’s slower, but it’s honest.

You don’t need a fancy calculator to find your maintenance. Take your bodyweight in pounds and multiply by about 14–15 if you’re fairly active — our 198-pound man lands somewhere near 2,800 calories to hold steady, so 3,000-ish to grow slowly. Treat that as a starting guess, not gospel. Eat it for two or three weeks, watch the scale and the mirror, and adjust by a couple hundred calories either way. Your body will correct the math faster than any app. What you don’t do is guess low and stay hungry — that’s the trap that keeps a fifty-year-old spinning his wheels.

The plates I build for this do double duty: high in protein, full of vegetables, real carbs around training, good fats for your joints and your bloodwork. A salmon and avocado plate is the shape of the whole idea — 40-odd grams of protein, fats that love your heart, and nothing you have to apologize for.

How to structure meals: the over-50 plate

Eating for muscle growth after 50 comes down to two habits: hit a real protein dose at each meal, and don’t leave big gaps. Because of anabolic resistance, you want a proper leucine hit per sitting — aim for 35–45 g of quality protein three or four times a day, spaced every few hours.^[2][5] That single change fixes most stalled older lifters I meet.

The over-50 plate diagram showing protein, slow carbs, vegetables and fat portions for building muscle after 50

Build every plate in this order and you won’t have to count much:

Protein first. A palm-and-a-half of steak, chicken, fish, or a good stack of eggs. This is the meal; everything else is a side.
Slow carbs around it. A cupped hand of rice, potatoes, or oats — more on training days, especially after you lift.
Two fists of vegetables. Volume, fiber, color. They keep you full so the eating stays comfortable.
A thumb of good fat. Olive oil, avocado, oily fish. Your joints and your cholesterol panel both thank you.

Breakfast is where most men over fifty leave protein on the table — toast and coffee, then nothing worth counting until noon. Fix that one meal first. Steak and eggs with spinach lands 40 grams before you’ve properly woken up, and the leucine from red meat and eggs is exactly the morning hit an older muscle wants.

What a week of eating looks like

Here’s a plain day for our 90 kg man, the kind of thing I’d set up for building muscle after 50 for men who’d rather cook four real meals than fuss with six. Repeat the shape across the week, swap the proteins so you don’t get bored, and lean the carbs toward your training days.

Meal	What’s on the plate	Protein
Breakfast	Steak and eggs with spinach	~40 g
Lunch	Mediterranean chicken bowl	~45 g
Snack	Cottage cheese, or a whey shake	~30 g
Dinner	Salmon and avocado plate	~40 g
Day total		~155 g

That’s four hits, each one big enough to matter, spaced across the day. No meal is a sprinkle. If you want the whole system laid out — the recipes, the swaps, the grocery list — my recipe kitchen is built for exactly this kind of eating.

Training is the ask; food is the answer

I’m a cook, not your coach, so I’ll keep this short. Food builds nothing on its own — it answers a demand that lifting makes. You need to put a real, progressive load on the muscle: work hard, add a little over time, and cover the big movements. The research that shows older men building muscle is resistance-training research; the men who gained the most simply trained harder.^[1]

Recovery matters more now than it did at thirty. You’ll want a day between hitting the same muscle, sleep you actually protect, and the protein spread across the day we already talked about. Train to make the ask, then eat to answer it. That’s the whole partnership.

The TRT question, honestly

I said I’d be straight with you, so here it is. I’ve been on testosterone since 35. I know what it does — appetite, recovery, how much work the muscle will take before it complains. I’m not going to sit here in a pink apron and tell you hormones don’t help, because they do, and pretending otherwise is how you lose a man’s trust.

When I first went on TRT, the thing that changed most wasn’t some overnight transformation — it was hunger, and how much better food worked. But I’d already spent years on stage in Sweden learning to eat with intent. The men I’ve watched waste that same edge were the ones who thought the prescription was the plan and let the eating go slack. It doesn’t work like that. Testosterone gives you a better engine. It doesn’t put fuel in the tank.

So do you need it to build muscle after 50? No. Food and training come first, always, and most men have a lot of room in both before hormones are even the question. Low testosterone is real and it can flatten a man, but that’s a conversation for a doctor and a blood test, not a gym decision and not something you’ll find guidance for from me. If you’re dragging, sleeping badly, and losing your drive, get proper bloodwork and talk to someone qualified. Then come back and let’s fix the eating either way, because the plate matters whether you’re on anything or not.

Magnus’s rule

Fix your food and your training for a solid year before you decide your hormones are the problem. If something still feels off, that’s a doctor and a blood panel — never a shortcut, never something I’d hand you.

You’ve got more time than the internet told you, big man. Start with the next meal — a real protein hit, sometime in the next few hours. If you want it done for you, my kitchen has the plates ready. I’ve got you.

Questions men actually ask

Can you really build muscle after 50?

Yes. Studies of resistance training in adults over 50 show real lean-mass gains — around 1.1 kg on average, more with harder training. Your muscle still responds to load and protein; you just need a bigger protein dose per meal than a younger man does.

How much protein do I need to build muscle after 50?

More than the old RDA of 0.8 g/kg. Aim for roughly 1.6–2.0 g/kg of bodyweight per day if you’re training — about 145–180 g for a 90 kg (198 lb) man — split into 35–45 g hits across three or four meals.

What should I eat to build muscle after 50?

Build each plate protein-first: steak, chicken, fish, eggs, dairy. Add slow carbs around training, two fists of vegetables, and a thumb of good fat. Front-load protein at breakfast, which is where most men over fifty fall short.

Is it too late to start lifting at 55?

No. Plenty of the men in the research were beginners in their fifties, sixties, even older, and still gained muscle. Start lighter, learn the movements, add load slowly, and eat enough protein to back it up.

What supplements should I take to build muscle after 50?

Food first, always. Whey or a protein powder is useful if you struggle to hit your protein — it’s just convenient food. Creatine is well studied and cheap. Beyond that, get a blood test and let real gaps guide you rather than a shelf of pills.

Do you need TRT to build muscle after 50?

No. Food and training come first, and most men have plenty of room in both before hormones enter the picture. If you have real symptoms — low energy, poor sleep, no drive — that’s a reason for bloodwork and a doctor, not a gym decision.

References

The honest fine print: I’m a cook and a lifter, not your doctor. Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here tells you how to obtain or use any substance — that conversation belongs to you, your bloodwork, and a physician. Full details: Nutrition Disclaimer · Medical Disclaimer.

Written by

Magnus Olafsson

The cook behind Slim Diet Era. Former Swedish stage competitor (B&K Classic Body Show, Swedish Grand Prix), on TRT since 35, cooking high-protein food in Chicago for his husband, two kids, and you. He counts the macros so you don’t have to.

More about Magnus →

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Ribeye, Rice and Broccoli

Ribeye, Rice and Broccoli