LOSE WEIGHT

Do you have trouble losing weight? Or would you like to lose faster? You’ve come to the right place.

The sad truth is that conventional ideas – eat less, run more – do not work long term. Counting calories, exercising for hours every day and trying to ignore your hunger? That’s needless suffering and it wastes your time and precious willpower. It’s weight loss for masochists. Eventually almost everyone gives up. That’s why we have an obesity epidemic.

Fortunately there’s a better way. Get ready for effortless weight loss.

The bottom line? Your weight is hormonally regulated. All that’s necessary is reducing your fat-storing hormone, insulin, and you’ll effortlessly lose excess weight.

Below is a practical step-by-step guide to do exactly that.

Top 18 Weight-Loss Tips
Are you ready? Here we go.

Start at the top of the list (most important) and go down as far as you need. Click on any tip to read all about it. Perhaps you only need the first piece of advice?

Choose a low-carb diet.
Eat when hungry.
Eat real food.
Eat only when hungry.
Measure your progress wisely
Be persistent.
Women: Avoid fruit.
Men: Avoid beer.
Avoid artificial sweeteners.
Review any medications.
Stress less, sleep more.
Eat less of dairy products and nuts.
Supplement vitamins and minerals.
Use intermittent fasting.
Exercise smart.
Achieve optimal ketosis.
Get your hormones checked
Consider weight loss pills / drugs (if desperate)

1. CHOOSE A LOW-CARB DIET

If you want to lose weight you should start by avoiding sugar and starch (like bread). This is an old idea: For 150 years or more there have been an infinite number of weight-loss diets based on eating fewer carbs. What’s new is that dozens of modern scientific studies have proven that, yes, low carb is the most effective way to lose weight.

Obviously it’s still possible to lose weight on any diet – just eat fewer calories than you burn, right? The problem with this simplistic advice is that it ignores the elephant in the room: Hunger. Most people don’t like to “just eat less”, i.e. being hungry forever. That’s dieting for masochists. Sooner or later a normal person will give up and eat, hence the prevalence of “yo-yo dieting”.

The main advantage of the low carb diet is that they cause you to want to eat less. Even without counting calories most overweight people eat far fewer calories on low carb. Sugar and starch may increase your hunger, while avoiding them may decrease your appetite to an adequate level. If your body wants to have an appropriate number of calories you don’t need to bother counting them. Thus: Calories count, but you don’t need to count them.

A 2012 study also showed that people on a low-carb diet burned 300 more calories a day – while resting! According to one of the Harvard professors behind the study this advantage “would equal the number of calories typically burned in an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity”. Imagine that: an entire bonus hour of exercise every day, without actually exercising.

Bottom line: A low-carb diet reduces your hunger and makes it easier to eat less. And it might even increase your fat burning at rest. Study after study show that low carb is the smart way to lose weight and that it improves important health markers.

2. EAT WHEN HUNGRY

Don’t be hungry. The most common mistake when starting a low carb diet: Reducing carb intake while still being afraid of fat. Carbs and fat are the body’s two main energy sources, and it needs at least one of them.
Butter and olive oil

Low carb AND low fat = starvation

Avoiding both carbs and fat results in hunger, cravings and fatigue. Sooner or later people can’t stand it and give up. The solution is to eat more natural fat until you feel satisfied. For example:

Butter
Full-fat cream
Olive oil
Meat (including the fat)
Fatty fish
Bacon
Eggs
Coconut oil, etc.

Always eat enough, so that you feel satisfied, especially in the beginning of the weight-loss process. Doing this on a low-carb diet means that the fat you eat will be burned as fuel by your body, as your levels of the fat storing hormone insulin will be lowered. You’ll become a fat-burning machine. You’ll lose excess weight without hunger.

Do you still fear saturated fat? Don’t. The fear of saturated fat is based on obsolete theories that have been proven incorrect by modern science. Butter is a fine food. However, feel free to eat mostly unsaturated fat (e.g. olive oil, avocado, fatty fish) if you prefer. This could be called a Mediterranean low-carb diet and works great too.

Eating when hungry also implies something else: If you’re not hungry you probably don’t need to eat yet. When on an LCHF diet you can trust your feelings of hunger and satiety again. Feel free to eat as many times per day that works best for you.

Some people eat three times a day and occasionally snack in between (note that frequent snacking could mean that you’d benefit from adding fat to your meals, to increase satiety). Some people only eat once or twice a day and never snack. Whatever works for you. Just eat when you’re hungry.

3. Eat Real Food
Another common mistake when eating a low-carb diet is getting fooled by the creative marketing of special “low carb” products.

Remember: An effective low-carb diet for weight loss should be based on real food, like this:

LCHF Foods

Real food is what humans have been eating for thousands or (even better) millions of years, e.g. meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, butter, olive oil, nuts etc.
If you want to lose weight you’d better avoid special “low-carb” products that are full of carbs. This should be obvious, but creative marketers are doing all they can to fool you (and get your money). They will tell you that you can eat cookies, pasta, ice cream, bread and plenty of chocolate on a low-carb diet, as long as you buy their brand. They’re full of carbohydrates. Don’t be fooled.
Bad Food

How about low-carb bread? Be careful: if it’s baked with grains it’s certainly not low carb. But some companies still try to sell it to you as a low-carb option.

Low-carb chocolate is usually full of sugar alcohols, which the manufacturer does not count as carbs. But roughly half of these carbs may be absorbed, raising blood sugar and insulin. The rest of the carbs ends up in the colon, potentially causing gas and diarrhea. Furthermore, any sweeteners can maintain sugar cravings.

Here are three examples of what to avoid:

Atkins’ Fairy Tale Cookies
Julian Bakery’s High Carb Low Carb Bread
The Dreamfields Pasta Fraud (that finally resulted in an 8 million dollar fine!)
These three companies are not unique. There are thousands of similar companies trying to trick you into buying their “low carb” junk food, full of starch, sugar alcohols, wheat flour, sweeteners and strange additives. Two simple rules to avoid this junk:

Don’t eat “low carb” versions of high carb stuff, like cookies, bars, chocolate, bread, pasta or ice cream – unless you are SURE of the ingredients (perhaps from making it yourself).
Avoid products with the words “net carbs” on them. That’s usually just a way to fool you.
Focus on eating good quality, minimally processed real food. Ideally the food you buy shouldn’t even have a list of ingredients (or it should be very short).

4. **EAT ONLY WHEN HUNGRY**

On a low-carb diet you should aim to eat when hungry (see tip #2 above). And if you’re not hungry? Don’t eat. Nothing slows down weight loss more than frequently eating a lot of food that you do not need. This, in fact, is so important that it’s worth this section of it’s own.

REDUCE UNNECESSARY SNACKING

Unnecessary snacking can be a problem on LCHF too. Some things are easy to eat just because they’re tasty and easily available. Here are three common traps to watch out for on LCHF:

Dairy products such as cream and cheeses. They work well in cooking as it satisfies. The problem is if you’re munching a lot of cheese in front of the TV in the evening… without being hungry. Be careful with that. Or lots of cream with dessert, when you’re actually already full and just keep eating because it tastes good. Or another common culprit: loads of heavy cream in the coffee, many times per day.
Nuts. It’s very easy to eat until the nuts are gone, regardless of how full you are. A tip: According to science, salted nuts are harder to stop eating than unsalted nuts. Salted nuts tempt you to more overeating. Good to know. Another tip: Avoid bringing the entire bag to the couch, preferably choose a small bowl instead. I often eat all the nuts in front of me, whether I’m hungry or not.
LCHF baking. Even if you’re only using almond flour and sweeteners snacking on baked goods and cookies usually provides additional eating when you’re not hungry… and yes, this will slow down weight loss.

FEEL FREE TO SKIP MEALS

Do you have to eat breakfast? No, of course not. Don’t eat if you’re not hungry. And this goes for any meal.

On a strict LCHF diet the hunger and urge to eat tends to decrease a lot, especially if you have excess weight to lose. Your body may be happily burning your fat stores, reducing the need to eat.

If this happens, be happy! Don’t fight it by eating food you don’t want. Instead wait for the hunger to return before you eat again. This will save you both time and money, while speeding up your weight loss.

Some people fear that they will lose control if they don’t eat every three hours, thus making them eat thousands of calories and blowing their diets completely. So they obsessively snack all the time.

This obsessive snacking may be necessary on a diet high in sugar/processed carbs to control hunger cravings, but it’s usually completely unnecessary on an LCHF diet. Hunger will only slowly return and you’ll have plenty of time to prepare food or grab a snack.

5. MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS WISELY

Tracking successful weight loss is sometimes trickier than you’d think. Focusing only on weight and stepping on the scale every day might be misleading, cause unnecessary anxiety and undermine your motivation for no good reason.

The scale is not necessarily your friend. You may want to lose fat – but the scale measures muscles, bone and internal organs as well. Gaining muscle is a good thing. Thus weight or BMI are imperfect ways to measure your progress. This is especially true if you’re just coming off a long period of semi-starvation (calorie counting), as your body may want to restore lost muscles etc. Starting weight training and gaining muscle can also hide your fat loss.

Losing fat and gaining muscles means great progress, but you may miss this if you only measure your weight. Thus it’s smart to also track the disappearance of your belly fat, by measuring your waist circumference.

6. BE PERSISTENT

It usually takes years or decades to gain a lot of weight. Trying to lose it all as quickly as possible by starving yourself rarely works well long-term, that’s just a recipe for “yo-yo dieting”. To succeed, you need something that works long term.

WHAT TO AIM FOR

It’s common to lose 2-6 pounds (1-3 kg) within the first week on a strict low-carb diet, and then on average about one pound (0.5 kg) per week as long as you have a lot of weight remaining to lose. This translates into about 50 pounds (23 kilos) per year.

Every 5 pounds of fat loss roughly equals 1 inch lost around the waist (1 kilo = 1 cm).

Young males sometimes lose weight faster than this, perhaps twice as fast. Post-menopausal women may lose at a slightly slower pace. People on a very strict low-carb diet may lose weight quicker, as well as those who exercise a lot (a bonus). And if you have an enormous amount of excess weight to lose you could start out much faster.

As you get closer to your ideal weight the loss may slow down, until you stabilize at a weight that your body feels is right. Very few people becomes underweight on a low carb diet – as long as they eat when hungry.

INITIAL STALLS

Are you coming off a period of semi-starvation (calorie counting)? Focus on your waist circumference and health markers (see advice #4) at first as it sometimes takes several weeks before weight loss is apparent.

WEIGHT-LOSS PLATEAUS

Expect weight-loss plateaus: Days or weeks where nothing seems to happen on the scale. Everybody hits them. Stay calm. Keep doing what you’re doing and eventually things will start happening again (if not, check out the other 16 tips).

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FOREVER

Losing a lot of weight long-term and keeping it off forever won’t happen unless you change your habits forever. If you lose weight and then return to living exactly the way did when you gained weight, don’t be surprised when the excess weight returns. It will.

7. WOMEN: AVOID EATING FRUIT

This is a tip that goes for men as well, of course, but eating fruit is a more common obstacle for women trying to lose weight.

This advice is controversial as fruit has an almost magical health aura today. People may believe that fruit is nutritious but unfortunately fruit contains a lot of sugar – around 10% by weight (the rest is mostly water). Just taste an orange or a grape. Sweet, right?

Five servings of fruit per day are equivalent to the amount of sugar in 16 ounces of soda (500 ml). Contrary to what many people believe, the sugar is more or less identical (about 50% glucose, 50% fructose).

Sugar from fruit can shut down fat burning. This can increase your hunger and slow your weight loss. For best results avoid fruit – or enjoy it occasionally as a treat.

Bottom line: Fruit is candy from nature.

8. MEN: AVOID DRINKING BEER

This applies to women too, but men drink more beer on average. Beer contains rapidly digested carbs that shut down fat burning. That’s why beer is sometimes referred to as “liquid bread”. There’s a good reason for the term “beer belly.”

Here are smarter alcoholic options for losing weight:

Wine (red or dry white)
Dry champagne
Hard liquor like whisky, cognac, vodka (avoid sweetened cocktails – try vodka, soda water, lime instead)

These drinks hardly contain any sugar/carbohydrates so they’re better than beer. However, large amounts of alcohol might slow weight loss somewhat, so moderation is still a good idea.

9. AVOID ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS

Many people replace sugar with artificial sweeteners in the belief that this will reduce their calorie intake and cause weight loss. It sounds plausible. Several studies, however, have failed to show any positive effect on weight loss by consuming artificial sweeteners instead of plain sugar.

Instead, according to scientific studies, artificial sweeteners can increase appetite and maintain cravings for sweet food. And one recent independent study showed that switching drinks with artificial sweeteners to water clearly helped women lose weight:

10. REVIEW ANY MEDICATIONS

Many prescription drugs can stall your weight loss. Discuss any change in treatment with your doctor. Here are the worst three:

Insulin injections, especially at higher doses, are probably the worst obstacle for weight loss. There are three ways to reduce your need for insulin:
A. Eat fewer carbs,which makes it a easier to lose weight. The fewer carbs you eat the less insulin you need. Remember to lower your doses if you can.
B. If this isn’t enough, treatment with Metformin tablets (at a dose of 2–3 grams/day) can decrease the need for insulin (at least for type 2 diabetics).
C. If this is not enough to get off insulin (again, for type 2 diabetics) you could try newer promising drugs like Victoza or Byetta. These reduce the need for insulin and cause weight loss.
Other diabetes medications. Insulin-releasing tablets (e.g. sulphonylureas) often lead to weight gain. These include: Minodiab, Euglucon, Daonil, and Glibenclamide. Tablets like Avandia, Actos, Starlix and NovoNorm also encourage weight gain. But not Metformin. The newer drugs Victoza and Byetta (injectable) often lead to weight loss, but possible long-term side effects are still unknown.
Cortisone as an oral drug is another common culprit (e.g. Prednisolone). Cortisone often causes weight gain in the long run, especially at higher doses (e.g. more than 5 mg Prednisolone per day). Unfortunately, cortisone is often an essential medication for those who are prescribed it, but the dose should be adjusted frequently so you don’t take more than you need. Asthma inhalers and other local cortisone treatments, like creams or nose sprays, hardly affect weight.

11. STRESS LESS, SLEEP MORE

Have you ever wished for more hours of sleep, and a less stressful life in general? Most people have – stress and lack of sleep can be bad news for their weight.

Chronic stress may increase levels of stress hormones such as cortisol in your body. This can cause increased hunger and result in weight gain. If you’re looking to lose weight, you should review possible ways to decrease or better handle excessive stress in your life. Although this often demands substantial changes, even altering small things – such as posture – may immediately affect your stress hormone levels, and perhaps your weight.

You should also make an effort to get enough good sleep, preferably every night. Strive to wake up refreshed of your own accord, independently of the alarm clock. If you’re the kind of person who always gets brutally woken up by the alarm ringing, you might never be giving your body adequate rest.

One way to combat this is to go to bed early enough for your body to wake up autonomously before the alarm clock goes off. Letting yourself get a good night’s sleep is another way of reducing stress hormone levels.

Sleep deprivation, on the other hand, comes hand in hand with sugar cravings. It also has an adverse effect on self-discipline and makes it painfully easy to give in to temptation (it’s no coincidence that induced sleep deprivation is a common interrogation technique). Similarly, sleep deprivation weakens your resolve to work out.

12. EAT LESS OF DAIRY PRODUCTS AND NUTS

Can you eat as much as you like, and still lose weight? Yes, it tends to work just fine with a low-carbohydrate diet, as appetite regulation happens effortlessly.

However, despite the fact that a low-carbohydrate diet generally makes it easy to eat just enough, there are foods classified as low carb which become a problem in larger quantities. If you find yourself having a hard time losing weight on a low carb diet, you could try to be more careful with:

Dairy products (yoghurt, cream, cheese)
Nuts

Dairy products contain varying amounts of lactose (milk sugar), which slows down weight loss. What’s more, part of the protein in milk generates a significant insulinresponse, which can have the same effect. Consequently, cutting back on dairy products may accelerate weight loss. This applies especially to dairy products typically lacking in fat, such as regular milk and various yogurts, but be careful with full-fat dairy such as cream and cheese all the same. And don’t forget whey protein powder, which is pure milk protein.

Exempt from all these dairy-product warnings is butter, which is almost pure fat. Butter may be consumed liberally as desired.

13. SUPPLEMENT VITAMINS AND MINERALS

Your body needs a certain amount of essential vitamins and minerals to function properly. What happens when you don’t get enough of them? What happens when you eat too little food, or when the food you eat isn’t sufficiently nutritious? Perhaps our bodies catch on and reply by increasing hunger levels. After all – if we eat more, we increase the chances of consuming enough of whatever nutrient we are lacking.

On the other hand, reliable access to vitamins and minerals could perhaps mean decreased hunger levels and decreased cravings, thereby promoting weight loss.

The above is, of course, speculation. But there are well-performed studies which suggest it might not be far from the truth.

VITAMIN D

A lack of vitamin D is probably the most common deficiency in northern countries such as Canada, or most of the US. Three recent studies indicate that, when compared to a placebo, a vitamin D supplement can decrease your fat weight or waist measurement [1 2 3].

In one of the studies,77 overweight or obese women received either a supplement of 1000 units of vitamin D, or a placebo, every day for 3 months. Those who tookthe vitamin D supplement decreased their body fat by 2.7 kg (6 pounds) – significantly more than the placebo group, who hardly decreased their fat weight at all.

14. USE INTERMITTENT FASTING

There are many things to consider before moving on to this tip #14, but don’t let this fool you. This is one of the most effective weapons available to lose weight. It’s perfect if you are stuck at a weight-loss plateau despite “doing everything right” – or to speed up your weight loss.

This super weapon is called intermittent fasting. It means exactly what it sounds like… not eating, during a specified time interval.

GAIN WEIGHT

HOW MUCH CALORIES REQUIRED

Bodyweight	Light Activity	Moderate Activity	Heavy Activity
100lbs	1500	1935	2400
100lbs	1500	1935	2400
125lbs	1650	2185	2650
150lbs	1850	2435	2900
175lbs	2050	2785	3200
200lbs	2300	3130	3500

Although weight-loss strategies are ubiquitous in the fitness industry, not every person in the world has that goal. In fact, questions about the best ways to gain weight pop up more often than you might think. Skinny teenagers, underweight adults, and hard gainers of all stripes scour the Internet for ways to put on muscle.

Sound familiar? Then you’re in the right place.

HOW TO GAIN WEIGHT:

Eat more calories than you expend.
Eat nutrient-dense, calorie-rich food.
Increase dietary fat intake.
Add a weight-gainer supplement.
Lift heavy weight.

If you’re a hardgainer yourself, you’ve probably already heard the golden rule of weight gain: Eat up. We know, we know: You just can’t eat anymore. You hate feeling uncomfortable. You don’t like filling yourself with pizza and hamburgers.

We get that eating a lot isn’t an easy job. But, really, the simplest way we can explain how to gain weight is exactly what you’ve heard over and over: eat lots of food, train heavy, and supplement smart.

WEIGHT GAIN: THE REAL STORY

The reason you keep hearing the same advice is because putting on some pounds is really a simple matter of consuming more calories than you burn. Now, we all know at least one person who has made the mistake of eating a lot more than necessary, not exercising, and packing on lots and lots of excess fat. That’s not what we’re here to do. We want to give you the tools so you can eat just enough calories to put on some muscle, but not enough to put on a lot of excess fat.

We want to give you the tools so you can eat just enough calories to put on some muscle, but not enough to put on a lot of excess fat.

Be aware, though, that increasing the calories you eat in order to increase your muscle mass will also bring some extra fat mass. Don’t panic. With the right type of exercise, the fat gain can be minimal. And remember, if you’ve been struggling to gain weight, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll put on 20 pounds of unwanted fat.

To figure out how many calories you’ll need to put on some weight, use to the calculator found at this article determine your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

Add at least 500 calories to the number it spits out. Continue eating at least 500 over your TDEE for a couple weeks to see what happens.

If you don’t notice any changes, feel free to increase to 750 or even 1000 extra calories per day. If you notice weight gain happening too quickly, then lower your calories down to 200 or 300 extra per day. Realistically, you can expect an increase of 0.5-1.5 pounds in body weight each week. If you’re nowhere near that range, adjust your calorie intake.

The biggest issue people have when trying to put on muscle is the sheer amount of food they have to consume. You’re definitely going to have to eat a lot of calories, but there are a few tricks you can utilize to decrease the volume of food you have to chew and swallow. That way, you’ll get more calories per bite and feel less like an overstuffed teddy bear.

BE CALORIE SMART

Do your best to consume nutrient-dense, calorie-rich food. Fats and oils, nuts and seeds, avocado, red meat, whole eggs, full-fat dairy, and oily fish are great choices for getting a lot of calories without having to fill your stomach to the brim. Don’t waste your time trying to fill up on gummy bears or saltine crackers—they just don’t provide enough calories or nutrients to be worth the effort.

That said, it’s also important that you let go of the mindset that you need to eat 2-4 grams of protein per pound of body weight. No scientific evidence suggests that eating all that extra protein will increase muscle mass—plus, that kind of diet can get pretty expensive. The 40/40/20 bodybuilder split just may not be the right choice for you.

Fats and oils, nuts and seeds, avocado, red meat, whole eggs, full-fat dairy, and oily fish are great choices for getting a lot of calories without having to fill your stomach to the brim.

Carbohydrates can offer the same calorie count per gram as protein, but they are less satiating. So, don’t be afraid to add some extra carbs to your meals. As you do, though, choose carbs that have lower fiber content so you don’t fill up as quickly. We like noodles, white rice, bread, and fruit.

And watch out for fruits and veggies with a high water content. While they may be a great source for vitamins and minerals, all that extra water can leave you feeling full and lessen the chance you’ll be going back for seconds. If you’re worried about coming up short on your micronutrients, we recommend a daily multivitamin.

HAVE FUN WITH FAT

Fat is a smart choice for your weight-gaining diet because it has twice the number of calories per gram than protein and carbs. Also, fat has the lowest thermic effect of food compared to carbs and protein. In other words, your body burns anywhere from 5-30 percent fewer calories digesting fats than it does the other two macronutrients.[1,2]

An easy way to up your diet’s fat content is to cook your meat and vegetables in olive, coconut, or other calorie-rich oils. In a pinch, add a little oil to your protein shake.

You can also sneak in some extra fat with your selection of protein. Opt for 80/20 ground beef, chicken thighs over chicken breasts, and look for a little more marbling in your steaks. Good options include rib-eye and T-bone.

Concerned about too much fat and cholesterol in your diet? Don’t be! Recent findings suggest little evidence linking fat intake to cardiovascular disease. While you still want to be mindful of your saturated fat intake, don’t fear the fat!

EXTRA CALORIES MAKE EXTRA POUNDS

As you plan your meals for weight gain, remember that you don’t have to follow the no-salt, no-butter, no-flavor rules most competitive bodybuilders follow. Add gravy, sauces, creamy dressings, and other seasonings to your food. Not only do these extras make the food taste better so you’ll want to eat more, they add ever-necessary calories.

We also suggest choosing foods that require little cutting and chewing. So, instead of always having steak, eat ground beef or pulled pork.

Eating in a calorie surplus is no easy feat, and if you’re serious about packing on the pounds, you’re going to have to eat every 2-3 hours. This will require you to do a little planning ahead, but easy snacks to take on the go include trail mix, granola, peanut butter sandwiches, protein shakes, and bagels. And get yourself a weight-gainer to mix up a daily protein shake with milk.

LIFTING TO BUILD

Once you have your nutrition figured out, you can make some tweaks to your exercise regimen. Really, any resistance-training protocol will help you build muscle, especially if you’re supporting lifting weights with a lot of calories. But if you want to put on some noticeable muscle mass, stick with strength and hypertrophy protocols.

Hypertrophy-based protocols require 3-4 sets using a moderate weight—around 70-80 percent of your one-rep max. This type of training has been shown to cause significant increases in the muscle-building hormones testosterone and growth hormone.[3] Train hard, but make sure you’re giving yourself enough rest in between sets—around 1-2 minutes—to make your workouts less metabolically challenging.

Any resistance-training protocol will help you build muscle, especially if you’re supporting lifting weights with a lot of calories. But if you want to put on some noticeable muscle mass, stick with strength and hypertrophy protocols.

Yes, increasing your rest periods will increase your gym time, so you may need to limit the number of exercises you perform during your workouts. Think more like a powerlifter—use big weight and take long breaks between sets. Try to get your heart rate down before you begin your next set. Keeping your heart rate lowered will help you protect those calories you’re eating so you don’t use them all when you train.

Exercise selection is just as important as the number of sets you do. We think big lifts like the squat, bench press, deadlift, row, and shoulder press are the best for packing on the most mass. However, you can still do single-joint work. Even leg extensions and leg curls can help increase strength and size, albeit not as much as compound movements.[4] If you do both types of lifting, do the movements that target the largest muscle groups first, and save the isolation exercises for later in your workout.

The great thing about having all those extra calories in your body is you will feel great in the gym. Use the extra energy to put up some bigger weight and train more days during the week. It might feel like your new job is to eat and train—that means you’re on the right track.

SUPPS HELP!

Supplements were created for a reason: Everybody needs a little help now and then. Putting on muscle can be just as much work as trying to lose 30 extra pounds of fat. Adding some simple supplements to your diet can make life just a little easier. Consider the following:

WEIGHT GAINER

It’s a good idea to invest in a weight-gainer supplement. Weight gainers often come loaded with protein, carbs, and fat so you can increase your calorie intake without having to work very hard. With some products, you can consume more than 1,000 calories in a single serving! If you choose to purchase, read the label and choose carefully.

CREATINE

Creatine helps increase your performance in the gym. Usually, that means you’ll feel stronger and lift more weight. More weight on the barbell generally equals more muscle.[5] Taking a creatine supplement will also draw water into your cells, effectively making your muscles a little bigger. Creatine is one of the best-studied supplements on the market. There’s really no reason notto take it. We suggest 5-10 grams per day.

DEXTROSE

Really, the more calories you can get into your diet, the better. So, if you’re already drinking a pre- and post-workout shake, or even drinking BCAAsduring your workouts, adding some carbs to them can’t hurt. Dextrose is pretty cheap, too, so you can get a lot without breaking the bank.

ZMA

If you want your muscles to grow, you need to give them time to recover from workouts. ZMAis one of the leading supplements for overnight muscle repair and recovery. A combination of zinc, magnesium, and vitamin B-6, ZMA is best taken before you call it lights out. ZMA has been shown to be an effective supplement for enhancing muscle recovery and boosting muscle size and strength.[6,7]

MORE TIPS FOR GAINING WEIGHT

Eating, training, and supplementing should make up the backbone of your weight-gaining endeavors, but these other helpful tips can make the whole process more efficient.

1. GET SOME SLEEP

As in any fitness regimen, sleeping is an imperative part of the recovery process. Your muscles don’t grow when you’re in the gym—they grow when you’re resting—so make sure you spend enough time catching z’s.

Your muscles don’t grow when you’re in the gym—they grow when you’re resting—so make sure you spend enough time catching z’s.

Skipping out on shut-eye can also increase cortisol levels in your body over time.[8] Cortisol is a stress hormone produced by your adrenal glands that can stimulate muscle breakdown. One of the best ways to keep that from happening is to spend more hours with your head on a pillow.

2. GO OUT TO EAT

Most restaurants serve meals that are much more calorie-rich than what you’d cook at home. If you’re an in-season bodybuilder, it’s common practice to stay away from restaurants that won’t serve plain chicken breast and vegetables. But because you’re in the calorie-surplus game, you can forget all those rules and order the butter-filled, sauce-laden meal of your dreams.

If you have the money to spend on restaurant meals, go for it. You’ll get a lot of food and a lot of calories that taste way better than the food you’d cook at home, unless you really know what you’re doing in the kitchen.

3. FOLLOW THAT ICE CREAM TRUCK

Want an extra treat? Eat it. Your muscles aren’t really picky about what type of calories they consume. Eating treats like ice cream can be a delicious way to add calories into your diet.

Now, we’re not telling you to forgo all the things you learned in your nutrition class about sugar. Refined sugar, especially in large doses, is still unhealthy.

So don’t think drinking a gallon of Coke every day will provide anything other than a gut—and eventually, type 2 diabetes.

4. GO BIG

One of the tricks for losing weight is to put food on small dishes so it looks like you’re eating more than you are. Well, we think the same thing will work for putting on pounds. The only difference is we’re swapping a baby plate for a giant one.

If you have bigger plates in your cabinet, use them. Same with your glasswear: Put away those 8-ounce glasses and pull out those 12- or 16-ounce tumblers and fill ’em up!

5. BE PATIENT

Putting on muscle is not a fast process. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of consistency. Give yourself a few months of work before you quit the whole process. If you understand that going in, you’ll be much less likely to get frustrated before your body has time to respond to the food and training.

6. KEEP TRACK

Log your food, your workouts, your weight, changes you see in the mirror, and how you feel.

Bodyspace can help you keep track your food intake, workouts, and progress.

If you have no way of measuring progress, it can be almost impossible to know if you’re moving forward, backward, or just spinning your wheels.

WHY OUR BRAIN CELLS MAY PREVENT US BURNING FAT WHEN WE’RE DIETING

A study carried out in mice may help explain why dieting can be an inefficient way to lose weight: key brain cells act as a trigger to prevent us burning calories when food is scarce.

“Weight loss strategies are often inefficient because the body works like a thermostat and couples the amount of calories we burn to the amount of calories we eat,” says Dr Clémence Blouet from the Metabolic Research Laboratories at University of Cambridge. “When we eat less, our body compensates and burns fewer calories, which makes losing weight harder. We know that the brain must regulate this caloric thermostat, but how it adjusts calorie burning to the amount of food we’ve eaten has been something of a mystery.”

Now, in research published in the open access journal eLife, a team of researchers has identified a new mechanism through which the body adapts to low caloric intake and limits weight loss in mice. Mice share a number of important biological and physiological similarities with humans and so are a useful model for studying how our bodies work.

The researchers tested the role of a group of neurons in a brain region known as the hypothalamus. These ‘agouti-related neuropeptide’ (AGRP) neurons are known for their major role in the regulation of appetite: when activated, they make us eat, but when fully inhibited they can lead to almost complete anorexia.

The team used a genetic trick to switch the AGRP neurons ‘on’ and ‘off’ in mice so that they could rapidly and reversibly manipulate the neurons’ activity. They studied the mice in special chambers than can measure energy expenditure, and implanted them with probes to remotely measure their temperature, a proxy for energy expenditure, in different contexts of food availability.

The researchers demonstrated that AGRP neurons are key contributors to the caloric thermostat that regulates our weight, regulating how many calories we burn. The findings suggest that when activated, these neurons make us hungry and drive us to eat — but when there is no food available, they act to spare energy, limiting the number of calories that we burn and hence our weight loss.

As soon as food becomes available and we start eating, the action of the AGRP neurons is interrupted and our energy expenditure goes back up again to normal levels.

In addition, the researchers also describe a mechanism through which AGRP neurons regulate their activity by detecting how much energy we have on-board and then controlling how many calories we burn.

“Our findings suggest that a group of neurons in the brain coordinate appetite and energy expenditure, and can turn a switch on and off to burn or spare calories depending on what’s available in the environment,” says Dr Blouet, who led the study. “If food is available, they make us eat, and if food is scarce, they turn our body into saving mode and stop us from burning fat.”

“While this mechanism may have evolved to help us cope with famine, nowadays most people only encounter such a situation when they are deliberately dieting to lose weight. Our work helps explain why for these people, dieting has little effect on its own over a long period. Our bodies compensate for the reduction in calories.”

Dr Luke Burke, the study’s first author, adds: “This study could help in the design of new or improved therapies in future to help reduce overeating and obesity. Until then, best solution for people to lose weight — at least for those who are only moderately overweight — is a combination of exercise and a moderate reduction in caloric intake.”

THE 6 RULES OF GAINING MUSCLE MASS

Here’s the frustrating truth: Most guys spend their entire life going to gyms, performing endless reps and sets, and never gaining more than a few pounds of muscle. You sacrifice sweat, invest in hustle and for what? Yeah, good health — that’s great. But if you’re like me, you also want results you can see.

Eventually many guys end up wondering, “Is my body just not designed to add size?“

I tried my own personal experiment to build as much mass as possible in one month. The result: I gained 20 pounds in 28 days.

I learned what it takes to add size — no drugs, no cheating, no gimmicks.

I did this to help all the average guys out there, guys just like me. The ones that are tired of being frustrated, misled and unable to make any changes that they can see. And as a former skinny guy, it was further proof that anyone — with enough patience and effort — can change their body.

If you want to add some mass to your body, or just make sure that you’re not wasting your time with your training and diet plan, here are six lessons that will help you avoid your common frustrations.

This might seem obvious, but when you’re trying to add mass, you need to eat more. If there’s a consistent theme in the struggle to gain weight, most people just don’t eat enough. Keep in mind that everyone’s body is different, so there’s no hard-and-fast rule on how much you need to eat. But most people eat for the body they currently have. When they eat “a lot,” that’s just compared to their current weight. If you want to gain more size, you have to be thinking about what it would take to fuel the body you desire.

So eating “a lot” for your size will undoubtedly leave you at your size. You need to push the limits and find ways to take in more calories. Remember, you’re trying to change the way you look and push past a weight that is easy for you body to maintain. What’s more, you’re trying to add muscle that might be stubbornly resisting all your efforts.

The best approach is finding an eating strategy that makes it easier to take in more calories. This might mean eating more meals. It might mean eating less often but taking in significantly larger meals. That’s what I did. I only ate 3 times per day, but I ate a lot at each meal.

Sometimes you might need some simple tricks to add calories. This could be adding 1-2 tablespoons of oils (like Udo’s oil) to meals, or adding a few extra tablespoons of nut butter after you’re already full. But if you’re trying to gain weight and your not seeing any changes, start eating more. It’s a simple idea, but one that can be difficult to achieve because it’s an uncomfortable process. Hang with it, and your body will eventually adjust — both with the “ease” of eating more and the changes you’ll see.

If there’s a type of food you want to eat more of, your top choice should be protein. Most guys don’t eat enough protein. That’s because there’s a variety of myths out there that will have you believe that you can only digest 20 to 30 grams of protein per serving. Or that you need to eat lots of small doses of protein 5 to 6 times per day. The result is that you feel like you’re getting enough protein, but you’re actually falling short of your goals.

If you want to boost how much protein you’re eating, understand that you can take in more than 20 to 30 grams per serving. And then focus on eating two to three times more protein, in general. If you’re already taking in about a gram per pound of your body weight, you don’t need to triple that amount. But just like calories, you want to eat for the body you’re trying to build. So add more protein as part of your effort.

One of the biggest mistakes when trying to gain weight is eating the wrong types of food. Gaining weight can be hard for some people. (And yes, people that struggle to lose weight do not want to hear about your “difficulties” stuffing your face, but both can be equally challenging.) When you hit that wall, your first instinct might be to eat the most calorically dense foods possible. Scarfing down pizza and donuts might help you gain weight — but not the type you want.

Remember the goal is mass, but more muscle and less fat is what you want. So you’ll want to eat foods that are dense in calories — think steak and potatoes — as well as foods that have nutritional value and will help with digestion, like greens and sauerkraut.

While you will have more room to take in extra calories, if those calories are all from the bad sources you will grow — in all the wrong ways.

A quick look at my workout should reveal something very important: the workouts were notoverly complicated. I hit the exercises that worked the greatest number of muscles. Moves like squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press and rows. Add in some “isolation” exercises to train your vanity muscles, and you have the perfect plan.

Don’t over-complicate your training with endless exercise changes. The fastest way to gain size is to become better at a few exercise and lift more weight. Your body will grow. Trust me. Which brings up another important rule.

There is a place for higher reps in any program. In fact, I incorporated some on my “conditioning” days. But training heavy plays an important role in your ability to grow. That’s because focusing on heavier weight increases your strength. And as you increase your strength, you can use more weight for more reps. And as your total work capacity increases (amount of weight you use multiplied by the number of reps you perform), you are able to add more mass.

You’ll want to be smart about your approach. The downside of heavier lifting is that it can put you at a greater likelihood of injury. So doing a proper and thorough warmup, as well as several work-up sets, will ensure that you body–and your muscles, tendons, and ligaments–are prepared to add more weight, become stronger, and stay injury free.

Two simple reasons why you want to make sure to prioritize sleep:

Sleeping enough helps your body build muscle
– Not sleeping enough makes it harder to build muscle

When you get enough sleep, your levels of growth hormone increase. This is a natural hormone that plays an important role in muscle growth and recovery. When you don’t sleep enough, another hormone–cortisol–is increased. This stress hormone makes it harder for you to gain muscle. In fact, research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people who don’t sleep enough not only lose weight, they also lose muscle.

Your goal should be to prioritize your rest just as much as your meals and workouts. It’ll ensure that all your hard work won’t go to waste.

By following these guidelines, you’ll be avoiding some of the most common mistakes that make gaining size seem impossible.

VEGETARIAN DIETS ALMOST TWICE AS EFFECTIVE IN REDUCING BODY WEIGHT, STUDY FINDS.

Posted on June 19, 2017 in Lose Weight

Dieters who go vegetarian not only lose weight more effectively than those on conventional low-calorie diets but also improve their metabolism by reducing muscle fat, a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition has found.

Losing muscle fat improves glucose and lipid metabolism so this finding is particularly important for people with metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, says lead author, Dr. Hana Kahleová, Director of Clinical Research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington DC.

Seventy-four subjects with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to follow either a vegetarian diet or a conventional anti-diabetic diet. The vegetarian diet consisted of vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits and nuts, with animal products limited to a maximum of one portion of low-fat yoghurt per day; the conventional diabetic diet followed the official recommendations of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). Both diets were restricted by 500 kilocalories per day compared to an isocaloric intake for each individual.

The vegetarian diet was found to be almost twice as effective in reducing body weight, resulting in an average loss of 6.2kg compared to 3.2kg for the conventional diet.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, Dr. Kahleová and colleagues then studied adipose (fat-storage) tissue in the subjects’ thighs to see how the two different diets had affected subcutaneous, subfascial and intramuscular fat (that is, fat under the skin, on the surface of muscles and inside muscles).

They found that both diets caused a similar reduction in subcutaneous fat. However, subfascial fat was only reduced in response to the vegetarian diet, and intramuscular fat was more greatly reduced by the vegetarian diet.

This is important as increased subfascial fat in patients with type 2 diabetes has been associated with insulin resistance, so reducing it could have a beneficial effect on glucose metabolism. In addition, reducing intramuscular fat could help improve muscular strength and mobility, particularly in older people with diabetes.

Dr. Kahleová said: “Vegetarian diets proved to be the most effective diets for weight loss. However, we also showed that a vegetarian diet is much more effective at reducing muscle fat, thus improving metabolism. This finding is important for people who are trying to lose weight, including those suffering from metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes. But it is also relevant to anyone who takes their weight management seriously and wants to stay lean and healthy.”