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GAIN WEIGHT


HOW MUCH CALORIES REQUIRED

BodyweightLight ActivityModerate ActivityHeavy Activity
100lbs150019352400
100lbs150019352400
125lbs165021852650
150lbs185024352900
175lbs205027853200
200lbs230031303500
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.
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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.
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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

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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.
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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:
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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.
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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

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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.
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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.
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THE 6 RULES OF GAINING MUSCLE MASS




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.

RULE #1: EAT MORE CALORIES THAN YOU BURN

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.
 

RULE #2: DOUBLE OR TRIPLE YOUR PROTEIN INTAKE

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.

RULE #3: EAT MOSTLY NUTRIENT-DENSE WHOLE FOODS

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.

RULE #4: DO COMPOUND EXERCISES IN THE GYM

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.

RULE #5: LIFT HEAVIER WEIGHTS

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.

RULE #6: GET 7+ HOURS OF SLEEP EVERY NIGHT

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  in Lose Weight

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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.”
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