Healthy Methods for Gaining Weight
There is only one way to gain weight, and that is by taking in more calories than you burn. When done with intelligence and attention to exercise, this process will make you more muscular; when done without intelligence and attention to exercise, this process will make you fat. If you’re reading this article, you’re obviously interested in gaining weight and I’m going to operate on the assumption that you aren’t looking to gain weight by getting fat. So, we’ll look at putting on some pounds by building and developing your muscles.
First, let’s do a little bit of math…and yes, you can use a calculator, but you need to write the numbers down! Take your current weight and multiply that by 18. The result will be the total number of calories you should aim for, on a daily basis, to enable your body to build new muscles. Now, take your current weight and multiply it by 1.5. This result will be the approximate amount of protein, in grams, that you need to put into you body daily for muscle growth.
You’ve got your two target numbers, so now you need to do some menu preparation. You don’t have to turn into a rapid calorie counter, but you do need to start paying a lot more attention to the calories and protein in the food you eat.
Now, depending on your point of view and awareness of nutrition, these numbers may be very intimidating to you. You’re probably looking at an intense increase in the amount of food you eat and it may seem impossible to do that.
In fact, it may actually be impossible to do that if you’re only eating three meals a day. The “three meals a day” lifestyle isn’t actually optimum for healthy living and it’s far from optimum for muscle building. As you go about your meal planning, you need to plan on eating five to seven smaller meals a day, instead of three bigger meals. It should also go without saying that you should be planning healthy meals.
All calories are not created equally. Just because the local junk-fast-food joint sells a greasy burger with 800 calories doesn’t mean you should eat three of them a day to reach your calorie goal. Empty and fattening calories, such as those in sweets, junk food, fast food, or soda aren’t going to help you gain healthy weight. Foods which are highly processed or high in sugar and saturated fat should be avoided as well.
Moving from food to exercise, there are some ways to exercise which help you lose weight and some ways which will help you gain weight. While you’re focused on gaining weight, it only makes sense to limit your exercises to those which help you gain weight by building muscles. So this isn’t the time to enroll in an aerobics class.
You should focus on a workout regimen of three or four weekly routines which are short and intense. Stay away from the plethora of machines available to you at the gym and workout using free weights.
Start with a weight that is heavy for you; ignore what everyone else is doing. If ten pounds is heavy for you, then it’s heavy for you and you should use it. To effectively gain weight in the shortest time period possible, you’re looking to stimulate the specific muscle fibers which promote the most muscle growth. This is best done by lifting heavy weights.
You’ll know that some weights are too light just by picking them up but, once you get closer to your limit you’ll need to do some testing. Start by adding five pounds to what you think is heavy enough and try to do a set of ten repetitions. If you get to ten, then on your next set add five more pounds. When you find a weight that you physically can’t get to ten repetitions with, you’ve found your starting weight.
Aim for six or eight repetitions in each set you do and increase either the amount of weight or the number of repetitions every week or two; you want to constantly challenge yourself so that you put on the muscle as fast as possible.