Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Best Way to Gain Weight





Looking for the best way to gain weight? You are not alone. While millions of people are working hard to try and lose weight, it may come as a surprise to many that some people need to gain weight.  For underweight individuals, adding extra pounds can be a challenge but not a real problem unless you are grossly underweight.

There are different ways to bulk up your physique but the best way to gain weight is always the healthy and natural way.

Many people are skinny because of hereditary factors.  Others are underweight and need to add extra pounds due to lack of appetite, illness, or eating disorders.  The only way to gain weight is by consuming more calories than you burn every day.  You can increase caloric intake by eating larger quantities of food or choosing calorie-dense foods.  It’s always best, however, to eat nutrition-rich foods rather than junk foods.

Count Calories and Nutrients, Too

Best Way to Gain Weight

Best Way to Gain Weight

Healthy foods offer the best way to gain weight.  Choose foods not only for their caloric contribution but, more importantly, for the nutrients they provide.  Eat foods that are rich in vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.  Each serving must be loaded with good nutrition as well as calories.  Foods that are high in calories and nutrients include nuts, avocados, dairy products, meats, eggs, and poultry.  Don’t forget to include healthy fats in your diet.

Eat a Balanced Diet to Gain Weight

Your body needs large quantities of carbohydrates, protein and fats, with carbohydrates being the primary energy source.  According to the Food and Nutrition Board, 45 to 65 percent of your total caloric intake should come from carbohydrates, 20 to 35 percent from fats, and 10 to 35 percent from proteins.  The best sources of carbohydrates are potatoes, corn, brown rice and pasta.  Good protein sources include meat, fish, beans, tofu, and poultry.  Healthy fats from olive oil, nuts and seeds provide the extra calories you need to gain weight.  Butter, whole milk and cheese also add more calories.  Don’t forget to include colorful fruits and vegetables and leafy greens in your daily diet.  They provide the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants you need for proper metabolism, higher energy levels, and a stronger immune system

Exercise to Gain Weight

You need to do strength-training exercises in order to convert protein and extra calories into muscle mass.  When trying to gain weight, the best way to do this is to eat protein-rich snacks after weight training.  Proteins provide the amino acids needed to repair and build body tissues and make the muscles grow.

Supplements to Gain Weight

People who are trying to gain weight can benefit from muscle-building supplements.  Creatine supplements contain a mixture of amino acids essential for muscle-building.  A number of studies, however, indicate that creatine may be linked with liver and kidney damage.  It may not be the best supplement for weight gain.  Whey protein, on the other hand, is loaded with amino acids that the body can easily absorb and utilize to build bigger and stronger muscles.  Whey protein is a safe and natural supplement that can be added into shakes and taken before or after your workout.

Rest and Recovery to Gain Weight

The best foods and exercise regimen will not do you any good if you do not give your body time to recover.  The body repairs itself and builds muscles while you are resting and sleeping.  Try to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night.  A combination of nutritious foods, exercise and rest is still the best way to gain weight and build muscle mass.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Balanced Diet
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Protein in your diet | protein in diet




Protein is one of the basic building blocks of the body so it is an essential part of your diet and can influence your strength but probably not your energy. Your muscles are built with protein and in fact protein is made up of 20 amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein and 9 are essential, they cannot be created and must be eaten meaning the other 11 amino acids can be created by our body.

Many times we hear that you need to eat steak for energy but in actual fact as we learned earlier carbohydrates are the body’s favored energy source. I always think of muscles as being made out of protein but really muscles are mostly water and protein so if you think about how people tend to diet they will cut out things like steak and carbohydrates so the body is not getting as much protein and carbohydrates as it needs to burn for energy so it will tend to burn protein and fat in equal parts to get energy. This is great for losing weight and good for losing fat but it is really bad to lose muscle. One of the ways to stop your body from burning muscle for energy is to do a fair amount of exercise, especially weight training to increase your muscle mass on a consistent basis.

So what kind of foods contain protein and how much do we need? Full proteins are found in steak chicken and fish and non-full proteins (those without all of the essential amino acids) are contained in lentils, beans, corn, peanuts. A can of Tuna has 20-25 grams of protein and if you look around you can probably get about 80 grams of protein a day comfortably.

One critical thing to look out for is the amount of protein that you eat at each meal. Your body can only metabolize about 25-30 grams of protein at a meal which is only about 4 ounces of steak or chicken. In the past I had taken digestive enzymes with my main meals to help to metabolize more but I now think that this may be a bit of shaky science behind it.

Some bodybuilders will eat 250-500 grams of protein a day but realistically if you have protein in a couple or three of your meals you are doing pretty good. One of the things to concentrate on is drinking a lot more water when you are eating a lot of protein, a lot of water is needed for your body to break down protein so if you are increasing your protein intake drink more water to help take the load off of your kidneys.


Protein in your diet

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on 20 Amino Acids
  • Related Blogs on Basic Building Blocks
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Is Creatine The Best Body Building Supplement?


Choosing a body building supplement is not always easy, just because there are so many possibilities. Before you go to the store or go online with credit card in hand to order a truckload of products, check out our guide to creatine. Who should take it and who should not?

Why Take Creatine Body Building Supplement?

One reason for taking creatine is that it gives many of the same benefits as a protein supplement. It is excellent for increasing muscle mass. It is also a natural substance that occurs in the body, so we are not introducing anything new to the body here.

Vegetarians tend to be low on creatine so this is definitely something to consider if you are a vegetarian bodybuilder. Of course you would want to find a vegetarian form of this body building supplement. But it is not only for vegetarians! Anyone wanting to increase muscle mass may benefit from this if not contraindicated for medical reasons (see below).

How Does It Work?

Creatine increases the availability of ATP or adenosine triphosphate. This is the main energy source that muscles use for their power. So if you have more ATP available, you can perform more reps and lift more weight than you otherwise would. This means that you can grow your muscle faster.


Turbulence Training

In other words, creatine does not directly bulk the muscles, but allows your training to be more effective.

How To Take It

Creatine is found in significant quantities in red meat. It would be possible to increase your creatine levels by eating a lot more steak, but of course that comes with a lot of fat and other substances that you might not want in your diet. For this reason, many people prefer to take it in isolated form as a body building supplement. In many cases it comes with aminos, dextrose and other good substances for increasing muscle mass.

There are several different types of creatine body building supplement. Creatine monohydrate was the first type to be developed and is still very popular and effective. Creatine phosphate and citrate are newer variations that are usually more expensive if you compare creatine content gram for gram. That does not necessarily mean they are more effective.

Whatever type you get, it is usually best in powdered form. It is flexible when you want to experiment with your dosage (difficult to do with tablets or capsules) and easily absorbed. You will see liquid creatine on the market but be aware this can be very unpredictable in terms of the amount of creatine that it contains.

The best way to take creatine is to cycle it. Four weeks on and two weeks off is a recommendation that you might want to try.

Who Should Not Take It?

Creatine is not recommended for people with kidney or liver disease. It may affect insulin action so it is best not taken by those with diabetes or other blood sugar related disorders. Like many supplements, it is not recommended for pregnant women or nursing mothers because it cannot be proved safe for them.

Early fears that creatine was dangerous for the general population have been shown to be unfounded by a large volume of research now. It has been shown to be safe for normal healthy individuals. However, anybody considering taking a body building supplement should check it out with their medical advisor.