Category: Weight Loss Exercise

There are a few things that you can do to gain muscle fast. The first thing to remember is that to gain muscle fast you need to take care of your diet, you need to train correctly and finally you need to rest very well so that you can make the most of those workouts.

Gain Muscle Weight Fast

In the last article I pointed out that most people do not use weight lifting as a form of exercise although it is critical to do this instead of just cardio to help drive up your metabolism. There are a few problems though.

Most people as they try to gain muscle fast make the critical mistake of overtraining while also not eating and resting enough.

So lets look at the proper way for eating, resting and training to maximize gains and minimize overtraining in your quest to gain muscle fast.

Eating to Gain Muscle Weight Fast

Eating to gain muscle is critical. Every time that you work out you are going to be breaking down that muscle and you need water and protein to rebuild your muscle bigger and better to handle higher s. Most people eat very little protein and lots of carbohydrates, especially grains and other white carbs instead of colored vegetables.

The best way to eat is as I have mentioned lots before is to have 6 meals a day. These meals are made up of getting all of your claories in one day and then break that up into six small meals. This means that your meals are a lot smaller than you may be used to.

The next thing to worry about is the amount of protein in each meal.

Eat 20 grams or so of protein in each meal and then over time if you get really serious about becoming a serious bodybuilder then you would take this protein up to 30 or even 40 grams of protein in a meal.

20 grams of protein by the way would be something around half a chicken breast or 2 to 3 ounces of meat.

Lastly remember that if you are taking in this protein that you can not just substitute by eating a giant steak instead all at one time.

Your body can not process that much protein at once and you will just pass it unused. With the price of steak and chicken we may as well be making the most of it instead of wasting it.

Resting to Gain Muscle Fast

Rest is also critical when trying to gain muscle fast. You need to make sure that you are sleeping well and not being affected by stress as these two things are the really important actions to gaining muscle after a tough workout.

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As you may or may not know the workout that gets you strong is only the fiest part of gaining muscle. The only time that your body actually recovers and gains muscle back is during the night when you are sleeping.

If you get lots of sleep then your muscles will heal, if you sleep poorly or not enough then your body will not recover fully and your body will become overtrained easily.

Stress also is a roadblock to muscle gains. Your body is not going to recover from a stressful workout if you are not allowing yourself the recovery period.

Stress causes your body and muscles to be tight and the tightness of the muscles is a primal reaction that allows you to react quickly to the various dangers that our caveman background was preparing for.

 

So eliminate stress wherever you can.

Training to Gain Muscle

OK, I saved the biggest until last. To really gain muscle fast you of course need to workout smart and get the most out of your muscles without over-training.

Have you ever looked at a construction worker? They tend to be big with muscle and fat but considering how much they lift they are not huge as bodybuilders.

The best way to build muscle is not to just lift a lot of throughout the day but instead you need to lift a lot of in a short period of time.

Even most people training in gyms do not realize this as you will see guys doing set after set with long rest times between sets.

I can tell you that the best way to workout is to warmup your muscles and then do sets to failure. Going to failure means that you are doing a set of 10 reps or so and that at the end of that set you have nothing left to lift with.

After you have a couple of months of working out like this you will be able to use advanced strategies like stripping s, pauses, and supersets but at this point just try to make sure that you need a spot on that last rep or two.

As far as number of sets try to do two sets to failure for two exercises in each muscle group. This means that for back for example that you would do lat pulldowns for two sets to failure and the two sets of seated rows to failure.

Using this lifting strategy should also make your workouts much quicker than you would expect. Your workouts should not last more than 45 minutes total.

Whole Strategy to Gain Muscle Fast

So her you are a total strategy to gain muscle fast. As you can see there are really only three things to be aware of. Arnold Schwarzenegger once said that gaining muscle was 99% mental and I have to agree.

If you are not only aware but have conviction in your actions when it comes to getting the right amount of rest, eating the right foods at the right times and training like a superstar for your body then you are going to gain muscle fast.

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Serotonin is a very important brain chemical. One of the ways that we see serotonin in use is in our moods and especially in the way that we think. Depression is often caused by low levels of this hormone so to raise serotonin levels is a very critical thing for many.

Think of serotonin in your brain as a funnel that just slowly drains goodness, if you have stress, don’t get our enough, get sick, then your serotonin production in your body will drop until that funnel has nothing to give your brain. This is bad. This is what causes depression in many people and there are ways to stop depression causing low serotonin levels.

The important thing to remember is that stress in our life, although sometimes important and good, increases the output of cortisol. Cortisol is the anti-happy hormone if there ever was one.

So it is important to keep your life free of extra stresses and especially when you are feeling down take all stresses possible out of your life

How to Raise Serotonin Levels

Basically what you need to increase the creation of serotonin in your body is diet change, exercise, exposure to bright sunlight and if all else fails then SSRI antidepressent drugs.

1. The dietary supplement 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan (5-HTP) is promoted as a treatment for insomnia, depression, migraine, obesity and attention deficit disorder in children. It is a derivative of the amino acid tryptophan and, in fact, the body makes it from the tryptophan present in foods such as beef, chicken, fish, dairy products and other high protein foods.

I have found a lot of evidence that people swear by supplementing their diet with 5-HTP so this is something that you can try.

2. Exercise increases serotonin. We all know how important exercise is for improving our physical health and concentration as well as mood and it is the endorphin creation that fuels higher serotonin levels. Get exercise everyday.

3. Bright light increases serotonin and in winter a lack of serotonin may be one of the reasons behind Seasonal Affective disorder. Getting out in bright sunlight, especially in Winter when it is much tougher often to find is important.

4. Taking a walk on a cold sunny day in the Winter is great but even in Summer some people just do not get out enough to help raise those levels of serotonin.

A few more tips from Chatelaine Magazine

5. Take B Complex Vitamins. High total intakes of vitamins B6 and B12 are associated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms over time in community-residing older adults, according to the results of a cohort study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Vitamin B6 in particular supports the production and function of serotonin, melatonin and dopamine in the brain.

6. St. John’s Wort. This herb has been proven effective for easing mild to moderate depression. It appears to work as a natural SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) by preventing the breakdown of serotonin in the brain.

7. Add inositol to your smoothies. Naturally present in many foods, inositol improves the activity of serotonin in the brain. As a supplement, it’s an excellent choice for alleviating anxiety and depression and supporting nervous system health.

And a couple more from a great article on the Bodyecology website

8. Include fermented foods and drinks in your diet – Fermented foods and drinks greatly assist in digestion and assimilation of all the important nutrients you need for serotonin. Additionally, they boost the nutrients in your food by at least a hundred fold. As mentioned above they manufacture those essential B vitamins that help with boosting your mood.

Microflora rich Dong Quai is an excellent fermented drink that supports your energy and mood AND decreases cravings for sugar.

9. Get massages and other forms of body work – We’ve heard about the healing power of touch, but now research backs it up! A study conducted by the Touch Research Institutes at the University of Miami School of Medicine shows that massage increases serotonin by 28% and decreases cortisol (the stress hormone) by 31%.

10. Consider purchasing a BioMat. This is a wonderful pad that you lie on — ideally with headphones and beautiful relaxing music that increases brain cells. The BioMat combines far infrared negative ions and amethyst crystals and produces negative ions that increase the flow of oxygen to your brain having a positive effect on how serotonin is oxidized in your blood stream.

Like a large, chamber-size and more expensive sauna the Bio Mat also helps with removal of toxins that interfere with brain health. I recommend the smaller size because it is more affordable and yet you can still do a “sauna-level” sweat on it.

11. Eat foods that are high in Serotonin or raise serotonin levels. There are a few foods like Turkey or bananas with their Tryptophan, buckwheat and Flax which are high in B Vitamins and Omegas. And when speaking of Omega vitamins don’t forget Wild Salmon or eggs.

Nuts like walnuts are especially beneficial for serotonin production. Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, peanuts, almonds and cashews can increase serotonin in the body

12. If all of these things fail then it is a good idea to talk to your doctor. Antidepressant drugs like Lexapro, Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil work to raise serotonin levels in the brain by stopping one part of your brain synapses from absorbing all serotonin and instead making it available for the parts that do need it. This will help you to be able to pop out of that depression in as little as a few days to a couple of weeks.

The key to using these drugs to raise serotonin levels to me though is that you need to do all of the right things. Do not rely on the drugs when you can instead rely on outdoor exercise and a better diet.

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I have been doing a bit of a whole self experiment to see how I could do more tracking. It feels a little like Biohacking but it is much more subtle.

I have been tracking my calories in using the app and website My Fitness Pal and at the same time I have gotten myself a FitBit Charge HR so that I can track my calories expended as well as my heart rate, sleep, and number of steps and floors done on a daily basis.

First My Fitness Pal

You have likely heard of My Fitness Pal before. It is a site that not only offers articles and other blog like infomration but also, I think more importantly, tracks your food with calories and nutrition.

To me it is interesting to see the number of calories eaten but it is also great to break down my protein, carbs, and fats. Also I track sodium and vitamin and mineral levels with the app and it has worked really well for seeing a lot of interesting food choices that I make.

This is what My Fitness Pal looks like on the Desktop

One of the early things that I found was that my eating was actually lower protein than I thought and that for many of my meals I was still overeating while other meals were a lot lower calories than I thought.

I can probably stand to eat less. I am a big snacker, but My Fitness Pal was also telling me that all those fruits and vegetables that I snack on throughout the day are very low in calories even when eaten in pretty big amounts.

I find that adding the foods is really easy in My Fitness Pal and I can either search through the online database and add a food easily or even scan a barcode with my phone and have it show up.

Also you get to break down breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as all your snacks so that it is easy to see what parts of your day are higher calorie than others.

Be aware of the serving size though. Just like anywhere else the serving size that you see in the app and the serving size the you actually eat may be different.

Add in A Fitbit Charge HR

Around the same time that I started using My Fitness Pal I also finally got myself a FitBit Charge HR.

The difference with this fitbit is that although it is still tracking steps like all of these different trackers do, this Fitbit Charge HR also tracks my heart rate, my sleep amount and patterns, and also links up my exercise level (doing some interpolation) right over to My Fitness Pal

This is what the sleep tracking as well as the exercise tracking looks in Fitbit

I have been using the Fitbit Charge HR for a few weeks now and it is great for letting me know exactly how much exercise I am getting so late in the day regardless of whether I have worked out of not I can at least see if I have had enough walking done.

Be aware though that the number of steps and calories burned may not be exact but over time you will be much more aware of how much exercise you are getting and what difference that exercise is doing for you.

Finally there is also a very vibrant Fitbit community online on both Reddit and on Facebook and these spots are great for tips, training ideas, and motivation.

There is a very social gamification with Fitbit where you can join in with others for a kind of challenge where you can compare yourself to your online friends to see how they are doing compared to you.

Fitness and exercise can often be lonely so having a little bit of extra motivation from others, even strangers, if a great thing to help you improve and keep going.

Putting My Fitness Pal and Fitbit Together

Now is where the magic sauce is for me. If you tracking your eating you are going to do great. If you track your exercise you are also going to do great.

Here you can see the addition of the calories added from Fitbit to My Fitness Pal

But the real advantage of both of these tools together is that you can track the food you are eating, those calories, and overlay your calories burned to give you a daily in and out total.

The knowledge of knowing what you eat and what you burned means that if you eat a banana you will know how much it took to burn that banana.

If you eat a meal at Wendys it will also give you an idea of what that decision is doing to you healthwise.

I hate to ever be the guy scolding people and judging their diet but I find that when people are eating fast food they will think, as I have on occasion, that it is a cheat meal and it will just take a bit of exercise to recover. Well that is not exactly true.

It will take a lot to recover from a burger, fries and a giant pop!

So when you are going through your day and syncing your Fitbit either automatically or on demand like I do what Fitbit does if you link correctly is to push the calories burned from your walking over to My Fitness Pal.

When those calories show up you will get more calories to eat for the day and be able to see how many calories you have burned and how much that burger and fries affected your total calories for the day.

One of the great things I find between these two apps is that Fitbit and My Fitness Pal are both available on iPhone as well as Android for mobile and each also has a website full of tips as well.

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