Hard Gainer? How to gain weight
Chances are if your reading this you find it hard to put on quality weight. Most people that go to the gym do if for on of two reasons a) They want the body builder look with a strong full muscular look, or b) They want to lose the weight and have the hard body shredded look that most body builders have. I have heard many excuses for why people quit going to the gym and training. Most of the time it is because of miss information provided by a friend telling them how to gain weight incorrectly.
Some people will tell you that when your bulking (trying to gain weight) to just eat anything and everything, never let your body go hungry. To a point this is true but what if you easily gain fat should you try this approach? What if you want to only put on lean muscle mass?
Determining what body type you have will also help you adjust the amount of carbs you should be eating. An example is the
Ectomorph body types have little muscle or fat while the
Mesomorph body types have well developed musculature with little to no fat. The other end of the scale is the
Endomorph who is characterized by a majority of body fat vs. muscle. If you are one extreme adjust your eating to accommodate for what your body is naturally like.
Personally I go with 2 weeks of eating and if I don’t notice I increase my eating. I go another 2 weeks and if still no change I continue to increase until I get the results I want. The reverse would be for the endomorph to decrease the eating until they get the lean results they are looking for. So how many carbs and how much protein should I be eating to bulk up?
Well since your trying to bulk up you need to eat more protein. The protein supplies your body with the raw materials that it needs to add lean muscle tissue. Extra carbs are needed to prevent protein from being wasted as energy, allowing the protein to do its job of fueling the lean muscle development. Fat lubricates your joints is used for energy and with out it your not eating a healthy productive diet. Ok so how much Protein, Fat, and Carbs should I be taking in? See below:
* Protein should be eaten at 1.2-1.5 grams per pound that you weigh
* Carbohydrates should be eaten at 4 – 5 grams per pound that you weigh
* Fats should be eaten at .5 grams per pound that you weigh
So if you weight 140lbs you should be consuming 168 – 210 grams of protein, 560 – 700 grams of carbohydrates, and 70 grams of fat per day. Each gram of protein equals 4 calories, each gram of carbohydrates equal 4 calories, and each gram of fat equals 9 calories. So calorie wise a 140lbs person would be consuming between 2947 calories and 3675 calories per day.
To fit all this food in you will want to be eating every 2 hours and trying to fit a meal or meal replacement shake in before bed. Personally I feel the more solid foods you can fit in verses manufactured meals the better. I try to limit my shakes to a maximum of 2 per day but sometimes due to time constraints I will have 3 to ensure I get the protein, carbs, and fat required each day. Try to eat before you feel hungry so you don’t end up burning muscle to fuel your hunger. www.fitday.com has a great free tool to track your meals and ensure you are getting the required protein, carbs and fat each day. It logs it all for you all you have to do is enter your meal plans.
I have also purchase this
ebook to help me along the way, it's full of information and I have learned a lot when I was still starting out to gain weight, the ebook is called
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle.