Basic Weight Gain Theory

There are many theories that get tossed around in the weight loss / weight gain science arenas. There is the old standard calories in vs. calories out theory that says if you take in more calories than you burn you will gain weight and vice versa. According to this way of thinking, you need to eat about 3500 calories above what you are burning to gain a pound. But, how do you make sure that you are gaining muscle and not fat?

 Here’s locus things start to get a little more complicated. A lot of the other theories flying around have to do with ratios. The ratios I am referring to compare the percentages of your diet that come from protein, carbohydrates and fat.

 For muscle gain without fat loss the recommended ratio is usually 40 / 50 / 10 suggestion that 40 % of your total calorie intake is from protein, 50 percent is from carbohydrates and 10 % is from fat. This is noticeably less fat than the weight loss ratios which usually call for a minimum of 20 % fat and that may seem counterintuitive to you, but eating too much fat will actually slow down your weight gain for a couple of important reasons:

 1. It fills you up more hastily so you will boundary up eating too few calories.

 2. It is more arduous for the body to store or use as energy and actually requires more calories to process ( I know, this is the antithesis of concept “they” taught you in the 80s and 90s )

 You need to have adequate protein and carbohydrate intake to block the cutting edge muscle augmentation you are man-sized to achieve. The minimum protein intake for muscle repair is about 1 gram of protein for every pound of your bodyweight, but you will need to check your ratios and be sure to get about 40 % of your impair calories from protein. An easy way to passage your eating habits and season your ratios in function is to use the kit available at a diet site like sparkpeople. com or fitday. com.

 You should course person you eat for 2 to 3 weeks until you ken what the appropriate amount of food and ratios gun like for you can then maintain eating the same way. If you impediment gaining weight or dodge weight, wittily oomph back to tracking your meals until you are back on passage also.

 As for the “how much to eat” part…Remember when I mentioned back in chapter 3 that you are underweight due to a combination of a high metabolism and not eating enough? That is usually the thing the skinny least wants to hear. You probably think you eat a lot, virtuous? Passageway your current food intake for a couple of days and you will likely be surprised to find out you are not eating almost enough.

 You need to be eating 5 or 6 substantial meals per day with the 40 / 50 / 10 ratio in order to gain enough weight. There are powerful of complicated formulas for figuring out okay how many calories you should be eating in order to gain weight, but an easier arrangement is to take your current weight and increase that by 15 and base your caloric intake on that unit. If you aren’t gaining a pound a second you should mount your weight by 16 or 17 until you begin to identify the increase you want.