ow can your gain weight diet rocket your physique into the stratosphere? Discover the healthy weight gain foods that fuel your body.
Weight Gain Diet Dangers
"You are what you eat" is more than just a saying. Behind these words lies an undeniable truth that most people fail to grasp.
Yet take a moment to consider how your food provides the raw materials to construct new skin cells, brain cells, muscle tissues, skeletal bone, or even a new heart, and you quickly begin to realize how food is more than "calories" to feed you - it is the rocket fuel that protects, preserves, and builds your body.
This choice of fuel becomes even MORE important when you begin exercising intensely. Without a healthy gain weight diet and the correct healthy weight gain foods on your dinner table, your progress in the gym will be severely compromised, yielding little in the way of results.
With this in mind, if you are underweight (or undernourished), your choice of nutrition becomes imperative. To gain weight healthily and put your progress into orbit, you must begin to consistently feed your body with quality, nutrient-rich foods in the proper proportions.
Photo courtesy of deanoakley
How Can You Gain Weight?
The good news is, a healthy weight gain diet doesn't have to be rocket science. With the correct nutritional guidance, you can soon discover the best ways to gain weight and muscle using the foods that you eat.
Here is why your primary concern when looking to gain weight should be to obtain a well-balanced diet. A well-balanced diet, by definition, is one that satisfies ALL your nutritional needs, including the maintenance of your health and existing muscle mass - and to provide for the production of any future weight and muscle gain you might wish to make.
So what does a well-balanced diet look like?
Well-Balanced Diet
No matter what your daily calorie budget might be, you would do well to target approximately:
- 60% to carbohydrates,
- 20% to protein, and
- 20% to fat.
Why these numbers? These figures are important as they broadly follow government guidelines, thereby providing adequate macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, essential fats) to fuel the body. Since many fad diets fail to deliver the required compliment of macronutrients and micronutrients, you would do well to send them "to infinity...and beyond"!Compare the well-balanced diet with the typical diet of today and you can see there is room for improvement. The modern diet has approximately:
- 28% carbohydrate,
- 20% sugar,
- 12% protein, and
- 40% fat.
Coincidentally, ancient man's diet is closest to the ideal well-balanced diet, proving why our ancestors suffered few of the modern-age ailments we sadly take for granted. How to Gain Weight Healthily
A gain weight diet's role should be to serve the nutritional and calorie needs of the muscle growth mechanism. To do so, you will need to keep your body in a positive calorie balance.
Writing in his book Heavy Duty, Mike Mentzer advocates keeping the body between 300 and 500 calories above maintenance levels and no more. Why? To consume more calories would risk fat gain.
Since it is unlikely the typical trainee will ever gain more than 2-3 pounds of muscle growth per week, this positive calorie balance allows for mass gains while minimizing the risk of fat gain and the health issues this brings.
Stellar Results
To assess your progress, keep a tape measure at hand. If after two months on a positive balance of 300-500 per day you see fat accumulating around your middle and your waist measurement begin to climb, reduce your calories.
Your strength gains in the gym will serve as an adequate example of how much growth has been stimulated, so if you are only increasing a rep or so each workout, consider a more modest positive calorie balance of 200-300 above maintenance levels.
This figure guarantees your weight gain, delivering you stellar results.
Gain Weight Diet to Ways to Gain Weight
Gain Weight Diet to Muscle Building
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