Gain Weight Fast Guide

An effective, healthy weight gain diet isn’t necessarily loaded with protein and carbs and it doesn’t require specific foods or a bunch of supplements. Although both are critical in a healthy weight gain diet, you also need to make sure you’re getting enough of the nutrients you need. You won’t put on muscle if you’re malnourished, no matter how much protein you eat.

There is No One Perfect Diet

I wish I could tell you exactly what to eat every day for a month in order to bulk up, but the reality is every one reacts a little differently to different diets. What works for you buddies might work against you. Some people do great on a high protein diet, others do better eating a lot of carbs. If you try eating a certain way for a month and you’re not getting anywhere, try a different diet.

Plan it Right

Planning your weight gain diet starts by calculating how many calories you burn off on a daily basis and how many calories you’ll need over and above that in order to gain weight. It takes about 3500 calories to gain one pound. That means in order to gain a pound a week, which is more than reasonable, each day you’ll need to get 500 more calories than you burn off.

Balance Your Macronutrients

Macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fats. To be getting a balanced diet you need some of all three, whether you’re trying to gain weight, lose weight or maintain your weight. That’s a simple matter of staying healthy.

Here’s a secret a lot of people miss: you don’t need a huge amount of protein to build muscle. Protein alone won’t build muscle, only high intensity strength training combined with good, balanced nutrition will do that. In a normal diet, you really only need about 15%, so a weight gain diet you can up it to 25%, but not more than 30%. A good balance to start out with is 45% carbs, 30% fat, 35% protein.

If that doesn’t give you the results you want (and you know the problem isn’t your workout routine), adjust the percentage with healthy ranges to find something that works for you.

A healthy weight gain diet is really just a diet composed of a large amount of calorie-dense, nutrient-rich foods. For some, it might be the traditional “meat and potatoes” diet. For others, it might be a vegetarian diet full of whole grain breads and hearty bean soups. The important thing to remember is that you don’t need any exotic foods, weird diet plans, or expensive supplements to build muscle.