Tips on how to gain weight and build muscle
Despite the fact that a large number of adult men and women struggle to lose weight, there are many who struggle to find the best strategy for gaining body weight and building muscle. If you intend to gain weight and build solid muscle, you may need to eat a few extra calories every day. You’ll need to exercise to build muscle mass, but you’ll also need to make sure you’re not exercising and training too much because you’ll be losing body weight instead of gaining it. Eating extra calories every day also doesn’t mean you should eat junk food. If you want to know how to gain weight and muscle, consider eating protein-rich foods and focusing on weight training.
There are some general rules and tips on how to gain a healthy weight and build strong muscles.
Eat extra calories seven days a week
The number of extra calories you’ll need to eat to gain weight depends on how easily you metabolize food and how much you plan to exercise. There are quite simple steps to solve it. For this, you need to use a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) calculator. You can find one anywhere on the internet. But if you love math, this is what the formula looks like and you can figure it out on your own.
In case you don’t use kilograms (kg) and centimeters (cm), then 1 kg = 2.2 lbs. and 1 inch = 2.54 cm.
For adult men, the formula is: BMR = 66 (13.7 X weight in kg) (5 X height in cm) – (6.8 X age in years) and for women it is BMR = 655 (9.6 X weight in kg) (1.8 X height in cm) – (4.7 X age in years).
So, for example, I’m a 32-year-old male, I’m 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm) tall, and I weigh 211 pounds (96 kg). My BMR is 2579 calories per day.
If you know your BMR, you can calculate your daily energy expenditure by multiplying your BMR by your activity multiplier. If you have an office job and don’t exercise, multiply that by 1.2. If you exercise 1-3 days per week, multiply by 1.375, and if 3-5 times per week, then by 1.55. If you’re very active then 1.725, and if you run a marathon or do some extreme exercise then it’s 1.9 for you.
Now, in my case, I would multiply my BMR (2579) by 1.55 because I go to the gym 3-4 times a week, and this comes out to 3996. What does this mean? It is very simple; I have to get almost 4000 calories a day to maintain my body weight. If I wanted to lose weight, I would need much less, and on the other hand, if I wanted to gain weight, my daily calorie intake would have to increase.
But as I mentioned before, you can find the calculator on the net. You don’t have to calculate it yourself because this alone would burn a few hundred calories.
eat much more often
Eat up to 5 or 6 meals every day to make sure you eat enough and have constant energy. It can be hard to get most of the calories you need from just one meal a day. And even if you do, be prepared to be pushed into the sea by Greenpeace as they will mistake you for a whale. Splitting up your meals will allow you to add extra calories to your daily intake without feeling uncomfortable about being full and fat.
Eat the perfect foods to build muscle. Foods high in carbohydrates and unhealthy fats, such as desserts, chips, or French fries, will help you gain weight, but they won’t increase your muscle mass. Stick with protein-rich foods, such as lean chicken, fish, beans, and nuts. Nuts and certain fish, such as salmon, will give you protein and healthy fats. And if you can’t get that or don’t have the time, you can always have a high protein energy bar. That’s a much better option than a Snickers.
exercise!
Sorry to disappoint you, but it is extremely difficult to build muscle mass if you don’t exercise. And if you already exercise, then remember that you will gain weight and muscle mass faster if you lift heavier weights fewer times than if you lift lighter weights more times. Try to exercise your entire body to build muscle mass. For this the best exercises are leg squats and dead weights. Try to do that as much as possible. If you like to run or do a lot of cardio, STOP! Have you ever seen a marathon runner with large muscle groups? Probably not, and there’s a reason for that. Cardio burns a lot of calories, and that’s the exact opposite of what you need.
Rest
Get plenty of sleep because your body needs recovery time for muscles to grow. Try to get around 7 hours of sleep each night. Exercise about 4 times a week to gain muscle mass without hurting yourself. It is very inconvenient when you can’t exercise because you have hurt yourself by overexerting yourself.
Keep smiling!
Try to stay stress-free as much as you can to gain a healthy weight. Stress causes your body to release a hormone, cortisol, which can lead to fat storage. So keep smiling!
There is also a very important issue that I must address. All of these helpful tips work in a broad sense, but to achieve best results, you need to shape your training regimen and your eating and sleeping routine around your somatotype, which is simply a person’s body type. There are three types: an ectomorph (tall, lean body), an endomorph (rounded body shape), and a mesomorph (muscular, stocky physique of average height). Each body type has specific characteristics, and what works for one may not work for the other two. So if you’ve been having trouble gaining weight, this could be why.
When you start a new exercise program, you will often experience extreme muscle soreness, called SUN (Delayed onset muscle soreness). This pain is perfectly normal and should not prevent you from continuing with your weight training program. It goes away in a couple of days. And if you get DOMS, it means that you trained hard and you should really be proud of yourself.