Article Surfing Archive

One major reason that people do not gain muscle mass in because of an insufficient diet. Weight training only provides a stimulus for your muscles to start growing. It is when you go home and recover after the exercise that you start to add on muscle.

For your muscles to grow you need to eat plenty of the correct types of food. Your diet provides the raw materials for your muscles to grow and if it is lacking then your muscles will stay the same size and you will see no results for your efforts in the gym.

The key to weight gain is to consume more calories than your body uses. The excess will be stored as extra weight on your body. This will either be muscle or fat but the key is to consume extra calories.To build muscle you must consume extra calories with sufficient levels of protein, if you eat just extra calories but with no protein to build muscle you will just get fat so we need to look at protein intake and calorie intake combined.

There is debate about how much protein you should consume. The amount most people agree on would be about 1.5grams per kilo of bodyweight. So if I was 80kg I would need about 120grams a day if I was 100kg I would need 150 grams per day. You then divide this by the number of meals you eat in a day to get the amount you should be eating in each meal. If I need 150grams of protein a day and eat six times a day I will need to have 25 grams of protein in each meal.

The protein consumption needs to be spread out evenly over the day. The body cannot store protein so if you eat more than the body can process in one go then it will get burned as energy or broken down and pass through the body. Eating it in smaller amounts throughout the day gives your body protein evenly leading to better muscle gain. Most sources say that the body can process and utilize around 30grams of protein per meal so going higher than this in one meal doesn't really have any benefit.

The best sources of protein in the diet are meats and dairy products. Meat on average uncooked is 20% protein so cooking 100grams of meat will yield about twenty grams of protein. An egg is about 7grams of protein. Milk ranges from about 6 grams per 200mil to 11grams per 200mls. The types of milk with the highest protein levels are the high calcium milks. In general meats provide the best sources of protein but it is good to get a variety of protein sources to stop your diet from getting monotonous the key is to eat an appropriate amount in every meal.

The next thing to look at is how often during the day are you eating. Some people eat lots in one or two meals but then eat nothing else during the day. People should be eating about 5 to 6 meals per day. This means that the body gets energy throughout the day making it less likely to store it as fat plus also you can keep building muscle through the day. The most important reason I feel however is that your stomach can hold only so much food in one go. A huge plate of pasta or rice at most could be around 1000kcals and if that make you full for the whole afternoon then in total you wont have eaten as much for the whole day as if you had smaller meals. The body can digest a lot more food if it is spread out in slightly smaller meals.

When eating through the day it is best to have your meals regularly spaced and about the same time each day, if possible. This gets you body into a pattern and makes it easier to eat your meals. If your meal times vary you my end up having two meals close together and not be able to finish the second one. If you are eating to gain weight you will most likely not feel hungry when you are eating and may go for days without feeling hungry. The thing though is that you may not be hungry but you will still be able to eat if you stick to a schedule. If you time your meals wrong you may feel stuffed and not be able to even chew and swallow your food. This may seem like a lot of eating but it only takes me 10-15 minutes to eat at each meal so I can easily fit it into my workday.

Pieces of equipment you need

Diary
One thing you will need is a diary to track what you are eating. The first thing you need to do is track your food requirements for a week. At the start measure your bodyweight at the beginning of the week. Then record everything you eat for a week, record when you ate and what you ate but most important the number of calories per meal. To figure this out you will have to start looking at packaging that comes with the food or making estimates based on nutritional guides you can find on the net but you have to record everything that you eat. Also record the caloric content of anything you drink as you may be consuming a lot of calories in drinks etc. Recording this will give you your calorie intake for the week and then divide this weekly total by seven to see what you consumed on average per day. Then measure your weight at the end of the week at the same day of the day as when you measured at the start to see if it has changed.

Most likely if this is how you normally eat your weight will not have changed and we will have figured out what you need to eat each day to maintain your weight. Most people need to eat between 2000-3000kcal per day to maintain their weight depending on age and size. To gain weight you will need to start eating more than this amount. To gain one kilo of weight you have to eat in excess about 7,000kcals of food. So if you wanted to gain one kilo in a week you have to eat an extra 1000kcals per day. This is about the same as adding 250grams of uncooked pasta or rice to your diet per day. But if you spread that over a day that is only and extra 170kcals per meal if you eat six times a day which is quite feasible.

Digital Scales
Now this is a very important piece of equipment. You need to have a set of these so you can measure the amount of food you are eating in each meal. Judging by eye is not a very accurate method and scales ensure that you are eating consistently over the day and not overeating in one meal or under eating. You will be weighing out your carbohydrates and your protein. When preparing meals you will have a protein source (Normally some type of meat but also dairy products or eggs) you will weigh out the protein source so you have the required amount per meal (20-30grams depending on body weight) So if I was making a meal with chicken I would measure out about 150 grams of chicken as this will give me about 30grams of protein. Then I weigh out my carbohydrate source (Potatoes rice pasta etc.) If was wanting about 500kcals from carbohydrate I usually weigh out about 125 grams of rice or pasta (uncooked). You will have to start looking on the packaging to see the energy value of the food then from there you can then figure out how much you need to eat and then weigh that out

Digital scales are pretty cheap. I bought mine from the Warehouse for about thirty five dollars. I use them to weigh my meat, pasta and rice, protein powder and other supplements since they work down to the gram. This helps make sure my meals are all the right size and have enough protein.

Bathroom Scales
Another important thing to have when trying to gain weight is some scales to measure your bodyweight. If you cannot keep track of how your weight is going it will be hard to know if you are eating enough or too little. I weigh myself in the morning and the evening and record what my weight is. This helps me to see any patterns. Another trick is to weigh yourself when you get home from work so you know how much you have to eat to be on target for your weight gain for that day or whether you don't have to eat as much this evening since you are already at what you should be. Your weight will fluctuate by one or two kilos between evening and morning so only use one of the measurements as a guide for your overall weight gain. Tracking how much you are eating and seeing how this relates to your weight gain gives you a guide as to how much you need to be eating to gain weight

Should I be using supplements?
When you are starting the most important thing is to have the diet correct make sure you are getting enough sleep each day (about eight hours a day) and weight training properly. If you are not doing that supplements will not be much help. Protein supplements can useful if you have trouble eating solid meals six times a day or are unable to prepare a meal or are on the go. You can get weight gain shakes and protein shakes which have the same calories and protein as a normal meal but they only take a minute or two to prepare and drink. If you are sometimes in a rush or not very hungry they can be quite good to have. They are also good to take straight after weight training as you may not feel like solid food but your body needs protein to help start the recovery process

Other Notes
One thing to watch out for when you are eating is that you will have figured out what you need to eat to maintain you weight and then you start to add extra calories but your weight gain is lower than what you thought it would be. I have had this occur myself and it appears to be that the body is trying to burn up the extra calories. For me this results in my body temperature going up, when I start eating more to gain weight my wife quickly notices that my skin becomes a lot warmer to the touch and this is the body trying to use the extra calories. However the body can only burn so many calories this way and then it will have to start storing it as extra body weight.

Useful Numbers
Most people eat the same types of food on a regular basis so here are a few numbers to help you start to calculate the number of calories you need to eat to gain weight. For more nutritional information search on google for "nutritional calculators"

Carbohydrate Sources
Bread (per slice) = 81kcal per slice
Pasta (Uncooked) = 361kcal per 100grams
Rice (Uncooked) = 357kcal per 100grams
Potatoes (Uncooked) = 83kcal per 100grams
Kumara (Uncooked) = 80kcals per 100grams

Protein Sources
Rump Steak (Uncooked) = 234lcal and 19.8grams of protein per 100grams
Chicken Breast (Uncooked) = 122kcal and 22.3grams of protein per 100grams
Eggs (No 7) = 76kcal and 6.9grams of protein per egg.
Milk (Calci-Trim) = 92kcal and 11.4grams of protein per 200mls

Conclusion
Hopefully this advice will help you get on track to making gains outside of the gym. Remember that diet and weight training are equally important and some people even say that weight training is slightly less important since you spend more time eating that weight training. However if you stick to a routine with your eating and make sure you are eating enough then you will start to make gains. Remember this process will take weeks and months but if you track your progress this will give you motivation to keep on going.