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How to gain weight?
 Exercise
and balanced diet is the key to
transform your body, but at times Working out is just not enough. Traditionally,
bodies seem to fall in one of three categories: Ectomorphic, Mesomorphic, &
Endomorphic. Most women have bodies as a mishmash of all three categories with
up to 300 variations.
If you’re naturally thin, it may require some effort to bulk up or add curves.
Your first plan of attack is your workouts. Concentrate on
muscle-strengthening over
fat-burning. If you’re
cardio workout lasts for an
hour, five days a week, for example, you might be burning more calories than you
can consume in your diet. Unless you’re training for a marathon, it makes sense
to cut back on your cardio. You can still maintain health benefits by doing
shorter or less frequent workouts.
 Next,
add up the strength component
of your routine. If you’re lifting light weights, go
heavier so that your muscles are stimulated to add more mass. If you’re not
lifting weights at all, do. You don't have to kill yourself, but you must
subject your body to out-of-the-ordinary stress each workout to grow muscle and
to gain weight. Start with general exercises such as
Squats (EX#S1),
Lunges (EX#S2) and upper body
moves like Biceps curls
(EX#S25), Bench press
(EX#S29), Push-ups
(EX#S35) and Shoulder Press
(EX#S17) presses using 5-15 pound dumbbells. Do one to three sets of 6-10
repetitions of each exercise.
Keep
in mind that the first 12 weeks of strength training won’t make your muscles
bigger or curvier. You’ll increase your strength, but it’s mainly from the
muscles learning to contract more efficiently. After this initial three month
period, provided that you are continuing to vary your exercises and increasing
the amount of resistance, your muscles will increase their
protein content, giving more
shape to your body parts.
There's a tendency for a thinner person to look extremely ‘defined’ or ‘cut’
from even a little bit of muscle training. This is because without much
body fat to soften the curves, every sinew of your
muscles will show through. You may also look ‘veiny’ for this reason. The
solution? Increase your body fat a little to
fill in the gaps.
When it comes to your diet, it can
sometimes be difficult to force yourself to eat more. But nutritionists
recommend trying to eat an extra 300-500 calories a day. You can do this by
adding a little bit more food to each of your regular meals, or snacking more
often. Eat higher calorie foods
and add more complex
carbohydrates to your diet such as grains and beans, especially if you're
exercising more.
To sum up, here's some basic information and things you should be doing to
help you bulk up and gain weight:
-
 To
gain weight you must eat more calories than your body burns off, so EAT
MORE! The most important thing that I cannot over stress is that you
need to eat to gain weight. You need to eat like you've never eaten before.
(but not junk food like donuts and chips or candy). In other words, you need
a weight gain diet.
-
Start eating six meals per day (space them out to about once
every three hours). This is a weight gain diet used by those who know what
they're doing.
-
Increase your protein intake and reduce your simple carbohydrate
intake. Without protein your body cannot build new muscle.
-
Keep your workouts under one hour. Short and intense!
-
 Concentrate
on free weight exercises that work the large muscle groups. The best
weight training exercises for building mass are the simple ones. For mass,
stick with compound free weight exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench
presses, barbell rows, pull ups and bar dips.
-
Use heavy weights and low reps, rest 3 minutes between each set.
-
Do only 2-3 exercises per body part.
-
Split your workout. Since you have a very high metabolism like
me, you need to train with more intensity, but less frequently.
Day 1: Chest, shoulders and triceps
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Back, and Bicep
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Legs and abs
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
-
 Increase
you water intake. A good formula for this is to multiply your bodyweight
by.66 to get the required number of ounces per day.
-
Use nutritional supplements. If you can't afford too many
products, just stick with the basics; like whey protein. If you can't afford
whey protein the next best thing is egg whites.
Getting curvy is not as simple as sticking to a weight-lifting program,
though, because the taller and longer-limbed you are, the harder it is for a
muscle to show it’s shape. This is because the muscle is stretched over a longer
limb. So for any bulk to show, it’s going to have to be bigger than it would
over a shorter limb. To gain weight and bulk up, you have to be willing to do
whatever it takes, and work as hard as necessary and you have to be consistent.
Your body will responds to consistency.
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