The Weight Gain Diet

If you want to put on muscle, adapting a weight gain diet is crucial! Gaining weight isn’t just for athletes and there easy tips you can apply to your after-workout regimens.

Adapting this kind of diet is useful even for people trying to lose weight. The more muscle you have, the more fat your body will burn. So you sort of have to gain weight to lose it.

You have to weight train and eat to gain weight. For hardgainers, this can include some serious eating. But we’ll break it down so you know what to eat, how much and when.

Here's the simplified weight gain diet:

1. Eat 500 calories/day more than your daily energy requirement

Your daily energy requirement =

+ BMR (RMR)

+ Calories you burn during workouts

+ Thermic effect of food

Together, these values equal how many calories you need to sustain yourself throughout the day.

When you've figured out your daily energy requirement, add 500 extra calories per day. That’s 3,500 calories extra per week.

If you don’t want or can’t eat 500 calories more, eat at least 300 calories and you’ll be fine. (500 calories’ll build muscle quicker.)

2. Eat a balanced diet

The rule of thumb is to split your calories like this:

55-60% from carbohydrates,
12-15% from protein and
30% from fat (10% from saturated fats)

When you calculate out your calorie percentages, it’ll determine how many “bad” calories you can eat. Depending on your situation, you might have to eat a lot of “bad” calories to get your calories in.

Try to use the 80/20 rules of thumb…80% healthy foods and 20% not-so-healthy foods. Don’t get rid of food you love because it’s bad, you want to enjoy your food too.

3. Record your progress

What is working for you? What isn't? Record your progress so you can make tweeks. Everyone’s different so there isn’t one “correct” way. Bodies react differently to listen to your body's signals.

Honor your body by listening to it because it’s all you’ve got!