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For me the challenge is not to lose weight, but to gain weight and develop muscles. I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain

For me the challenge is not to lose weight, but to gain weight and develop muscles. I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain rate is way too slow. I'm guessing I've a high metabolic rate. Is there any actually good guide for gaining weight quickly in a healthy way?

adamfaliq 5y ago
Assuming you have been lifting/ exercise, you just gotta eat more whole grain carbohydates. Rolled or steel cut oats, brown rice, pasta 2-3 times a day and you can exceed your daily calories requirement pretty easily.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I used to be like that. I couldn’t get above 75 kg no matter how much I lifted or ate protein and stuff. This solved itself by getting older. Now I still have trouble putting on muscle but getting fat is quite easy :-). In hindsight I think it’s not a good goal to gain weight if your body doesn’t respond. I would focus on eating right and being strong, flexible and coordinated and let the weight settle wherever it wants.
OminousWeapons 5y ago
Are you assessing and recording your caloric intake and your macros currently? Are you assessing and recording your weight daily on a reliable scale? If not, those are the places to start. Buy some scales (body and food), get the MyFitnessPal app, and start collecting data on what you normally eat and how much you weigh over time. If you are losing weight over time, eat more of what you normally eat until you weight stabilizes. Once your weight has stabilized and you have a baseline, go to iifym.com and develop a weight gain / bulking plan. This will be what you currently eat daily calorie wise + 200-300 calories with prescribed macros. Try to hit your newly prescribed calories and macros each day with a focus on healthy eating (track and record your food intake to monitor this) and keep track of your weight. You should aim for 1-2 lbs per week of weight gain. If you are not achieving that, increase calories by 100-200 per day until you do.
anonporridge 5y ago
You're not eating enough. That's it. Eat more and lift heavy weights. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stronglifts5x5/comments/37bxer/hard_gainer_diet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stronglifts5x5/comments/37bxer/hard... https://www.reddit.com/r/gainit/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/gainit/wiki/index
baash05 5y ago
Careful what you wish for boss. But it comes down to eating more chicken. Lift and Eat. Do not just cram your gut. Plan what you eat.
BFLpL0QNek 5y ago
Go get a resting metabolic rate test. The one I had was cheap and consists of fasting the night before then breathing in to a machine for 15 minutes. It measures the amount of oxygen your body burns in your breast to calculate your resting metabolic rate which then gives you the base number of calories your body burns a day if you did absolutely nothing. They should then give you a recommended reasonably accurate number of calories to eat depending on your goal and lifestyle. This means you can calculate a reasonable surplus without going overboard and just getting fat. Also if progress is slow gaining muscle, remember for the majority of people it’s is a long slow process. A lot of the rapid transformations/strength gains we see have help from synthetic testosterone which is a completely different ball game.
maxlybbert 5y ago
I’m certainly no expert. After reading “The Hacker’s Diet” and having some success counting calories, I started reading more about nutrition; but mostly what was in weight loss books. I stumbled across https://www.hockeytraining.com/nutrition/ https://www.hockeytraining.com/nutrition/ , which has a lot of information I had never seen since it’s more focused on exercise. It may not be what you’re looking for since hockey players aren’t trying to bulk up. But perhaps it can give you a good introduction to the basics.
gillesjacobs 5y ago
Eat more and lift weights. Starting Strength by Rippetoe has many comments on weight gain and strength training for people in your predicament.
ungamed 5y ago
Its very unlikely you have a high metabolic rate, this has almost no factor in muscle building. You need enough workload, calories, protein and rest to gain muscle, its really that simple. The amount of horseshit around the diet is unbelievable. Its not fun, its not catchy, do the work and results will happen.
pizza234 5y ago
You're very likely what's called "hardgainer" in the fitness field. Just search for it, you'll find lots of information. However, starting with the idea of doing things "quickly" is the worst possible approach. In the fitness, quick improvements are also lost very quickly; plus, staying fit requires permanent, lifelong changes, and in this perspective, quick or slow don't matter.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Please don’t look up “hardgainer”… it’s full of a bunch of ad-speak designed to prey upon your insecurities in the hopes that they can take your money. Some people are skinnier. If you are one of these people it is a very lucky thing, as you are much less likely to experience health issues due to your weight over the course of your life. Gaining weight is harder for you, but i think you know that already? So you can skip the bizarre indoctrination of a relatively useless word like hardgainer. Anyone who insists otherwise is either drinking the cool-aid themselves or trying to take your money. And at the end of the day what’s the point? All the fundamentals are relatively the same. If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food? How much is literally as personal as something gets. So start with counting what you eat, be empirical about it, and slowly raise/lower accordingly. This is the same advice as anyone, regardless of what category of marketing speak and I securities they have.
  - pizza234 5y ago
    "Hardgainer" is simply the term for a person that struggles to put mass ("hard" "gainer") using generic programs; it's not associated to a specific methodology. For this reason, by looking the term up, one will find different approaches, and try a few, to see what works. > If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food? This is imprecise/wrong for several reasons, the first being that the parent assumes already a correct diet: > I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain rate is way too slow Now: > All the fundamentals are relatively the same Even assuming that fundamentals are "relatively the same", each body responds differently, and there are lots of ways to structure a plan, even if the same exercises are performed. It's ultimately a matter of finding what works effectively for a given body. I actually write as somebody who does only fundamentals (as in "multi-joint exercises" for the main muscle groups) with a nonconventional schedule.

adamfaliq 5y ago

Assuming you have been lifting/ exercise, you just gotta eat more whole grain carbohydates. Rolled or steel cut oats, brown rice, pasta 2-3 times a day and you can exceed your daily calories requirement pretty easily.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I used to be like that. I couldn’t get above 75 kg no matter how much I lifted or ate protein and stuff. This solved itself by getting older. Now I still have trouble putting on muscle but getting fat is quite easy :-). In hindsight I think it’s not a good goal to gain weight if your body doesn’t respond. I would focus on eating right and being strong, flexible and coordinated and let the weight settle wherever it wants.

OminousWeapons 5y ago

Are you assessing and recording your caloric intake and your macros currently? Are you assessing and recording your weight daily on a reliable scale? If not, those are the places to start. Buy some scales (body and food), get the MyFitnessPal app, and start collecting data on what you normally eat and how much you weigh over time. If you are losing weight over time, eat more of what you normally eat until you weight stabilizes. Once your weight has stabilized and you have a baseline, go to iifym.com and develop a weight gain / bulking plan. This will be what you currently eat daily calorie wise + 200-300 calories with prescribed macros. Try to hit your newly prescribed calories and macros each day with a focus on healthy eating (track and record your food intake to monitor this) and keep track of your weight. You should aim for 1-2 lbs per week of weight gain. If you are not achieving that, increase calories by 100-200 per day until you do.

anonporridge 5y ago

You're not eating enough. That's it. Eat more and lift heavy weights. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stronglifts5x5/comments/37bxer/hard_gainer_diet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stronglifts5x5/comments/37bxer/hard... https://www.reddit.com/r/gainit/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/gainit/wiki/index

baash05 5y ago

Careful what you wish for boss. But it comes down to eating more chicken. Lift and Eat. Do not just cram your gut. Plan what you eat.

BFLpL0QNek 5y ago

Go get a resting metabolic rate test. The one I had was cheap and consists of fasting the night before then breathing in to a machine for 15 minutes. It measures the amount of oxygen your body burns in your breast to calculate your resting metabolic rate which then gives you the base number of calories your body burns a day if you did absolutely nothing. They should then give you a recommended reasonably accurate number of calories to eat depending on your goal and lifestyle. This means you can calculate a reasonable surplus without going overboard and just getting fat. Also if progress is slow gaining muscle, remember for the majority of people it’s is a long slow process. A lot of the rapid transformations/strength gains we see have help from synthetic testosterone which is a completely different ball game.

maxlybbert 5y ago

I’m certainly no expert. After reading “The Hacker’s Diet” and having some success counting calories, I started reading more about nutrition; but mostly what was in weight loss books. I stumbled across https://www.hockeytraining.com/nutrition/ https://www.hockeytraining.com/nutrition/ , which has a lot of information I had never seen since it’s more focused on exercise. It may not be what you’re looking for since hockey players aren’t trying to bulk up. But perhaps it can give you a good introduction to the basics.

gillesjacobs 5y ago

Eat more and lift weights. Starting Strength by Rippetoe has many comments on weight gain and strength training for people in your predicament.

ungamed 5y ago

Its very unlikely you have a high metabolic rate, this has almost no factor in muscle building. You need enough workload, calories, protein and rest to gain muscle, its really that simple. The amount of horseshit around the diet is unbelievable. Its not fun, its not catchy, do the work and results will happen.

pizza234 5y ago

You're very likely what's called "hardgainer" in the fitness field. Just search for it, you'll find lots of information. However, starting with the idea of doing things "quickly" is the worst possible approach. In the fitness, quick improvements are also lost very quickly; plus, staying fit requires permanent, lifelong changes, and in this perspective, quick or slow don't matter.

asimpletune 5y ago
Please don’t look up “hardgainer”… it’s full of a bunch of ad-speak designed to prey upon your insecurities in the hopes that they can take your money. Some people are skinnier. If you are one of these people it is a very lucky thing, as you are much less likely to experience health issues due to your weight over the course of your life. Gaining weight is harder for you, but i think you know that already? So you can skip the bizarre indoctrination of a relatively useless word like hardgainer. Anyone who insists otherwise is either drinking the cool-aid themselves or trying to take your money. And at the end of the day what’s the point? All the fundamentals are relatively the same. If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food? How much is literally as personal as something gets. So start with counting what you eat, be empirical about it, and slowly raise/lower accordingly. This is the same advice as anyone, regardless of what category of marketing speak and I securities they have.
- pizza234 5y ago
  "Hardgainer" is simply the term for a person that struggles to put mass ("hard" "gainer") using generic programs; it's not associated to a specific methodology. For this reason, by looking the term up, one will find different approaches, and try a few, to see what works. > If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food? This is imprecise/wrong for several reasons, the first being that the parent assumes already a correct diet: > I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain rate is way too slow Now: > All the fundamentals are relatively the same Even assuming that fundamentals are "relatively the same", each body responds differently, and there are lots of ways to structure a plan, even if the same exercises are performed. It's ultimately a matter of finding what works effectively for a given body. I actually write as somebody who does only fundamentals (as in "multi-joint exercises" for the main muscle groups) with a nonconventional schedule.