Achieving a sculpted torso and rounded muscles takes a lot of work and desire. With a skillful approach, it is possible to achieve noticeable results in a few months. The main thing is to understand that in addition to strength exercises, sweating in the gym, and incredible loads, there is another important component on which half the success depends - proper nutrition for gaining muscle mass for men.
Understanding the processes occurring in the body, knowledge of the influence of food on the formation of a figure helps to increase muscles steadily, evenly, without stretch marks.
Please note that proper nutrition for gaining muscle mass differs from the generally accepted diet for a healthy lifestyle, and it is not similar to a diet for weight loss. Let’s look at what food should be for bodybuilders in more detail later.
Examination by a doctor
Visit your doctor and undergo the prescribed examination. Excessive thinness (especially sudden weight loss) with a balanced diet and regular physical activity should raise alarm: something has gone wrong in the body. Reasons for weight loss include:
- endocrine system problems
- tumor development
- allergic reactions
- diseases of the gastrointestinal tract
- parasites, etc.
Timely detected and treated pathologies help restore metabolism and gain normal body weight. Consult a nutritionist to help you create a balanced diet. Perhaps a specialist will prescribe a course of vitamins and, if indicated for you, steroids.
If you are underweight, you should consult your doctor.
Is it necessary to keep stress under control?
The nervous system consumes a large amount of energy. Because of this, the higher the load on the nervous system, the more a person becomes overtired and worried. This often leads to rapid burning of the calories we get from food. If you thought this was great and this is the way out of the situation (you get nervous and lose weight), then no. Stress interferes with both gaining weight and maintaining results. To feel calmer and less stressed, you can:
- control sleep duration. It should be at least 7–8 hours so that the body has time to recover and rest;
- take breaks from work. This is especially true for those who have intellectual work. Take breaks regularly for 10–15 minutes. At this time, you can drink water, walk around the office, ventilate the office, and so on. Changing activities and breaks will help prevent nervous fatigue.
Gaining muscle mass is really not that easy, but it is possible, don’t you agree? Take an integrated approach. It will help you achieve the desired result faster, maintaining motivation, good mood, good spirits and health.
For those who want to get better: useful tips
- Simply increasing the size of portions and increasing the amount of carbohydrates consumed is the main mistake of those who want to gain weight quickly. Such a diet will lead to problems with the gastrointestinal tract and can even cause aversion to food, fraught with anorexia. Increase your caloric intake slowly, by 200 calories per day. The basic principle of a weight loss diet is to eat more calories than you burn.
- Establish split meals - at least five to six meals a day every 3-4 hours. It is important to approach the new regime smoothly: you are used to eating 3 times a day - first introduce the fourth snack, then accustom yourself to the fifth, sixth. You must be comfortable, otherwise your body will experience stress.
- Half an hour before meals, drink a glass of vegetable or fruit juice, but try not to drink during the meal itself. Drink drinks between main snacks to provide extra calories.
- Juices stimulate appetite, which is very important when gaining weight. Non-alcoholic beer is also shown in reasonable quantities. It stimulates the production of gastric juice and bile, helping the gastrointestinal tract, therefore it is indicated for low acidity.
- Forget about fast food, canned food, fried foods, refined foods, lard - such food, and even in large quantities, will lead to obesity and digestive problems. You need to get your weight back to normal, not become fat.
- Breakfast should not be a quick snack, but a complete meal. Scientists have proven that optimal saturation of the body with carbohydrates and proteins occurs precisely thanks to the first, morning meal.
- Be sure to restore your sleep patterns and regulate your psychological state. This is especially important if you are pregnant, because weight loss will affect not only the mother, but also the baby. The support of parents, friends, and a loved one during a period of weight gain cannot be overestimated. In severe cases, such as anorexia nervosa, modern psychotherapy can help.
Protein is the main building material during weight gain.
Meal time
For athletes, an exercise program and regularity of exercise are important, but without a balanced diet this will only be part of success. To get a guaranteed result, you need, in addition to understanding what to eat, to consider when to do it.
Before training
Two hours before going to the gym you need to eat a hearty meal. The table should contain mainly complex carbohydrates. They charge perfectly, and there is enough energy for a full workout without concessions.
Feel free to include in the menu:
- pasta;
- porridge;
- vegetables;
- fruits.
Half an hour before, if you feel the need, you can drink an energy drink, which is based on a mixture of proteins and carbohydrates.
After training
You shouldn’t starve after exercise, but it’s also not right to pounce on food after leaving the gym. Give the body 40 minutes to recover and continue the tissue formation processes that have begun.
You can eat a couple of bananas or drink a gainer. You can prepare it yourself at home. To do this take:
- 200 g low-fat cottage cheese;
- 150 ml milk;
- 2 tablespoons oatmeal (fine);
- 1 PC. banana.
Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth. Drink the finished protein-carbohydrate cocktail immediately, without allowing the structure to change during storage.
And a little later there should be a full lunch or dinner, in which proteins and slow carbohydrates will prevail.
Very thin (typical ectomorphs) beginning athletes should always remember about the carbohydrate window and use its properties by loading up on carbohydrates immediately after exercise. But it should not be fast food or fried potatoes, but natural vegetables, fruits, and cereals.
But endomorphs need to limit the amount of carbohydrates they eat, especially in the evening.
Before bedtime
A very important moment for bodybuilders is the last meal. Firstly, the feeling of satiety is important, and secondly, you need to start metabolic processes that will continue to work during sleep. This is facilitated by drinks enriched with ingredients that stimulate tissue growth. They are drunk at night.
Weight Gain Products
Squirrels
To gain weight, your body needs the main building material - protein. Remember how breastfeeding babies recover quickly? They absorb a volume of milk equal to 1/5 of their body weight per day.
A young body needs more calories to develop. Girls under 25 years old need about 2000 cal per day with a sedentary lifestyle, about 2400 with an active lifestyle. When gaining weight - at least 3000.
It is no coincidence that one of the ways to gain weight for a girl with acute weight loss is to regularly consume 3 glasses of infant formula. Or a more familiar drink - full-fat milk (cow's, goat's, and if you can get it - high-calorie and nutritious buffalo milk).
Your diet must include:
- dairy products: country or store-bought sour cream 25% fat, butter, cottage cheese, kefir
- chicken and quail eggs, and nutritionists allow the consumption of two to eight eggs per day when building muscle mass
- seafood and fatty fish, which must be included in the diet at least twice a week, as an option, fish oil
- first courses of beans: peas, beans, lentils
- meat: chicken, pork, veal, turkey
Carbohydrates
A variety of porridges cooked in milk and butter will help you gain weight without harming your health. A good option is rice, which will help saturate the body with carbohydrates. To increase the calorie content of the dish, you can cook the cereal in broth.
Feel free to introduce pasta and white bread into your diet. Many plump women may be jealous, because delicious baked goods will not harm you. However, don't overdo it! The amount of carbohydrates introduced into the diet for weight gain should not exceed 55% of all food eaten daily.
Chocolate
From time to time you can treat yourself to high-quality dark chocolate based on natural cocoa butter. It is better to avoid sweets with trans fats.
Vegetables
When preparing dishes, add more vegetables, stew them, boil them, bake them, and eat them in salads. It is recommended to actively introduce into the menu not only potatoes rich in starch, but also melons, cabbage, beets, and carrots. In vegetable salads, add sour cream or olive oil, which contains a lot of vitamin E - a stimulator of good metabolism.
Beverages
Between snacks, drink sweet tea and fruit drinks. Juices with pulp are recommended. Be sure to drink non-carbonated clean water - about 2-2.5 liters per day for normal metabolism.
Fruits and nuts
Eat persimmons, melons, apricots, bananas, dates, rich in vitamins and fiber for normal digestion. Dried fruits are a real storehouse of complex carbohydrates - an excellent snack option. Combine dates, dried apricots, and raisins with nuts and seeds, which are rich in essential acids - an important element in protein synthesis.
Sample menu for weight gain
Breakfast
Option 1. Sweet coffee with cream, a bun and toast with jam.
Option 2. Hercules with honey, with nuts and pieces of fruit.
Option 3. Rice milk porridge with butter, fruit.
Lunch
Option 1. Pie with meat or vegetables.
Option 2. Pasta with meatballs.
Option 3. Omelet with cheese, tomatoes.
Dinner
Option 1. Fish soup, macaroni and cheese, white bread.
Option 2. Soup with pasta and meatballs from beef and pork, with sour cream. Vegetable salad, white bread.
Option 3. Borscht with sour cream, mashed potatoes with fried fish.
Afternoon snack
Option 1: Popsicles, sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Fruit yogurt, banana.
Option 2. Sandwich with ham and greens.
Option 3. Milk with oatmeal cookies, gingerbread.
Dinner
Option 1. Meat baked in the oven, with vegetable salad, bread. Fruit dessert with honey.
Option 2. Fish with rice, bread, fruit.
Option 3. Buckwheat with milk, dried fruits, bread and butter.
Second dinner
Option 1. A glass of full-fat milk.
Option 2. A glass of fermented baked milk or kefir.
Option 3. Yogurt.
It is important to combine a weight gain diet with exercise.
What could be the problem?
There can be quite a lot of problems, and no one will understand it better than you. Face the truth and admit to yourself what is the reason that you still cannot fight back the girl from the next door who takes your ice cream:
- I am a sparrow man and one piece of bread lasts me for 3 weeks;
- I love cookies and sweets, and I skewered your porridge with meat;
- that I, in the army, or something, in order to comply with the regime, if I want, I won’t eat all day, if I want, I’ll empty the refrigerator at 2 o’clock in the morning.
You eat very little
The first problem is that you don't work as hard in the kitchen as you do in the gym.
Your energy costs are higher than your energy consumption. And this is the biggest mistake for guys with a thin physique.
If you exercise regularly and correctly, and you don’t gain weight, then you should eat more .
You're not eating what you need
You need to eat a lot, of course, but this does not mean that you should have a personalized table at the nearest McDonald's. This will only lead to the appearance of a third chin , which will gracefully flutter in the wind, and at night hug and warm better than any girl.
Of course, the muscles will also grow, but they will be hidden so deep that Indiana Jones himself will not be able to find them.
Over time, you will join the ranks of the army of chubby guys shaking the Internet with the question of how to transform fat into muscles . But keep in mind that this ancient magic is not available to everyone, so eating all sorts of nasty things is not the best option.
A diet that won't let you gain weight
Very often I meet people who have tea for breakfast, at lunch they simply look towards cutlets, and in the evening they eat everything that was prepared in case of nuclear war and accumulated in the cellar for decades.
This option will not lead to anything good either. Even if all energy costs for the day are covered in one go. All elements obtained from food simply will not be absorbed and will go to feed the alligators that live in the sewer, if you know what I mean.
In addition, it wildly slows down your metabolism and reduces your chances of somehow becoming Hercules to nothing.
Sport
A nutritious, balanced diet will definitely help you gain weight quickly, unless the doctor has found that you have serious health problems that are slowing down your metabolism. However, without physical activity, you may not gain as much as you would like, namely, gain weight in the hips and abdomen.
To gain weight quickly, you can consume a homemade protein shake. Mix a glass of cottage cheese and cream, a couple of tablespoons of honey. You can add any jam or syrup.
Your task is to build not fat, but muscle mass, without getting skin problems, and to be in good shape. Regular sports, namely strength training, exercises for the chest, upper and lower extremities will help. Consult with an experienced trainer or choose a suitable course on the Internet.
How to get in shape without pharmacology
How to start running from scratch
Meanwhile, there is an opinion that the training process is not a quick process. Results visible in the mirror can be achieved after years of training! Experiments with diets give a short-term effect and the extra pounds return very quickly and sometimes with a reserve... The exception is the use of prohibited pharmacology.
As often happens, the truth in such an opinion is relative and refers to cases of the wrong approach to the matter. You can lose weight and get in shape quickly, and maintain and improve the results obtained. The only limiting point: if the situation is advanced , then the process may indeed drag on, but in this case the intermediate results will be more obvious and motivating.
We tell and show the transformation of the body in a fitness experiment right on KABAKIN.SITE
