How To Gain Muscular Body Weight

Here is how to gain weight, and not get fat at the same time. You will gain some fat as well as muscle, unless you're a genetic marvel.

Prepare to step up food intake if you want to gain weight. When adding food, do so gradually, so your body can adapt. Make sure that you add quality food, not rubbish. This is a simple way to work out how much extra food you need;

Imagine your diet right now consists of 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 20% fat. This is just to explain the concept, not me telling you that you need this exact breakdown.

You will need to keep track of your lean body mass, to make sure that youre adding mostly muscle and not fat.

Imagine your lean body mass is 150lb. Allow one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, which would be 150 grams protein - this equals 30% of total calories. You will therefore get 600 calories of protein a day, as one gram of protein equals four calories, i.e. 150 times 4.

You will need to eat 2000 calories a day in our example, as the 600 grams of protein is 30% of total calories.

Half your total calories come from carbs, so that's 1000 a day. One gram of carbohydrate is four calories, which means youll eat 250 grams of carbohydrate daily. That accounts for 1600 of our daily total - the last 400 calories will come from fat. I gram of fat is 9 calories, or 44 grams a day from fat. Watch the amount of saturated fat in your diet - 30 calories a day for men and 20 for women (who always seem to get the worst deal.)

Thats 250 grams carbs, 150 grams protein and 44 grams fat, to equal 2000 calories total. To make it simpler for your body to cope with what may be more food than you're used to, divide the total calories by five or even better six, having smaller meals each day. This will also assist in fat burning, as it will speed your metabolism up.

As you start to gain weight (and you will if you follow this program), every so often you'll need to recalculate your stats, as your food requirements will increase.

That will give enough fuel to your muscles to allow them to grow. Coupled with this eating plan, you need a well thought out bodybuilding routine, to give your muscles a reason to grow.

Major compound exercises will do the best and most efficient job here, such as the squat, dead lift, bench press, overhead press, chin up and dip.

Here is a key tip - do not miss out on lower body training - your lower body has some of the largest muscle groups. The quickest way to gain weight is to build up the largest muscles in your body first.

Because over two thirds of your muscle mass is in your legs and back, make sure you work hard on squats and deadlifts.