How To Gain Weight and Add Lean Muscle

Are you looking for tips on how to gain weight? For many of us that constantly struggle to keep our weight down, the idea of gaining weight may seem quite easy. However, most people that are looking to gain weight are interested in packing of lean mucle while at the same time melting away fat (Not increasing the size of that spare tire). If that were the case, this page would read: "Head over to your favorite fast food buffet and have at it!" The keys things to consider on how to gain weight by adding muscle are ultimately (to no surprise) diet and exercise. This area focuses more on the diet side of the equation and the theory on how to gain weight. The second (and just as important) element to gaining weight or building muscle is discussed here. Also feel free to check out our Free Muscle Building Routine.

There are many theories out there in the areas of weight loss or weight gain science. There is the old standard calories in vs. calories out theory that says if you take in more calories than you burn you will gain weight and vice versa. However, by following this method, you need to eat about 3500 calories above what you are burning to gain a pound. However, we're not interested in gaining weight simply for the purposes of getting bigger. As mentioned above, the trick is to gain muscle without gaining fat.

If you want to understand how to gain weight quickly, it's not as easy as eating as much as you want (unfortunately). For muscle gain without fat loss the recommended ratio is usually 40/50/10 meaning that 40% of your total calorie intake is from protein, 50 percent is from carbohydrates and 10% is from fat. This is noticeably less fat than the weight loss ratios which usually call for a minimum of 20% fat and that may seem counterintuitive to you, but eating too much fat will actually slow down your weight gain for a couple of important reasons:

It is more difficult for the body to store or use fat as energy and actually requires more calories to process

You need to have adequate protein and carbohydrate intake to support the new muscle growth you are trying to achieve. The minimum protein intake for muscle repair is about 1 gram of protein for every pound of your bodyweight, but you will need to check your ratios and be sure to get about 40% of your total calories from protein. There are many online tools available that help in tracking your eating habits and keep your ratios in line like sparkpeople.com or fitday.com.

In order to get started, it's a good idea to track everything you eat for at least 2 to 3 weeks. This will provide you with a benchmark and help you understand what your current ratios are and what adjustments you will have to make in order to get the results that you want. If you stop gaining weight or lose weight, simply go back to logging your meals and make the necessary adjustments until you are back on track again. For those that find it difficult to gain weight, this exercise will highlight why you are having difficulty in gaining weight. You might be surprised to find out that you are not eating nearly enough.

You need to be eating 5 or 6 substantial meals per day with the 40/50/10 ratio in order to gain enough weight. There are plenty of complicated formulas for determining how many calories you should be eating in order to gain weight. However, if you are looking for a simple guideline a quick and easy method is to take your current weight and multiply that by 15 and base your caloric intake on that number. This method is a bit of trial and error, so if you aren’t gaining a pound a week you should multiply your weight by 16 or 17 until you begin to see the increase you want.

While there is a common misconception that muscles grow while lifting weights, the act of strength training forms only a small fraction of the muscle building process. Muscle development actually takes place at night during deep sleep when the body synthesizes new cells with nutrients from our diet. Therefore nutrition forms a very important part of any bodybuilding program. Click here to see some of our sample meal plans & learn how to gain weight and build muscle with the right diet.

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