Beebleblog

It may seem strange too see the word diet and weight gain in the same sentence, but it does help prove a point that when the word ‘diet’ is mentioned it doesn’t have to mean starving yourself it just refers to which foods you eat.

Weight gain is almost as much in demand as weight loss and the big businesses aren’t slow to pick up this fact with dietary supplements for “Mass Weight Gain” and other similar products. However, as with the need to lose weight there are no short cuts; it is the same for weight gain. You can’t just take a supplement and hope for change, you have to reassess your whole diet to help maximise growth, just as people who want to lose weight need to. It should also be noted that weight gain should not be seen as simply putting on body fat, but as maximising muscle mass.

Now some women will read this knowing that they want to put on weight but don’t on the other hand want to get huge muscles, they would probably rather be more curvy. Well this post will still apply to you as the dietary intake will help you reach your desired size and as for muscle growth, that also depends both on the type of training you do and on hormones, as women don’t have enough testosterone to get too much muscle. In this post I will cover the main points to weight gain and what you need to do to achieve your goals. One thing is for sure though and that is that it will be a lot of hard work.

Protein

Ahhh… the magic word and it is the one that supplement companies like to really work on. It is true though as the protein we ingest is broken down and turned into amino acids and it is these little fellows that are the building blocks for our body structures. Some work with nerves, some work with blood vessels and some work with muscles. It would take me all day to write about them here so I have included a link to a very well written description of them. Click here to read about them. The long and short of it is that even though the amino acids have different jobs they work as a team and so having a supplement that contains just one amino acid is somewhat pointless. The best idea if you are going the supplement route is to get one that has a good balance of all the amino acids. I’m not going to name one because I am not a big fan of supplements.

Nearly all the amino acids you will need form protein and so you will get all of them from meat, nuts, beans and other protein sources. So really now all we need to know is how much protein should we ingest? Because everyone is different, this is just an estimate, a guide, but a good one never the less. The minimum level that our bodies need to maintain the muscle size is 1 gram per kg of your body weight daily (if you weigh 70kg you want 70 grams of protein per day – Beeble). If you are active and play sport or train regularly then a quantity of around 1.5 grams of protein per kg of body weight a day is a good amount (if you weigh 70kg then you will want about 105 grams of protein per day – Beeble). Finally, if you really want to maximise your muscle growth then you need around 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. (So you weigh 70kg you will need 140 grams of protein per day – Beeble).

It is not all about cramming in as much protein as you possibly can, your body can only work with so much a day, anything over this recommended amount is wasted and exerts a lot of work on your liver and kidneys and will get stored as fat. You need to spread the protein throughout the day as the body can only work with so much at anyone time.

More than just Protein

If you are a regular reader then you should realise by now that the body is a whole (not a hole – Beeble) and you have to treat it as such. If you just fill up your body with protein you still aren’t guaranteed to gain muscle. Your body needs a good balance of all foods with a full range of nutrients. You see without your vitamins and minerals your body won’t be efficient at transporting the amino acids to where they are needed. Again, this means that you won’t get the most from your protein. Without your carbohydrates you won’t have the energy to make the most of your exercise program which will determine how much protein is used.

And Don’t Forget: Exercise

This leads me to the last part of the subject and that is the exercise. I won’t go into great detail as we are focusing on the diet side of things but it is a very important part to the weight gain. I once read an article on the world wide web from a guy who had been taking protein and muscle growth products and had no results. This rambled on for several pages and needless to say he wasn’t happy with the companies. In fact the products had just made him overweight and gain large % of body fat. Well once I had finished reading the tirade of complaining it transpired that he had not taken up any form of exercise. This meant that his body didn’t need the vast amounts of protein he was taking. So the body had nothing better to do with it than store it as fat. Kind of proves my point that you have to use your body as a whole. Exercise will create the demand for more protein as it knows it has to get stronger and therefore it will get bigger. I will cover the exercise you need to do in the exercise technique section soon.

Natural Foods that Contain Higher Levels of Protein

•    100 grams of beef has approx. 25 to 35 grams of protein
•    100 grams of chicken has approx. 25 to 30 grams of protein
•    110 grams of duck has approx. 20 to 25 grams of protein
•    1 spiny lobster (229 grams) has approx. 60 grams of protein
•    85 grams of cod has approx. 20 grams of protein
•    150 grams of haddock has approx. 35 grams of protein
•    154 grams of mackerel has approx. 40 grams of protein
•    113 grams of tuna has approx. 30 to 35 grams of protein
•    113 grams of lamb has approx. 25 to 30 grams of protein
•    113 grams of pork has approx. 25 to 35 grams of protein
•    86 grams dry roasted soybeans has approx. 34 grams of protein
•    113 grams of turkey has approx. 30 grams of protein
•    113 grams of veal has approx. 30 grams of protein

These figures are approximate but give a good guidance. It can depend on the cut of meat, how it is cooked and what you eat it with that determine the final content of protein. If you would like to get more nutritional content of foods visit this link.

Summary

•    Get the quantity of protein right for your goals
•    Treat your body as a whole and have a good wholefood diet
•    Supplements aren’t as good as real high protein foods
•    Exercise the right way for your goal
•    Work hard and put the effort in, the results will come

Leave a Reply