If you’re wondering how to put weight on in a healthy way, you’ve come to the right place. There’s plenty of information out there on how to lose weight and shed pounds, but when it comes to how to gain weight, there’s not as much to go on. Do you know what high-calorie foods, high-calorie snacks, and high-calorie options to eat to help fill out your frame?
For most people, being underweight can raise concerns. Difficult gaining weight can affect well-being, whether it's due to genetics, a speedy metabolism or underlying health issues. Thankfully, there are methods you can use to put on weight and achieve your desired body goals.
There are a number of reasons that might be preventing you from packing on the pounds. It can be frustrating to put the hours in inside the gym, only to be let down by the scales at the end of the week.
My aim in this article is to leave you with a number of actionable steps that you can implement in your weekly routine to stack the odds in your favour when it comes to weight gain.
Much like moving up in the weights that you use in the gym, increasing the number of calories that you are introducing into your diet should be an incremental process. If you add too many extra calories too soon, you will find yourself struggling to hit your daily quota and possibly even lose interest in your diet entirely.
The tips I provide in this article are sustainable habits that, over time, will produce results and make the weight-gaining process more attainable! By following these suggestions, you can safely and steadily gain weight while attaining a rounded lifestyle.
Create a Meal Plan
One of the biggest reasons people struggle to gain weight is because they don’t know how to plan out their meals for the week, they don’t care about cooking, or they aren’t hungry enough to eat the number of calories necessary to gain weight reliably.
When it comes to gaining weight, few things are more important than an effective meal plan. Think about any other goal that you set yourself; by breaking down the desired objective into a series of manageable tasks, the end product all of a sudden seems a lot more attainable.
When you are looking to meet your weight gain goals, an organised meal plan ensures that you're consuming the correct number of calories and nutrients required to support weight gain.
Planning your snacks allows you to prioritise foods that are going to align with your goals and set you up for success. This advance planning helps you avoid all of those impulse decisions that hold you back each week and offers an added sense of accountability to your weight-gaining efforts.
After a week of following a planned diet, you will see first-hand how it helps steer off high-calorie junk foods that can result in poor nutrition and potential health issues.
A well-designed meal plan will also never seem restricting, as it will incorporate a variety of healthy meals, ensuring that your efforts never seem stale.
Consistency plays a role in gaining weight, and a meal plan assists you in staying on course and reaching your calorie targets in the long run!
Increase Your Calorie Intake
To put on weight, you have to increase the number of calories you consume. When we gain weight, it is either in the form of muscle or fat. In order for our body to enter a metabolic state where muscle or fat can be made, there needs to be a surplus of energy for it to store.
You have likely heard the term calorie being thrown around or on just about any food curtain or television advertisement, but in its simplest sense, a calorie is just a unit of energy.
If you want to gain weight, then you will need to take in more calories, and then your body needs to maintain your weight as it currently stands.
In order to arrive at this magic figure so that you can begin tracking your progress and make sure that your efforts are within that sweet spot, you will need to figure out your energy expenditure (TDEE) which is influenced by factors such as age, gender, height, weight, activity levels and overall health.
Once you have this approximate number, you can begin centring your meal plan around it, making sure that the number of calories you consume daily is somewhere between 300-500 calories above.
This is something that you should aim to adhere to on a daily basis, as your weekly average will be a missive determining factor on your weight gain results.
Selecting High-carb Foods
Incorporating carbohydrates from grains, potatoes, quinoa, and oats can provide sustained energy and help with weight gain. These foods are also high in fibre, vitamins and minerals.
While calories are going to be the overall determinant of your weight gain, ensuring that you have a sustainable energy source of complex carbs will help with your performance in the gym and your overall energy levels.
This can go a long way in improving your overall well-being, which will be a contributing factor to how you adhere to plan in the long run.
Eat More Often
In terms of concrete strategies for gaining weight, increasing the frequency of your meals can be a good idea. Why would eating more regularly help you put on weight? Well, because some people find it difficult to consume large quantities of food in a single sitting.
If you are piling on the number of calories you are consuming over time, you can expect your portion size to increase somewhat.
If you stick to eating the same number of dinners each day, this will only become more and more difficult to sustain as time passes.
There is an inherent need to add more recipes to your diet plan. For many, a great strategy is getting as many calories in as early as possible, which is a great way to ensure that you reach your daily intake. Try having your first meal a little earlier and expanding the window of time that you are getting your meals in.
Spreading out the same amount of food across several smaller snacks can make it easier to stick to a weight-gaining meal plan without feeling too full. This is an especially useful strategy for those who are underweight and used to eating small snacks.
Prioritise High-calorie Foods
Whether you work with a nutritionist or not, one thing you’ll want to do when thinking about your snacks is include high-calorie foods, which are foods ideal for putting on some extra pounds.
If you spend your days munching on lettuce leaves like a cow grazing on grass, then you’re not likely to see the weight-gaining results you’re looking for. You need to eat high-calorie foods and find out what the high-calorie vegetables are since these will get you closer to the caloric surplus you need to be at to put on some size.
There are plenty of high-calorie foods that you can use to supplement your diet and get yourself into that calorie surplus. A number of calorie-dense foods, such as avocados, nuts, nut butter, dried fruits, and dark chocolate, can be implemented in your diet to help meet your daily intake. These choices are loaded with fats, fibre, and beneficial plant compounds that can enhance your nutrition.
Start Weight Training
When it comes to weight gain, your efforts will be made a whole lot easier if you throw some resistance training into the mix. This will help you massively in that your body will be gaining muscle and fat at the same time, leading to maximum gain.
Strength training and resistance workouts promote muscle growth and support weight gain. These exercises help enhance muscle strength by forcing muscles to work against resistance.
Try incorporating activities like weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, or resistance bands into your routine two to three times a week. Focus on compound movements like squats, lunges, and pushups to build lean muscle mass effectively.
You will also notice an increase in your appetite when you begin training, which makes eating all those calories much easier.
Get Quality Sleep
If you consult any personal trainer or dietician when you are on the path to adding a few kilograms to the scale, they will most definitely ask about your sleep.
Since our bodies recover most when we are sleeping, it is only natural that getting sufficient sleep helps your muscles repair and facilitates weight gain.
If you aren’t already, focus on getting yourself some quality sleep each night, aiming for 7-9 hours. Inadequate sleep can hinder the gaining progress and may lead to muscle loss over time.
So if you are looking to avoid disappointment the next time you step on the scales, then this is perhaps the easiest way that you will achieve the results you are looking for. You’re literally gaining weight in your sleep!
Reduce Cardio
When it comes to gaining or losing weight, our bodies operate a simple calories-in versus calories-out system. While the bulk of this article has centred around the former, the latter is of equal importance.
The number of calories that you are either above or below your weekly goal also comes down to how active you are on a weekly basis. So if you are a very active person and work a physically demanding job, the number of calories that you will need to consume to put on size is going to be much higher then somebody who works an office job.
While more movement is always a good thing, if you currently do a lot of cardiovascular exercises, you might want to cut down on it if your goal is to gain mass.
For example, if you run on a regular basis or do a lot of HIIT training, this could negatively impact your ability to put on a few extra pounds. As such, it’s something you might want to consider if you’re finding it hard to put on weight and you partake in a lot of cardio exercises.
By reducing the amount of cardio that you are doing, you will avoid burning many of those precious calories that are going to result in extra weight gain!
Drink Water after Meals
When you are looking for tips to facilitate your weight gain goals, it's often as easy as finding methods that are implemented when weight loss is the goal and flipping them on their heads!
When people are looking to shed some additional pounds, they often try to drink plenty of water before their meals so that they feel less full and, therefore, eat less food! By leaving your glass of water until after your meals, you can preserve your appetite and eat more as a result.
Intaking extra calories can be difficult if you are not used to it but if you save that extra space in your stomach for calories, then you are going to have an easier time reaching your calorie goals and be happy with the number that you see on the weighing scales each week!
Meal Prep
‘Meal prep’ may just be the two most important words for anyone looking to stick to a new diet. With all the busyness that comes with having a job, a family, and hobbies, finding time to cook large meals regularly can be tricky.
If you’re really tired one day coming home from work late, then you might just want to go to bed without eating or only eat whatever you find in the fridge.
You can even throw a few weight-gainer shakes into the fridge alongside your food throughout the week. These calorie-rich drinks offer a mix of calories, protein, carbohydrates and good fats to aid in gaining weight.
Sipping on a weight gain shake between meals or as a snack can significantly increase your calorie intake.
It is also much easier to drink your calories than to eat them. So, by consuming extra calories in your meal plan in the form of weight gainer shakes, you can easily add a few thousand calories to your weekly intake with little to no difficulty.
This is fine from time to time, but if it becomes a pattern, you’ll be sabotaging your efforts to gain weight. If you meal prep, either the night before or over the weekend, then you should have no trouble eating all the right options.
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