What To Eat To Gain Weight And Build Muscle

Are you underweight and don't know what to eat to gain weight?

Millions of dollars are spent each year on magazines, books, and weight gain supplements. Gaining weight does not happen overnight and requires a commitment from you, but does not have to be hard if you work out and eat the proper foods in large enough amounts.

Numerous people are continually searching for the fastest ways to gain weight and don't know what to eat. If you truly want to learn what to eat to gain weight and maintain it, a diet rich in calories and protein combined with a regular weight-training regimen will help you accomplish your goals.

If you are looking for the best weight gain supplement for you, take into account your diet and exercise routine before making a decision. Weight gain supplements can be very beneficial when used in conjunction with the proper diet and weight training routine.

The major part of your calorie and protein consumption should come from the foods you eat. Substituting a weight gain supplement for a meal is never a good idea. Your body needs the natural nutrients found in lean meats, poultry, fish, vegetables, and carbohydrates. Weight gain supplements can be used effectively as a weight gain aid when they are used to supplement your diet, not replace part of it.

A diet consisting of large amounts of protein, fats, carbs, and high in calories is essential to any weight gaining effort aided by weight gain supplements. Training with weights is necessary if you want to build new muscle tissue, and a weight gain supplement can be used after a workout, in between meals, or as a snack but should never replace a meal.

Protein is a major component of any diet designed to add body weight. Lean red meats, fish, poultry, and eggs are excellent sources of protein. Several small meals per day containing large amounts of protein are crucial to your weight gaining effort. The question of what to eat to gain weight is not as complicated as some believe.

Along with plenty of protein, fats and carbohydrates are a big part of any weight gaining diet. By avoiding sweets and empty calories, you will give your body the fuel it needs to add body mass and build new muscle tissue through the nutritious foods you eat at regular intervals during the day.

If you are finding it difficult to stick to a weight gain diet, try eating five or six smaller meals per day instead of three large ones. Keep in mind that a piece of chicken and a baked potato is always better than a shake, bar, or pill.

If you should decide to use a weight gain supplement, make certain you consume adequate amounts of food each day in addition to the supplement. Weight gain supplements can give you added protein and calories and may be especially helpful if used immediately following weight training. Always be certain your diet contains all the required elements and use weight gain supplements wisely.

Learning what to eat to gain weight is a relatively simple task. Increase your calorie intake and make certain you are eating healthy, protein rich foods. This combined with weight training and plenty of rest should allow your body to bulk up effectively and help you maintain your new body shape.

Rules to follow to build muscles

Do not underestimate breakfast.
Breakfast is the most important meal on the day. Breakfast counteracts your muscles to breaking down on the most effective way. On the night the blood sugar is goes down and if you not eat a good breakfast you stop your muscle from growing.

Nutrition
Do not take nutrition instead of food. Nutrition works best as a compliment to your food or as a boost before training. But never believe that nutrition makes your muscle grow the way that real food does. Also test different to see what nutrition that fits your body best.

Eat every 3-4 hour
You muscle grow as long as you have the right amount of blood sugar in your body. As long as you have that the body knows its okay to build muscles. You have that right amount in your body about 3-4 hours after your last meal. That means you have to eat every 3-4 hour to maintain the right balance in your body and to continue to grow muscle.

Drink Water
Every chemical rejection in your body happens in a water based environment. If you do not drink water you are going to dry and your functions in your body works poorly. Functions like fat burning, muscle grow and condition.

Control what you eat
Analyse what you eat and see if you get enough to build muscle. One way to do that is to whey your food for three days. This is to see your how much protein, carbs and fat you get. Do this a couple of times a year to see your development. This is easy to do with help of a diet program that you can find on internet.

Vary the food
This is a key for success. The big advantage you get is that your body do not get used to one certain nourishment. The risk is also minimal that you get lack of something, and surely will get the right amount of vitamins and minerals that your muscles need to grow.

Eat right before training
You need to load your body right before you can perform a good workout. If you are training in the morning it can be good to eat lot of carbs the night before. If you are training in the evenings you have many meals to get you prepared for your workout.

Eat right after training
After breakfast this is the most important meal for you. After training you muscle are broke down, and you need to eat as fast as you can after training. Your muscles need both protein and carbs to grow, and here can your nutrition drinks be very important. This gives you both carbs and protein fast.

The Science Of Muscle Building

Bodybuilding involves more than just lifting weights. It pays to have an understanding of human kinetics. How do muscles work?

Muscles develop by making them work. Muscles can only work when the body is in motion. They work extra when we are in full motion. Thus, to develop the muscles to the maximum, we must make them work to the best of our abilities. Hence, the bodybuilding principle of “No Pain, No Gain.”

You can’t grow your muscles by doing nothing. You have to move around a lot. The only thing that will grow in points of inertia, if you remain stationary, is your weight. If you want muscle growth and power, you must work your body methodically. Muscle training is called a workout.

Muscles can be toned (or conditioned) by regular activities like brisk walking, jogging, and doing other slightly heavy works. But toning muscles will not grow them in size and beauty. You have to do more —lots more — to have stunning muscles. You have to workout. By the very term “workout,” you can have a good idea of what it takes to grow muscles.

Bodybuilding procedures using weights and other heavy-duty activities are the best-known muscle growers so far. You have to devote your life into this if you want extra visible muscles on you. You also have to do away with vices like smoking, drinking liquor, eating junk foods, etc.

Muscles grow in size only when they are moving. Try to be still in front of a mirror and you’d see no sign of any bulking muscle taking shape. Now, clench your fist hard, and muscle evidence will show at least on your forearm. This simple principle illustrates the potential of muscles being developed through repeated and graduated motions. As muscles are subjected to repeated exertions that gradually increase intensity, they grow and toughen.

The more intense the muscle activity, the better and faster the muscle is developed. Hence, a systematic muscle development program incorporating increased muscle stimulation builds more muscles effectively. If your exercise features no such system of increasing efforts and challenges to your muscle strength, your muscles can only grow so much. Some exercises do form muscles, but only to a certain extent. The muscles built only become regulating muscles that enable you to perform normal tasks effectively. But they cannot exceed in performing beyond such tasks.

On the contrary, a fully developed muscle does not only allow you to do normal tasks; it is calibrated to reach its full potentials — far beyond what regulating muscles can do. Bodybuilding helps you develop your muscles to the extreme.

Learn To Gain Weight And Build Muscle

If you want to increase muscle mass and gain weight, remember that in order to effectively bulk up, you will need to be persistent in your efforts. Increasing your caloric intake is an important part of gaining weight and building new muscle tissue. When you feed your body more food than it can burn, you gain weight. Weight training is also an important part of gaining weight and increasing your muscle mass. Weight training stimulates the muscles and promotes growth. The combination of weight training and proper diet is the best, most effective way to gain weight and increase muscle mass.

Failure to eat properly while weight training could result in loss of muscle tissue. Make certain you get plenty of protein, fats, and carbs and in large enough quantities to allow your body to gain weight. Supplements can play a role in building body mass if taken while adjusting your diet and training with weights. Meal replacement bars, powders, and protein drinks can be an excellent way to increase your daily caloric intake. In order to increase muscle mass, you must give your body approximately 500 more calories per day than the number of calories your body uses.

Exercise and diet are the most important things to consider when attempting to gain weight and increase muscle mass. Weight training and the adequate food intake will leave your body with no choice but to gain weight and add mass. Make sure to get enough rest between workouts to give your body time to recuperate and build new muscle tissue.

If you want to get the maximum benefit from your mass building routine, you must avoid the most common reasons that cause people to fail at building muscle and gaining weight. A quality mass building routine combined with proper nutrition and plenty of rest can produce results that you never dreamed possible. Consistency, smart eating habits, the proper weight lifting techniques, and lots of rest are the common elements shared by every successful body builder.

Building muscle is a slow process and it could possibly take several months before you see noticeable results. If you are determined and consistent in your muscle mass building routine and your eating habits, you efforts will pay off in time. Nutrition is also crucial in building muscle mass. The right amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and fats must be included in your diet in order to give your body the fuel it needs to add muscle tissue. The trick to building muscle is to find the combination of foods that allow you to add new muscle mass. Trial and error combined with sound dietary guidelines will allow you to find just the right nutritional plan for you.

The proper weight lifting techniques are a very important part of a muscle mass building routine. If you don't work your muscles, they won't grow. You will need to find the right amount of weight and the right weight lifting exercises for your body. Determination, trial and error, and a consistent effort will eventually give you the results you want. The most important thing is to stay focused and realize your reward is waiting for you down the line.

Choosing The Right Bodybuilding Supplement

Before wasting your money on a pile of bodybuilding supplements you really need to work out what you are hoping to achieve. Don't lose sight of the fact that sound nutrition forms the basis of any muscle building program and no amount of supplementation with the latest and greatest products will make up for bad eating habits. The bottom line is, bodybuilding supplements should be used IN ADDITION to regular food, not INSTEAD OF it.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's go on to think about what supplements could be of use and this is something that can only be determined by your physical and performance goals. Don't make the mistake of copying your training partners or believing all the garbage spouted in magazine ads. Decide first what you want to achieve and then choose the supplements that will help you reach your goals.

To help you make an informed choice, the most popular and useful bodybuilding supplements available today are listed below, broadly divided into two goal-related categories.

Determined to build muscle? This cannot be achieved without dedication, sheer hard work and sound nutrition. With a solid foundation in place you can help the process along with supplements like creatine, whey protein, prohormones, testosterone boosters and amino acids.

Need to lose fat? There is no point in building awesome muscles if they're covered by layers of fat. Once again, the key to success is hard work but you can boost fat loss by using products from supplement categories that include fat burners, stimulant-free products, appetite suppressants and carb blockers.

Many more supplements are available to support your bodybuilding endeavors. These include energy boosters and products aimed at enhancing the condition of your mind and body. As we progress through this series of articles we'll look at each of these in turn.

Rock Hard Abs! Do You Have What it Takes?

If your abs look good, your whole body looks good. Having Big arms and chest is one thing but having rock hard defined abs is so another.

Everyone knows that nothing turns heads like a defined full set of abs. And hey, chicks love em. What more needs to be said.


Contrary to popular belief, the abs or Rectus Abdominis is really only one muscle. It stretches from the top of your pelvis up to your ribcage. The "six-pack" as it is called is merely sections of this one muscle.

Dispelling the Ab Myths:

The action of any muscle is simply to contract. And as you can't contract half your bicep or quad, it makes sense that you cannot contract half your abs as well. Therefore the myths about "upper ab" and "lower ab" training are total nonsense. I'm not discounting those training methods but the simple fact is that if you can't see your lower abs, it just means you've got fat covering them, not that you need to work them harder.

Say goodbye to hanging knee-raises, straight-leg raises, and any other type of leg raises for building your abs. They simply don't work. The primary role of your abs is to stabilize your body. When you raise your leg for example, your hip flexors pull on your spine and arch it forward/downward. Your abs stabilize this action by resisting and essentially keeping your back from breaking. Take note that this is the static action of the abs. It doesn't build or strengthen. Leg raising exercises only feel like they are effectively working your abs because of the repeated strain and exhaustion of your muscle producing catabolic, lactic acid build up. Search for "lactic acid" at http://www.muscle-body.com for more information.

What Really Works:

What does strengthen your abs is what strengthens any other muscle in your body. Contraction! In this case - Decreasing the distance between your rib cage and your pelvis.

So we come back to the good old sit-up. But there are a few things to keep in mind.

Firstly, forget about the cool all-the-way-up sit-ups you see in the movies. Your abs are fully contracted when your shoulders are about 5 to 6 inches off the ground. So don't bother trying to impress or outperform someone by touching your elbows to your knees. It does nothing for you. Crunches as they are sometimes called are the way to go.

Secondly, don't wedge your feet under something to help you get up. You don't need to do this if you are doing crunches properly anyway. Your legs should be at 90 degrees to each other and your knees at 45 degrees to your waist. If you need to, use something to press your heels back against to stabilize yourself. This way you will use your hamstrings instead of your hip flexors which will keep the focus on your abs.

Thirdly, keep your hands lightly held against the side of your head or crossed on your chest. Don't clasp them together behind your head or neck. If you do you will be tempted to pull with your hands to get the last few reps out, which will put unnecessary strain on this fragile part of the spine.

Alternative:

Another good exercise for abs is kneeling crunches. You will need special equipment to perform this exercise. This is where you kneel and contract your abs so that your upper body arches forward/downward. You hold a rope attached to a pulley with weights for extra resistance. Most gyms will have a rope attachment to the triceps pull down to perform this exercise. The idea is to lock your arms against your upper body so that you pull down only with your abs and not your arms.

Ab Training Devices:

In 2 words - Forget it.

You don't need them. Most of them do nothing for you. Building muscle is hard and it hurts. Most of these devices are designed to take the pressure off your body making the exercise seem easy and con you into thinking you are really targeting your muscles. Don't believe the hype. Ab training is definitely hard work but definitely worth it's reward.

The Secret:

How to Get Six Pack Abs is just what you need.

Body Building for Beginners

Body building or even just showing up at a gym can be intimidating for a beginner. Provided below are some tips that can help you get into body building, and into your first fitness club:

Seek Advice - There is no sense trying to learn it everything yourself when starting out in Body Building. Take some time to talk to others who are more experienced, and learn what you can from them. When using new equipment or a new exercise it is also always a good idea to talk to someone, to ensure that you don’t get injured.

Sleep - When working out for the first time it is important to ensure that your body is getting the rest that it needs. This will usually be more than what you were taking before.

Diet - Just as important as sleep it’s important to ensure that your diet is keeping up with your exercise. This doesn’t just mean eating more, it means eating better. Think of your body as an automobile. The more you drive a car, the more fuel you need to put into it. You need to ensure that you are putting the proper fuel in your car as well, to ensure that it will drive consistently and perform to spec.

Set Goals - Set goals that are attainable. Out of reach goals only set yourself up for failure. Take it one step at a time, and enjoy/celebrate your success all the way up the ladder. Whether it’s another 10pounds to your bench press or just making it to the gym 3 days a week, you need to set goals, otherwise it’s easy for your workout to get pushed aside when life gets busy.

Visualize Success - It’s important to see yourself succeeding before you even begin working out. This winning mind set will take you to new levels in your training and will set yourself up for success!

Be smart about getting into body building to ensure that you will achieve success both mentally and physically.