Have you worked out for a month and not seen the results you expected? Well weight training meal plan for females blog got you covered. If your workout routine is not in sync with your nutrition plan, there won’t be any results. It’s actually impossible to build muscle mass without a careful nutrition meal plan. Among men, lifting weights releases testosterone; but unlike women who have a very limited amount of testosterone hormone in their system, it’s better for women to rely on other methods for building muscle mass. Instead of solely relying on weights to build muscles, women should concentrate on their diet in order to see the same results as men.
Weight-Training Diet Plan for Women
You can gain strength by eating a healthy diet while lifting weights.
Even while you, like many women, might prefer to work up a sweat in your aerobics class, weight training is an important part of any fitness regimen. Although you shouldn’t worry about gaining weight, sticking to a well-balanced strength training diet will still help you shed weight and tone your muscles.
Women Resisting Weight Training
According to a study from September 2016 that was published in the International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, women exercise to reduce weight and tone up and most frequently choose aerobic exercise. Although a morning run helps you burn calories and strengthens your heart, regular strength exercise may be more beneficial for slimming down and toning your muscles.
Because you don’t want to get overly “bulky,” you might be reluctant to incorporate regular weight training into your exercise regimen. That is not physiologically conceivable unless you spend hours every day of the week in the weight room and consume enormous amounts of food. According to the American Council on Exercise, adding two days of strength training to your weekly regimen enhances your lean muscle mass but does not add bulk because women produce less testosterone than males do (ACE).
Regular strength training enhances your body’s metabolism of fats without transforming you into the She-Hulk and raises the production of somatotropin, also known as human growth hormone. Increasing this hormone’s output may also hasten the biological aging process.
Weight-Training Benefits for Women
As if transforming you into a lean, muscular, fat-burning machine wasn’t persuading enough, a good weightlifting diet and consistent strength-training exercises have numerous health advantages.
As you age, your body gradually loses muscular mass, increasing your body fat percentage and slowing down your metabolism. You don’t have to let age determine your physical appearance, though. Maintaining your lean muscle mass and keeping your metabolism at its peak through regular weight training may make it simpler for you to lose weight and keep it off.
Exercise with weights is advantageous for your bones. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, 8 million of the 10 million Americans with osteoporosis diagnoses are women. Osteoporosis is a long-term bone condition that increases the risk of fractures.
Because of their smaller, thinner, and less solid bones, women are more likely to acquire osteoporosis. Additionally, as estrogen levels fall after menopause, bone loss accelerates. Furthermore, women often live longer than men do, and osteoporosis risk rises with age.
Your muscles and bones are physically, physiologically, and chemically closely related. By exerting stress on your muscles during strength training, you can increase bone density, bone health, and bone strength. According to a December 2018 article in Endocrinology and Metabolism, weight training is the greatest activity for building muscular strength and maintaining bone health.
The Mayo Clinic notes that your strength-training activity may also help you manage your chronic health conditions, such as your arthritis, back pain, diabetes, or depression, however you should always first speak with your primary care physician.
Strength-Training Diet for Women
Of course crunches, lunges, and bicep curls are effective muscle-building exercises, but poor nutrition may prevent you from reaping the full rewards of strength training. It takes more energy to gain muscle because the process is anabolic, and it also takes more energy to keep up with the energy demands of your workout.
Women’s strength-training diets must provide enough calories and a balanced mix of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. The ACE specialists claim that if you scrimp on your weightlifting food plan, you might not reap the full rewards of your strength-training program. Additionally, you could end up losing the muscle mass you’re attempting to gain, which could result in muscular fatigue that degrades the effectiveness of your exercises, raises your risk of injury, and lengthens the time it takes you to recover.
Your risk of nutritional inadequacies may also rise if you don’t adequately feed your workout.
Consume Enough Calories
Calories are among the most crucial components of a diet for women doing strength training. As mentioned, your body requires an excess of energy to grow muscle. Your height and weight, age, level of physical activity, and general state of health may all affect how many calories you need to consume as part of your strength-training meal plan.
The USDA’s 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines state that women need between 1,600 and 2,400 calories per day. Women of all ages and levels of activity are included in this. Therefore, if you lead a very active lifestyle that includes strength training at least twice a week and regular cardiovascular exercise, you should definitely err on the side of caution and consume between 2,000 and 2,400 calories per day.
To help you assess if you’re consuming enough calories or too many, keep track of your weight, body composition, and calories. Then, add or remove calories in increments of 50 to 100. Better yet, seek advice from your doctor or a certified dietitian who can offer calorie recommendations that are unique to your requirements and goals, as well as assist you in tracking your progress and making changes to your plan as you go.
Need for Protein
Your muscle fibers and connective tissue suffer microscopic tears as a result of heavy weightlifting. You must give your damaged tissue an adequate quantity of nutrients, including the crucial amino acids required to heal the microscopic tears and develop the muscle, in order to repair and expand your muscles. A diet for women who lift weights must include enough calories as well as enough protein to suit your increased needs and help you reach your objectives.
The American College of Sports Medicine advises aiming for 1.2 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight when working out aerobically and lifting weights to lose weight and build muscle (or 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound). You therefore require 75 to 120 grams of protein per day if you weigh 150 pounds.
Although that may seem like a lot of protein, you may easily obtain the necessary quantity of protein from entire foods, such as:
- 8 grams from a cup of skim milk
- 7 grams from one large hard-boiled egg
- 27 grams in 3 ounces of cooked lean chicken breast
- 15 grams in 1 cup of cooked chickpeas
- 17 grams in a 7-ounce container of nonfat Greek yogurt
- 8 grams in 1 cup of cooked quinoa
Protein assists your weight loss efforts in addition to assisting you in gaining more muscle that burns calories. According to a review from April 2015 that appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating a high-protein diet lengthens satiety, making you feel fuller for longer, which encourages you to eat less. Because it takes more energy to absorb and metabolize protein than it does to consume and metabolize carbohydrates and fat, eating extra protein also somewhat speeds up your metabolism.
What About Carbohydrates and Fat?
Yes, protein should be a major component of any weightlifting diet, but you also need to consume enough carbohydrates and fat to help you burn fat and tone your muscles. Your body requires both carbohydrates and fat for the energy it needs to sustain muscle mass and power through demanding workouts. Getting enough carbohydrates and fat also stops your body from converting the protein you’re consuming to develop muscle into a fuel source.
Adults should consume 20 to 35 percent fat and 45 to 65 percent carbs, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Your daily calorie requirements and the quantity of protein you require may determine your precise carbohydrate and fat requirements.
For instance, if you need 120 grams of protein daily and are eating a 2,000 calorie diet, you are getting about 25% of your calories from protein (480 calories), leaving you with 1,520 calories to divide between carbohydrates and fat, or roughly 45 to 50% of your calories from carbs and 25 to 30% from fat.
However, in order to maximize your nutritional intake, you must include healthy sources of fat and carbohydrates in your weight-lifting diet plan. Healthy sources of carbs include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat milk, yogurt, and beans. Avocados, almonds, seeds, and vegetable oils are great choices for fat in your weightlifting diet.
Strength-Training Meal Plan
There is no set formula for how many meals you must consume each day as part of your strength-training food plan. However, eating frequently keeps your muscles and body well-fueled. To control hunger and avoid those uncontrollable snack attacks that lead you to eat a whole box of crackers while you idly watch TV, Harvard Health Publishing advises eating three meals a day.
While recommendations for your weightlifting meal plan’s number of meals are a little vague, those for your pre- and post-workout meals are specific.
A pre- and post-workout meal composed of carbs and protein, or just protein, increases both strength and body composition, according to a position statement on nutrient timing published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition in August 2017.
Timing may affect what you consume to fuel your workout. The ACE advises eating a high-carb, high-protein meal, like a tuna sandwich with an apple or roasted chicken with sweet potatoes and carrots, two to three hours before to your activity. You should eat a simple carbohydrate and protein snack between 30 and 60 minutes prior to your activity, such as a banana with peanut butter or low-fat Greek yogurt with fresh blueberries.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition advises consuming a high-quality source of protein within two hours after your weight-training exercise to enhance muscle growth following your workout. Good alternatives include low-fat milk, grilled fish, hard-boiled eggs, and nonfat Greek yogurt.
4 Food Rules For Strength Training
Undisputed facts about healthy food for an active and fit lifestyle include: You should drink plenty of water, eat as many vegetables as you like, and nutrition, not exercise, is more important for weight loss and maintenance. Even though I’d want to believe that running 30+ miles per week while preparing for a marathon qualifies me for that massive chunk of cake at Little Cupcake Bakeshop, it unfortunately doesn’t. In reality, scientists claim that people frequently overestimate their calorie intake and then compensate by eating more calories than they expended. According to some basic math, this results in weight gain despite intense exercise.
Fuel up pre-workout to improve performance
A word first regarding pre-workout nutrition: If your aim is weight loss, you’re exercising first thing in the morning, and you don’t exercise for more than an hour, according to Slayton, you don’t need to eat before working out. But if, like mine, your objectives are more performance-related, she advises that you have a light meal before class. You’ll likely burn off those extra calories in the gym anyway, and you’ll have more energy to go out harder.
Timing is everything
Slayton thinks that timing is as important as what you eat. To aid in muscle recovery and prevent binge eating later in the day, try to have a meal or snack within 30 minutes of working out. Decide whether to eat a snack before or after working out, but not both. Make your post-workout nourishment a genuine meal if you had a pre-workout snack (so, time your workout to end at breakfast, lunch or dinner time). Alternatively, if you exercise on an empty stomach, go for a post-workout snack with 100 to 200 calories that is higher in protein than carbohydrates (like a hardboiled egg and some fruit or Greek yogurt with berries.). Smoothies are the best post-workout food in my opinion since you get liquids, protein, and fruit all in one, claims Slayton.
Try this Matcha Colada recipe from Little Book of Thin:
Ingredients:
-4 to 6 ounces coconut water (or water)
-1/2 teaspoon matcha powder (like Panatea)
-1 cup fresh or frozen pineapple or papaya
-1 scoop protein powder
-1 cup greens (microgreens, spinach, or kale)
-1/3 avocado, peeled and roughly chopped
-1 slice peeled fresh ginger (the size of a penny)
-1 handful ice cubes
-6 drops NuStevia (optional)
Place coconut water (or water) in a high-powered blender followed by the other ingredients in the order given. Blend well and serve.
Eat more protein
Slayton advises consuming 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight, which caught me off guard. That means a woman weighing 135 pounds should consume 135 grams daily! I evaluated my protein intake from yesterday after calculating my goal in grams and was almost 50 grams wrong.
When exercising, Slayton advises, “It’s crucial to consume enough protein to help you maintain—and build—all of that precious muscle.”
Although I occasionally eat fish, I am a strict vegetarian, which makes this challenge much more difficult. Slayton has given his OK to my choice of protein foods, which include hard-boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, quinoa, edamame, almonds, and shrimp. Slayton also suggests spirulina; her favorite brand is Health Force. It’s actually powdered green algae, which may sound disgusting, but contains 5 grams of protein per tablespoon and tastes great when mixed into yogurt or added to smoothies.
Check out this list for more great healthy sources of protein (complete with helpful infographic!).
Stock up on cherry juice
According to Slayton, tart cherry juice is rich in antioxidants and can aid in muscle repair by reducing inflammation after exercise (and research). Try mixing 1-2 oz of tart cherry juice with seltzer immediately before bed (bonus: tart cherries contain melatonin, which will improve your sleep quality! ), such as Eden Foods Montmorency Tart Cherry Juice. or purchase frozen tart cherries to include in your smoothie for recovery.
Muscle-Building Diet Guide—for Skinny Women Who Want to GAIN Weight
In this article, we’re going to talk about a muscle-building diet designed for naturally skinny women who are trying to gain weight. Make no mistake, this isn’t a weight-loss diet. It’s not even a diet for the average woman who wants to become leaner and stronger. This is a bulking diet, a diet that will help you gain weight. Lean weight, yes, but the scale will still move up.
Muscle-building nutrition can be overwhelming at first, especially for beginners. How much should you eat? Which foods are healthy? Should you avoid carbs or sugar? Why are ketogenic and vegetarian both so popular despite being seemingly contradictory? Will intermittent fasting help you build muscle more leanly?
But nutrition can also be pretty simple if you focus on the fundamentals. There are just two factors that make the difference between gaining nothing or gaining 0.25–0.75 pounds of muscle every week. But there are hundreds of things that make the oh-so-small difference between gaining 0.25 and 0.26 pounds of muscle. So let’s focus on the big stuff first, master it, and then worry about the small fries later.
This article is for beginners. It’s for women who haven’t quite figured out how to gain weight yet. And it will help you gain weight consistently on the scale every single week. Keep in mind that building muscle becomes harder and harder as you become more and more advanced, so we recommend learning the advanced stuff eventually. But there’s plenty of time for that later, once you’re already building muscle.
How to Gain Weight: Calories
To gain weight, you need to be in a calorie surplus. When you consume fewer calories than your body needs, your body is forced to burn stored energy (fat and muscle) to get the energy it needs. This causes weight loss. However, when you consume more calories than your body needs, your body has a surplus of energy, and that energy can be stored.
- Calorie surplus = weight gain
- Calorie balance = no change in weight
- Calorie deficit = weight loss
Thus, “eating enough to gain weight” is the definition of “being in a caloric excess.” Gaining weight is made easy by this. Increase your calorie consumption if you’re not gaining weight as quickly as you’d want. It’s not straightforward, but it’s also not difficult.
Our objective is to store that extra energy as muscle mass because we’re not only interested in growing weight; we also want to gain muscle. However, we must first make sure that there is excess energy that can be stored before we can do that. You won’t be able to store anything at all without that additional energy.
Under normal circumstances, women typically gain 60–70% of their new weight as fat. Therefore, if you put on twenty pounds while maintaining a regular diet and engaging in consistent exercise (such as cardio), you’ll add about 7 pounds of muscle and 13 pounds of fat. You’ll get stronger and more muscular as a result of that. You’ll need to carry that extra weight around the block and up and down stairs, which is why obese women typically have such powerful lower bodies. However, we advise lean muscle growth. Your strength, athleticism, looks, and health will all improve because you’ll develop more muscle and less fat.
The good news is that you will see so-called “newbie gains” if you are just starting out with weightlifting. Beginners are frequently able to develop lean muscle mass quickly. Perhaps you could even reduce your body fat while doing it. During their first year of lifting, ladies can anticipate gaining the following amounts of strength and muscle. Here are Cassandra’s results for gaining muscle as an additional illustration:
To be clear, you probably can’t even accomplish it right now. You won’t be able to shed fat and gain muscle forever. Here are some illustrations of how women who began lifting weights afterwards gained weight. It’s clear that some people accumulate fat more quickly than others. However, the great majority of your gains can probably be lean, regardless of your genetics and environment.
So how do we do this?
Before You Eat Big, You Need to Lift Big
Before you start eating more food, you need to prime your body for muscle growth. You need to start lifting weights. You can do that by joining a commercial gym, setting up a barbell home gym in a spare room, or even just buying a pair of adjustable dumbbells. In a pinch, you could even start following a bodyweight workout routine.
You don’t need any fancy equipment. Your plan doesn’t need to be complicated. But you do need a structured plan that will challenge your muscles. Bigger muscles are stronger muscles, so to get gradually bigger, you need to start getting progressively stronger.
How Quickly Should You Gain Weight?
Once you’re lifting weights, the next thing to consider is how quickly you should be gaining weight. By adjusting how many extra calories you eat, you can control how quickly you gain weight.
The faster you gain weight, the faster you’ll gain muscle, but you’ll also be more likely to store more fat. The slower you gain weight, the harder it will be to build muscle, but the less fat you’ll gain. So the idea is to give your body enough extra nutrients to build muscle, but not so much that the extra, extra nutrients are stored as body fat.
The ideal rate of weight gain depends on your genetics, your experience level, and how good your workout program is.
- Your genetics and experience level are probably assets. If you’re a skinny beginner, you’re still very far away from your genetic potential. Your genetics aren’t likely to limit you. You’ll do great.
- If you train specifically for muscle growth, you can be more agressive with weight gain. Our programs are all designed to stimulate muscle growth, as are many others. So just make sure you follow a muscle-building workout routine, you give it your best effort, and you’re consistent.
So for the average naturally skinny woman who’s following a good muscle-building program, we recommend gaining weight pretty fast! About 0.25–0.75 pounds per week. If you gain less weight than that, increase your calorie intake. If you gain more weight than that, reduce your calorie intake.
How to Set & Adjust Your Calorie Intake
You don’t need to track calories to gain weight. We’ll teach you a few different methods. You can pick the method you prefer. But even if you aren’t tracking calories, it still helps to know what’s going on under the hood. So let’s talk about the calorie requirements of gaining weight and building muscle.
It takes around 3,500 to gain a pound of fat, and a bit less than that to gain a pound of muscle. So to gain around 0.5 pounds per week, you should eat around 250 extra calories every day. But you’ll also be burning calories while working out, and your metabolism will speed up as you start eating more food, so you may need to eat even more than that. The trick is to weigh yourself every week, see how much you gain, and then adjust accordingly.
- If you’re gaining less than 0.25 pounds per week, eat 200 extra calories each day.
- If you’re gaining more than 0.5–0.75 pounds per week, eat 100 fewer calories each day.
It can be a bit iffy the first week. You’re increasing your exercise regimen while also feeding your digestive system more meals. Your weight may fluctuate or flatten out at times. Don’t interpret it too broadly. Additionally, even if you aren’t gaining weight, lifting weights will be such a novel stimulus that you’ll likely lose some fat and develop some muscle.
This can be a difficult procedure to master, even after the first week. It’s not necessary to be flawless at it. You’ll do well even if you aren’t gaining the same amount of weight each week as long as there is an upward tendency in general. (You should also observe that each week, you’re gaining stronger.)
Let’s now discuss how to calculate your daily calorie requirements. You may figure out how many calories you need in one of two ways:
- Eating intuitively: taking your diet as it is now, adding in extra food, and eating a bit more or less depending on how much weight you gain each week.
- Calorie tracking: starting from scratch, calculating your body’s calorie needs, and tracking the food you eat. You can then adjust your intake in 200-calorie increments each week, depending on whether you’re gaining weight or not.
Let’s go over the pros and cons of both methods.
Method One: Adding Calories
This method assumes you’re already eating enough calories to maintain your body weight. If that’s the case, that means you’re in energy balance. You aren’t in a calorie surplus or deficit. So all you need to do is eat a bit more.
To gain around half a pound per week, you need 200–300 extra calories per day. That’s a large glass of milk or soy milk (500ml), a small bowl of trail mix (1/3 of a cup), a Quest bar, or two scoops of protein powder. You don’t need to eat that much more, especially if you choose calorically dense foods like olive oil, avocado oil, trail mix, dried fruits, roasted nuts, smoothies, soy milk, and milk.
After a week of eating big, step on the scale, and see how much weight you gained (or didn’t gain). Then adjust your calorie intake as needed. If you didn’t gain weight, add in another 200 calories. If you gained too much weight, eat 100 calories less.
This option is simple and effective, but it only works if you already have a very consistent diet. For example, if you wake up in the morning and have breakfast, bring a packed lunch to work, and then come home and eat dinner with your family. In this case, since you have a steady routine, it’s easy to add in an extra snack without changing anything else.
The whole method relies on the fact that you eat consistent meals and serving sizes, though. If you add in a snack between breakfast and lunch, but then you aren’t as hungry for dinner, so you eat less… that won’t work. You need to be able to keep your diet consistent, adding in extra calories.
Your body wants to stay skinny, and it has dastardly tricks to keep you that way. Let’s say you make a sugary Starbucks run twice a week to satisfy some cravings. Or maybe you order takeout once a week. Those are extra calories that you get sometimes. Not often. They’re not part of your regular routine. But that’s your body’s way of keeping your weight steady each week. Thing is, now that you’re adding extra calories into your diet, those cravings might disappear. So now you’re eating a bit more calories every day, but you aren’t getting those biweekly calorie infusions anymore. And so you don’t gain weight.
Since your appetite will naturally cue you to eat enough to maintain your weight, these subconsciously caloric adjustments are very common. They’re very sneaky. Watch out for them.
Fortunately, this muscle-building diet is self-correcting. If you’re adding in another 200 calories every week you fail to gain weight, then eventually you’ll start consistently gaining weight. As long as your diet has some structure to it, this method will eventually start to work. And whenever it stops working, it will fix itself again.
If your diet is too sporadic, though, you might want to count calories instead.
Method Two: Tracking Calories
This option is best if you want to build a bulking diet from scratch. The goal here is still to develop a fairly consistent routine, though, so that you can eventually switch back to option #1. Counting calories every day isn’t a sustainable lifestyle for most people. It’s not something you want to do forever. It’s only something you want to do for now, as you’re learning.
Plus, your body has a rhythm to it. If you eat meals at the same time every day, your digestive system will prepare for them. You’ll get into the rhythm of digesting meals at certain times. It’s not the end of the world if you fall off your schedule, but eating enough food is already hard enough as is. We might as well make it as easy as possible.
So how many calories should you be eating? That’s a tricky question. Calorie algorithms can get pretty complicated. Different people have different body compositions, diets, lifestyles, and goals. Fortunately for us, we can simplify it by focusing on a specific niche: skinny women who are working out and eating to build muscle.
For the average thin woman eating a balanced diet with a moderate protein intake and working out every second day (for about 3 hours total each week), this calorie intake should get you very close to your maintenance calorie needs:
- Maintenance Calories = weight (pounds) x 13
- Maintenance Calories = weight (kilos) x 29
Then adjust a little based on your lifestyle:
- If you wake up, drive to work and sit at a desk all day, decrease the multiplier by 1, making it 12 (if you use pounds) or 29 (if you use kilos).
- For every extra hour of exercise you do per week—in addition to your muscle-building workouts—add an extra 1 to the multiplier. For example, if you play two soccer games every week, each lasting about an hour, your multiplier would be 15 (if you use pounds) or 31 (if you use kilos).
This should roughly reflect what you’re already eating. It won’t be perfect, but it should be about right. If the number seems way off, feel free to adjust it up or down by another 10%. Metabolisms vary from person to person, and chances are that you already know whether yours is larger or smaller than average.
Now we need to add in the calorie surplus. Just like with option #1, this means adding 200–300 calories per day on top of your maintenance needs. From there, weigh yourself every week and adjust accordingly. If you don’t gain weight, eat 200 more calories per day. If you gain too much weight, eat 100 fewer calories per day.
Examples of Adding Calories Into Your Diet
- Increase three meals by 100 calories each. Perhaps you do that by adding a small glass of milk to your meals. Liquid calories are fairly easy on the appetite, so this should be fairly achievable.
- Add in a couple 150 calorie snacks. Snacks have been shown to instinctively cause people to eat more, and they will allow you to keep your main meals reasonably sized. These snacks could be as simple as a homemade protein bar split in half, a whey protein shake, a handful of trail mix, or a couple pieces of fruit.
- Add in a fourth (or fifth) meal. Maybe a small fruit/protein smoothie, or some muesli cereal with milk and frozen berries, a homemade protein bar, or a store bought one—like a Quest bar. All of these options are quick to prepare and consume, rich in fibre, contain a fruit or vegetable (except for the Quest bar), and contain enough protein to spike muscle protein synthesis.
- Have (more) dessert. If you already eat a pretty healthy diet that’s rich in protein and made up mostly of whole foods, perhaps you could just have a 250-calorie dessert after dinner. Bonus points if you make the dessert yourself.
Adjusting Your Calorie Intake Each Week
The most crucial aspect of your bulking diet is to change it according to whether or not you are gaining weight. I am aware that we have repeated this a lot, but it is crucial. You need to increase the amount of food in your diet if you aren’t gaining weight. It’s a harsh reality. The last thing you want to hear is that you need to eat even more when you’re already eating a lot. But that is the reality. You must carry out the action.
You must monitor your progress and make adjustments as you go in order to be absolutely certain that you are continually adding muscle. This will also adjust for inaccurate calorie estimates or monitoring mistakes. It enables the system to rectify itself. This is what will enable you to continue gaining weight each week, despite the fact that your body is inherently resistant to weight increase. Our bodies are also resistant to gaining weight. We are aware of how it is. Although challenging, it is effective.
Also, keep in mind that this won’t last forever. It’s challenging to put on weight. However, you return to maintenance once you’ve reached your target weight. You can once more eat anything you want. The process of maintaining your results is simple, pleasurable, and natural. You’ll experience a new level of homeostasis in your body.
Check your weight each week to see how it has changed.
On Sunday morning, we advise getting up, going potty, and then stepping on the scale. By doing this, you’ll maintain the most constant levels of fluids and stomach contents from weigh-in to weigh-in. Then, if you aren’t gaining the weight you want, then increase your daily calorie goal by 200. Alternately, cut 100 calories if you’re gaining weight too quickly.
We advise beginners who are thin to gain 0.25 to 0.75 pounds every week. You can change your calorie intake up or down each week, based on how your weigh-in goes, to get closer to that pace. If you’re more concerned with gaining fat, 0.25 pounds per week is a suitable goal. If you’re more focused on building muscle, 0.75 pounds each week is a reasonable rate. An average strategy would be to aim for 0.5 pounds.
This is how to ensure advancement.
Simply keep making adjustments if something isn’t functioning until it does. The factor you need to change when it comes to weight gain is your calorie intake.
If after a few weeks of working out you haven’t put on any weight and you’re wondering, “Damn, am I doing the wrong workouts? Do I have poor genetics? Am I following a bad diet? But none of that is the case. You’re in the wrong spot looking for the issue. The recipe is fine; you simply need additional calories and ingredients.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
Why Is Protein Important for Building Muscle?
A calorie excess will provide you with the energy to gain weight, weight training will encourage your body to try to build muscle, and eating adequate protein will provide your body with the building blocks it needs to create new muscle tissue. (Protein is used to build muscle.) The trinity of muscle building is sufficient weightlifting, adequate calorie intake, and adequate protein intake.
How Much Protein Should You Eat Per Day?
Most research shows that around a gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day (2.2 grams per kilo) is ideal for building muscle. That’s probably more than you eat right now, but it’s nothing crazy. If you have trouble hitting that goal, remember that you can always buy some protein powder.
Keep in mind that this is how much protein it takes to build muscle. You don’t need to eat this much protein forever. Muscle doesn’t take as much protein to maintain. This is why you’ll sometimes see very muscular people eating far less protein than this. Once you reach your goals, you can eat a bit less protein without fear of losing muscle.
What Are the Best Sources of Protein?
There are many excellent sources of protein, including whey protein powder, plant-based protein powders, whey protein concentrate, chicken, fish, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, beans, peas, red meat, grains, soy, and so on. This makes getting enough protein if your diet is unrestricted quite simple. If there are constraints on your diet, buying a proper protein powder usually fixes the issue.
Chicken is more expensive, less nutritious, and great for growing muscle than whey protein. But there are lots of fantastic varieties of protein powders. For those who have issues with dairy or wish to forgo animal products, pea + rice protein powder is excellent.
Is It Healthy to Eat More Protein?
Yes, most research shows that diets higher in protein are totally healthy. Not only is protein rich in nutrients, but it also supports a lean, strong, and athletic physique. Make sure you’re still eating plenty of other good foods, too, though. Lots of nuts, fruits, veggies, legumes, and so on.
How Much Protein Should You Have Per Meal?
Hitting your overall daily protein goal is the most important thing, but splitting up your protein evenly over the course of the day can help, too. In an ideal world, you’d have at least three meals per day, and at least 20 grams of protein in every meal. (Intermittent fasting is okay for losing fat, but it doesn’t seem to be ideal for building muscle, especially for naturally skinny people.)