Gain weight fast

     The focus we need to maintain is that we need to be in a caloric surplus to gain weight. Simply put, we need to eat more than we burn. The other primary objective we want to accomplish is adding the right kind of weight. The vast majority of those reading this do not want to become a sumo wrestler. We want most, if not all of the weight gain to be added as lean skeletal muscle. Having this goal is much different than just downing a ton of calories. This was something I didn’t know in the beginning.  

     So initially I ate everything in sight, a true “seefood” diet. I would eat my double lunch and all of my friends’ lunches that they didn’t eat. Apple pie was healthy because it had apples in… right? Wrong. We want good wholesome food! So what are we talking about? We are talking about calorie-dense foods that are not high in fiber in this case. Yes, you read that right, go less fiber. Why? What?! Yes. The reason we want to aim for less fiber (NOT no fiber) is that we are going to hit our fiber goal either way by the sheer amount of food we are ingesting. We will keep some veggies/fruit in there along with everything else. This way we can eat a large portion of food, and also not feel like a beached whale so full of food, or worse yet, a human fumigator. We want to be able to digest the food quickly so we can comfortably eat the next meal. Again, we are not going no fiber. We are still aiming to get our minimum recommended amount. This is commonly stated as approximately 14g of fiber per 1000 calories. The reason I say we are aiming for less is that if we aimed to get more, combined with the extra food our body is processing, it could become quite a bit on the overall digestive system.

     “So what are these magical foods, David?” Glad you asked! Some of the ones I recommend the most are: Rice cakes, raw unfiltered/pasteurized honey, natural peanut/almond butter, whole grain oat bread, whole grain pasta, brown rice, whole milk, coconut oil, 80/20 beef, chicken thigh, nuts, olive oil, avocados, bananas, cream cheese, full-fat greek yogurt, whole-grain bagels, oatmeal, potatoes, granola, quinoa, raisins, chia seeds, dark chocolate, cheese, dates, salmon, guacamole, protein bars and shakes, eggs, and natural mayonnaise to mention a few.  Yes, you can have pizza and burgers and fries, and… you get the point. You will likely use it for fuel and can handle the extra calories. I encourage you to make it homemade with natural and unprocessed ingredients. This way you get the most nutrients and calories without all of the other junk.

     So we have our heavy-hitting food list more or less and calorie numbers. The big thing we want to focus on is the tracking of these nutrients. Our body likes homeostasis or “the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes”. Basically, our body doesn’t like to change. Step out in the cold and you shiver to keep warm. It’s 110 with the heat index and 80% humidity, you are going to sweat like a pig (just kidding, pigs don’t have sweat glands. But you do and you will sweat a great amount). Eat an extra-large pizza and a half (been there done that and you are likely to not eat much over the next day or two. I’ve seen this occur. Our primary objective is to create a large enough calorie surplus to add muscle. Most sites will say to add 500 calories to your daily calorie allotment. While this makes sense because that would yield one pound of muscle (if the muscle was 3500 calories like fat), but this is not the case. Muscle is made from protein and is about 700 calories worth of metabolically active tissue. If you are young (high school) and haven’t weight trained before, start at 10% and increase at +5% from your last bump in calories. Take weekly measurements and photos so you know you are putting on lean or mostly lean mass.