What to eat to gain weight? For many people who are more focused on losing weight and staying in shape, this question may sound strange. When gaining weight becomes task number one, those around you perceive it as carte blanche in their relationship with food. Here’s what calorie-dense foods for weight gain are worth including in your diet to make it healthy and balanced.
Causes of Weight Deficiency
Before addressing the problem, you need to understand the cause of the problem. Men and women face weight loss for a variety of reasons. The list of the most likely ones looks like this.
Heredity
Perhaps in your family, an asthenic physique is the norm. Slimness in such a case is often combined with low metabolism: metabolism is slow, but it’s difficult to gain weight.
Insufficient Nutrition
Do you eat enough? Do you know what foods you need to eat to get better and are they part of your regular diet? Try counting calories: the norm for women cannot be lower than 1200 and for men 1800 kcal. Target 2,500 kcal for an adult male and 2,000 kcal for a woman.
Stress and Depression
Often in situations of severe emotional turbulence or, conversely, extreme apathy, appetite is lost, and a person may simply forget to eat. As a consequence, the body loses mass, energy, and strength become less.
Accelerated Metabolism
In this case, the metabolism is so fast that the body has no time to gain weight. Reshaping the menu, changing your lifestyle, selecting optimal physical activity – the problem must be solved systematically.
Doctors may recommend increasing body weight to a woman who is planning to become pregnant. Reducing the fat layer may have a negative impact on reproductive function: normal ovulation frequency is disrupted and estrogen levels fall. Pregnancy may not occur.
People who are underweight often suffer from weakness, rapid fatigue, atrophy of muscle tissue, lack of vitamins, and anemia.
How to Restructure Your Diet
Properly increasing your body weight does not mean eating fast food and chocolate ice cream 24/7. On the contrary – to gain weight, it’s important to consistently increase the total number of calories per day and keep a balance of proteins, fats, and carbs. Their optimal percentage ratio can be represented as a formula: 45/30/35 respectively.
In order not to create excessive stress for the body, you should not change your usual diet abruptly. Try to stop eating unhealthy foods: fast food, extra fats, and fast carbs even while watching movies, playing at a Bitcoin casino, or going to a restaurant with friends. Increase the total caloric content of your diet by 200-300 kcal per day. Thus, weight gain will proceed smoothly and gradually.
Eat often and regularly: divide your meals into 2 to 5 meals.
If you work out at the gym, ask the coach to select a set of exercises that will allow you to reach your goal faster. For example, weight training may be more effective for you than cardio. Combined with a balanced, protein-rich diet, it will be easier to get the results you want.
What Foods to Eat to Gain Weight
High-calorie foods are great, of course, but high-protein foods are better. They help increase muscle mass and provide essential amino acids. Consider healthy fats and complex carbs as well.
Form a food basket so that the set of products is healthy and likes you: for example, if you refuse meat, it can be replaced by legumes.
Protein
Red Meat
We are talking not only about beef steaks but also about liver, for example. The latter contains 12 of the 129 amino acids as well as vitamins A and B12. It’s better to give up semi-finished and processed foods. They may contain excessive salt, sugar, flavor enhancers, or other unnecessary substances.
Bird
Chicken or turkey can be boiled or baked in the oven. You can afford the crust, but it is better to refuse: it is certainly caloric, but it is better to do without the high content of harmful fats.
Eggs
Rich in protein, it’s also easy, tasty, and fast. Eat it in any form from a poached egg to a protein omelet. It’s better to boil them or cook them without oil in a nonstick pan.
Eggs strengthen the nervous system and normalize blood pressure.
Fish and Seafood
Mussels, shrimp, salmon, trout, pollock, tilapia, pike – choose what fits your taste and budget.
Fatty redfish also contain healthy fats. Bake in the oven or cook on the grill. To avoid cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, and the development of diabetes it is better to be careful with salted and smoked fish due to its excessive salt content.
Fats
Olive Oil
A source of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Use it to dress salads and make healthy sauces. It loses its healthy properties when cooked.
Avocado
The product consists of 77% of healthy fats, oleic acid helps reduce cholesterol levels, and thus reduces the risk of heart and blood vessel diseases.
Avocados are a great addition to toast and sandwiches and salads.
Nuts
Champion from the world of healthy snacking: high energy value and lots of healthy fats. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, peanuts – choose any.
