Diet recommended for gaining weight

so milk not only contributes to height it also contributes to weight? O.O that i didn't know.

 

A liter of milk contains around 600 calories.
The one I drink has 630 calories and 32 gr of protein. So 4 liters give me around 2500 calories a day and 112 gr protein. That's a huge amount of calories. How can someone not put weight by consuming this?

Of course you don't have to drink as much as I do, especially if you don't lift heavy weights.
Nothing beats a balanced diet!

 

ahh okey noted. Umm how much weight did you carry?

 

i infer from this that you don't know much about nutrition. i'm on my phone right now but when i get home i'll write you a quick guide in layman's terms.

 

the health inquiry we usually do at places i've worked:
how many meals do you eat a day?
what does each meal consist of?
what types of physical activity do you do?

answer honestly. no one will judge you.
i spend most my time in a chair, forget meals all the time, snack on shortbread. terrible for me but i dont care, im being honest. be honest and we can give some reasonable advice.

 

In the beginning I joined a gym and started doing the bodybuilding programme they gave me there, while at the same time I was reading Starting Stength [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3rd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp/0982522738"]Starting Strength, 3rd edition: Mark Rippetoe, Jason Kelly: 9780982522738: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]
It's a book that contains a beginner strength regime and detailed instructions of the exercises of the programme.

So gradually, after some practice, when I got the hang of the exercises in the book, I started doing Starting Strength.
I was skinny and out of shape so I began with really light weights and now after some months, I am doing a little better.

If you are also considering to start weight training as a mean to gain weight, then I would suggest you to check this book out.

 

ok, at pc now, so here goes a quick n' dirty primer on what i know of nutrition (IMPORTANT NOTE: i am not a medical professional, and am simply explaining what i've gained from studying metabolism at uni. take everything with a critical mind, and if you doubt something, check other sources. obviously the subject is much more complicated than this, but this should be enough to get you started, i hope).
it has a little bit of technical lingo, but only where i feel it's relevant so as to actually teach something rather than just saying "this is like this and like this and so you should do X, Y and Z" (you can check a biochemistry book to see if i'm talking nonsense ), but i also generalize a lot of things so it shouldn't be too hard to read through:

first of all, the process of eating food and what happens to it:

Spoiler

-mastication and digestion: the breakdown of food into its constituent parts. mastication is chewing while digestion is mostly chemical, and it starts in the mouth via your saliva (hence, chewing your food well is imporant for good digestion), to then continue in the stomach where the food is churned while your stomach acid does its job.

-absorption: the stuff that the food ends up as when you digest it is sucked passes through the lining of your intestines (and occasionally your stomach, such as with water and iirc alcohol) and goes into your bloodstream, from where it mostly goes into your liver and some biological voodoo not worth going into happens (look into liver function and the hepatic portal vein if you're interested), and from there to the rest of your body, taking nutrients to all your cells.

-excretion: what you didn't absorb, you poop (urine, on the other hand, is made by a separate method by filtering stuff that's in your blood).

now, the things that food is made of (most of the technical lingo is here, but it's relevant to what follows):

Spoiler

we can separate these into:

-macronutrients: proteins, carbs and fats: biological compounds made from amino-acids, carbohydrates and fatty acids, respectively (i'll get into these later), from which most biological material is composed and which have various functions in the organism. these are all broken into their constituent compounds (aminos, carbs and fatty acids) rather than absorbed whole.

-vitamins: small biological compounds (that is, they are made from multiple elements) that play specific roles in various biochemical reactions in the organism.

-minerals: different chemical elements (not compounds) that also play specific roles in various biochemical reactions in the organism.

-other stuff like anti-oxidants.

re: the macronutrients:

-protein: big-ass molecules made of units called amino-acids. proteins are basically the main structural component of the organism. when your body builds something, it uses protein. additional functions include forming channels that let stuff in or out of your cells, forming enzymes (mostly proteic compounds that cause or speed up biological reactions, ie they make stuff happen), and in extreme cases being used for energy (which is why people who starve have no muscle). some of the amino-acids that are be used by the body to make protein are called "essential" because the body doesn't produce them. you have to eat those with your diet.

-carbs: these are "sugars", but not in the "table sugar" or "sweet food" sense, but rather the type of chemical compound that sugars are part of (table sugar, or sucrose, being a mix of glucose and fructose. usually something ending in '-ose' is a sugar). carbs also include starches, cellulose and chitin. the main function of carbs in the human body is energetic (glucose is the primary kickstarter for energy generation, and is stored as glycogen, which is basically a bunch of glucose molecules stuck together so they don't take up as much space), but they also have some structural and biosynthetic functions (which are not relevant here).

-fats: these include both animal fat (which is saturated) and vegetable oils (which are unsaturated, which means that its molecules are more flexible). these have three basic functions: structural (cellular membranes are literally made of fat, for example, with proteins stuck through that fulfill different functions), energy storage (the cells in adipose tissue, which is what we know of as 'body fat', all have huge-ass blobs of these inside them, and when they get too big, that's when we get fat), and reserve energy generation (for when carb intake is low, which is why we can get thin again).

note: calories, which are mentioned along with the above in nutritional data, are simply a measure of energy. they're not a nutrient, but they depend a lot on the nutrients a food has. carbs and fats for example are huge sources of energy, so they tend to increase the calories in food by a fair amount.

note 2: dietary fiber falls under carbohydrates, usually (certain carbs that can't be digested fully or at all by humans, like cellulose from vegetable matter).

third, how this actually pertains to eating:

Spoiler

first of all, you need all the things mentioned in the previous point to function optimally, so eat your veggies, eat meat, eat fats, some sugar if you want, etc. as long as you don't go overboard only on one (and this'll also depend on which activities you do and how much you do them, since they'll affect how your body uses the nutrients from the food you eat), you're generally good. make sure to get all your essential amino-acids in (animal sources such as milk, meat and eggs will keep you covered, but a good variety of plant foods can work as well. i mostly go with meat and milk, so couldn't say what a good mix of veggies would be, sorry), along with some carbs and fats and a fair amount of minerals and vitamins, and that's the health angle taken care of, mostly; the rest'll depend on your goals, and to know how to work towards those, you need to know the following:

1) your body obtains energy through a molecule called ATP. you need know nothing about it other than it literally works like fuel in an internal combustion engine: it's broken apart, and releases energy that your cells use to do stuff.

2) the body has multiple ways to obtain ATP. if your diet is balanced, this will primarily be through the breakdown of glucose (a simple carb, or monosaccharide). this gives you a small sum of ATP and some residues that then go through a few more steps (look up the citric acid cycle and the electron transport chain if you wanna know more) and produces even more ATP. if glucose is not plentiful, the body can break down the aforementioned glycogen (which is just a bunch of glucose stuck together) to continue the process. if neither glucose nor glycogen are plentiful, it'll break down fats for energy, which takes a long time but gives you a metric crapton of ATP. finally, if you have almost no carbs (i think the figure was something like 30g or less of carbs per day), you get what's called ketosis, which is another way of breaking down fats that helps fuel your brain (which consumes stupid amounts of glucose).

now, this is regulated by two hormones called insulin and glucagon. to make it simple, both are always present, but the former is released in response to eating and stimulates the buildup of compounds (including proteins, fat inside adipose tissues, and glycogen), so after a meal you'll have more insulin than glucagon and your body will start using the stuff you ate to do stuff, whereas if you have an empty stomach for a while your levels of glucagon will rise because there's no input of "fuel", so to speak, and your body will resume taking its energy from the stuff it has stockpiled.

fourth, AKA "what the hell are you trying to tell me with this":

Spoiler

simple: health-wise, you need a bit of everything to be optimal, but if you're looking for body recomposition, you need to look at how your body reacts when you eat, and to the different things you eat.
if you want to lose weight (not the case here, but still useful to know**), you need to stimulate the breakdown of the fatty acids in your adipose tissue, which diet-wise can be done via low-carb diets (fat levels in your diet play less of a role, because dietary fat doesn't go straight into adipose tissue) and helped along via low-calorie diets (ie eating less, which, since dietary carbs are mostly an energy source, will usually mean eating low-carb anyway). you can also go with a ketogenic diet (the ultra low carb ones where you need to break down fats to fuel your brain), in which high fat intake becomes more important for obvious reasons. note that there can be health concerns associated with keto diets, so if you were to run one in the long term, it's best to do some research first and decide for yourself, else stick to short periods of a few days at a time with regular refeeds where you eat carbs. aside from how you handle your "macros" (the amount of each macronutrient you eat in each meal/day/whatever), there are also many different ways of structuring your feeding times. two example approaches are: multiple small but regular meals, which theoretically keep you not hungry and thus prevent you from overeating; and intermittent fasting (which has turned into a fad in the fitness world but is actually an interesting method if viewed with a critical mind), where you eat during a specific period of the day, and basically fast during the rest, usually consuming only low-calorie beverages (water, green tea, etc), to keep insulin low and glucagon high, and continuously deplete your glucose and glycogen during the fasting period.
in your case, however, you want to GAIN weight, so you need to stimulate the opposite pathways. the answer here is straightforwards: eat more (so you have more fuel and building blocks that your body can use), eat more often (so you have more insulin floating around to make your body use those new building blocks to build new stuff, and avoid breaking for fuel the ones it already has), and give your body a reason to actually build new stuff (strength training, for example, which, combined with a high-calorie diet*, will have you build muscle).

*bear in mind you'll also likely gain a bit of fat with this, particularly if you're not using up a lot of energy (if you want muscles, you need to lift weights or do other strength training, anyway, so might as well). this also again doesn't relate directly to the levels of fat in your diet, but to your total energy intake and the fact that you'll be stimulating insulin release all the time by eating. if you wanna shed it, you now have the know-how as well.

**told you it'd be useful

fifth, how to eat for weight gain from weight training:

Spoiler

EAT MORE

more seriously, if you lift weights, you're going to be abusing your muscles a fair amount, and they need to be repaired as well as "upgraded", so you're going to need a fairly high amount of protein from your diet. high-protein diets are generally poo-pooed by many nutrition people, BUT: 1- they address the general population, who don't deadlift double their bodyweight for reps, and 2- many people suggest astronomical amounts of protein that may or may not be useful to those who train but which might very well be unhealthy for someone who does not. some people say 1g/lb or 2g/kg and other similar figures, others will say more, and i've seen one or two studies reporting a "usable limit" of just under that (zero point eighty-something grams per pound, if memory serves). once you're pushing some heavy weight, 1g/lb won't kill you, even if it's more than your body can use, and you can always just reduce it if you need to.

you will also need a fair amount of fats and carbs for energy, because your body will use it not just for exercise, but also for the repair, hypertrophy and maintenance of the muscle mass you're training. the exact ratio of each (and of protein as well) is a hotly debated topic, so don't worry about it and just eat more, and more often

on the subject of milk, if you can digest it (the sugar that provides a fair amount of the carbs in milk, lactose, requires an enzyme, lactase, to break it down, and many people start to lose lactase activity towards adult age, resulting in lactose intolerance, which gives them diarrhea and stomach cramps), it's an excellent source of all three macronutrients. the full-fat milk i buy, depending on the exact brand, has around 30g of protein, 45g of carbs and 30g of fats, totaling about 580kcals, and here at least it's not too expensive to get, so for a small sum of money i can get half my protein intake (i weight around 60kg) and a fair amount of carbs and fats for the day in a single package (of course, when i had the bright idea of downing 2-3 liters a day PLUS solid meals, i got fat, so be careful ).

that's pretty much it. take your time to process it and see how it fits with how you eat and how you can eat to help you further your goals. corrections welcome from whoever might know more about the subject

 

now i'm hungry

 

to add to fishy's post:

- get used to eating a set number of regular meals.
(personally i make sure i eat 3 meals a day, with a snack before and after training, usually protein powder or sardines or more full meals. thats breakfast, lunch, snack, workout, snack dinner).

- Protein is important, you dont need to count grams but it should be the focal point of your meal. it causes an anabolic (muscle growth) response. 100grams or more of chicken/meat both before and after some type of resistance training will increase that anabolic response
if you want to see the sciencey stuff, read some papers by kevin tipton or oliver witard. there is tons of research on the anabolic response to protein, check out pubmed.
(for me i eat a chicken breast or more with each of my three meals and then a protein shake or can of sardines before and after training).

- carbs are good for you, so are fats, there is no such thing as unhealthy foods (well maybe trans fats) but there is such thing as food in excess.

- you dont have to drink a litre of milk or eat 5 times a day or any of that stuff. but it's worked for a number of people. the main point is eat more meals.
if you usually eat lunch and dinner, start eating breakfast too.
eventually start more meals like one between lunch and dinner.
(the most clean weight i've ever gained was from eating five square meals of beef, veggies and rice every day and training as often as i could.)

 

JM blakley had it right:

"For breakfast you need to eat four of those breakfast sandwiches from McDonalds. I don't care which ones you get, but make sure to get four. Order four hash browns, too. Now grab two packs of mayonnaise and put them on the hash browns and then slip them into the sandwiches. Squish that stuff down and eat. That's your breakfast."


"For lunch you're gonna eat Chinese food. Now I don't want you eating that nit good stuff. You wanna get the stuff with MSG. None of that non-MSG nonsense. I don't care what you eat but you have to sit down and eat for at least 45 minutes straight. You can't let go of the fork. Eat until your eyes swell up and become slits and you start to look like the woman behind the counter."

"For dinner you're gonna order an extra-large pizza with everything on it. Literally everything. If you don't like sardines, don't put 'em on, but anything else that you like you have to load it on there. After you pay the delivery guy, I want you to take the pie to your coffee table, open that sucker up, and grab a bottle of oil. It can be olive oil, canola oil, whatever. Anything but motor oil. And I want you to pour that oil over the pie until half of the bottle is gone. Just soak the life out of it."

"Now before you lay into it, I want you to sit on your couch and just stare at that nasty pizza. I want you to understand that that pizza right there is keeping you from your goals."



"Now you're on the clock," he continues. "After 20 minutes your brain is going to tell you you're full. Don't listen to that brain You have to try and eat as much of the pizza as you can before that 20-minute mark. Double up pieces if you have to. I'm telling you now, you're going to get three or four pieces in and you're gonna want to quit. You simply can't quit. You have to sit on that couch until every piece is done.

And if you can't finish it, don't you ever come back to me and tell me you can't gain weight. 'Cause I'm gonna tell you that you don't give a hapeney about getting bigger and you don't care how much you lift!"


Heavily edited for family forum.

Obviously I'm not advising you follow that but the message is clear, eat eat eat. If you are underweight you really don't need to learn too much yet, when you make a healthy weight then you can start counting your macros.

Watch the masked profanity please.

 

do note it is HIGHLY, HIGHLY important that you do some serious heavy-duty exercise while following any of these sorts of weight gain diets, so you actually give your body something to do with all that food, else you'll get fat (and i can tell you from personal experience, it's extremely easy to out-eat every single activity that you do). weight training is ideal, but it has to be gradual or you'll be limping for days after every session if you jump right into heavy weights, so you still have to moderate your food intake until you're really pushing your limits.

in addition, something i forgot to mention: the reason why you'd get fat from eating too much, again, does not directly correlate to the amount of fat that you ingest, but to your total calories. this is because the fatty acids that accumulate in fatty tissue are pretty much made from scratch by your body from components that are floating around not being utilized. these come from both carbs and fats, since they're made of mostly the same types of chemical elements, and fat production is stimulated when insulin is high and/or when you're not very active, because there's a bunch of surplus energy sources going unused (so the body goes "screw this, i'll store them", turns it all into glycogen and fat and stores the latter in adipose tissue cells)

 

as a side note, here's another example of a bulking "recipe":

http://ditillo2.blogspot.com.ar/2009/04/gain-weight-to-build-your-arms-john.html (look for the "get big quick" drink)

and here are some more (and possibly saner) examples:

http://ditillo2.blogspot.com.ar/2013/09/gainers-gourmet-part-six.html

do note that these are intended for people who could probably press us both overhead with one hand. trying them yourself now will probably make you obese retroactively such that you'll always have been fat (and will probably retroactively make it have run in your family for decades such that family photos will now picture fatter people than when the picture was taken)

 

that sounds dangerous O.O

 

yeah, not something you wanna try until you have some heavy-ish lifts under your belt, and if you know your foodstuffs you can get the same effect from regulr meals anyway (at least until you have a couple dozen kilos of extra muscle and need the calories any way you can get them)

 

hmm not really planning on a titan sized body but does what you recommend aside from the umm health drink help to gain a lean body? Cause technically i have the frame it's just the weight now that's the problem. And Seiken Steve thanks for the advice although you scared me abit about the whole meal thing O.O. but yeah i get the idea. It sounds expensive by the way O.O

 

Oh yeah for Fish of Doom this is basically what I eat
Breakfast: Sometimes toast (6 pieces) Sometimes a cheese sandwich :3(3 pieces) Sometimes cereal ( 1 bottle of milk and 1/6 of the cereal box yeah i know quite small)
Lunch: Nowadays teriyaki Chicken rice, Rice with dish(any dish), Just another three more sandwiches, and porridge
Dinner: Rice with any dish, and milk.
( the rice with dish is normally three helpings)
will this help?

 

getting lean is just losing fat, so either pack on muscle slowly so as not to gain much fat, or go for broke and then focus on leaning out afterwards. the diet looks balanced, try increasing your dinner and see what happens (either two dishes with the rice or an entire liter of milk with no extra dishes. keep it up for a month, exercise, and see if it gives any results)

 

If you are severely under weight then staying lean shouldn't be a concern, you won't get fat for a LONG while yet.

You aren't getting any protein with your breakfast Buddy, make sure you get either eggs or meat with every meal.

Also add a litre of milk between each meal and you will be well in the right track.

Good luck!

 

that too. if you weight 50 kilos you probably have more important things to worry about before leanness. how tall are you?

 

five foot and 11 inches. a normal height in malaysia