How Much Should I Eat To Gain Weight?

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You Gotta Eat To Gain Weight!

This post is part 2 in the how to gain weight the healthy way series – Eat To Gain Weight.  Last post I talked a bit about the importance of eating high quality muscle building foods and listed some examples of the types of foods your weight gain nutrition plan should center around. Hopefully you grasp the importance of eating clean foods, as this is where most people completely screw up the whole weight gain thing, thereby sabotaging their chances for a more muscular and healthy body.

Today I’m going to tackle one of the questions that I’m asked most often about the weight gain process in general..

“How Many Calories Should I Eat To Gain Weight Without Getting Fat?”

This is a tricky one, as it depends on a few different factors that are unique to each person. I’ll start by saying that there is no single answer here that will work for everybody. There is an unknown element at work that’s commonly referred to as metabolic individuality.

Metabolic individuality describes every body’s unique ability to break down and utilize nutrients at different rates. This is why some people are genetically predisposed to being skinny while others are predisposed to being chubby. The skinnier “hard gainer” types typically have very efficient  hyper active metabolisms that run and run and run, while chubbier people tend to have metabolisms that break food down much slower.

In order to figure out how many calories you need to eat to gain weight, you’re going to have to do a little trial and error experimentation. The bad news is that it can take a few weeks to nail down the right number for your body. The good news is that if you approach it right, you can start to build some muscle while you’re ironing everything out.

So…How Many Calories Should You Eat To Gain Weight?

The first step in the process of figuring out haw many calories you need to eat to gain weight without also packing on a lot of fat, is to take a few basic measurements and plug them into an equation to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate or Resting Metabolic Rate.

The measurements that you need to take are:

1. Your Body Fat Percentage
2. Your Current Weight

Here’s the equation for BMR - BMR = 370+(21.6 x LBM (kg)).

If you need some help getting through the BMR and estimated daily expended energy calculation head on over to this page and learn how to calculate your basal metabolic rate or download this target calorie consumption worksheet that walks you through these calculations step-by-step.

After you’ve figured out what your Basal metabolic rate is, you need to plug that number into another equation that takes into account your activity levels throughout the day, and determine your estimated daily expended energy value.  This value represents the number of calories your body expends on a daily basis in order to maintain your current weight at your current body composition.

Here’s the equation for estimated daily expended energy - BMR x Estimated Activity Level Multiplier

Activity Level Multipliers

Sedentary	BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly Active	BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. Active	BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very Active	BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extra Active	BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.

After you’ve taken all of the measurements and run them through the equations, you have a place to begin your experimentation to figure out exactly how much you should eat to gain weight. In order to make this as simple as possible, all you need to do to get moving towards your weight gain goals, is to take your estimated daily expended energy value and adjust it according to your weight gain goals…

• If you’re a hard gainer and your goal is to gain as much weight as possible as quickly as possible. And you’re willing to pack on a bit of body fat while gaining weight, then simply add an extra 750 – 1000 calories to your estimated daily expended energy value.  Over the course of a week all of these extra calories will add up significantly.
• If you’re one of these guys who wants to build muscle and gain some weight, but you really don’t want to pack on a lot of body fat at the same time, then cut it back a bit and add an extra 500 calories a day to your estimated daily expended energy value.
• If you really, really, really don’t want to put on any body fat at all, but you still want to gain weight, then add on an extra 250 – 500 calories to your estimated daily expended energy number.

All of these approaches will lead you in the same direction – towards healthy sustained weight and muscle gain, you just need to decide which approach is right for you and consistently implement it. Focus on eating your target calorie value each and every day, and make sure to get those extra calories from high quality foods.

What To Do If You Still Don’t Gain Weight…

Regardless of the approach you take and the foods you eat, you may still have a hard time gaining weight.  You remember that pesky nuisance metabolic individuality…right? This is where you need to up your game a bit and adjust how much you eat to gain weight in an efficient manner.  Most guys don’t take the right approach here.  Either they start slamming down tons of excess calories until they realize that they’re only getting fatter, or they just give up completely.

Listen to me when I say that it doesn’t have to be that way – there is an approach that will allow you to figure out exactly how you need to eat to gain weight without all the nonsense. It’s going to take you a few weeks to figure it all out, but in the grad scheme of things it’s a minor inconvenience on your way to a more muscular and powerful body!

If you find that you’re not gaining weight, simply beign adjusting your target calorie value up by 250 – 500 calories every 2 weeks. After 2 weeks break out the body fat calipers and jump on a scale – see if you’re making progress towards your goals.  If not Re-adjust your target calorie value again. Just continue this process until you begin to gain weight and muscle mass.

While simple, this approach to figuring out how many calories you need to eat to gain weight is rarely used.  It does require some patience, persistence and work on your part, but this is often times what it takes to gain weight and build muscle. Stick it out and you will begin to move closer to your goal of a bigger, more muscular body.

Part 1 in the How To Gain Weight The Healthy Way series talks about what types of foods to eat to gain weight,  If you missed it…check it out!

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