Calories and Weight Gain
Body needs vary within individuals for maintaining a stable metabolic function. Metabolic function is defined as how quickly a body uses energy - in this case how many calories it uses per day to maintain function. Between 2000-2500 calories per day is considered an average amount of calories needed to keep your metabolic rate in constant and consistent activity.
Adding 1000 extra calories per day is gaining weight at 2 pounds per week. Some caloric needs may exceed 2500 calories per day; the key is to increase the needed calories by at least 1000 calories per day, since you need calories to gain weight.
Burning Calories with Working Out
Exercise does burn calories so to gain weight while exercising requires having more calories in your diet when working out. Calorie supplements can give you the extra boost you need. The best weight gain supplements will provide the most calories and the most extra nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fats, sugars, fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Calorie Supplements and Weight Gain
If you are a patient fighting a disease like cancer or AIDS, there may be times when, despite your best efforts, you don't want to eat. Even if you have the option of high calorie, nutritious and tasty meals, you may be too tired, nauseous or just not in the mood. In times like these, calorie supplements can come in handy. Nutritional and calorie supplements should not be a staple in your diet, but they can be a real help in a pinch. These calorie supplements, especially when they are nutrient, vitamins and minerals can help you maintain a weight, or add calories when you are trying to gain weight.
High Calorie Foods
Packaged foods have the nutritional value and calorie count on the label. Chose the brand of product with the higher calories if you have a choice. Look in dietary and nutrition books for a list of high calorie foods for weight gain. Try to avoid Packaged foods packed with salt and preservatives. Salt will help you retain water, which makes your weight appear higher then it really is. Focus on highly nutritious foods with natural fat content like eggs and avocados.
Calories
Calorie usage depends on activity levels, the more active, the more calories are used. It takes 1.5 calories a minute to keep the body operating smoothly, without additional activity. When the activity level increases the rate of calorie usage goes up. If you are exercising regularly and find that you are not putting on weight, in the form of muscle, you may want to look at introducing a calorie supplement into your diet. This will give you the extra calories you need for weight gain and should offer extra nutrients and vitamins to maintain your health and well being.
Extra Calories
Gaining weight requires finding extra calories when you have meals or snacks. Add sugar to your coffee, put sugar on your cereal, add dressing to your salads, choose high calorie brands of a product, choose the higher calorie canned fruit, Choose raisins over grapes, cook oat meal with milk, put butter and sour cream on your potato, put cheese on sandwiches, use mayonnaise with tuna. All can add extra calories for gaining weight.
Gaining Weight and Calories
Gaining weight requires more calories than your body needs. The body needs1.5 calories each minute just keeping the body functioning. With additional movements, that amount can more than double to over 180 calories per hour. High calorie foods and calorie supplements provide the extra caloric intake needed to exceed the functional amount of calories. Every extra calorie is needed to gain weight
The Effect of High Calories on the Body
Gaining weight is a challenge and requires a dedication to add those extra pounds. It need not be a long term activity. A weight gain diet is rich but is not a permanent process. Reach your goal and then maintain with less rich foods. Proper dental hygiene will neutralize the effect of sugar, a six month plan to gain weight is not a lifetime of rich eating, and proper exercise will tone the body and exercise the muscles, including the heart. The objective is to gain only the wanted extra pounds not continue to add excessive weight with higher calorie foods.
Protein Shakes and Weight Gain
Protein shakes alone are not effective for weight gain. Protein has been found to speed up metabolism in the body, so the body utilizes more calories more quickly. The more calories you use, the more you lose weight, not gain weight. Protein alone is a spiral away from weight gain. A combination of protein, fats and carbohydrates gain weight. .
Getting Extra Calories
Become a high calorie detective by reading food labels and nutritional books. Not all ice cream or canned fruit is alike for offering high calories. Choose the high calorie brands. Avoid the diet sodas and add salad dressings. Butter the toast and add jams and jellies. Add sugar to your tea and coffee. All calories add up. A high calorie supplement is also ideal for adding extra calories for gaining weight. Remember though, its better to add a lot of healthy extra food into your diet, than to gain weight eating a bunch of junk food.
Caloric Content
You need to choose high calorie foods for weight gain. A few examples of high calorie foods are: English muffin with butter: 345 calories, 1 cup mashed potatoes: 200 calories, apple pie slice: 400 calories, 4 slices of bacon: 700 calories, 2 fried eggs: 215 calories, 2 pork chops: 500 calories, coconut cream pie slice: 450 calories, 8oz chocolate milk: 290 calories, 1 cup chili and beans: 300 calories, avocado salad with dressing: 350 calories, ¼ pound T-bone steak with melted butter: 600 calories, 8 oz cheese ravioli: 625 calories.
About Calories and Weight Gain
Do Exercise and Weight Gain
Heavy Weights
To build muscle mass for weight gain, you need to train with heavy weights, more specifically, heavy free weights. A heavy weight is one that is challenging for you. This means that it could be 5 lbs if you have never lifted a weight in your life.
You don't want to injure yourself, so challenge your muscles, but don't push yourself into injury! To ascertain if a weigh is challenging, try the following: complete 8-12 reps and if you muscles temporarily fail, you are using the right weight. Heavy weights will stimulate more muscle fibers, and therefore more growth, than lighter weights, therefore, additional muscle stimulation means additional muscle growth.
Muscle Weight Gain
To gain muscle weight, your muscles need to grow and get larger. Muscles need high calorie fuel and exercise to grow. With a combination of proper diet and exercise for weight gain, your muscles will grow and you will therefore achieve your weight gain goals. Without the exercise, the muscles can not grow. Without fuel, the exercise will burn calories, not build muscle.
Overtraining
When you are weight training heavily to gain weight, the exercise puts a strain on your body, so make sure that you get adequate rest and recuperation after each of your workouts. If you over train you are not giving your muscles enough time to repair which will impede the effectiveness of you next workout. If you are not at maximum strength you won't reach your muscular potential. You could also injure yourself. Make sure that you approach your weight gain and your muscle gain in a paced and balanced approach.
Aerobic Exercise to Avoid
There are some exercises that are better at helping you lose weight than gain weight. If you are trying to gain weight by building muscle, you will want to stick to weight training, the best anaerobic exercise. Examples of aerobic exercise that you may want to avoid include biking, jogging, swimming, running, basketball, cross-country skiing, jumping rope, roller blading and walking for fitness.
Weight Gain Exercises
Gaining weight with exercise works best when you target the larger muscles for growth and work to add muscle mass. Push-ups are excellent for adding weight to the upper body. Lunges and squats work best for the thighs while standing heel raises are highly effective for building the calves (works best on a step). Try crunches for the abs, and pull ups (if a bar is available) work well for the arms and back. All these exercises can add weight with muscle mass when combined with an appropriate weight gain diet.
Anaerobic Exercise vs. Aerobic Exercise
The reason that weight training is so effective for muscle weight gain is that it is anaerobic exercise as opposed to aerobic exercise, which is often recommended for weight loss regimens. Aerobic exercise includes running, walking, biking, aerobics programs and other exercises that burn calories without specifically building muscle mass. The term "anaerobic" is defined as "without oxygen." Anaerobic exercise uses muscles at high intensity in short bursts. When you are weight training and trying to maximize the benefits of anaerobic exercise, focus on all of your movements being short and fast.
Multi Joint Exercise
When using exercise to gain weight, you want to focus on working the large muscle groups that are commonly called multi-joint (compound) movements that simultaneously stimulate many groups of muscle. Compound exercises should be the basis of any weight training weight gain program because they offer the best results for the least amount of work (not that you won't be working hard!). These compound exercises include Bench Presses, Overhead Presses, Pull-ups/Barbell Rows, Squats, Dead lifts and Bar Dips.
Gaining Weight with Exercise
Some exercise will help to gain weight such as weight training where extra muscle mass adds to the body weight. Other exercise like running and cycling will burn calories and without extra calories you will lose weight, not gain weight. Remember though, that weight training raises your metabolic rate, so you will require more calories to maintain any weight gained through added muscle. A combination of proper diet, weight gain shakes and exercise for weight gain will maximize healthy weight gain with added pounds of muscle.
Weight Lifting Techniques
To maximize your weight lifting workout and build muscle mass for weight gain, lift hard for a short, intense period of time and then take time to recover until the next workout. You should focus on what are considered "big exercises" such as squats, dead lifts, bent-over rows, chin-ups and bench press. These exercises focus on many muscle groups but they are also focusing on the muscles that are easiest to build up. You should also increase your strength by adding a small amount of weight each workout. If you focus on building strength steadily, size will follow. If you are uncertain what to do and how to do these exercises or employ this technique, you could get help from a professional trainer or someone at the gym with experience. Don't be afraid to ask for help!
Is Exercise Necessary for Weight Gain
You don't have to work out to gain weight. Gaining weight takes eating more calories and nutrients each day than you use, whether through exercise or your normal daily routine. Working out can help with weight gain by increasing muscle mass because muscle is heavier than body fat. So, if you are maintaining a weight that is not optimal, you need to increase calories. If you are working out, you will need to increase your caloric intake exponentially to make up for the calories you are burning with exercise.
Gym Memberships and Weight Gain
A membership at a gym can help you exercise to gain weight, but home equipment works just well. Without equipment, regular strength exercises like push ups, pull ups, crunches and leg lunges can build muscle mass and gain weight. Be sure to add the high calorie weight gain shake when you workout to replace any calories you burn during your exercise routine.
How To Have Your Own Gym In Ur House
Is it possible to build a strong, muscular body working out in my own house? Or joining a gym is the only way to achieve it.
That’s the question a lot of folks do and I got and answer for that. Of course you can do it and it doesn’t matters if it’s your house or a gym where you are training.
You may have a lot of reasons to not want to go to a gym. It doesn’t matters. Whatever your reason, there are still a lot of options if you want to workout and have huge muscles. And, as I told you, your home may be the best gym for you.
There are guys who like a lot doing the workout in their own house. They have their gym just down (or up) the stairs waiting for them. And they don’t spend their time trying to go there and back.
I could listen to whatever music I wanted to, as loud as I wanted to without having to worry about those around me. I could grunt, yelp and scream through my sets if I was in the mood without disturbing anyone (hey, squatting to failure isn’t easy okay?) or train shirtless if I felt like it.
And, at the end of the workout, you don’t have to get into your car to go back to your place to rest.
The only real disadvantage is that your exercise selection will decrease because you won’t have access to certain pieces of machinery such as a leg press or calf machine. You can purchase certain machines if you have the money to spend and plan on training at home over the long term, but for the majority of people this simply won’t be possible.
The good news is that planning out a proper bodybuilding routine does not require the use of any fancy equipment, and all of the machine exercises that you would regularly perform can be swapped for freeweight substitutions.
There are some basic equipment that you must have at your home gym, like: An adjustable barbell with freeweight plates, adjustable dumbbells, a bench with incline adjustments, a chin-up bar and a squat rack.
So there you have it; the 5 pieces of basic equipment that are needed to set up a home gym. As long as you have these basic tools in your arsenal you can perform an equally effective workout without ever having to join a traditional gym.
7 Days Cleansing Diet Plan for Weight Loss
A 7 days cleansing diet can be a good idea if you’ve overindulged over the holidays or while on vacation and you need to get back on track with a healthier diet and exercise program.
Being super-focused on everything you eat for a week gets you back in the mindset of doing the right thing for your body after a period when you haven’t been doing so well.
When you think of a cleansing diet you might think of the Master Cleanse Diet or some other type of fad diet that involves eating little or nothing over the course of a 7 day cleanse.
While this sort of liquid diet or all one food diet is a popular idea of what cleansing is about, the truth is you can do a 7 day cleansing diet that involves more food than you might expect. The important thing is that you only eat certain types of food to help clean out your body.
7 Days Cleansing Diet
There are different ways to approach a cleansing diet. Some people like to detox by drinking only freshly squeezed fruit juices and filtered water for the duration of the cleanse, which is more like a fad diet, while others say that a seven day cleansing diet is all about cutting out the processed foods and meat and eating only certain kinds of foods for a week. The latter is a much more reasonable and balanced way of dieting. The important thing is that you only eat certain types of food to help clean out your body and do not starve yourself or this will not give results.
It is very important to have lots of water and if possible fruit juices during the 7 day cleansing diet plan. On the first two days, it is generally advised to fast, that is only have water or at the most some freshly squeezed fruit juice. From the third day you can include foods. Foods that are allowed include organic raw fruit and vegetables, steamed or stir-fry vegetables and brown rice. Preferably, stir-fry vegetables should only be cooked in virgin olive oil or sesame oil. Herbs and spices can be added.
You can eat as many of these food items as you like and as often as you like. Be sure to eat lots of green vegetables, such as spinach, broccoli, celery, kale, chard and beet greens, and also be sure to have some fruit each day. If you still find this menu restrictive, then gluten free cereals and frozen rice waffles that contain no artificial flavors or refined sugars can be added.
Tips for 7 Day Cleansing Diet
The following are a few diet tips that must be followed during the duration of the cleanse.
* Avoid all meat, fish and dairy products. It is also advised to avoid tofu, other meat alternatives and beans.
* Do not eat any processed foods or simple carbohydrates.
* It is advised to stick as much as possible to raw, organic fruits and vegetables as the main constituent of your food.
* Make sure the juice that you have is freshly squeezed and not from a bottle.
* In cooked foods, brown rice is the best option. It is a healthy fiber filled food that will help you feel fuller.
* When you come out of the diet, don’t go back immediately to eating as you used to. Start by gradually adding in more cooked foods. After a week or so of transitioning back to a more regular diet, you should be able to start eating more meat and processed foods again.
* Though some experts believe that a detox diet is not very effective, other researchers do agree that when not taken to extremes of fasting, the 7 day cleansing diet is healthy and beneficial.
Your muffin top may kill you
CHICAGO — If your pants are feeling a bit tight around the waistline, take note: Belly bulge can be deadly for older adults, even those who aren't overweight or obese by other measures.
One of the largest studies to examine the dangers of abdominal fat suggests men and women with the biggest waistlines have twice the risk of dying over a decade compared to those with the smallest tummies.
Surprisingly, bigger waists carry a greater risk of death even for people whose weight is "normal" by the body mass index, or BMI, a standard measure based on weight and height.
"Even if you haven't had a noticeable weight gain, if you notice your waist size increasing that's an important sign," said lead author Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society, which funded the study. "It's time to eat better and start exercising more."
Other research has linked waist size to dementia, heart disease, asthma and breast cancer.
Bulging bellies are a problem for most Americans older than 50. It's estimated that more than half of older men and more than 70 percent of older women have bigger waistlines than recommended. And it's a growing problem: Average waistlines have expanded by about an inch per decade since the 1960s.
To check your girth, wrap a tape measure around your waist at the navel. No fair sucking in your bulge. Men should have a waist circumference no larger than 40 inches. For women, the limit is 35 inches.
The new study, appearing in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, is the first to analyze waist size and deaths for people in three BMI categories: normal, overweight and obese. In all three groups, waist size was linked to higher risk.
About 2 percent of people in the study had normal BMI numbers but larger than recommended waists. Jacobs said the risk increased progressively with increasing waist size, even at waist sizes well below what might be considered too large.
The study used data from more than 100,000 people who were followed from 1997 to 2006. Nearly 15,000 people died during that time.
The researchers crunched numbers on waist circumference, height and weight to draw conclusions about who was more likely to die. Study participants measured their own waists, so some honest mistakes and wishful fudging could have been included, the authors acknowledged.
Four extra inches around the waist increased the risk of dying from between 15 percent to 25 percent. Oddly, the strongest link — 25 percent — was in women with normal BMI.
People with bigger waists had a higher risk of death from causes including respiratory illnesses, heart disease and cancer.
The study was observational, a less rigorous approach that means the deaths could have been caused by factors other than waist size. But the researchers did take into account other risk factors for poor health, such as smoking and alcohol use.
Some older adults gain belly fat while they lose muscle mass, Jacobs said, so while they may not be getting heavier, they're changing shape — and that's taking a toll.
A tape measure, or a belt that doesn't buckle the way it used to, "may tell you things your scale doesn't," Jacobs said.
Fat stored behind the abdominal wall may be more harmful than fat stored on the hips and thighs. Some scientists believe belly fat secretes proteins and hormones that contribute to inflammation, interfere with how the body processes insulin and raise cholesterol levels.
But Dr. Samuel Klein, an obesity expert at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is skeptical about that theory. Removing belly fat surgically doesn't lead to health improvements. That may mean it's simply a stand-in for some other culprit that is causing both belly fat and poor health. Klein wasn't involved in the new research.
Klein said the new study, while showing a link between waist size and mortality, doesn't pinpoint exactly how much belly fat is dangerous for normal, overweight and obese people. The 40-inch for men and 35-inch for women cutoff points are irrelevant for many people, he said.
What can be done to fight belly fat? It's the same advice as for losing weight. Eat fewer calories and burn more through walking, bicycling and other aerobic exercise. "Sit-ups are useless," Klein said.
Americans may be getting honest about their weight
A new government telephone survey released Tuesday puts the adult obesity rate at nearly 27 percent and rising. A more scientific survey has already said the rate is 34 percent and holding steady.
Experts believe the 27 percent is probably an underestimate, because it's based on what people say. People tend to say they weigh less than they actually do and say they are taller than they are.
But the fact that it's catching up to the more accepted 34 percent estimate could suggest people are becoming more accurate when they talk about their girth. It's one explanation, anyway, said Dr. William Dietz, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It is possible people are paying more attention to their weight and reporting it more accurately," said Dietz, director of the CDC's Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity.
The new results are based on a telephone survey of about 400,000 people who were asked their height and weight. CDC researchers then calculate whether the person is obese, following a standard formula for body mass index.
Under the formula, a 5-foot-4 woman is obese if she weighs 174 pounds or more, a 5-foot-10 man fits that description if he weighs at least 209 pounds.
The study found that nearly 27 percent of the surveyed adults said they were obese in 2009, up from about 25.5 percent in 2007, a small but statistically significant increase.
Earlier this year, the CDC released results from another study that actually weighed and measured 5,700 adults. It found that 34 percent are obese; results have been similar in the last three surveys.
The differing surveys mean the CDC is reporting that obesity is increasing — and that it's not.
"We have somewhat contradictory data," because the studies were done differently and sampled different populations, Dietz said.
There could be several reasons why the telephone survey produced different results, said Dr. K.M. Venkat Narayan, an Emory University public health professor familiar with the two studies.
For example, the phone survey included only people with landline telephones, meaning others with cell phones were not part of the data, he said. It could be that a significant number of people who exclusively use cell phones are obese and not counted.
As for people underreporting their height and weight, "it's not so much lying," but rather that they don't regularly get on a scale, Narayan said.
The new report also found that in nine states at least 30 percent of the adults were obese in 2009. The states were Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and West Virginia. In 2007, only Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee had that many obese people.
Source: The Associated Press
