Calories!
Getting into a caloric surplus!
There is only one way to gain weight, and that is to get into a caloric surplus! Depending on your height and build, your body needs a certain amount of calories to either lose, maintain or gain weight. There are plenty of calorie calculators online that can help you find how many calories you need to consume daily in order to gain weight.
Generally the daily recommended calorie intake for a man is roughly 2,500 kcal, and 2,000 kcal for a woman.
Unfortunately, I also struggle to gain weight! After hours and hours of research online I've finally found the tricks that have helped me over the last year to gain the weight I wanted, to the point where I'm confident enough to take my shirt off in public and feel like I'm being stared at for the right reasons!
The real struggle!
Now don't be fooled, it may sound easy to just stuff your face everyday but if you have a fast metabolism and struggle to gain weight, it's actually pretty difficult to get those calories in, you may find you can eat what you like but you're more than likely in a caloric deficit at this point, otherwise you'd already be gaining weight! When you finally get into that caloric surplus, your body won't need all of these extra calories and you may find meal times harder than the gym! Below you'll find some high calorie foods to really help you on your journey.
Meals for the mighty!
Planning your meals
As I can only comment about my own weight gain journey, you can use it as a template to structure your own meal plan to help gain those calories!
My daily calorie goal to ensure I was gaining weight was 3,500 kcal (which was so hard at the beginning) so I had to break that down through the day to give myself a fighting chance!
- Breakfast - 7am (750 kcal)
- Mid-morning snack - 10am (350 kcal)
- Lunch - 1pm (850 kcal)
- Mid-afternoon snack - 4pm (350 kcal)
- Dinner - 6:30pm (850 kcal)
- Evening snack - 9pm (350 kcal)
Total calories: 3500 kcal
