How to Achieve Healthy Weight Gain

Achieving healthy weight gain is a relatively simple task as long as you weight train regularly, get plenty of rest, and most importantly, avoid eating unhealthy foods.

Although junk food is very high in calories, consuming it too often will hinder the progress of your lean tissue weight gain in the short term, and cause serious health problems in the long term.

Everyone knows that eating more food will result in weight gain, they often don't realize how important it is to eat nutritious muscle building foods, and avoid fat and sugar laden junk foods. healthy weight gain man flexing arm

Here are three reasons why healthy weight gain requires more calories from healthy foods:

Increased nutrient requirements - Your weight training workouts will increase your body's daily nutrient requirements, which are only contained through eating healthy foods.

Energy for your workouts - Only high quality complex carbohydrates will provide you with the energy you need to get through vigorous weight training workouts. Consuming low quality sources of simple carbohydrates will

Muscle and tissue repair - High quality sources of protein that are found in healthy foods must be consumed in order to allow the body to repair its self. Junk foods will not supply the body with the muscle building amino acids it needs to help you grow.

Eating unhealthy foods just because they are full of calories will not benefit your weight gain program.

Healthy Weight Gain Requires Healthy Foods!

Sure junk food is high in calories, and eating it will make you gain weight, however, the majority of the weight you gain will be unsightly body fat, and not lean muscle mass. Consuming junk food will also negatively impact your energy levels, and can lead to some serious health implications like cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Needless to say, there is a huge list of foods that should be avoided by anyone trying to build muscle and gain weight. Instead of listing every single food, we have come up with the following three categories that each of the foods to avoid fall in to:

1. Alcoholic beverages - Beer, liquor, wine etc.

2. Foods high in refined sugar - Candies, packaged cakes, chocolate bars etc.

3. Foods high in saturated or trans fats - Butter, fatty meats, many packaged foods.

Make sure you eliminate any foods from your diet if they fall in to any of these three categories. Even moderate amounts of these foods can effect your progress.

The Foods to Avoid

Now let's take a closer look at each of the types of foods that must be avoided in order to achieve healthy weight gain.

Alcoholic Beverages

Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol is probably the fastest way to sabotage your healthy weight gain efforts. Aside from the empty calories in alcohol that are easily stored as body fat, alcohol also negatively affects your muscle building progress in the following ways:

1. Negatively affects hormone levels - Alcohol not only lowers the levels of the muscle building hormone testosterone, it also increases levels of the muscle "eating" hormone cortisol. Talk about fighting an uphill battle... And we're only at number one! beer is not a healthy way to gain weight

2. Decreases bodies ability to absorb micronutrients - Alcohol consumption can make it more difficult for your body to absorb the vitamins and minerals it needs to repair and rebuild tissue.

3. Decreases rate of protein synthesis - Alcohol can actually directly effect the bodies ability to build muscle tissue... By up to 20%!

4. Promotes dehydration - Alcohol promotes dehydration. Considering that water is not only important to building muscle, but also health in general, it's obvious that dehydration can play a negative role in your program.

5. Decreases the quality of your sleep - Although you might literally pass out after consuming alcohol, the quality of your sleep is effected substantially. Since building muscle requires lots of quality sleep, excessive drinking can make things very difficult for your body.

Foods High in Refined Sugars

Foods that are high in refined sugars should be avoided if healthy weight gain is the goal. Essentially any foods that list glucose, fructose, or high-fructose corn syrup near the beginning of the ingredients list are culprits. Candies, chocolate bars, cereals, and most processed foods are extremely high in refined sugar, and should be eliminated from your diet immediately. donuts not for healthy weight gain

Refined sugar is a simple carbohydrate, and contains no vitamins or minerals. Excessive consumption can negatively impact your muscle building efforts in the following ways:

1. Depressing the Immune System - Did you know that drinking one can of soda can decrease the strength of your immune system by 50% for up to three hours? Simply put, building muscle requires a healthy immune system. If you are constantly getting sick, you will not be able to weigh train, and you body will not have the energy to build and repair muscle tissue.

2. Inhibiting the Release of Growth Hormone - Since refined sugars are absorbed into the blood stream so quickly, they force the body to rapidly secrete insulin. This in turn can inhibit the release of growth hormone, an important hormone in the muscle building process.

3. Drawing Upon the Bodies Micro-nutrient Stores - Since sugar lacks vitamins and minerals, it draws upon the bodies stores of micro-nutrients in order to be metabolized. These are the same micro-nutrients your body uses when building muscle.

Foods High in Saturated or Trans fats

Saturated and trans fats are know as the "bad fats". Consuming too many foods that are high in these types of fat is a bad idea if healthy weight gain is the main goal, and you are concerned about your long term health. eliminate pizza for healthy weight gain

Excess saturated and trans fat intake can lead to the following negative effects:

Increased LDL cholesterol levels (AKA the "bad" cholesterol).
Increased amounts of body fat, since the bad fats are more easily stored by the body.
Increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stork diabetes and other chronic illneses.

Neither of these types of fat will benefit the bodybuilder like unsaturated fat will. Saturated fat intake should be limited, and trans fat intake should be completely eliminated from you diet.

Putting it All Together

In order to achieve healthy weight gain, you have to weight train regularly, and get plenty of rest and recovery. It's also essential to eliminate the unhealthy refined foods from your diet, and replace them with nutrient dense muscle building foods that will nourish your growing body.

Consuming alcoholic beverages, and foods high in sugar and fat will not benefit your muscle building program in any way, and will increase your risk of various diseases down the road.