How to Gain Weight

If you read this guide to the end, you WILL gain weight, build muscle, and change your life EVEN IF YOU’VE FAILED BEFORE.

You: I am underweight and I really want to gain more weight… How do I put on mass?

Scientifically, it’s an easy process. You simply need to consume more calories than you burn. If you do that, you will gain weight. It’s physically impossible for you to not gain weight.

You:But I’m already eating a lot!

Hit the back button right now, or start eating more. It’s probably true that you have a faster metabolism than the people you eat with, but you simply need to eat more. Repeat after me: if I eat more calories than I burn, it will be physically impossible for me to not gain weight.

Basic Diet

Like many things, packing on mass is easier said than done. If you don’t already know how many calories you need to be consuming daily to gain weight (roughly 20x your own body weight in calories daily), figure out your minimum caloric intake using my calorie calculator and then eat a lot more than that. If you eat an extra 500 calories a day (one small mass gainer shake) you’ll gain a pound of mass every week assuming you’ve got your metabolism in check (see above).

So I should go to McDonalds once a day – got it.

NO! The truth, of course, is that you can gain weight on a fast/junk food diet (and as proven in a recent movie – you can lose weight on a twinkie/mcdonalds diet). It all comes down to calories. But if your health (and fat/lean muscle ratio) matters to you at all, choose nutrient-dense foods instead of junk foods. Nutrient-dense and calorie/energy-dense foods include legumes, nuts, seeds, olives, dairy, meats, seafood, and poultry.

So I eat chicken, cheese, bacon, peanut-butter sandwiches with glasses of whole milk.

No; with gallons of whole milk. Now you’re getting it. If you’re a real nutrition geek, try to keep a diet of 40% carbs, 30% fat, and 30% protein.

It’ll help to increase your meal frequency to six times daily. If you get two or three of those meals from mass gainer shakes (which you can make inexpensively with our mass gainer shake recipes – or buy pre-made in the form of mass gainers) it’s really not any more difficult to stomach/get down six meals a day, nor is it tough to fit them into your schedule.

Increasing your meal frequency will also help regulate and normalize the flow of nutrients into your body. You don’t want to be on a three 1000-calorie meal daily diet – you’ll be getting three sugar crashes a day and, most importantly, you’ll go catabolic – storing more fat and losing muscle mass.

If you pursue your weight gain goal systematically, and plan your meals in advance, I guarantee you’ll gain weight. Remember: no matter how many times you’ve failed before, you know how to do it right this time. It’s impossible to not gain weight if you ingest more calories than you burn, and it’s simple with mass gainer shakes.

Using Mass Gainers to Gain Weight Fast

You don’t have to use mass gainers/weight gain supplements to gain mass. They work incredibly well but if you’re strapped for cash keep in mind that the primary purpose of weight gainers is to make companies money. I recommend you focus primarily on building an all-around weight gain diet from a variety of foods, and only then add a mass gainer.

With that said – whether you make them yourself or buy them – use mass gainers. They’re a life saver.

What About Exercise?

99% of weight gain is achieved in the kitchen and in the lab. Make your body a machine, and then eat, eat, and eat more. Low-rep weight training, however, can help increase weight gains (partly by boosting testosterone). And, perhaps more importantly, exercise can help ensure that you gain muscle instead of fat (and, of course, you get stronger, which is great).

Your workout should primarily be composed of large, old-school, compound exercises, such as squats, dead lifts, and bench presses. Work within a range of 4-12 reps. Anything more serves to improve endurance, and anything less is pretty much just stupid to do regularly.

One of the most under-recognized issues regarding gaining weight fast is that – when it comes to working out – more is rarely better. Keep your workouts shorter than an hour to prevent cortisol spikes and don’t do those big compound exercises more than two or three times (at the absolute most) a week.

Then immediately get out of the gym and eat something. More food is always better.