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How to Gain Weight Without Just Adding Body Fat · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Today, we're going to talk about gaining weight. Now, some of you might be looking
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  at me crooked-eyed, wondering, why are we talking about gaining weight?
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  Everybody's trying to lose weight. Well, obviously, that's not the case.
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  Naturally, losing weight always gets a lot more press, but there are quite a
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  lot of people struggling with their weight because it's too low.
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  First, let's talk about what the concerns are when your weight is too low.
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  Number one, when you have too little body mass, you're at a higher risk of getting
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  injury because you may not have enough muscle mass to protect your joints.
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  The second risk is that you may not have enough muscle mass to adequately run your metabolic system.
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  Your muscle cells actually absorb a lot of the blood sugar from the food you
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  eat. If you have too little muscle mass, it's very easy for your blood sugar
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  to get really high, especially after a larger meal.
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  Finally, bone density. We need muscle mass, we need mass in order for us to
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  develop good bone density.
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  And now let's talk about gaining weight. So when we're talking about gaining
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  weight, we're obviously not talking about the scale going up.
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  That's a very crude metric, right? What we care about is overall healthy weight gain.
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  And that healthy part means that we probably want more muscle,
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  maybe some more subcutaneous fat, maybe some more bone density.
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  But we definitely don't want visceral fat. We don't want a lot of water weight.
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  So, now that we talked about that, obviously, we know what the main contributors to weight are, right?
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  So, one of them is muscle, the other
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  one is fat, which breaks down into subcutaneous fat and visceral fat.
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  And the next one is bone, and the next one is water weight.
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  Water weight is something women are generally a little bit more aware of.
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  It's something that they understand better because around their menses,
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  certain hormonal changes, they know their water weight, their amount of bloating,
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  fluid retention can change a lot.
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  Men are not often as in tune with that, but if you've carried a lot of extra
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  weight, you'll know this because suddenly you weigh yourself and you're 315
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  and the next day you're 308.
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  Is it possible that you gained or lost fat in such a short amount of time?
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  Absolutely not. Impossible.
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  Same with muscle, same with bone, but water weight is one of those things that
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  can fluctuate quite rapidly, especially if you had a high carb meal,
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  meaning high refined carb meal,
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  or if you drank a ton of water, or if you had a lot of salt.
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  Those are the factors that generally affect your water weight.
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  So when I want a client to gain healthy weight, the first thing is to understand
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  that it takes time. It's not going to be an overnight thing.
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  And for somebody to gain weight they have to do two things really well one they
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  have to eat a healthy diet with a calorie surplus meaning a little bit more calories every day,
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  usually somewhere around 150 to 200 calories extra per day is all that's needed,
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  and two they have to get enough healthy movement if they're not exercising enough
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  if they're just sedentary what they're going to gain is a lot of visceral fat
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  or even excess subcutaneous fat.
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  So they have to do some combination of movement, aerobic stuff,
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  and some resistance training.
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  We'll get into the details in just a minute.
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  Let's focus on nutrition and the calorie surplus.
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  The nutrition usually can be a combination of fiber and protein.
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  The reason I don't include fat is
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  because even somebody who's underweight generally doesn't need more fat.
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  Unless they have a food disorder or eating disorder where they're really trying
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  to cut out fat, absolutely.
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  Then we say, hey, you need some healthy fat. You need a little bit of,
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  like, beans have healthy fat.
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  You can do some avocados you can do some olive oil even i'm not a big fan of
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  any kind of refined oil added to your food,
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  i found myself over the past few years since i've been with my partner she generally
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  likes to use more olive oil and fats in the food i don't i always grew up not
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  really eating a lot of that so it snuck into my food more but generally
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  it's more of a problem and not as helpful as people think.
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  Even if olive oil has the stamp of approval from pretty much everybody,
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  it usually replaces the healthier carbs that you could get from more beans,
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  from more lean chicken, lean proteins, and other food sources.
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  So we want to focus on fiber and protein.
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  But the reason fiber is important, because we don't want to absorb too many
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  simple carbs from our food or too many saturated fats.
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  When you have more fiber, you're feeding bacteria that generally take some of
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  the absorbed saturated fat. They turn it into other types of short-chain fatty
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  acids that are actually good for your body.
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  And they help block the absorption of some of these saturated fats.
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  So it's good to have a balance.
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  You don't want to just go get whey protein or some other pea protein and just downing that.
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  In the news, of course, you're going to hear that, oh, that's exactly how you
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  should gain weight. That's what the bodybuilders do.
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  They do, but that's because they're lifting intense amount of weight on a very
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  regimented schedule and they have the kind of body and genetics that tends to,
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  favor that kind of weight gain with that kind of protein content.
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  And for whatever reason, their body doesn't get injured as much as yours.
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  You may not be that type of person. So it's much safer to focus on the lean
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  protein, to focus on the fiber.
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  And that's how you're going to gain weight. And how do you know how much to
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  eat? How many calories should I eat? That's very simple.
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  Measure what you're eating this week and add 150 calories to it.
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  So, for a week, take photos, upload it to ChatGPT, give it as much info as necessary,
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  and it will tell you how many calories you had, and then you add 150 on top
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  of that every single day, or 200.
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  Over time, you're going to see that your body is going to gain weight.
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  And especially if you're adding the resistance training to it,
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  it's going to be even easier for your body to signal that, hey,
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  we are needing to grow here. Let's do that.
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  So now we get to the exercise part. We get to the resistance training part.
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  By no means am I saying you should stop being active. You should still do lots
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  of aerobic activity. You should definitely not be holding back on your aerobic
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  capacity. even sumo wrestlers who
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  are trying to gain weight get plenty of aerobic work in their training.
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  What we want to do is signal for the body to take the protein that you're eating and actually turn the.
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  Amino acids into protein structures of the muscle and the way you do that is really,
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  by moving weight now you can do that by going to the gym and doing compound
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  exercises like overhead presses chest presses and squats and deadlifts
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  or you could do it at home using calisthenics exercises so this is when you
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  do push-ups this is when you do.
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  Some wall sits this is when you do some air squats Lots of different fantastic
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  core exercises that will really get your heart rate up and definitely give you
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  a fantastic resistance training routine.
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  And I think it's an easy one to incorporate for most people,
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  especially if you're busy.
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  And the good news is that you don't need a lot of it.
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  Most of us, if we're at home and even two to three times a week,
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  if we can take some time away and just,
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  set a timer for five minutes, do some of these lifting exercises,
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  your body is certainly going to get a signal that, hey, it's time to put on muscle.
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  If you're already lifting, of course, add a little bit more to your lifts.
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  Usually to add more muscle mass, you need to be in a very specific range,
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  of reps and sets so if you just want to be super strong you do fewer repetitions
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  maybe a little bit more sets,
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  if you just want a lot of tone on your muscle and just get a good aerobic slash
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  resistance training exercise you do many more sets and many more reps that and
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  but then of course you decrease the weight right.
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  The sweet spot is where you do maybe 12 to 15 repetitions, maybe even up to
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  25 repetitions, and you're not really going all out with your sets.
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  Maybe you're doing three to five sets.
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  That's generally the way to put on muscle mass.
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  Now, it's very hard because you really have to focus on the intensity as well.
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  So when you're lifting, when you're pushing that muscle, that weight over your
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  shoulders, when you're doing a shoulder press, an Arnold press,
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  you've got to flex. You've got to really feel that flexion.
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  That's what's going to help put on muscle.
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  Timing your protein around those exercises is also very beneficial.
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  Bodybuilders have figured this out.
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  The best way to do this, of course, is to just get a personal trainer who's
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  going to tell you exactly how to put on muscle mass fairly easily.
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  So remember, when it comes to putting on weight, you need two things.
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  Calories, which is healthy calories, calorie surplus, that's your food,
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  and the exercise, which is the resistance training.
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  Hope this is helpful to you guys. If you have any questions,
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  you can always email me, hello at drashori.com.