So you want to get Big: Part 2
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Consult a general practitioner before attempting this exercise |
What if I don't gain
Well let's go back to 4100
calories per day. As I mentioned earlier, we are not all the same and may
have different caloric needs. So this theoretical amount of 4100 calories
may or may not cause you to gain any weight. Let's say that you have eaten
this amount of food for one week and nothing happens. You did not notice
any gains but you did not lose any weight either. What's wrong? Obviously,
it takes you more than the original 3600 cal/d to maintain your weight. So
we need to make some adjustments. From here (4100 cal/d) we will add
another 500 cal/d (4600 cal/d). Now we will wait another week and see what
happens. If you still do not see any gains, repeat this process until you
start gaining no more than one pound per week.
What if I'm
gaining too much
I'm sure by now some of are
thinking that if 500 extra calories give us one pound more must be better.
Not so fast! The quicker we gain, the more chance there is that we will
store fat. Remember we only want to take in enough to cause the muscles to
grow. That way we will minimize fat storage. So more is not necessarily
better in this case.
Well what happens when you finally start gaining, but are gaining too much
weight too fast? Simple----we do some fine-tuning, by lowering the caloric
intake by 100 cal/d until we level off to one pound per week. It's just
that simple!
Help, I've reached
a plateau
OK, let's say it took us 4100
cal/d to gain one pound of body weight per week. Will we keep gaining
weight as long as we eat this amount of food? NO! As we become more
muscular and gain more body weight our caloric needs increase. So 4100
calories soon will only help us to maintain weight once again. It should
be obvious that we need to increase our food intake again.
So, now what we need to do is determine about how many calories per pound
of body weight it took us to gain weight in the first place. This will
make it much easier to adjust our caloric intake as our body weight
increases. So 4100 / 200 lbs = 20.5 cal/lb. That simply means it took us
20.5 calories per pound of body weight to gain weight. Now that figure
should stay about the same as long as we do not increase our energy needs
by increasing our activity. So as our weight slowly rises, we need to also
recalculate our caloric needs. Therefore, as our 200 lb. man reaches 205
lbs., he needs to also have increased his caloric intake to 4200 cal/d to
avoid hitting a plateau and not gaining any more body weight.
Well there you have it! Information on helping you add on those extra
pounds.
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