Healthy Eating Plan to Gain Weight

When you're trying to gain weight, you need a healthy eating plan to ensure your body gets all the nutrients it needs to build muscle and bone, as well as maintain healthy connective and nerve tissues. Just as for weight loss, slow and steady weight gain based on good nutrition, will give you the strong healthy body you desire.

Calories

• For healthy weight gain, you must increase your daily calories beyond what your body uses. Your doctor is the best source for determining your caloric needs, but you may also use an online calorie calculator.

Protein

• Protein supplies the amino acid building blocks for all your body tissues as you gain weight. The USDA recommends that men eat about 56 grams each day, while women should eat 46 grams of protein.

Carbohydrates

• Even when you're eating excess calories to gain weight, your body can metabolize its own muscle if you don't eat 6 to 11 servings of grain or vegetable carbohydrates each day for immediate energy.

Fat

• When you're gaining weight, you can eat more fat than usual, 25 percent of your daily calories as opposed to 15 percent, for instance. But fats should be healthy fats like those found in olive oil, avocado, nuts, flax seed and cold water fish like salmon and tuna.

Junk

• Desserts and fried foods that are very high in sugar and fat supply a lot of extra calories, which can help you gain weight, but they don't provide nutrients to build muscle, bone or connective tissues. Those empty calories are stored as fat.

Considerations

• A healthy eating plan will not increase your muscle mass if you do not also exercise. In particular, strength training is necessary to develop muscle mass.