Gaining Weight in a Healthy Way

When it comes to being laborious, gaining weight is as tedious as losing weight, if not more. Moreover, gaining weight in a healthy way is extremely important. Thus, keeping the wellness quotient high in our priority list, here's how to gain weight in a healthy way.
Gaining Weight in a Healthy Way
'Scrawny', 'scraggy', 'bony', 'lanky', 'underweight'. If these adjectives are plaguing your life then fret not. Like everything else, science has devised ways to gain weight healthily. All it requires is a lot of patience, smart time management and an immense amount of unwavering dedication. Planning is also a quintessential element of gaining weight. Understand that being underweight is a condition and not a disease. So treat it like that. Here's how you can change the undesired condition while walking the healthy way!

Ways to Gain Weight Healthily

Do it for Yourself - It is of primary and ultimate importance that you are convinced of the fact that the entire process is done in personal interest. External factors may motivate you but it only holds your interest for a short span of time. Self motivation is very crucial and has the potency to kick you hard enough to not only reach your goal but also to maintain it afterwards.

Understand the Reasons behind your Condition - Go to the doctor as the first step before performing any heroics on your own. Being underweight may be a result of numerous causes such as low food consumption habit, genetic structure or disorders related to eating habits such as bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa. Some people are naturally underweight as they have a high metabolic rate or some kind of a hormonal dis-balance. Weight loss is also related to thyroid. Psychological conditions such as depression may also result in low weight. Therefore, find out the root cause and the condition of your health before appropriating on the ways to gain weight healthily.

Set a Goal - Be very pragmatic when doing this. Ideally, you should break down your goal to several notches. Smaller goals consume shorter spans of time and therefore give regular doses of satisfaction. They also decrease the chances of demotivation.

Design and Follow your Diet Chart - Understand that gulping down on fatty food indiscriminately, will result in only an ugly looking paunch on that meager body of yours. It is very important that you design your diet chart in tandem with a proper dietitian and according to your daily schedule. Be practical and try to include things that you can pack from home. Reduce your junk food intake as a stringent rule not only on paper but primarily in practice. You might like to refer to this weight gain diet. Do not cheat as at the end, you have a point to prove only to yourself. Design your eating breaks as per your schedule and maintain them. Specify one day of the week when you shall indulge and succumb to the tantrums of your taste buds. Knock yourself out on all that your tongue desires on that day. In short, be balanced. Take a look at foods to eat to gain weight.

Compliment Yourself! - The trick is to take a picture of yourself before you start the process and place it where you shall see it everyday. This will help you to gauge the changes in your body as you work towards gaining weight in a healthy way and give you that joyful feeling of achievement. Naturally will you work harder to reach the target and feel super about it. This will also harness your tendency to give up as then you will know what you shall become again!

Stop Cribbing and Obsessing - DO NOT keep thinking about it all day long. It does not help. It also hampers other things in your life. Continue with you normal schedule just in a more disciplined manner. Sleep on time and at least for 8 hours. Maintain stipulated food timings. Plan your day and try to keep to it. However, things generally tend to deviate from the plan so do not let it affect you majorly. Avoid letting guilt sink in with occasional slips and misses. Do not crib when there is no change in your weight. Try to check the reason behind it and find the solution. Also, do not jump onto the weighing scale after every hour to check your weight. That will not only not show you the authentic result but also distract and discourage you. Check your weight daily at one specific time of the day. More on how to gain weight quickly.

Exercise is a Must - There are no substitutes to exercising. You have to do it. However, do not adopt exercises on hearsay alone. Your condition has specified exercises and those alone can help you. Consult a trainer on a regular basis as each phase might require you to change your exercising pattern.

Read up! - It always helps to look up on related matter to enhance the process of gaining weight in a healthy way. It will help to customize these tips according to your specific needs, without messing with the broad idea. You will also know how to positively and optimally multiply the effects of these stipulations. It will also help you to increase personal involvement with the process and help you to extract pleasure out of the personal role played. More on how to gain weight safely.

Enjoy the Change - Be happy about the changes taking place in your life. Psychology plays a huge role in getting optimized results of the efforts taken. Pat yourself with even the slightest increase in weight. Do things like making your food colorful or get yourself new and vibrant gym gear. This will help change your outlook and infuse that feel-good factor in dollops. Accept everything with a smile and always look forward to a better tomorrow.

Diet Tips to Gain Weight Healthily
  • Wondering what to eat to gain weight? Plan your meal pattern in a manner where you eat several small meals spread out evenly over your waking hours. Say after every three hours, eat something. Starving will not help your body. Also, you tend to eat more than recommended if the body has been kept without food for hours. It induces cravings for harmful sugar and fat rich food. Avoid it.
  • Concentrate on rich in calorie foods. However, avoid eatables high in saturated and trans fat. Only things with mono and polyunsaturated fats will serve your cause when health is of primary importance. Do away with sugars.
  • Drink lots of water, milk and fruit juices. Avoid sodas as a rule. Also restrict your drinking to 30 minutes before and after a meal so as to not disturb digestion.
  • Derive the correct balance of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals in your meals. Load it with nutritious calories found in avocados, walnuts, almonds and olive-oil.
  • Do away with deep-fried eatables like chips and fries. Snack on nuts, tuna, cottage cheese, yogurt, raisins and chicken breasts instead. In short,
  • Avoid bodybuilding supplements if not absolutely necessary as they have severe side-effects. If you are advised to take it nevertheless then have it in prescribed, moderate doses. Remember over-consumption may show fast results but damages the body in the long run and your priority is health.
Exercise Tips to Gain Weight Healthily
  • Your exercise time should never exceed 60 minutes but intensify your regime to the fullest. For instance, lift heavy weights but do less number of repetitions.
  • You should be concentrating on different body parts on different days of the week. Draw up a chart in consultation with your trainer for equal distribution of exercises for different body parts.
  • It is extremely important to start gyming sessions with a warm-up session as it limits lactic acid building up in the muscles. This allows you to exercise more intensely. Stretching exercises are the best form of warm-up exercises.
  • Do not over exert yourself as you need to gain weight and not lose some by being over enthusiastic.
  • Finally, try to minimize on avoidable movements. Take the lift rather than climb stairs, get groceries home delivered, keep culinary ingredients handy to save on cooking time and rest as much as possible. You do not need to burn those calories.
Like anything else, gaining weight in a healthy way needs a lot of discipline. Just be patient and consistent. As you get into the process you will come across a lot of shortcuts to weight gain. Try not to succumb as being healthy is being happy in life.

By Ankana Dey Choudhury
Published: 11/10/2009
 
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