subject: How To Build Muscle Mass — Weight Gain Program [print this page] Just gaining weight won't make you look or feel better. It sure won't make you any healthier. Total body weight is a combination of bone, muscle, and fat. The idea of weight gain is not to add fat, but to add muscle.
The two factors that contribute to weight gain and building muscle mass are diet and exercise. One isn't more important than the other. They are really equally important.
Diet: To GAIN weight, you must eat more calories than your body burns. To figure how many additional calories you must eat, men should multiply their body weight by 15, and women should multiply their body weight by 12. The result is the number of calories that you must consume each and every day while maintaining your present level of activity to just MAINTAIN your current body weight.
If you eat 500 calories LESS each day, you will lose one pound of body weight in a week. If you eat 500 calories MORE each day, you will gain one pound of body weight in a week. But these things are true ONLY if you do not increase or decrease your level of normal activity. Activity (exercise) burns calories. Just sitting there doing nothing is burning some calories, and if you climb a flight of stairs, you'll burn a lot more.
Exercise: Exercise is good, but you must remember that all exercise is not created equal. There are basically two general types of exercise.
One is aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is high-intensity exercise that is designed to build heart muscle and stamina. Aerobic exercise burns a great many calories in a short period of time. If you are trying to gain weight and build muscle mass, you want to keep aerobic exercise to a minimum. That doesn't mean don't do any. It means not to make aerobic exercise the center of your workout program.
The other is weight training. Weight-training exercise is designed to build muscle mass. Weight-training exercises build strength and thus muscle. Weight-training exercises do not burn a great many calories in a short period of time. If you are looking first and foremost to add muscle mass while losing fat, weight-training exercises need to be at the center of your workout program.
