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Exercising regularly at the gym is only plays a small role in building muscle. Following a proper diet for building muscle is crucial for anyone trying to build muscle, but is especially crucial for hardgainers. In fact, a hardgainer could probably follow the diet and never exercise and still gain some muscle (but not nearly as much, and it will be accompanied by a large quantity of fat). This article will help you in designing the diet that you need to be able to build your body into the one of your dreams. The first step in designing the diet is to figure out the minimum number of calories you must eat in a day in order to maintain your body weight (we’ll call this your balance point). You should probably begin designing your diet well after you have begun working out (at least three weeks after). This will give your body’s metabolism time to adjust to your new life style. After all there is no point in figuring out your balanced diet right as you start working out, because it will change in a few weeks time. This will also give you time to adjust to your workout regimen and your diet separately, which will increase your chances of sticking with both. To figure out your balance point you will need to weigh yourself everyday, and keep track of how many calories you are tacking in each day. In order to be consistent, you must weigh yourself at the same time each day. This should be in the morning, right when you get up (before you do anything else, like eat, or go to the bathroom). You need to track this over the period of a couple of weeks and constantly adjust your calorie intake to see which level keeps you at approximately the same weight. Remember that your weight will fluctuate randomly by a small amount everyday, and that no significant change in weight will occur after only one day. So, even though you should weigh yourself every day, it is only after a couple of weeks that you will really be able to see how your body is responding to your calorie intake. It’s not so important to find your exact balance point, so you don’t need to be very precise about it. All that is important is that you are eating enough calories to gain weight, even though you are now working out every day. It’s a safe bet that if you’re reading this article, you probably aren’t eating enough calories, so increasing your calorie intake and seeing how your body responds is the most important thing. Once you know your balance point, you can increase your calorie intake beyond this point in order to gain muscle, and fat. It is important to realize that if you want to gain muscle really quickly, you are going to have to be prepared to gain some fat as well. You can’t have your cake and eat it too (at least not at first). However, once you are as strong as you want to be, you can then shift gears and take the fat off. Now at this point you’re pretty much free to choose your diet however you want, within a few guidelines. Obviously, you want to get a healthy dose of vitamins and minerals each day. You also want to get a good amount of healthy fats as well as complex and simple carbohydrates However, despite what some other sources will say, I have found that strictly regulating fat and carbohydrate intake is not necessary for hardgainers. All you need to watch out for is that you are eating enough to consistently gain weight, and keep your energy level up. What is most important is regulating your protein intake. When it comes to protein, both quality and quantity are important. Ideally, you should be having about 1 to 1.5 grams of protein for every pound of body weight every day. This means that if you weigh 140 pounds, you should be taking between 140 and 210 grams of protein every day. This is where supplements will really help you, because that is a lot of protein to get from natural food. For example, an egg, which is a food that is ‘high’ in protein, has on average about 7 grams of protein per egg. You would need to eat a lot of eggs in order to get your daily intake. That said, one of the best foods for getting natural protein is chicken meat. It has a higher concentration of high quality protein than most other meats. Hi. I am a hardgainer. That means I have a hard time building muscle. Until recently, I had been skinny my whole life, and it always annoyed me. I developed a method that worked for me to build myself the body of my dreams. Visit my site, http://www.hardgainertips.net in order to read more about my method.
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