Healthy Weight Gain Diet Plan for Balanced Nutrition
Gaining weight and building muscles is not as easy as pie. You need to put a lot of effort into modifying your dietary habits, following a healthy lifestyle, and staying active by practising exercises. While you focus on weight gain, you should not only ensure good calorie intake but also have quality proteins and other nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fibre, and more. A muscle gain diet should focus on high-quality proteins, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates to support muscle growth and recovery. A well-structured weight gain diet ensures that you’re not only increasing your calorie intake but also nourishing your body with the right balance of macronutrients and micronutrients for optimal health and muscle growth. A well-developed diet plan for weight gain can help you put on a desirable quantity of kilos, build muscle mass, and avoid empty calories and unhealthy fats by offering you a healthy diet chart.
The struggle to gain pounds after being underweight is as hard as losing weight after being obese or overweight. While making efforts to gain weight, you need to boost your intake of all macronutrients, namely proteins, carbohydrates, healthy fats, and more. Following a well-balanced muscle gain diet helps ensure you’re not only gaining weight but also building lean muscle mass efficiently. A well-designed diet chart to gain weight can help you track your progress and ensure that you’re consistently consuming the right balance of nutrients. The precious guidance of a certified nutritionist can help you have a customised weight gain diet chart containing the right nutritious foods that supply you with all essential nutrients to help you put on weight healthily. BMI (Body Mass Index) helps you know whether you have a healthy weight or are underweight. When you have BMI between 18.5 and 24.9, you happen to have weight falling in a healthy weight range. If its 18.5 or below it, it indicates you are underweight
Also, being underweight is associated with various health issues, such as weakened immunity, poor skin health, brittle hair, fatigue, frequent infections, and weak bones. So, opting for a customised diet plan for weight gain and weight gain tips from expert nutritionists can work wonders in not only helping you put on desired weight but also being a healthier you. By following the right weight gain tips, you can ensure that you’re gaining weight in a sustainable and healthy manner, rather than accumulating unhealthy fat. Let’s have a look at weight gain tips that you should follow when following a diet plan for weight gain.
10 Best Weight Gain Tips to Follow
Heres a quick rundown of some of the best dietary weight gain tips.
Have Smaller Meals More Often
Instead of eating three large meals a day, prefer to eat smaller meals five to six times a day. This will help you have an appropriate intake of calories and add pounds healthily. Eating smaller meals frequently is also beneficial for underweight individuals who have less appetite and happen to fill full quickly.
Devour More Calories Than Your Body Can Burn
The simple logic and science behind this weight gain diet tip is consuming greater calories than what your body burns is bound to cause an increase in weight. If a system’s influx is greater than outflux, the chances of accumulation of material in the system are greater. So, consume more quantity of food.
Use a Bigger Platter and Increase Your Portion Size
Using bigger plates to eat meals and snacks is one of the easiest ways to increase your calorie intake, no matter whether you are following a non-veg or veg diet chart for weight gain. By using bigger plates for meals, you end up eating greater calories than usual. You may go for larger portions of food by using larger plates, large-size bowls, and bigger dinnerware.
Add Nutritious Foods to Your Meals
While trying to eat high-calorie foods to gain weight, it is important to choose the right weight gain foods that also supply your body with essential nutrients. Choose dense fruits, such as avocadoes, bananas and mangoes, and full-fat milk to add to your healthy diet chart. These foods are not just high in calories but also loaded with nutrients. Also, you can have starchy vegetables, such as corn and potatoes.
Opt for Healthy Fluids
Choose to have milk, smoothies, healthy juices, and full-fat dairy in your weight gain diet chart instead of beverages, such as tea, coffee, and diet sodas. Opting for healthy fluids helps you have enough calories along with a host of essential nutrients that will nourish you and boost your immunity. You can also have fresh fruits and vegetables over diet sodas. Devour high-calorie smoothies and shakes when on a weight-gain diet plan. You may enrich your smoothies with nut butter, yoghurt, fruits, milk, nuts, and seeds.
Say No to Junk Food
Having a lot of empty calories along with added sugar, unhealthy fats, and salts can be harmful to your health, though you may gain weight. Junk food has abundant empty calories, salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats. So, avoid junk foods when following a diet plan for weight gain. Instead, top your diet with nutritious foods, such as beans, fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and dairy. This will help you put on your desired weight healthily and boost your immunity.
Dress Up Your Regular Salads
You may think that salads are low in calories so you may try to skip them when following a diet plan for weight gain. But, don’t do so. Salads are rich in essential nutrients. So, instead of dropping them from the weight gain diet chart, garnish them with avocadoes, cheese, seeds, olive oil, and nuts. You can also dress the salads with fruits, such as berries, apple slices, and pears.
Season Your Soups
Top your soups with yoghurt, sour cream, and cheese, as these seasonings not only add calories to your diet but also make your soup more flavourful. This will also make you crave more soup in your meals.
Enrich Your Diet with Protein Sources
Protein is a key nutrient in our diet that help us have a healthy body. Our muscles are made up of proteins. The deficiency of proteins can turn your weight gain efforts futile. Also, insufficient proteins in your diet can lead to fat gain and can make it difficult for you to maintain a healthy weight. So, you need to add foods rich in proteins to your weight gain diet chart. Have a minimum of 1.5 to 2 grams of proteins per kilogram of your body weight, as it helps in adding pounds to your weight healthily and building lean muscle mass. If you are looking for healthy protein sources to add to your weight gain food list, opt for fatty fish, such as salmon, legumes, nuts, eggs, beans, and milk.
Munch on Nuts
Eating nuts helps you in gaining weight as well as provides you with a range of essential nutrients, such as proteins, minerals, vitamins, and more. You can snack on nuts, such as almonds, pistachios, and walnuts, or add almond butter or peanut butter to your breakfast. They offer you a rich supply of nutritious calories. If you love munching on carrot sticks, you can dip them in nutritious nut butter and eat them. Also, seeds and dried fruits can enrich your breakfast and snacks with nutritious calories, so go for them.
Prioritize Carbs & Proteins from the Mixed Platter
When you are going for a mixed platter, choose to relish a carbohydrate-rich and protein-abundant diet. Your plate will be filled with a variety of nutritious foods when following a diet plan for weight gain. In such circumstances, eat carbohydrate food sources and protein-rich foods first and then go for vegetables. As a result, your digestive system digests carbohydrates and proteins ahead of vitamins, fats, and minerals. This helps burn the digested calories soon and you end up relishing food again.
Choose the Right Fats
Although fats are a great source of calories, not all fats are healthy. So, make sure that you have healthy fats in your diet plan for weight gain and stay away from unhealthy fats. This is a beneficial weight gain tip to overcome the underweight condition healthily. Include foods containing healthy polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats in your weight gain food list. Walnuts, trout, salmon, and avocadoes are some of the weight gain foods containing healthy fats. Also, you can have canola, olive, and safflower oils. Be sure you stay away from foods containing trans fats, as it is harmful to your heart and overall health.
Keep a Track of Foods You Eat
Even though old eating habits are hard to give up, maintaining a food journal can help you figure out the areas where you need to put in efforts to improve your diet plan for weight gain. Remembering all that you eat throughout the day can be a daunting task, so keeping a track of what you eat by maintaining a food journal can help. It helps you track not just your food intake but also certain habits that you can change for betterment. For instance, if you drink a glass of water before your meal, it reduces your appetite and may hinder your weight gain efforts. Noting this in your food journal will help you figure out this habit and remind you to avoid drinking water just before meals. So, you can enjoy your meals to the fullest.
Curb Intermittent Fasting
You might be in the healthy habit of intermittent fasting. However, this fasting concept is effective for weight loss and works wonders in getting you in shape. When attempting to put on weight, you need to have regular meals. In such circumstances, intermittent fasting won’t help you gain weight. So, stop intermittent fasting and have your meals on time as per the diet chart for weight gain. You may also have additional meals throughout the day.
While you follow this healthy diet plan for weight gain, you also should practice exercise regularly. You can go for a brisk walk for 40 minutes daily, do yoga, and practice other aerobic exercises, such as jogging, cycling, and more. This will help improve your appetite and stay fit despite gaining kilos. Also, you should avoid certain unhealthy foods, such as refined carbohydrates, sugary foods, fried foods, candies, and carbonated beverages. Healthy weight gain foods that you can have in your healthy diet chart include fruits, dark leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, avocadoes, full-fat dairy products, legumes, and fish.
What to Avoid When Attempting to Gain Weight?
To make your weight gain efforts successful, you should be careful to avoid certain practices that normally people may resort to achieve their weight gain goals. Here’s a quick rundown of things to avoid when trying to gain weight.
Inadequate Cardiovascular Exercise
Often, people quit practising or restrict cardiovascular exercises in an attempt to gain weight. However, it is necessary to keep up with your cardiovascular workout routine to maintain healthy brain, heart, and lungs. So, continue cycling, swimming, and running. Weight gain for males or females can be healthy even if they practice cardiovascular exercise for 20 minutes thrice a week.
Diet Low in Veggies
Vegetables are low in calories and abundant in minerals and vitamins. Often, people think that weight gain for males and females can be easy if they eliminate or minimize veggies and increase carbohydrate-rich options in their diet. However, that’s not true. Vegetables supply your body with essential vitamins and minerals and their inadequate intake may cause malnutrition. So, ensure that your weight gain diet plan contains sufficient nutritious vegetables.
Giving Up Your Efforts Soon
Determination and subsequent patience are two keys to achieving weight gain for males and females. Even though may not experience weight gain goals immediately, keeping up your efforts can help. Some people may need longer spans than others to achieve their fitness goals. Consulting certified nutritionists and dieticians can help you stay motivated and on the right track to gain weight healthily.
Sample Healthy Diet Plan for Weight Gain
Here’s a sample diet plan that can help increase your calorie intake and nourish your body with essential nutrients.
- Early Morning (at 7 am): Have a glass of milk with two couple of boiled eggs. If you prefer vegetarian food, you can have two bananas ad 5 to 6 soaked almonds with a glass of milk.
- Breakfast (at 8 am): Two moong dal chillas or vegetable stuffed parathas. Non-vegetarians can have two egg omelettes with a couple of toasted multigrain bread.
- Mid-Morning (at 11 am): A glass of curd lassi and a handful of roasted almonds or a dry fruit chikki
- Lunch (at 1 pm): Two Chapattis, two bowls of vegetables, fish or a cup of yoghurt, 1 bowl of rice with 1 cup of daal. Also, you can have a cup or plate of sprout salad.
- Evening (at 5 pm): A cup of tea with two wholewheat biscuits and Poha with peas, roasted peanuts, and potatoes.
- Dinner (at 8 pm): One bowl of mixed vegetable soup, two chapatis, two medium-sized bowls of vegetables, one bowl of rice, a cup of daal, and a mixed nutritious salad.
- At Night before going to bed (at 10 pm): A glass of milk with turmeric mixed in it. You can also have two bananas with it.
So, if you are underweight and struggling to gain some kilos naturally, resort to a healthy diet chart for weight gain. The valuable guidance of dieticians, such as health experts at Health Total, can help you have a personalized weight gain diet chart containing all nutritious weight gain foods that not just increase your calorie count but also boost your intake of essential nutrients. So, you simply don’t gain calories and pounds but also enrich your body with all the necessary nutrients. This helps strengthen your immunity, combat underweight health issues, such as brittle bones, pale skin, and frequent infections, and help you gain and maintain a healthy weight.
So, reach out to us online or over a call toll-free at 1-800-833-171709 and embark on your journey to gain weight healthily with our customised diet plan for weight gain.