For women, wellness advice is often tailored towards losing weight, slimming down and looking after your overall wellbeing. While these are all solid goals, what happens if you’re a woman who wants to actually gain weight and build muscle? This seems like an odd goal to a lot of people, which means that the advice out there is scarce. There’s plenty of information on fat loss for women and muscle building for men, but not much for women who want to get bigger. That said, implementing the same basic muscle-building recommendations for men into your nutritional and workout programme can work for you too.
When you start weight training, most women assume their eating enough calories. Women who want to lose or maintain their weight often underestimate their daily calorie intake, but women who want to bulk up often overestimate their daily intake of calories. Therefore, being honest with yourself about the number of calories you consume daily is your primary hurdle to overcome. For this, a common weight loss tip can easily be applied; keep a food journal. While dieters should keep a journal to find out exactly what they’re eating and where they can cut calories, you should keep a food journal for several days to see what you are eating, the times you are eating, and the gaps in your daily meals.
Another way in which you have to be honest with yourself is to realise that you need to eat in order to grow and put on muscle. As a woman, you can be reluctant to consume carbohydrates and worried about getting fat, but you have to consume an adequate amount of proteins, carbohydrates and fats to build muscle. When using your food journal, add up your total calories at the end of each day – including those that come from carbs, proteins and fats – and see where you can add in more. Yes, eating more of these foods will add on a little fat, but without this fat you are never going to put on muscle. You need to be in a caloric surplus, and so you need to take steps to gradually accomplish this.
The reason why we say you have to go slowly is that suddenly adding a load of calories to your diet will cause you to gain too much unwanted body fat. For the best results, you should begin by adding an additional 200-300 daily calories for a week, preferably from carbohydrates. If you currently consume 1,600 calories a day, for example, you should increase this to 1,800 calories every day for a week. After this week is up, take a look and evaluate your progress. You should aim for a weight gain of one to one-and-a-half pounds a week, but certainly no more than two pounds weekly. This is a slow process for sure, and it can be frustrating, but in the long run you will be more satisfied.
In order to see results, you need to stick to your increased caloric intake for at least thirty days, if not more. The slow progress may make you want to give up, but stick with it! At the very least, it’s worth giving a month of your life to see what might happen. Another foodie tip to consider is to have the best possible pre-workout meal, as this is a great place to add in those extra calories. A pre-workout snack of 20 grams of whey protein and some fast carbs such as a big bowl of cream of rice or a white bagel, for example, will help you to bulk up and work hard. Remember, you will grow outside of the gym not in it.
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