While the fitness world might know those who struggle to gain weight as “hard gainers,” Steve Kamb has another word for it: skinny nerds. In fact, Kamb has created a website dedicated to such individuals, as he used to be a skinny guy too. Here are Kamb’s top tips for skinny nerds who are trying to up their weight wellness:
1. Eat a Lot: Kamb admits, ‘This sounds much easier than it really is. Whatever you’re eating now, you should probably double it. If you eat three meals a day, instead eat six. You need to be eating every two to three hours, and each meal needs to be the size of a normal meal. This is going to be difficult for a few weeks, because you’ll often have to force yourself to eat even when you’re not hungry. 500 extra calories a day = one extra pound gained per week. Whatever you’re eating now, add an additional 1000 calories (spread throughout the day), and you’ll put on two pounds a week.’
2. Eat a Lot of Good Things: According to Kamb, ‘You need to eat a ridiculous amount of calories (probably 3500+ per day) if you want to gain weight, but you want to make sure most of those calories are GOOD calories. You could easily get 3500 calories eating Taco Bell and Twinkies, and drinking Mountain Dew, but that will just make you fat. If you want to build muscle, you want to eat healthy calories that are loaded with good protein, good carbs, and healthy fats. Protein is the building block for your muscles. Chicken, fish, meat, eggs, milk, almonds, peanuts. Eat lots of this stuff, all the time. Carbs will help you put on weight, but it won’t be muscle – pasta, brown rice, wheat bread, oatmeal, etc. will help you put on weight, but a lot of that weight will be fat. Every meal should have vegetables and fruit. If you just eat protein, your body will resort to using it for energy rather than building muscle.’
3. Keep Track of Everything You Eat: ‘Sign up for a site light dailyburn.com (it’s free), input your stats and start to track every one of your meals,’ Kamb instructs. ‘It will tell you if you’re eating enough calories, enough protein, and enough carbs. This site has helped me put on 15lbs since last fall.’
4. Do Compound Exercises: ‘Compound exercises are your friend,’ says Kamb. ‘Concentrate on complex, compound exercises that recruit as many muscles as possible: bench presses, dumbbell presses, squats, dead lifts, pull ups, chin ups, and dips. Do these exercises, and concentrate on lifting as much weight as possible. Don’t worry about triceps extensions, shoulder shrugs, bicep curls or crunches. All of the compound exercises listed here use every muscle in your body, and when you overload your body with calories and protein, those muscles will grow. Don’t worry about isolation exercises until you’re up to your goal weight and ready to tone down.’
5. Concentrate on Fitness, Not Appearance: Kamb notes, ‘Appearance is a consequence of fitness – this is the mantra of the actors of who trained for the movie 300 – would you be okay looking like a Spartan? Concentrate on being really strong and lifting heavy weights, and your body will follow suit. It doesn’t matter if you can only bench press 10lb dumbbells right now. Wherever you’re starting out, concentrate on being stronger each and every time you exercise. Push yourself, get stronger, lift more, and before you know it you’ll be ripped.’
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