Before jumping right into weight loss or weight gain ideas, the most important formulae you should know is,
Weight gain= Calories you eat a day > Calories you spend a day
Weight maintain= Calories you eat a day = Calories you spend a day
Weight loss= Calories you eat a day < Calories you spend a day
Talking about the most common mistake, people tend to measure the quantity of food they eat to figure out if their weight is going to increase or decrease. However, all our body cares about is the number of calories we take in instead of quantity of food. I know what you’re thinking right now. Before you find the method of counting calories quite overwhelming, let me make it clear that I’m not telling you to do this all your life. You just have to educate yourself for few starting months. Later, you will have a rough idea of the number of calories just by looking at the food.
Now the question arises “How will I know how much calories should I take to manipulate my weight?” Click here to know the approximation. “How will I be able to know the number of calories in a food?” “Calorie counter by MyfitnessPal” made it a lot easier to keep track of your daily diary. Just enter the name of the food you are going to eat, and it will tell you how much calories your food contains. You can find this app here for Android and here for iOS for free.
Whenever you are trying to lose weight, it should be fats, not muscles. Same goes for weight gain. You should try to gain lean muscle mass, not fats. Yeah, this means you still have to take care of quality and type of food you take in along with counting calories. “But I don’t know if the weight I have is due to fat or muscle.” Just catch your love handles. The part of the inner tissue that can come to your grasp or pinch after hard muscle inside is all fats. Thinner the grasp you can get, lower the fat percentage and vice-versa. For precise measurement, you can get electric devices meant for fat percentage measurement. You can also use caliper and chart to measure fat percentage. The easiest method for fat percentage approximation can be done by Clicking here.
[PS- None of the above-mentioned app or website sponsors us and it is not an advertisement. It is solely just a recommendation.]
How to lose weight?
The first thing you should do is get your heart pumped. Doing cardiovascular exercises is gifting yourself some more years to live a healthy life. It can be hard to jump out of your bed in the morning to do some cardio at the beginning, but as you get used to, it becomes a part of your life. Losing weight for some days and gaining back more than ever is what you should try to avoid. For that sustainable change, you should be consistent. Consistency comes from the change of lifestyle. Does that mean you should do exercises for whole life? Probably yes! Is it worth it? Of course! Doesn’t matter what time you get up. You should have the courage to step your feet out of the house. It can start with light jogging for 20-30 minutes, taking rest in intervals. Push yourself harder the next day. Challenge yourself every single day. Call your friend who is motivated more than you. Compete with your friend. This is what makes cardio interesting.
Next thing you can do is build some muscles. As muscles need more calories to maintain themselves, you will eventually lose fat in long run. This is how bodybuilders remain lean even after eating so much food. Hit the gym five to six times a week. Seeing everyone on fire gives you motivation like nothing else can. There might be some days when you don’t feel like working out. Just go to the gym even if you don’t want. A minute later, you will be working out for sure.
Doing cardio and hitting the gym might be quite interesting part. What haunts people the most is diet. Whenever you hear of diet, you might think of starving yourself. That is not what diet is. It is all about making the healthy choice of food. In weight loss, 80% role is of diet and only 20% is of exercise. Now that might be shocking but it’s true. Lazy people out there might jump into conclusion right away to stick with diet leaving exercises. Just losing the weight should never be a goal. Losing weight in a healthy way is what you should aim for. More importantly, not gaining weight after a certain period should be the goal.
How to gain weight?
“Hey! Why don’t you eat? Are you that broke?” Most embarrassing dialogue skinny people might ever hear. They are always heard replying “You don’t know how much I eat; I can win an eating competition if given a chance. It’s just my body which doesn’t grow at all.” When skinny people say they eat a lot, they are probably talking about the quantity of food. However, our body simply doesn’t care about what amount of food we eat. All it cares about is calorie count!
There are two easy ways of gaining the weight. One is easier, but I wouldn’t recommend that way. Easy ways are almost all the time unhealthy. The easy way is to gain a lot of fat and muscles at the same time by eating whatever you like. Yeah! You heard it right. Anything! Even junk foods and craps. For doing this, you have to pay some cardio to your body later on to decrease unnecessary fat you gain. You might end up accumulating unhealthy cholesterol too. As said above, it is an unhealthy way. Choose this way only if you have to gain weight in short period of time for a specific purpose; choose this way only you can promise yourself many days of cardio. Many gym newbies are seen going this way for bulking and ending up packing fats rather than muscles. You can see their pictures in “When bulking goes wrong” memes. LOL!
The healthier way is not that tough, but you have to free some time to monitor quality, quantity, and schedule of your meals. Just because you want to bulk up doesn’t give you an excuse to eat craps you want. You should eat healthy food just like one who is on a diet to lose weight. Aim to eat 500 more calories every single day than you’ve been eating before: eat in order of 50% carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fats. You should never let yourself feel hungry. Eat a small portion of meal every 2-3 hours to keep yourself satiated forever.
Should skinny people go to the gym? Of course, they should. Everyone should do weight training to let muscles grow. Having more muscles is a sign of a healthy body. When you break your muscle fibers by challenging yourself, your muscles think that they are not enough in the amount to handle the stress you’re giving them daily. This activates cell division in your muscles. In presence of amino acids (components required to synthesize protein), your muscles grow in an amount sufficient to handle the stress you’ve given them before. This is why you have to constantly add weights to your training session. Progressive overload principle works. Skinny people gain 3-4 kgs of weight in first few weeks of their weight training session. After that, visible changes stop because they stop challenging themselves like they did in their first few weeks. In other words, the body gets used to the stress. Lack of nutrients is also another reason for slow progress. If you do all right, there is no way you don’t get the result.
Motivation
• Remember that even Mr. Olympia had to start somewhere. Bodybuilders wouldn’t have ever reached there if they had given up the way you do.
• Think about where you would have been by now, what body shape you would have by now if you hadn’t given up a year ago.
• Don’t give up because you don’t see results. It takes nearly 14 days for you to notice a small change in your body.
• You and me, we both know what’s right and what’s wrong for our body. If you ruin your body unknowingly, it is a mistake. If you ruin your own body by giving excuses while you know deep inside that you’re wrong, it is a sin.
• Going for cardio in the early morning is all about the mindset you make before you go to the bed. Tell yourself you’re going out for cardio tomorrow in the morning no matter what; even if you sleep for just 4 hours due to workload, you tell yourself you will wake up to do some cardio. Get more cups of coffee later in the day if you have to, but don’t cheat yourself.
• If you wake up late and feel like skipping cardio that day, just step out of your bed and take a walk around your house at least for 5 minutes. This will prevent you from the guilt of cheating and will remind you how disciplined you are. It will help you do the right thing next morning.
• Don’t make your workout sessions boring. Try to add some new stuff every day: that can be weights, volumes, reps, new forms, or even new exercises.
• Whenever you have to fight between eating or not eating a crap meal, remember your goal and imagine your goal body shape. Skip the crap meal and after some minutes, you’ll be proud you did. This motivates you like nothing ever can.
• Tell about your target to your friends and family or post it even on social media if you’re comfortable. This will push you to work out and eat right whenever you feel like giving up. Since people start asking about your progress, you try your best to prove your dedication to the mass.
• If fat loss is your goal, drink coffee, tea, or anything caffeinated, for it increases heart rate and metabolism, thereby promoting fat loss. Avoid this if you have high blood pressure or any kind of heart problem.
• Last but not the least, actually it is first, always keep yourself hydrated. Aim to drink 8-10 glass of water every single day. Add 500-1000 ml of water in your diary for work out session. You can alter this amount on basis of your body type. Some people sweat a lot, while some don’t sweat at all even during an intense workout. If you sweat a lot, obviously you have to drink more water accordingly. Coffee is diuretic (promotes urination) and hence promotes loss of water from your body. Drink more water if you drink coffee.
