Actions for this page Listen Print. Summary Read the full fact sheet. On this page. Reasons for lack of weight gain Consult with your doctor before trying to gain weight Eat more for weight gain — quality first, quantity second Resistance training for muscle gain Lifestyle adjustments for weight gain Track your weight gain progress Where to get help Things to remember.

Reasons for lack of weight gain Some common reasons why a person may find it hard to gain weight include: genetics not eating enough having a very physically active lifestyle or job overexercising Please note that some people are too thin because of a disability, eating disorder, substance abuse, or serious medical condition — these conditions are not addressed in this fact sheet.

Consult with your doctor before trying to gain weight Always see your doctor before you start any weight-gain program. Your doctor can: give you a check-up to rule out the possibility of an underlying medical condition that may be causing your thinness, such as hyperthyroidism suggest an appropriate weight goal for your height and build assess your diet and physical activity levels advise on diet, exercise and lifestyle changes that will encourage weight gain refer you to other specialists, such as a dietitian, if necessary.

Eat more for weight gain — quality first, quantity second Being underweight usually occurs when energy kilojoule intake is less than the energy used.

Suggestions include: Use a kilojoule-counter book to calculate how many kilojoules you eat on an average day. The amount may be smaller than you think.

Eat three good meals every day. Give yourself slightly larger serves if you can. If you have a small appetite, eat five to six times a day. Drink fluids before and after meals, but not with them. This helps leave more room for food.

Successful weight gain requires that you increase your daily intake of carbohydrates. Avoid low carbohydrate diets. Avoid high-protein diets. A healthy snack may include fruit, yoghurt, muffin, rice pudding, low-fat custard, milkshake or liquid meal supplement.

Avoid high-fat junk foods. Instead, choose nutritious high-fat foods such as avocado or nuts. Top your usual foods with some concentrated calories, like grated cheese.

Spread peanut or almond butter on a wholegrain muffin. Prepare hot oatmeal or other cereal with milk, not water. Add powdered milk, honey, dried fruits or nuts after cooking. Garnish salads with healthy oils such as olive oil, whole olives, avocados, nuts and sunflower seeds.

Pump up soups, casseroles, mashed potatoes and liquid milk with one to two tablespoons of dry milk powder. Resistance training for muscle gain Resistance training promotes muscle growth.

Suggestions include: Train just two or three times per week to give your muscles time to recover. Choose compound exercises that work multiple major muscle groups, for example, the squat and bench press. Make your workouts short and intense rather than long and leisurely.

These claims are not scientifically proven. Seek professional advice. A gym instructor, personal trainer, exercise physiologist or physiotherapist will help make sure you are doing each exercise correctly. Good advice will increase your gains and reduce your risk of injury.

Lifestyle adjustments for weight gain Suggestions include: Be prepared to eat when you are not hungry. Use a timer to remind yourself to eat every two hours. Try to make your additional eating sessions as appealing as possible. For example, stock the fridge and cupboard with snack foods you love.

Eat small serves of protein foods before and after each resistance training session to help promote muscle growth. Accept that an increase in food intake may cause bloating or gas. Be prepared to gain some fat as well. Track your weight gain progress Tracking your progress helps to boost motivation.

Suggestions include: Keep a diary to monitor your kilojoule intake and training schedule. Be consistent. Weight gain requires that you increase your daily food intake every day. It may help to write up meal plans. A licensed and credentialed trainer can design a personalized program.

A trainer can also teach you proper form and technique. Check with your local gyms for referrals. If you're not ready for in-person sessions, many trainers now offer virtual workouts. After you learn the basics, you can work out on your own. Get free.

Training with free weights, like dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells, is often better for muscle building than machines, says Pedicini.

You can also go back and forth between free weights and machines depending on the type of exercise and which muscles you are working on.

Leg up. While you need full-body workouts that address all your major muscles, older men should pay special attention to their leg muscles: quadriceps and hamstrings in the thighs , the gluteals in the buttocks , and the calf muscles.

Compound exercises that work different muscles in one movement — like squats, deadlifts, and lunges — are great for building leg muscles. Weight, reps, and sets. Pedicini says older men should do fewer repetitions reps with heavier weights to gain the most muscle.

Find your tempo. Lifting should be done at a seven-second tempo. That means three seconds to lift the weight, a one-second pause, and three seconds to lower it. You also want to use enough weight, so the last few reps are a challenge.

If you can't lift the weight at least eight times, use a lighter weight. When you can comfortably perform eight reps without completely tiring the muscle, increase the weight.

Two days is plenty. Ideally, you should do weight training at least twice a week. You often can feel results after four to six weeks of consistent training.

You can also go back and forth between free weights and machines depending on the type of exercise and which muscles you are working on. Leg up. While you need full-body workouts that address all your major muscles, older men should pay special attention to their leg muscles: quadriceps and hamstrings in the thighs , the gluteals in the buttocks , and the calf muscles.

Compound exercises that work different muscles in one movement — like squats, deadlifts, and lunges — are great for building leg muscles. Weight, reps, and sets. Pedicini says older men should do fewer repetitions reps with heavier weights to gain the most muscle. Find your tempo. Lifting should be done at a seven-second tempo.

That means three seconds to lift the weight, a one-second pause, and three seconds to lower it. You also want to use enough weight, so the last few reps are a challenge. If you can't lift the weight at least eight times, use a lighter weight.

When you can comfortably perform eight reps without completely tiring the muscle, increase the weight. Two days is plenty. Ideally, you should do weight training at least twice a week. Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week.

Give yourself 2 weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. Biceps curls are fun, but if you want to put on muscle, you have to do more to challenge your body.

And one key to doing that, says Samuel, is working through so-called "multi-joint" movements. Instead, you want to do exercises that challenge multiple joints and muscles at once. Take, for example, a dumbbell row.

Every row rep challenges biceps, lats, and core if your form is strict. Using multiple muscle groups allows you to lift more weight, says Samuel, a key stimulator of growth more on that later.

And it pushes you to use muscles together, just as you do in real life. Make sure moves like squats, deadlifts, pullups, and bench presses are in your workout to take advantage of that. All will stimulate multiple muscle groups at the same time, and in order to grow, you want to do that. If you want to build muscle and strength, you have to train heavy, says Curtis Shannon, C.

If done right, the stimulus of heavy weight going down with control and going back up will cause greater muscle tear and rebuild.

That means not every set you do should have you pumping out 10 to 15 reps. Yes, high-rep sets can have value, but for multi-joint moves like squats and bench presses, and deadlifts, don't be afraid to do sets of, say, five reps.

That'll allow you to use more weight, building more pure strength, says Samuel. And as you progress, that new strength will allow you to lift heavier weights for more reps. One way you can approach this in your training: Lead off every workout with an exercise that lets you train low-rep.

Do four sets of three to five reps on your first exercise, then do three sets of 10 to 12 reps for every move after that. A study at the University of Texas found that lifters who drank a shake containing amino acids and carbohydrates before working out increased their protein synthesis more than lifters who drank the same shake after exercising.

The shake contained 6 grams of essential amino acids—the muscle-building blocks of protein—and 35 grams of carbohydrates. You can get the same nutrients from a sandwich made with 4 ounces of deli turkey and a slice of American cheese on whole wheat bread.

But a drink is better. So tough it out. Drink one 30 to 60 minutes before your workout. Your body should move every day, but that doesn't mean your workouts should take you to fatigue and exhaustion.

Limit your weight room workouts to 12 to 16 total sets of work, and never go beyond that. This doesn't mean you can't take on a brutal workout every so often. But limit workouts that take your body to its breaking point to three times a week, never on back-to-back days.

Research shows that you'll rebuild muscle faster on your rest days if you feed your body carbohydrates. Have a banana, a sports drink, a peanut-butter sandwich. As we mentioned earlier, one major key to muscle-building is pushing your muscles to handle progressively greater challenges.

In general, most gym-goers think that means you must lift heavier in every single workout. That's simply not feasible, says Samuel. Don't simply aim to add weight on every set of every exercise, says Samuel. But do work to improve in some way on every set of an exercise. On the next set, instead of adding weight, do the same 10 reps, but do them with even sharper form.

Sometimes, staying with the same weight for all four sets on a day can provide plenty of challenge, says Samuel, especially when you're improving your execution every set. There are other forms of progressive overload too.

You can decrease the rest time between sets, going from, say, seconds to 90 seconds, or you can up the reps, or you can even do more sets. I may deadlift pounds today four times and not be able to add weight. But if I can squeeze out a fifth rep, or even do my four reps with more control than I did last week, I'm on the right track.

One sometimes-forgotten way to progressively overload your muscles is to leave them under more of something called " time under tension ". When your muscles are working, whether they're under a bench press bar, or whether your biceps is working to curl a dumbbell upwards, they're under "tension" from the weight.

You can feel this too: If you stand holding dumbbells at your sides, your biceps aren't under tension. The moment you begin to curl them upwards, you'll feel them flex against the "tension" of the dumbbells.

Experienced lifters often use this tension to their advantage. Instead of just lifting and lowering a weight on say, that biceps curl , they lift with a specific tempo.

They might curl up as fast as they can, for example, and then lower the weight for three focused seconds with good form on every rep. Doing this leaves your muscles under tension for longer than a typical set, in which you might lift and lower the weight without any specific timing.

And that extra time under tension during a set can help spark muscle growth. Note that you can do this on almost any strength exercise. It doesn't work for explosive exercises, like kettlebell swings, snatches, and cleans.

But squats, deadlifts, curls, pullups and pushups and many other moves can be tweaked to add more time-under-tension, pushing your muscles farther on every rep.

Sleep is often the forgotten variable in the journey to muscle. Everyone misses a workout here and there. To achieve optimal muscle mass, you need complete control over your macros.

If you eat right, push yourself in the gym, and choose the right supplements, you have a chance to be rewarded with powerful muscles that take your physique and performance to the next level.

We use tools, such as cookies, to provide you with the best user experience. We use these tools to personalize content and ads, provide social media features and analyze website traffic. Learn more or manage settings. The 5 Essentials of Muscle Building Fitness. Tags: Fitness. Putting on muscle comes down to three simple principles: 1.

Take in more calories than you burn 2.