Best Ways to naturally gain weight & lifting for beginners?

Hey guys, I've recently come to a disconcerting fact, most of my jeans and shorts won't even fit me anymore because I lost a fair amount of weight during the school year (you may be able to relate being a poor college student who has to live off of gross dining hall food).

How can I regulate exercise and food patterns into gaining some healthy weight back? What types of food are best to eat to achieve this? I don't have a scale on me otherwise I'd tell my weight but I can assure you I'm pretty tiny and need to start bulking up.

I also want to start lifting weights to gain some muscle, are there any tips you can give me on someone trying to start this out for the first time? I'm in pretty good shape physically in terms of fitness, but I'd like to get a little bit stronger.

Tips on this would be appreciated, I know sythe has a lot of people who have done excellent work in gaining muscle mass, losing weight (in my case I need to gain some!) etc. I'd appreciate the help greatly.

 

First of all, to actually gain weight you need to know your BW's average calories/day.
You must eat more than said calories.

You can use websites like this: Calorie Calculator, to determine what your maintaining calories are and depending on how much more weight you want to gain, eat more than what's already required of you. But make sure you know what you're eating if you want a clean cut look. Otherwise you'll unknowingly build up on fats/carbs that your body may retain and you'll end up regretting.

Keep your protein intake high. You'll actually have to do some research in regards to how much protein/carbs/fats your body needs in order to reach certain levels of gains (only if you're very serious about this).

Secondly, is of course your workout. Since you're supposedly "pretty tiny", should start off with HIT (High intensive training) workout routine.
It's very easy and simple for beginners such as yourself and as you gradually progress, you can move onto larger sets/reps/weights but primarily sticking to HIT workouts.
Sample: HIT Routine

60% Diet, 40% Exercise.

Source: I'm a Personal Trainer.

 

Wow, this is fantastic! I'm definitely very serious about this I would say. Thanks so much for your help. It should be a great summer then of doing this kind of thing. I really appreciate you taking the time to type this out for me. Wish me luck

 

I would never recommend this for someone serious about putting on size and getting stronger.

I'd recommend Starting Strength - a really famous beginner program that just involves the use of barbells. If you're extremely interested, I suggest googling "Mark Rippetoe Starting Strength" reading heaps about it, learning the lifts and make sure you're at a caloric surplus.

High intensity interval training which is known as HIIT, usually relates to running, not lifting weights. So you'd basically sprint X amount of meters then power-walk Y amount of meters.

This site isn't the best site to ask about gaining weight and becoming stronger, but if you do your research I can assure you that it'll lead back to some variation of Starting Strength.

 

I didn't recommend HIIT
HIIT = High Intensity Interval Training (indeed is a cardio-based routine)
HIT = High Intensity Training (a form of Strength training)

 

Don't need HIT either.

 

Not a matter of "need".

 

Well myself and many other people wouldn't recommend it to anyone let alone a beginner as a good way to gain weight and strength.

Any reasons why that should be used?

 

Part of being a PT is the consideration of a clients physical measure as well as their primary goal.
OP has stated:

• gaining some healthy weight
• need to start bulking up
• gain some muscle
• someone trying to start this out for the first time
• like to get a little bit stronger

I can assure you a majority of PT's including myself will recommend a form of HIT to start a beginner off with.
OP has already said he's a beginner and it's his FIRST TIME.
Having known that, I am certain his muscles are not familiarized with the exposure of muscle tension.

Also you must consider that beginners don't yet have the energy level to input THAT much effort you or anyone else may have at the gym.
HIT is one of the most common starting routines all professionals use for their beginner clients and is a great start for those who simply want to start getting in the rhythm of weights, which is what OP wants, to increase muscle memory and muscle reaction. Not to mention it'll definitely build a plateau for him to break in future when he's gained strength.

You can't just expect a beginner to simply hop onto an insane workout that you know of, hoping he'll instantly enter a muscle hypertrophy and recruit muscle fibers to gain size. Doesn't work that way unfortunately.
Like almost everything in this world, you gotta start small so you can end big. Which in this case is beginner workouts progressing to advanced.

Again, HIT is just a typical Personal Trainers recommendation for all beginners which is why I myself recommended it.
If you have concrete information (not the stuff you see from amateurs on BodyBuilding sites) or the qualifications to prove me wrong then I'm all ears.

Also you stated "Don't need HIT either", while recommending 'Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength' which in fact is in the form of HIT. So I'll rest my case on this controversy.

 

Blazee, funny enough I just recommended SS to someone else in this forum somewhere.

Chosenn,

For the record, 4 of the 5 goals made by the OP are the exact same thing lol.

Second, whilst HIT is a FORM of resistance training, not all resistance training is HIT.

And for the record, being a PT is not the end all be all of physiological knowledge. On the contrary, the vast majority of PTs are dumb as shit when it comes to the body and its systems, and use cookie cutter routines and rotate those through all their clients.

SS by Ripptoe is not "an insane workout", its actually catered specifically for the individual starting out who has never done any resistance training. Hell, half the people he has pictured in the book are teens and women. Have you read it? Its a great start for novices and provides measurable and planned progression.

And since you keep throwing it out there, who is your PT cert from out of curiosity?

 

SS is no form of HIGH intensity training and by no means an "insane workout"


SS is so popular and recommended to every beginner looking to gain size and strength because of its SIMPLE LAYOUT. It utilizes LINEAR progression because a beginner's body can adapt to it.

Mark Rippetoe along with Dr Lon Kilgore have studied this topic into so much further depth than you.

SS doesn't aim to build a plateau to break like you stated previously because a beginner should not be constantly on a plateau on major lifts such as the squat and deadlift because of their quick adaptation to the stress (workload)

The statement above is also true "Majority of PT's are dumb as shit". You can do a 6 week online course and become a "PT" and get a job making fat women do crunches on a exercise ball or you can read some good books, articles and watch some good videos and learn more valuable information that what you learn in a shitty course like that.

You recommend High Intensity Training to individuals. Intensity in weight lifting relates to a percentage around a 1RM very often. Starting Strength is MEDIUM intensity, LOW volume and HIGH frequency. You are contradicting yourself because High Intensity training would never be given straight to a beginner because of obvious form problems (how are you going to get someone squatting close to their 1RM if they've never been under the bar before) muscular imbalances and injury. Even if a complete beginner came into a gym, a coach would never go straight to a HIGH INTESNTIY training because there is no foundation built. A year of medium intensity training such as SS, BLSS, Bill Starr's 5x5, JasonDB's 5x5, etc would be used to build that base before working with reps close to the 1-3 range.

 

So well put, thanks for this

 

you shoudlnt start with really heavy weights till you get your form right, or you could seriously injure yourself