What Do You Have To Gain?

We have previously promised a three-part series about changing one’s weight:

1. Losing weight (specifically, losing fat)
2. Gaining weight (specifically, gaining muscle)
3. Gaining weight (specifically, gaining fat)

And yes, that last one is also something that some people want/need to do (healthily!), and want/need help with that.

There will be, however, no need for a “losing muscle” article, because (even though sometimes a person might have some reason to want to do this), it’s really just a case of “those things we said for gaining muscle? Don’t do those and the muscle will atrophy naturally”.

Here’s the first part: How To Lose Weight (Healthily!)

While some people will want to lose fat, please do be aware that the association between weight loss and good health is not nearly so strong as the weight loss industry would have you believe:

Shedding Some Obesity Myths

And, while BMI is not a useful measure of health in general, it’s worth noting that over the age of 65, a BMI of 27 (which is in the high end of “overweight”, without being obese) is associated with the lowest all-cause mortality:

BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: a meta-analysis

Body weight, muscle mass, and protein:

That BMI of 27, or whatever weight you might wish to be, ignores body composition. You’re probably aware that volume-for-volume, muscle weighs more than fat.

You’re also probably aware that if we’re not careful, we tend to lose muscle as we get older. This is known as age-related sarcopenia:

Protein, & Fighting Sarcopenia

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, our featured expert in the above article, recommends getting at least 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight per day (Americans, divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 to get your weight in kg).

So for example, if you weigh 165lb, that’s 75kg, that’s 1.6×75=120g of protein per day.

There is an upper limit to how much protein per day is healthy, and that limit is probably around 2g of protein per kg of body weight per day:

Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?

You may be wondering: should we go for animal or plant protein? In which case, the short version is:

• If you only care about muscle growth, any complete sources of protein are fine
• If you care about your general health too, then avoiding red meat is best, but other common protein sources are all fine
• Unprocessed is (unsurprisingly) better than processed in either case

Longer version: Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head

What exercises are best for muscle-building?

Of course, different muscles require different exercises, but for all of them, resistance training is what builds muscle the most, and it’s pretty much impossible to build a lot of muscle otherwise.

Check out: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

Prepare to fail!

No, really, prepare to fail. Because while resistance training in general is good for maintaining strong muscles and bones, you will only gain muscle if your current muscle is not enough to do the exercise:

• If you do a heavy resistance exercise without undue difficulty, your muscles will say to each other “Good job, team! That was hard, but luckily we were strong enough; no changes necessary”.
• If you do a heavy resistance exercise to the point where you can no longer do it (called: training to failure), then your muscles will say to each other “Oof, what a task! What we’ve got here is clearly not enough, so we’ll have to add more muscle for next time”.

Safety note: training to failure comes with safety risks. If using free weights or weight machines, please do so under well-trained supervision. If doing it with bodyweight (e.g. press-ups until you can press no more) or resistance bands, please check with your doctor first to ensure this is safe for you.

You can also increase the effectiveness of your resistance training by doing it in a way that “confuses” your muscles, making it harder for them to adapt in the moment, and thus forcing them to adapt more in the long term (e.g. get bigger and stronger):

HIIT, But Make It HIRT: High Intensity Resistance Training

Make time for recovery

While many kinds of exercise can be done daily, exercise to build muscle(s) means at the very least resting that muscle (or muscle group) the next day.

For this reason, a lot of bodybuilders have for example a week’s schedule that might look like:

• Monday: Upper body training
• Wednesday: Lower body training
• Friday: Core strength training

…and rest on other days. This gives most muscles a full week of recovery, and every muscle at least 48 hours of recovery.

Note: bodybuilders, like children (who are also doing a lot of body-building, in their own way) need more sleep in order to allow for this recovery and growth to occur. Serious bodybuilders often aim for 12 hours sleep per day. This might be impractical, undesirable, or even impossible for some people, but it’s a factor to be borne in mind and not forgotten.

See also:

Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise (According To Actual Science)

Anything else that can (safely and healthily) be done to promote muscle growth?

There are a lot of supplements on the market; some are healthy and helpful, other not so much. Here are some we’ve written about:

• What To Eat, Take, And Do Before A Workout
• Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People
• Ginseng: Exercising With Less Soreness!
• Taurine’s Benefits For Heart Health And More
• Topping Up Testosterone? What To Consider

Take care!

These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…

• “Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
• “Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
• “Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”—Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
• “Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.

For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.

But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!

Here are some sneaky tips:

(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)

Beyond soups and smoothies

Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…

Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”

Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:

• Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
• Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
• Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.

Vegetables that punch above their weight

Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:

Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…

They:

• are full of antioxidants and fight inflammation
• boost immune health
• help control blood sugar levels
• improve vascular function and heart health
• and even fight cancer, which is a many-headed beast, but for example:
  • against bowel cancer
  • against prostate cancer
  • against breast cancer
  • against ovarian cancer
  • against lung cancer

…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.

Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.

Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.

Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.

Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.

• If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
• If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
• If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
  • If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!

Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.

Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:

• Lipid-lowering effects of time-released garlic
• Garlic extract lowers blood pressure in patients with hypertension
• Garlic extract reduces blood pressure in hypertensives

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!

But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!