When you look to put on weight, you will want to eat foods that promote healthy weight gain. Healthy weight gain comes in the form of lean muscle mass, which you will construct by eating more calories, while restricting your fat intake. Consult a doctor before starting any weight gain diet, just to make sure you follow a correctly formulated diet plan.
Function
When people start a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, they usually wish to gain weight in a healthy manner. According to Rutgers University, you should look to increase your lean body mass, while minimizing how much body fat you gain. The lean body mass you gain will consist of increased bone density, more muscle tissue and connective tissue.
Features
Most find it easy to eat more carbohydrates, as you can find them in popular foods such as pastas, grains and starches. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products and lean proteins to achieve this type of diet. Make sure that you eat between four and six meals that include complex carbohydrates, like grains, and slow digesting proteins, like milk, per day to achieve maximum weight gain.
Considerations
Before starting on a high-carbohydrate diet, raise your awareness of what constitutes a healthy diet as a whole. Rutgers University reports that even with the increase in carbohydrates that you will consume, you must still eating healthy amounts of proteins and fats. Rutgers suggest going with 55 to 60 percent carbohydrates, 25 to 35 percent fats and 10 to 15 percent proteins, as this helps you to maintain a balanced diet while you gain weight.
Misconceptions
A common problem with a high-carbohydrate diet remains that some dieters believe they will gain too much weight. According to the University of Arizona, however, you will not gain unhealthy fat weight, but rather lean muscle mass, as long as you keep active and reduce the amount of fat that you put into your body. This weight gain might take some time, as most will only gain about 1 lb. per week, but you will not run the risk of becoming unhealthy throughout this process.
Warning
You need to maintain a high level of activity while putting these additional calories into your body, or else you run the risk of gaining unhealthy weight in the form of fat. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recommends doing strength-training exercises two to three times per week, as this will ensure that this additional energy goes to good use. Keep to healthy foods with higher caloric values, like whole grains, low-fat milk products and lean meat products like poultry, as this will help protect your heart from issues that arise from consuming fatty foods.
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