High-carb Diet To Gain Weight

With more than two-thirds of the American population overweight or obese, the profusion of information on weight loss makes finding information on weight gain difficult. But, you can find golden nuggets of advice in all those weight loss recommendations that you can apply to gaining weight: Weight is all about calories. Not all carbs and fat are bad for you and you can make weight loss formulas work for weight gain.

Healthy Carbs and Fats

A high-carb diet does not have to be unhealthy to be a weight-gain diet, and it need not consist of carbs alone. By including healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats -- and the calories that go with them -- you can gain weight on a high-carb diet without eating bags of potato chips and drinking buckets of soda. Choose whole-grain bread, rice and pasta, rather than processed. Add peanut butter, avocados or black olives to your dishes, which contain 76 percent, 83 percent and 88 percent of their calories in healthy fats, respectively. High-fat, high-calorie proteins such as nuts and seeds are also a healthy addition to your high-carb diet.

Healthy Calories

Gaining or losing weight comes down to one thing: calories. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you expend. Carbs and protein contain 4 calories per gram, while fat contains nine calories per gram, but all carbs are equal when you total them at the end of the day. While you will gain weight quickly by eating large amounts of high-calorie, high-carb foods, such as French fries or cookies, your health will suffer. Better to gain weight slowly and steadily with healthy high-carb and high-fat foods.

Calculating Calorie Requirements

Determine your calorie needs with a simple equation: multiply your weight by 12 to 15 calories expended for each pound, depending on how active you are. The product is the number of calories needed to maintain your current weight. Each pound is worth 3,500 calories, so to gain 1 to 2 lbs. a week, you must increase your calorie intake by 3,500 to 7,000 calories weekly or 500 to 1,000 calories daily. Although a calorie is a calorie regardless of where it comes from, you likely will have to work harder to eat healthy calories rather than unhealthy ones. However, the weight you put on will not be in the form of dangerous belly fat.

A Word About Exercise

You may think exercise is only necessary if you want to lose weight. Not true. In addition to exercise being essential to good health, exercise in the form of strength training will help you put on some pounds. Though you will be burning some of the carbohydrates you eat for energy, muscle weighs more than fat; that is, more muscle fits in the same space as 1 lb. of fat, making that space weigh more. By increasing your muscle mass, along with increasing your calories with a healthy high-carb diet, you will find yourself gaining the weight you want.