A Better Way to Add Bulk

Q. I'm a healthy 24-year-old-male, but I’m 5 feet 6 inches tall and only weigh 121 pounds. I desperately want to put on a little fat and get bulky. I’ve tried going to the gym, but I felt like I started losing weight rather than gaining. I’ve tried eating more, but I get full easily and find that I eat less later if I try to pig out. I drink about eight glasses of water a day and don’t drink alcohol. What should I do?

A. Whether you are extremely heavy trying to lose weight, or thin and trying to beef up, changing your body type is never easy.

You already know the two strategies that you should use to add extra heft: eat more calories and exercise more. But how you implement this approach can make a big difference in the results you see.

When you started going to the gym, what did you do exactly? If you jumped on the treadmill or elliptical trainer, or took some boxing classes, chances are you also upped your calorie burn enough to burn off body fat, rather than increase your size.

Exercising To Gain

While it’s important to include cardiovascular exercise to strengthen your heart and lungs and keep the rest of your body in good working order, it may be beneficial for you to limit how much time you spend doing cardio. Sticking to 20 to 30 minutes per day of a cardio workout should be enough to improve your health risks without revving up your calorie-burning processes too much.

Keep an eye on your intensity, too, when you do cardio. Working at higher intensities—running vs. walking, or pedaling a machine faster or harder—can increase your calorie-burn dramatically.

A better focus at the gym would be for you to lift weights to increase the amount of muscle mass that you have. It could take at least six months to build up significant amounts of muscle. But if you stick to a routine, you should see increases to your size.

The weight-lifting regimen you follow has a powerful effect on the amount of muscle that you can build. Avoid circuit-training weight routines because they focus more on calorie-burning and a cardiovascular element rather than on building muscle.

You’d probably be better off sticking to a tried-and-true formula, lifting heavy weights for two to three sets of eight to 12 reps. Wait one to two minutes between each set of exercises so your muscles can recover and you can then provide another blast of intense muscle-building stimulus during the follow-up set of exercises.

Whenever you start lifting weights, you should work up to heavier weight very gradually. But do work up to them because you’re likely to build more muscle by challenging your muscles more. Try my muscle-building workout in the MSN FitZone.

Eating To Gain

Diet is a key component of weight gain, too. You say forcing yourself to overeat doesn’t seem to work. You clearly have strong satiety signals that naturally help you moderate and balance your energy intake. For now, you’ll have to figure how to override them, though!

One approach is to sneak small amounts of calories in all day. So rather than trying to eat a huge ice cream sundae after dinner every night (which you may not be comfortable doing), instead, pad all your meals and snacks with a few extra calories.

Find ways to add calorific ingredients to different meals. Here are some suggestions:

Breakfast:
• Add nuts to your cereal
• Add whole milk or whole soy milk to your cereal
• Sprinkle oatmeal flakes on your cereal or yogurt
• Add more butter, pesto spread or peanut butter to your toast
• Add olives and cheese to an omelet

Lunch:
• Add beans to every meal
• Add olive or walnut oil to salads and other entrees
• Choose rich, creamy soups over watery soups
• Eat extra bread or add extra cheese to a burger or sandwich

Dinner:
• Start with an appetizer and end with dessert
• Be generous with olive and walnut oils as flavorings
• Sprinkle main courses with nuts or olives
• Start with an avocado salad and include cheese in your main dish

Snacks:
• Munch on nuts
• Satisfy your sweet tooth with “discretionary calories” that come from cake, cookies, ice cream and other high-calorie treats
• Add beans and bread to a meal
• Eat pasta with creamy sauces
• Drink an energy or protein shake or smoothie

If you can sneak in several hundred calories a day by slipping in extra bites of foods, or making your normal meals a little more fattening, and if you work out with weight to provide an appropriate muscle-bulking stimulus, over time you should start to see some hypertrophy, or muscle growth.

Get More Fitness and Weight-Loss Advice From Martica:

• Workout Weight Gain
• Are Protein Shakes A Good Idea?
• Stuck at a Plateau Weight
• Waist Size Matters, Fit or Not

Find all articles by Martica.

Do you have a fitness or weight-loss question for Martica? Send e-mail to experts@microsoft.com. Please include Ask Martica in the subject line. Each of our experts responds to one question each week and the responses are posted on Mondays on MSN Health. We regret that we cannot provide a personalized response to every submission.

Martica is a Manhattan-based exercise physiologist and nutritionist and an award-winning fitness instructor. She has written for a variety of publications including Self , Health , Prevention , The New York Times and others. Martica is the author of seven books, including her latest, - Cross-Training for Dummies . (Read her full bio.)