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Want to gain weight healthfully?  It takes a combination of healthy, calorie-dense foods and resistance training to build lean body mass.

When it comes to your overall health, you often hear that you should work to “achieve and maintain a healthy body weight”.  And when you hear that, it’s natural to think that it applies only to people who have extra weight to lose.  But there are those who have the opposite weight problem – they struggle with trying to gain healthy body weight.   And while plenty of overweight folks might be happy to trade places with those who struggle to gain, they should know that underweight people often find it just as hard to achieve their weight goals as those who are trying to lose.  And, just as many overweight people do, those who feel skinny or scrawny may have issues with body image, or feel as if all they do is think about food.

Healthy weight gain takes time

Whenever weight change is the goal – whether it’s to lose or to gain- most people want quick results.  But in either case, the process is usually fairly slow and gradual.  In order for an underweight person to gain a pound in a week’s time, they need to eat an extra 500 calories above what they burn every single day – which is often easier said than done.  And sometimes (in an attempt to speed the process along) people turn to unhealthy, high calorie foods – like donuts and French fries – that are loaded with fat and sugar.  Aside from the fact that these foods don’t provide proper nutrition for an active body, they’re also not likely to lead to healthy weight gain.

Healthy foods for healthy weight gain

Gaining weight in a healthy way, then, requires more than simply eating more calories – you want to emphasize healthy foods that are also calorie-dense to ensure that you will ‘bulk up’ rather than simply ‘fatten up’.  But, boosting calories alone – even from very healthy foods – could simply add more fat to your frame if you don’t couple it with resistance exercise.  So gaining healthy lean body mass requires a one-two punch of healthy eating along with strength training.

It also helps to eat on a schedule – and to set aside some extra time to eat more often – in order to work in those extra calories.   It does take some forward planning and a lot of patience, but with practice, you can achieve healthy weight gain.  Here are some tips to help you.

How to gain weight in a healthy way

• Drink extra calories from fruit juices, low fat milk or soymilk.  If fluids fill you up too much, have them in between meals, rather than with your food.
• Gradually increase portions.  Whenever you’re able to serve yourself, add an extra spoonful or two of food to your plate to gradually increase the amount you eat.  Most people eat whatever they are served, and this often works better than trying to eat a entire second helping.
• Add healthy fats to your vegetables.  Use olive-oil vinaigrette on your salad, and add nuts, seeds, avocado or olives to salads and cooked vegetables.
• Choose calorie-dense whole grains.  Cereal topped with milk or soy milk makes a good snack that isn’t too filling.  The highest calorie cereals are dense and heavy – the box of cereal should feel heavy for its size when you pick it up.  Look for cereals that get their extra calories from nuts, seeds and dried fruits rather than extra fat or sugar.  You can boost the calories in hot cereals by cooking them in milk or soy milk – then stir in nuts or nut butter, dried fruit, seeds or mashed banana. Look for heavy, dense whole grain breads – they tend to have more calories per slice than ‘regular’ bread – and load up on foods like whole grain pasta, brown rice and quinoa.
• Adequate protein is important, but stick with lean proteins – fish and seafood, poultry, lean cuts of meat and vegetarian proteins such as beans and tofu – and increase calories by boosting your portion size, rather than relying on higher-calorie, fatty meats.
• Dried fruits have more calories than fresh fruit on a per-serving basis, and are good added to cold or hot cereal, trail mix, salads and smoothies – or just by the handful as a snack.
• Healthy snacking can help healthy weight gain.  Trying to work in an extra 500 calories or more per day is easier if you include regular snacks.  Aim for three meals and three snacks (mid-morning, mid-afternoon, after dinner) and try to space meals and snacks evenly.  That way, there’s less of a risk that your snack will ruin your appetite for your next meal.  A protein shake, a bowl of cereal with milk and fruit, a sandwich on whole grain bread, or a cup of bean soup are just some examples of healthy snack options.

 Susan Bowerman is Director of Nutrition Training at Herbalife. She is a Registered Dietitian and a Board-Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics.

What you eat and drink after your workout – and when – can have a big impact on your next performance.

What do you eat first after a workout? Most athletes pay fairly good attention to what they eatbefore exercising, but afterwards – for some – it’s almost as if ‘anything goes”.

Eating the right foods and beverages after exercise does more than just replenish your draining fuel supply – it helps your body get ready for your next round of activity, too. So, if you’re the type who works out regularly (and fairly hard), what you eat – and when – can make a big difference in your overall performance.

Keep in mind that refueling is geared primarily to those who are doing extended and strenuous bouts of exercise. If your usual activity is a daily walk or brief swim, your regular meals and snacks should take care of your nutritional needs as long as your diet is healthy and well-balanced – but always stay on top of your fluid intake.

But, if you’re going the distance, what you eat after your workout is just as important as what you eat before you exercise. You’re not only helping your body recover from a bout of exercise – you’re also helping your body prepare for the next one.

What to eat and drink after exercising

Replenish fluids and salts after exercise

When you exercise, sweating causes you to lose important body salts – like sodium and potassium – that need to be replaced. Many advanced athletes get in the habit of weighing themselves before and after exercise, in order to figure out how much fluid needs to be replaced. For each pound that you lose during activity, you should drink about 2-3 cups of liquid (or about one liter of fluid per kilo of weight loss).

What to drink after exercise

Water is fine as a fluid replacer, since you’ll be eating afterwards – which means you’ll pick up carbohydrate, sodium (and likely some potassium) and from your foods. For those who don’t normally drink high-calorie liquids, this is the one time they might drink fruit juices, since they provide fluid and carbohydrate and – depending on the fruit – potassium, too. Sports drinks are great since they provide not only fluid and carbs (some even have a bit of protein – which your body also needs), but the right balance of salts that have been lost through perspiration, too. And, they usually have a mildly light, sweet taste that often encourages you to drink more.

Your body needs carbohydrate after you exercise

After a hard workout, your body has burned through a lot of carbohydrate – the primary fuel that keeps your muscles working – and it’s important to refuel as soon as you can. The recommended amount is about 1.4 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight (or, 0.6 grams carbohydrate per pound of body weight). That’s about 100 grams of carbohydrate for someone weighing 165 pounds (75 kg). Healthy carbohydrates – fruits, whole grains and the natural carbs in dairy products – are a good place to start with post-workout snacking.

Your body needs protein after you exercise

A bit of protein is important in recovery, too, since it helps to stimulate muscle repair and growth after you’ve been working out. It doesn’t take much – about 10 grams of protein or so will do. The ideal post-exercise meal or snack contains a combination of healthy carbs and protein, which is why athletes often turn to foods like a sandwich on whole grain bread, a dish of yogurt and fruit, a protein shake made with milk and fruit, or specially formulated recovery beverages.

Meal timing is important after exercise

When you exercise, your muscles become very sensitive to the nutrients that are available – and that sensitivity lasts for a limited amount of time. That’s why many athletes who want to optimize muscle recovery pay attention to this “metabolic window” – the time period of about 30-45 minutes after exercise during which you should try to eat your carbs and protein. During this critical time after you exercise, your muscle cells are more sensitive to the effects of insulin – a hormone that helps transport amino acids (from protein) into your cells. Insulin also works to drive carbohydrate into the cells, where it is stored in the form of glycogen. This stockpile of carbohydrate can then be used to provide energy to working muscles during the next bout of activity. And, once you kick this fuel storage process into gear, you can keep it going for up to eight hours if you continue to provide your body with a shot of carbohydrate every two hours.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife. Herbalife markets sports nutrition products. Find out more about Herbalife24 – Nutrition for the 24 hour athlete.

A well-planned vegetarian diet can meet all your nutritional needs, but there’s more to being vegetarian than simply eliminating animal foods from your diet.

Planning a vegetarian diet isn’t really thatmuch different from planning a diet that includes animal foods. Like any other well-balanced plan, a healthy vegetarian diet includes plenty of veggies, along with fruits and whole grains – the main difference is that vegetarians get their protein from plant-based sources rather than animals. And as long as it’s well thought-out, a vegetarian diet can easily provide what your body needs. Let’s explore the options.

Different types of vegetarian diets

Generally speaking, a vegetarian diet excludes animal flesh – so vegetarians as a whole don’t eat meat, fish or poultry. In its strictest form, the vegan diet, even animal products – like milk, eggs or honey – are also excluded. But there are plenty of variations on the vegetarian theme. There are lacto-vegetarians who eat dairy products (but no eggs), ovo-vegetarians who do just the opposite (eggs, no dairy) and the pescetarians who eat a plant-based diet – but they also eat fish.

Getting enough protein on a vegetarian diet

One of the biggest dietary challenges – especially for strict vegans – is getting adequate protein from plant sources. Proteins are made up of small units called amino acids, which your body uses to manufacture body proteins like hormones, enzymes and muscle tissue. Your body can make some amino acids, but others are called essential – because your body can’t make them, so they have to come from the diet.

All animal products – from meat, poultry and fish to milk and eggs – are called completeproteins because they contain all the essential amino acids, and in the right proportions. The challenge for vegetarians is that – with the exception of soybeans – most plant foods lack one or more essential amino acid, so they’re considered incomplete.

Fortunately, there’s a fairly easy work-around – and that’s to combine plant sources in such a way as to provide all the building blocks that the body needs. The essential amino acid that is lacking in beans, peas or lentils, for example, is abundant in grains – and, conveniently, what grains lack, beans can provide. So, when you pair black beans with rice, or a bowl of lentil soup with whole grain bread, you can provide your body with all the essential amino acids it needs.

One of the most common mistakes that many of my clients make when they decide to “veg out” is to simply eat everything that used to be on their plates – minus the ‘flesh’. That might be okay if you’re already eating plenty of plant foods and are getting adequate protein from plant sources. But I see lots of people who start out with a pretty bad diet, but don’t do anything other than to cut out all the animal foods. In the end, they just wind up with the poorly-balanced diet they started with – only now they’re not getting enough protein, either. In short, they’re paying too much attention to what they’re cutting out and not enough attention than what they needed to add in. A diet made up of little more than pancakes and French fries might qualify as vegetarian…but it’s hardly healthy.

Planning a vegetarian diet

A healthy diet – vegetarian or not – consists of a balance of important food groups – fruits, vegetables, proteins and grains. Here are a few basics to get you started:

Have a fruit or veggie at every meal and snack

That’s good advice for everyone. I generally recommend that people strive for at least 3 fruits a day, and then two servings of vegetables at lunch and another two servings at dinner. As calories allow, you can increase these numbers.

Whole grains contribute to protein needs

Whole grains provide some (although not all) essential amino acids, which makes them an important component of a vegetarian plan. The amount you need to eat each day will depend on your calorie and protein needs, but you’ll need a minimum of two daily servings.

Beans, peas and lentils help complete your protein needs

The amino acids found in beans, peas and lentils (and products made from them like tofu, tempeh or protein powders made with soy or pea protein) complement those found in grain foods, which is why these foods are so important. You don’t necessarily have to eat beans and grains at the same meal, but you should make a point to have some of each throughout the day. Again, the amount you need will depend on your calorie and protein needs, but as with any other plan, you should aim to have some protein at each meal and snack to meet needs and help with hunger control.

Dairy and eggs are great protein sources for lacto-ovos

It’s somewhat easier to meet protein needs if you’re vegetarian (not vegan) and include dairy products and eggs in diet. These foods provide high quality protein at a relatively low calorie cost.

Protein powders can help meet protein targets

Protein powders made from plant proteins – like soy, or rice and pea – are great for vegetarians and vegans alike, since they help boost your protein intake at a relatively low calorie cost. They’re easy to add to foods like protein shakes, cooked oatmeal and even soups to boost protein– and, you can tailor the amount you use to your individual needs.

Protein content in vegetarian foods

Note: Pay attention to the calorie cost of some of these foods. Nut butters, for example, do provide some protein, but the calorie cost is relatively high. Also, I included rice, hemp and almond milk on the list because many people use them as alternatives to dairy milk, but notice that they are quite low in protein. Also, I’ve included information on eggs, egg whites and milk-based products for the lacto-ovo vegetarians.

 Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife.