How to Build Muscle Mass Safely and Effectively

Trying to gain weight can be quite a challenge, especially if you are trying to do it correctly and healthily without increasing the percentage of body fat. This way, you will continue to have a toned body, but with more muscle mass. To achieve this, we have spoken with nutrition specialist Carrie McMahon, who explained the concept of “reverse diet” to us.

This type of diet is a way of gaining weight slowly but surely concentrating only on gaining muscle as well as repairing metabolic damage due to other strict diets that you have practiced on previous occasions. In the words of McMahon: «This repair is essential to achieve your goals. Strict diets do enormous damage to our metabolismsince on many occasions, the body undergoes fasting. As a consequence, the metabolism will go much slower.

Even if you have not been on strict diets, the “reverse diet” also works for those people who have always been skinny and would like to gain a few extra kilos of pure muscle.
The diet consists of increasing food intake, slowly but steadily so that the metabolism can get used to this increase without going into “shock”, which is what happens when you drastically and suddenly increase the food you put into the body.

What is the reverse diet?

The first step is to start counting macronutrients. Macros or macronutrients are those nutrients that supply most of the body’s metabolic energy, therefore we talk about fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. The way you distribute macronutrients in your diet (such as heavy proteins, light carbohydrates, and fat) has an effect on your metabolism that determines whether you lose or gain weight.

When you are starting the reverse diet, the recommendation from professionals focuses on keeping the proportions of your macronutrient intake the same as you did before. Little by little there will be gradual adjustments in intake. If you’ve never counted your macros, try to remember the foods you ate the previous week, and write down the information to get a rough idea of ​​what you ate. “The key is to start where you were until now.” As McMahon explains, if you happen to be doing a detox or low-calorie diet for a week, it doesn’t count. Think about what you have done during the last 6 months. That’s where you have to start.

A healthy diet has on average approximately 30% and 35% protein, 25% fat, and 45% carbohydrates. Once you start adding more foods to gain weight, you should do it in small amounts each week in such a way that you do not change your diet daily, but for weeks. Each week you add more foods, so you will eat between 50-100 calories a day. Progress is slow.

Here is a list of healthy foods rich in macronutrients perfect for the development of muscle mass:

The reverse diet also mentions that to gain muscle healthily, it is not enough to just make these changes in the diet, it must be complemented with strength exercises. “Combined with weight training, eating more calories will allow your body to gain more weight and focus on building muscle.” It is much healthier and less dangerous than starting a diet to gain weight by suddenly overfeeding.

As Carrie McMahon explains, gaining weight will not make you look fatter, especially with this method, because the body, by focusing on gaining muscle, your appearance will be of a more toned body. Don’t worry about what the scale says, focus on how you feel inside.