Calorie Overload Principle

CALORIE OVERLOAD PROGRAM

How Do I Put This into Practice?

1. First off, determine your basic calorie needs, our nutrition calculator will give you a good idea of your maintenance calorie level. From there you need to add around 500 calories, to give your new daily calorie intake. This will typically be around 12 times your body weight in pounds plus 500.
For example, if your body weight is 200 lb's and you lead a sedentary lifestyle, your calorie level would be 2400 plus 500, giving a daily total of 2900 calories per day. Alternatively you can keep a food diary and calculate your daily calories consumed for seven days. If you gain no weight and lose no weight over the seven days, then the average of the seven days combined will give you your individual calorie needs daily to maintain and support your current weight. So add 500 calories to this daily figure.

2. Follow the standard athletes diet for food choices, eating frequency and number of meals. Exceptions will be highlighted below. In summary this is that you should eat 6 meals per day, every 2-3 hours. Each meal should be a balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. It is still wise to consume a third of your daily carbohydrate allowance immediately post training, and taper your carbs through the day based on the principles outlined in the insulin index article.

3. You should aim for a diet with around 1g per pound of bodyweight, with 1g of fats per kilo of body weight and the rest coming from carbohydrates. If your lifestyle is sedentary, get no more than 15% of calories from fats, if your lifestyle is very active this can be as high as 20%, even if this exceeds 1g/kilo of bodyweight. Remember that fats is critical in quality and type as apposed to just quantity. If you want a no-brainer for fats, consume mostly fish oils, but for further information have a look at the section on fats.

4. As this program can be followed long term, its vital to re-establish your daily calorie needs every month. This is most easily done by simply adding 250 calories per day to your diet if you gained less than 1lb during the previous month.
These additional calories should mainly be derived from carbohydrates, although as your weight increases, you do need to ensure your protein and fat intake remains inline with your new body weight. A monthly recalculation is ideal. But if you gain a tremendous amount of weight then you should re-analyse your intake more frequently.

5. The supplement alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) is a beneficial supplement to use during long term weight gain as it may enhance your body's sensitivity to insulin, which will promote lean mass gain, enhance fat loss, and minimise fat storage.

6. Moderate levels of cardio exercise can, and should, be performed during long term weight gain programs, but ensure you take some simple carbs afterwards to prevent lean mass loss. During weight gain programs, loss of fitness is often experienced, this hampers performance when training large muscle groups. If your training suffers, progress stops, so don't lover look the benefits of some light cardio training.

Click here to learn a greater depth of information about this program.