While most diets are designed to deprive people of food they may crave, a new concept has been developed centered on the idea of eating just about whatever you want, within reason.

Billed as Your Final Diet, Dr. Abby Aronowitz has written a book under that title which not only encourages people to change their thinking on dieting, it suggests being a little overweight might be good.

Abby’s diet even has a list of “healthy” junk foods she encourages users of her diet to eat. These snacks include all natural treats such as Garden of Eatin’ Sesame Blues tortilla chips, Smart Food popcorn and Newman’s Own Organics Champion Chip Cookies. These healthy junk foods are higher in protein and fiber and have no artificial chemicals in their ingredients lists. She has said her research at Columbia University showed artificial sweeteners can actually increase appetite. She also suggests ways of using chocolate to suppress an appetite.

Those using Abby’s diet plan learn to manage sugar, carbs and fat intake rather than eliminating them. Dr. Aronowitz has said everybody craves those elements of their diet, and eliminating them only leads to diet failure. This, in turn, can lead to yo-yo dieting and a poor outlook about themselves.

In an interview, Aronowitz said the USDA recommends women should consume about 1,600 calories per day. She encourages her patients to multiply that by seven for a weekly total of about 11,000 calories. Then, her patients are told they can eat just about whatever they want within the 11,000 calories, especially if they eat all natural foods.

Changing the mind set is also important to her plan. Those using her suggestions will be encouraged to ignore pressure to become unrealistically thin, learn being thin doesn’t mean being sexy and become good role models for children to teach them about food selection and positive body image.

Fitness is important too, and not just for thin people. Aronowitz says even those listed as overweight benefit from being more fit.

Dr. Aronowitz believes increased health comes less from worrying about losing weight and more from accepting your actual size, eating better and working on your overall fitness level. This also improves your self-image.

Article from: www.abbysdietsuccess.com

What does getting bigger actually mean? You can get bigger by stuffing yourself with junk food all day, but this will just make you fat. You can get bigger and lean to get a ripped physique, but this usually involves first getting bigger and then doing a cutting phase to get lean. Or you could get a physique which is in between these two physiques.

Getting bigger is normally referred to as “bulking up” which requires making adjustments to your diet and training regimen. Bulking up is a benefit to people who want to know how to gain weight. Gaining 30-40 lbs within 6-months of being on a bulk up diet and training is very common. It won’t all be muscle, but gaining some fat should be the least of your concerns. You can always get lean after you have gained the weight, and you will not look out of proportion because of the muscle you would have gained.

However, bulking up is not for all body types. If you are overweight and have a tendency to put on weight easily then it’s not suitable for you. If you have a fast metabolism (which is typical for hardgainers), then this method can be an effective way to increase muscle mass, get stronger and smash through those training plateaus.

Eat Big To Get Big

You need to eat a lot in order to get bigger! Missing out on breakfast and having lunch on the go is no longer an option if you are serious about getting bigger. You need to learn to eat proper meals, and you will want to buy food in bulk so you can prepare meals in advance. Just grab the prepared meals from the fridge in the morning when you are in a rush to get to work so you don’t skip on meals.

Meal Frequency

Eat at regular times throughout the day. Generally speaking you will want to eat 6 meals per day, every 3 hours like clockwork, including breakfast (6am), mid morning snack (9am), lunch (12pm), mid afternoon snack (3pm), dinner (6pm), and before you go to bed (around 9pm). Obviously the times can be different. This is the minimum eating requirements on a bulk up diet. It’s not uncommon for people who are bulking up to eat more than 2,500 calories. Exactly how many calories you will need to bulk up will depend on your weight, how often you are training, how much weight you want to gain and how fast you want to do it.

Stick With High Calorie Foods

Swap low calorie food for high calorie foods which have a high nutritional value. You need to be consuming excess calories if you want to bulk up.

Get Enough Protein

Buy a good protein supplement like Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey. Whey protein isolate is fast digesting and a cheap way of getting adequate protein in your diet. Protein powder can be easily added to weight gain shakes. The best time to take a weight gain protein shake is first thing in the morning and last thing at night. On workout days, instead you can drink one for breakfast and after the workout. Don’t always drink shakes to get your protein though. Eggs are another very good source of protein. You can make an eggs omelet with mushrooms, onions and salsa, which is very tasty and packed with protein.

Don’t Be Too Strict!

You are allowed to cheat with junk foods occasionally, just don’t make it a bad habit. You want to get the majority of your calories from unprocessed healthy foods. Eat what you want whenever you feel like it, just as long as are consistent with eating healthy foods.

Training

During the bulking up phase you will want to limit doing cardio because this form of exercise burns too many calories and does little for building muscle. You don’t need to spend hours in the gym in order to get big. In fact, over training can be detrimental to muscle gains. If you’re a hardgainer, you will not want to workout more then 3 times per week for 45 minutes each session.

When lifting weights, do heavy workouts with low reps (6-10 repetitions). This is the best way to get bigger. Focus on the basic compound exercises like squats, bench press, military press, pull ups, and so on. These exercises target the larger muscle groups. Working the large muscle groups like the chest, back, legs and shoulder will help with your efforts to increase testosterone levels, which is an anabolic hormones which plays a key role in muscle building.

Gaining weight and building muscle can be very challenging to a person who has been skinny all their life. It may be hard to imagine for some but there are people out there who are trying to gain weight without much success.

The good news is there are a few simple steps you can take to gain weight and build muscle naturally.

10 Steps To Building Muscle Naturally

1.) Try to eat at least 20 calories per pound of bodyweight. For example, if you are 130 pounds, then try to aim for 2600 calories per day. If you do not see any weight gain for over 2 weeks, then slowly increase your calorie intake by 200-500 calories. Rinse and repeat if you don’t see weight gain again for 2 weeks.

2.) Now that you figured out how much you should eat per day, divide up the calories into small 6-8 meals per day. For example, if you eat 3000 calories and you eat 6 times per day, then that will be 500 calories from each of your meals.

3.) Eat most of your carbs during the morning and between your workouts. Those are the best times to convert carbs for energy to be used instead of storing it in your body as fat.

4.) You need to eat healthy fat such as nuts, fish, olive oil, etc. Some people believe that all fat are bad because of the name. Healthy unsaturated fat can supplement your muscle growth.

5.) Right before your workout, you need to have some healthy carbs such as fruits and oatmeal so you can have energy to lift your best. You will feel weak if you go on an empty stomach. Also, this is the time to take a protein shake.

6.) Right after your workout, you will need to do the same as your pre-workout meal. This is also the best time to add starchy carbs such as white bread with a little bit of jelly. The bad carbs will be used to help your body recover from an intense workout, and they will not be stored as fat.

7.) Try to avoid fat, even healthy ones, near workout times because fat can slow down your protein intake.

8.) For workout, focus only on heavy compound exercises, such as, deadlift, bench press, and squat. Those 3 are KING when it comes to gaining weight and building muscles. Do not work on bicep curls like all the skinny guys at the gym. Always make sure you do proper warm-up with lighter weight, and ask for help if you do not know the proper lifting techniques otherwise you might injure yourself.

9.) Getting more sleep can help your muscles recover faster to grow. Sometimes hardgainers are not gaining weight or building muscles simply because they are not sleeping enough.

10.) Just because protein is good for you, doesn’t mean you should take thousands of grams per day. Extras will most likely end up stored as fat. You just need about 1 to 1.5 grams per bodyweight.

Article By: Kai Lo

I used to believe that it was impossible for me to build muscle as a skinny hardgainer because I was 135 pounds at 5′7. Now I am a little over 160 pounds with muscles at the same height after 4 months. I wrote a FREE guide based on my own personal experience to help other skinny hardgainer build muscles. Get it now for FREE: Bodybuilding For Hardgainers