Weight Gainers: What Are They and Do I Need Them?

Lots of skinny guys call themselves “hardgainers” or “ectomorphs“. They say it’s impossible to gain weight and muscle by normal means.

But as long as a doctor tells them it’s OK to work out, they’re wrong.

They just have problems eating enough food to get a surplus of calories.

Consequently, the market for weight gainers is one of the most lucrative for supplement manufacturers.

Do weight gainers help bodybuilding or weight training?

Skinny guys who don’t gain body weight can’t add muscle mass, no matter how hard they work out.

Think of it this way: if you want to add 10 pounds of muscle to your skinny frame, you have to gain at least 10 pounds of body weight.

It doesn’t matter if you lift weights all day long, you won’t get more muscular unless your bathroom scale keeps saying you’re heavier than you were the previous week.

Lots of skinny guys work out hard. In my estimation, some of these guys work out harder than successful athletes. But because they never learn how to create a diet that supplies excess calories, they fail to gain muscle.

Then, they start to look around for a quick fix. They fall into the weight-gainer trap.

Weight gainers give them a quick and easy way to eat enough calories so their rate of weight gain stays positive. And now that they finally get enough calories to gain weight while lifting weights regularly, the muscle gains come too.

Some commercial weight gainer shakes supply around 2000 calories per serving. This is more than most skinny guys eat in an entire day.

So yes: weight gainers help guys who are undernourished, but the weight gain supplements don’t do anything that a balanced, high-calorie diet can’t do better. Real food is ideal, but guys on the go can benefit from weight gainers when they have no time to cook.

Make your own weight gainer

Instead of buying pre-packaged powders, you can save money and take charge of your own diet by making your own weight gainer supplement.

There are no secrets to making an effective weight gainer drink. Here’s how you do it:

• Pack it full of calories in the form of fat
• Throw some protein powder into the mix to help with muscle protein synthesis.
• Use something to make it taste good.
• Use something else to stop it from separating or settling.

Making a weight-gain drink is simple, easy, and effective for underweight guys who don’t have time to eat.

In his famous 800-page book “The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding“, Arnold Schwartzenegger lists several recipes for weight gainer drinks. To make your own weight gainer, Arnold recommends these recipes:

 

 

 

There you have it: Arnold’s recipes for making your own weight gainer shakes.

Just so you know, lecithin is an emulsifier.

Emulsifiers are molecules that form chemical bonds to both fat and water. They stop the fat and water from separating.

If you throw some stuff in a blender, then drink it immediately after preparation, you don’t need an emulsifier. But if you plan to drink portions of your weight gainer all day long, you need an emulsifier.

When Arnold was developing these recipes, he was a teenager in the Austrian army. He drove a tank all day long and didn’t have a chance to raid the ‘fridge whenever he got hungry. So his weight gainer shakes needed to last all day long without the fat rising to the top.

Arnold also recommends drinking a portion of the weight gainer 1 ½ hours before working out, to give the protein time to digest. Read Fast and Slow Proteins for a discussion about how protein digestion rates relate to weight lifting.

If you do make your own weight gainer, use it during your bulking phases when you are actively gaining weight, but don’t rely on it for everyday nutrition.

Remember: good food comes with nutrients that are missing from artificial food substitutes.

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