Most women will try to avoid getting a bulky, overly muscled look for fear that they won’t appear feminine anymore. That often means they stick to cardio machines and are careful about the carbs and protein that they eat.
However, for a toned, very fit look, most women will need to gain some muscle.
The ideal aesthetic that women who work out are trying to achieve will often require building muscle. How to gain weight and muscle for women? It’s going to require a combination of strength training and eating the right foods.
I want to share with you some methods for how to gain muscle mass fast for women in a way that is healthy and that gets effective results.
These are proven methods that should work for just about anyone, no matter their health or body mass.
Benefits of Building Muscle Mass
Adding muscle to your body provides a lot of benefits. If you are building muscle effectively, you’re also losing weight effectively. That’s because muscles can burn calories for you even when your body is at rest. As you build more muscle, you’ll burn more calories each day.
So, knowing how to develop muscle mass in your body means you also know how to lose weight and gain muscle fast for women. You can be building muscle while you burn calories, getting rid of fatty tissue.
One thing you should know about developing muscle mass, though, is that muscle weighs more than fat. You could end up weighing even more when you build muscle then you did before you began your exercise plan.
How to Build Muscle Through Diet
What you eat makes a big difference in how much fat stays on your body and how quickly muscle develops. If you’re going to grow muscle tissue, you need to be eating the right foods.
If you’re looking to lose weight to gain muscle, for women that means focusing on a diet that’s low in sugar and saturated fat and high in protein and lean meats.
Your diet should have very little processed sugar and as few additives and preservatives as possible. It should be a diet that’s as free of processed foods as possible. You also want to be careful about your carb intake.
Carbohydrates can add a lot of weight to your body without turning into muscle mass.
Proteins are essential for building muscle, and you want to eat foods like legumes, eggs, and lean meats, including turkey and chicken. These are the essential building blocks for muscle, and you won’t get a lean, muscular look without them.
In order for muscles to grow, they’re going to need enough nutrition to develop. When women are trying to build muscle, studies show that women are going to need about 1.6 to 1.8 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight.
This should be their daily intake, and adding more to that won’t necessarily spur greater muscle growth.
Women also need to consume enough calories to give them energy for muscles. You have to be careful about how many calories you consume, as that can turn into fatty weight when not used as energy and when not used to grow muscles.
In order to build a pound of muscle, it should take somewhere around 2,500 calories.
Women will also need plenty of vitamins and minerals, and it’s a good idea to get on a multi-vitamin if you’re trying to build muscles. This will help take care of some muscle deficiencies you may have in your diet. This helps you a well so that you don’t need to closely observe your nutritional intake.
How to Build Muscle Mass Through Exercise
Of course, you also need to exercise to build muscle. How to gain weight and muscle fast for women? Doing the right kinds of exercises can help develop muscle fast, and while you may want a personalized diet and fitness plan, you can follow some general guidelines that will help spur muscle development.
Heavy lifting is a good place to start. If you lift heavy weights, that will cause micro tears in your muscle that force your body to repair muscle tissue and grow larger.
These tears activate the nutrients in cells in the body that make muscles bigger and stronger and that make them more able to handle even greater weights.
You also want to do plenty of reps as you work out. Short exercise sessions might not do you much good. When women are trying to build muscle, fitness experts recommend they do about four sets of 10 reps.
Make sure the weight is heavy enough to give you a challenge and that it’s so heavy you have difficulty doing more than a dozen reps without taking a break. That way, you know the weight is having an impact and muscles are being developed as you work out.
Cardio exercises are excellent for muscle growth as well. They improve your endurance and your lung capacity. They strengthen your heart so that the increased exertion of working out is not so unbearable for you. You’ll be able to work out harder and longer if you incorporate cardio exercises into your workout regimen.
Variety is essential too, especially if you want to stick with the workout program. If you’re doing the same thing every day, that can get old fast. You may lose motivation and not want to keep going with the exercise program.
So, it’s helpful to change things up and do different kinds of exercises throughout the week. You may want to do swimming one day, running another day, and weightlifting for the remainder. This variety doesn’t just keep things interesting; it also works different parts of your body and ensures a full body workout.
Tips for Building Muscle Mass
Rest Is Essential
There’s one more important key for how to gain muscle for women. That’s getting plenty of rest. When you sleep, that’s when all of your muscle growth is going to happen.
Your rest time is when your body heals itself, so that’s when the body is sending the hormones, nutrients, and cells to the torn muscle tissue to develop stronger and bigger muscles.
If you don’t get enough sleep, all your working out and dieting won’t have the impact you want it to. You’ll feel constantly fatigued and unable to do your workouts.
You also won’t see muscle growth as quickly and as powerfully as you might expect. Rest is so essential for building muscle, and especially when you’re working out rigorously. Your body is going to become overtired if you’re not getting adequate sleep.
How to Gain Weight and Muscle for Skinny Women
You might have to make some modifications for your particular body type. It can be helpful to have a personal trainer and personal dietitian to make recommendations for you.
Skinny women may have difficulty gaining weight and muscle, pushing past their body’s natural plateaus. If you find that’s happening with you, you may have to increase your carb intake.
You may also need to focus on adding unsaturated, healthy fats to your diet. These are heart healthy fats that are good for you and that can help you gain some extra healthy weight.
Be careful about starving yourself as you diet and workout, ensuring that you’re getting enough nutrients and protein to build muscles.
If you’re always hungry and always tired, you may be struggling to get enough nutritional value from your food, and you may need to increase your calorie counts.
Listen to your body and the warning signs it’s giving you, and that can help you to decide what changes you need to make in your diet and your exercise routines.
Eventually, you should be able to gain weight and muscle mass as you keep dieting and working out.
Keep in mind that dieting doesn’t necessarily mean cutting back on how much you eat. It simply means being mindful of what you are eating, being careful about limiting specific food groups, and focusing on others. That’s how you will get the best results and achieve the body you want.
