Honestly, when I first started this site, I didn’t think there were many women trying to gain weight. However, judging by the emails I receive and a quick perusal of the ezine subscription list, there are either a lot of you out there or a great many men named “Becky.”
The world’s obsession with losing weight drowns out the concerns of the underweight and, without a doubt, it is the women trying to learn how to gain weight that find themselves the most ignored.
The good news is that gaining weight isn’t much different between the sexes – weight gain for girls is essentially the same as it is for boys.
While this site is admittedly written with the male in mind, it presents the same principles that a naturally thin woman must adopt if she wishes to quickly put on healthy weight.
In short, you must increase your caloric intake and inspire the right kind
of growth through weight training.
The bad news is that most women have a collection of mental stumbling blocks regarding these techniques. To gain healthy weight (pounds in pleasing places), you simply must move past the following three mental stumbling blocks…
1) Weight Training Will NOT Make You Masculine
Many women have the false impression that weight training will make them look masculine. A remarkable number of the emails I receive from women looking for weight gain advice always think to tell me either “I don’t want to look like a bodybuilder” or “I don’t want to look like a man.”
I get it.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that there are far too many men on the planet. I’d be the last person to suggest something that could possibly create more.
Fortunately, women simply don’t naturally possess the hormone levels (primarily testosterone) that will allow them to become huge muscular creatures. No amount of weight training is going to change that.
Women see a photo of a “bodybuilding woman” who may not be their idea of beauty and these photos lead to an irrational fear of free weights. Some women become convinced that even glancing at a weight rack could mean they’ll have a full beard within a week.
Three Reasons Not To Fear Becoming One Of Those Bodybuilding Women You May Envision
- They are on stage – tanned, oiled and flexing. This makes anyone appear a great deal more muscular than if you met them on the street or even at the beach. They’ve also done some intense pre-competition dieting. They won’t look like that for long.
- The ones with the extreme muscle and who exhibit masculine characteristics didn’t get that way through natural training. Instead, they have used steroids. If you don’t unnaturally alter your hormone levels, your femininity is safe.
- They didn’t get that way overnight. You just don’t wake up one morning and look like these women. Regardless of what you think of them, understand it has taken them many years of dedicated training to achieve their look. It wasn’t by accident.
If you felt you were becoming “too big,” if your boyfriend started hiding behind you at the first sign of trouble, you could simply stop. Muscle is easy to lose. Weight training does not start you on an irreversible path towards becoming a female Schwarzenegger.
2) Don’t Just Gain “Any Weight”, Gain Lean Muscle Weight
Many thin women set out to gain any weight, fat is fine with them. I hear this often, “I don’t want to gain lean muscle, I just want to put on weight.”
There is a major problem with this approach. If your gains come primarily from increased body fat, you’re unlikely to be pleased with the results. You have no control of where that fat is placed on your body. Genetics and genetics alone controls this.
If you want an idea of where that fat will go, refer to Murphy’s Law of Fat – Fat gains will go to the exact place you least desire them to go. In naturally thin people, fat gain usually appears disproportionately around the mid section.
There is something worse than looking like a stick figure, and that is looking like a stick figure stuck in an inner-tube.
We all know people who have been blessed with aesthetically pleasing fat distribution. In women, this can sometimes make for desirable curves. This is genetics. Unless you have the same genetics, trying to achieve the same look will be a fruitless pursuit.
Forget the scam weight gain pills that may promise to give you curves in all the right places. Unless these people have made genetic discoveries worthy of a Nobel Prize, they are lying to you.
Science is still decades away from allowing us to mess with our genetic coding. In the mean time, your best bet to improve your physique in the way you want is to go after lean muscle weight gains.
This is healthy weight gain and unlike body fat, lean muscle likes to distribute itself evenly and it will pay attention to your directions (your weight training).
3) Move Away From The Treadmill, Step Up to The Squat Rack
You can get a girl to the gym, but can you get her past the treadmills? Women who head to the gym with the desire to gain weight do the same things women who are trying to lose weight do – they tend to like to stick to the treadmills and ellipticals.
This isn’t going to help you gain weight, it can even be counterproductive. You don’t need to burn calories, you need to build muscle.
You have to venture outside of your comfort zone, skip right past the machines and head directly to the free weights. Your goal is to inspire muscle gain and nothing will inspire muscle gain like free weights. Learn how to effectively and safely squat and you’ll possess one of the greatest skills for lean muscle weight gain known to woman.
Weight Gain For Women Conclusion
If you can move past these mental hurdles, if you can subscribe to a rational perception of the capabilities of weight training, healthy and pleasing weight gain is well within your reach.
Explore this site with an open mind, apply some of the presented techniques and get ready for people to start referring to you as something other than “that anorexic chick.”
Where to Go From Here?
The secret to quickly and dramatically changing your physique for the better is putting together a COMPLETE program. To get started, check out The Weight Gain Plan: Factors for Success Pt 1.
Think You’re Alone?
Think you’re the only female out there trying to gain weight? You’re not, there are many interested in weight gain for women. If you’re looking to follow a complete and proven program to help you pack on some quality weight, check out the weight gain program reviews.
Couple more articles you may like…
Gym Memberships: Choosing the Right Gym For You
Learn how to pick a gym that serves your mass building needs and negotiate the best deal for yourself.
Designing Successful Weight Gain Programs
Learn how to design and execute a complete program, from setting your start date to getting rolling, that will pack on the muscle.
