Weight Gain Goal Setting

It is important to be realistic when setting your goals for weight gain. Real weight gain takes time – anyone can put on excess body fat but if you are looking to increase your overall weight you need to be careful and consistent with your intake. Practically and realistically you should look to gain around 200 – 500grams per week. Some weeks you may find that you do put on more weight than others and it is important to expect this. Each week is not going to be perfect but the more consistent you are with your eating and exercise routine the better your results will be.
If you are looking to gain weight you need to understand it is a slow process so set your goals accordingly. Follow these steps to set your own realistic goals:

1. Decide what your main long term weight goal is
2. Think about why you want to achieve this goal? What is your motivation for it?
3. Ask yourself “how realistic is it” – can you really see yourself at that weight or that size?
4. Now that you have your main goal and have thought about the reality of it you need to set smaller stepping stone goals. It is important to set smaller stepping stone goals along the way to your main goal so that you see progress. If you solely focus on the main goal it can seem a long way off! To stay motivated you need to keep achieving.
5. Write your smaller goals down – make sure they are realistic – break your weight gain down into the time based on 200 – 500grams a week.
6. Keep a list of your goals somewhere you will see it often – this keeps them fresh in your mind and reminds you of what you want to achieve.
7. Celebrate success – once you start to achieve your weight gain goals you should reward yourself. This helps to make your brain realise that that you enjoy doing this and that you do get rewards for working hard.

Now that you have learnt how to gain weight safely and correctly you can use a menu planner to plan your daily intake. It is based on a calorie diet so you may need to adjust it depending on your energy needs that you earlier calculated. Remember that to gain weight you need to add quality foods!