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Would Whole30 be for me?


Drakowski

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Hello,

Im new to this whole30 plan and wanted to make sure im looking in the right direction. I need help on which plan would be best for my self.

Im 38 years old and have done the worst thing for the longest time which was not eat during the day and work like a crazy person all day. Now, im paying for

It because I cant gain weight. I looking to find a plan just like whole30 but gain weight (healthy). This whole30 is the perfect plan im looking for.

Could someone help me with a idea on what plan I would be best fit for rather whole30 or similar to gain healthy weight and maintain the weight.

Thank you and I hope I didnt start off with a bad thing by posting this....

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http://whole30.com/downloads/whole30-meal-planning.pdf

 

Start with the Meal Template.  Become familiar with the portion sizes and then read all of the rules and recommendations.  Click on the Whole 30 up above for everything.  Read through before your start.   There's one plan and I believe it will work for you.

 

There are others who've used the Whole 30 for weight gain.  Simply google Whole 30 with any question you have and you'll find many of your answers.

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Action Item: Get your calories in. If those satiety signals are misfiring, you may feel like you’re eating too much, because you’re full all the time. Still, make sure you’re eating at least three meals a day, even if you feel like skipping lunch. You of all people can’t afford to be missing meals. And while we discourage people from grazing like antelope all day long, if you do find you’re hungry between meals, go ahead and have a snack—ideally including a decent amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrate. (Snacking on just an apple isn’t doing much for your cause.)

Action Item: Eat more fat. Go back to our Meal Planning Template as your starting point. The fat amounts outlined should be the minimum anyone is consuming during their Whole30, but you’ll need to up your amounts to the highest end of the spectrum, if not beyond.

Action Item: Eat more carbs. While we love leafy greens and other “lighter” nutrient-dense vegetables, your priority needs to be both nutrient and calorie-density. Don’t fill up on bowls of salad and platefuls of broccoli, leaving less room in your belly for meat and fat. Prioritize carb-dense vegetables with each meal (like potatoes, winter squashes, beets, and parsnips) and don’t be afraid of fruit (!). Even taro and yuca have a place here, if you need some starchy variety.

Action Item: Eat more protein. While eggs are nutrient-rich and an easy breakfast option, many folks find they hit their satiation point on just two or three—they just get sick of the taste or texture of eggs. The trouble is eggs are light on protein compared to comparable amounts of red meat, chicken, or salmon. Try branching out into other kinds of meat and seafood for breakfast, because it’s important to eat enough of everything—fat, carbohydrate, and protein.

Action Item: Liquid food. We generally recommend against liquid food because it bypasses normal satiety signals, prompting people to feel less satisfied after their “meal” and potentially leading them to overconsume. In this case, however, you may want to purposefully employ this principle to sneak in a few more calories. Check this link for three recipes with lots of calories.

Action Item: Don’t even think about intermittent fasting. Do we really need to explain this one?

Lifestyle Factors

So we’ve covered the obvious food angle… but know that there is much more to this story than just eating more. Other lifestyle factors, like training, recovery, and stress, all play into your ability to maintain or gain weight.

To put it bluntly, if you’re running 10 miles a day and wondering why you can’t maintain muscle mass, well… Certain exercise protocols (especially those with lots of longer-duration, moderate to high-intensity activity) are whittling off body weight—often in the form of muscle mass—faster than you could eat it back on.

Even if you are on a strength-focused program, if your recovery practices are inadequate, you’re not going to be able to easily maintain your gains. Lifting heavy five days a week doesn’t mean squat if you’re only sleeping six hours a night, not doing any recovery work, and are chronically stressed with work, school, family, or financial worries.

Action Item: Rethink your training. Consider swapping out those long, hard training sessions and sexy met-cons for very short high-intensity met-cons and lots of heavy strength work. Think “muscle-building,” not “muscle catabolism.”

Action Item: Prioritize recovery. Make sure your recovery efforts are adequate for the frequency, duration, and intensity of your training sessions. If you don’t have the time to properly recover, step down your training. Remember, you don’t get fitter when you train, you get fitter when you recover from that training. And recovery is more than just taking a rest day. 

Check Under the Hood 

Finally, consider consulting a functional medicine practitioner and having them analyze factors like your stress hormones, thyroid function, and gut health. If your gut isn’t healthy, it doesn’t really matter how much you’re eating—you’re not absorbing all of those nutrients, which means you’re unable to make use of them in the body. (It’s like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom—no wonder you’re not gaining weight.) And other factors, like parasites, bacterial imbalances, environmental toxins, micronutrient deficiencies, and food sensitivities, influence your body’s ability to turn nutritious food into healthy body tissue.

A stress response gone awry (remarkably common in today’s hectic modern world) can dramatically tilt the balance of tissue breakdown and repair towards ongoing breakdown. Over time, this can erode your muscle mass, while infuriatingly and seemingly paradoxically preserving your body fat stores. A good functional medicine practitioner will address lifestyle influences on your stress response, and give you some useful strategies to start to normalize the way your brain not only perceives stress, but also how your brain (and adrenal glands) respond to stress.

Understand that if you’ve got a medical condition or long history of chronic stress, your weight maintenance issues may not be improved by dietary and lifestyle efforts alone. If you’ve tried all of these recommendations and are still unable to maintain or gain weight, it’s time to call in the big guns, and do some comprehensive testing.

Action Item: Consult a Professional. You can consult the Institute for Functional Medicine to find a practitioner in your area, or email [email protected] for more information.

 

- See more at: http://whole30.com/2013/12/keeping-weight-whole30/#sthash.LlhCLuB0.dpuf

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