A Weight Gainer

Why you need it: What better for packing on mass than a WEIGHT gainer. The main thing when bulking, next to getting your needed share of macro and micronutrients is, of course, packing on all the calories you can handle without turning into a balloon. Since you will be expending quite a bit of calorie while bulking, trying to add all that muscle, sometimes it will be hard to make your calorie-count every single day from nutritious self-prepared meals. Your family will not always be as supportive of an 8-meal a day habit. Take it from me. That's where weight gainers come in. Ranging from 600 to 3000 calories these gainers allow you to add serious additional calories from quality sources without having to spend hours behind a stove. Just mix and you have an instant high-calorie meal... and cost-effective too. They may seem expensive, but if you try to calculate what it would cost to make a similar meal yourself taking into account calories, quality and bio-availability of the nutrients, additional vitamins, bulking pills and minerals, and ease of preparation, you'll soon find just how little they really cost.

How it works: As an additional easy to prepare the meal they add calories to your daily totals drastically while giving you a correct balance of protein and carbs (1 to 1 up to 1 to 2, with most carbs coming from simple sugars) and a good helping of fat. Not to mention extra vitamins and minerals, which is not always the case with calorie-dense foods, which will be what you're targeting if growth is what you seek. This way you can get to your target healthily without running up the grocery bill too high.

How to use it: Use it as a post-workout meal, as a meal before going to bed (your burn up to 70 calls an hour while sleeping, keep that in mind) and potentially as meals when it is hard to prepare a meal, like midmorning or mid-afternoon, times you spend at work and so on. Use a serving, but be sure to pick a weight gainer that in combination with your regular meals and the number of shakes you will take will meet or exceed your demands without turning you into sumo. No need to invest in a 3000-cal shake if you already eat 3000 calls a day and take 2-3 shakes daily. That will only make you fat with that amount of sugar.

If you are of an endo-morphic (heavy) body-type it may be best to look into a low-carb gainer or even a Meal Replacement powder (negative protein to carb rate) to avoid excess body fat. The trouble with these is that they are very expensive, don't always provide the best balance of nutrients and they are pre-packaged, so they don't allow you to choose your doses and amounts. But for the endomorphs the amount of protein takes priority. If you are ecto- or mesomorphic its is best to get a weight gainer, it'll be hard to digest all protein and replenish Glycogen on an MRP. Protein powders are not an option because you need quite a lot, but the amount of pure protein that can be absorbed without extra fat or carbs is limited (30-35 grams). That's why neither protein nor MRP is included in this 'bulking' list.