Are you a skinny girl?
Do you want to gain weight and curves?
Skinny girls asked for a post to help them with one very important thing. Curves! They were tired of wearing jean short inside their jean trouser to have an appearance of the curve. “How long will I keep wearing a body shaper for butts”? One of them asked me impatiently. “You have to remove it sometimes you know.”
So, on this post, we will be talking about skinny girls and how they can go from letter i to figure 8.
If you are still reading this then I guess you must be tired of people asking you if you are sick. Giving you unsolicited advice on what you need to do to gain weight. A client once told me someone asked her to eat ice cream, soft drinks, and sausage. She gained weight; on her tummy. They might even ask with genuine or malicious concern if you have a food challenge at home? When was the last time you dewormed? Instead of feeling sad and resentful, you should be happy. You should be happy that you are blessed with a metabolism that is an inferno. Do you know how much people are spending to lose weight, but you, when you sit down, you are burning fat, while asleep, you are burning fat. Your body does not need your help for that; it can do it on its own.
Yes, I know, you may say, but I need to put on just a tiny weight and I need curves, mine is non-existent. I look like a microphone.
Well, whatever your reason for wanting curves as long as you want curves and muscle, this post is for you.
Here are proven practical steps for you to go from letter i to a figure 8
Eat lots of clean and healthy food
Gaining weight for skinny girls tends to be difficult, what with a metabolism that is always on fire, burning everything you eat coupled with you being a picky eater and not eating enough.
Food is the foundation of your weight gain, curves, and muscle. If it is not strong, everything else crumbles, much like a house with a weak foundation. If you want to build a skyscraper, you will not make the foundation of a bungalow; if you do it will collapse. The house you are building is your body. The style is weight gain, curves, and muscle. The foundation is food. Tasty, nutritious and healthy food. You have to avoid processed food and junk food. You do not want to end up with belly fat health challenges like diabetes, HBP or high cholesterol level.
Eat frequently and healthy. Do not exhaust your storehouse of energy. You do not have excess fat in your body to burn. People who want to lose weight are very creative in inventing healthy and unhealthy ways of forcing their boy to burn fat. Weight loss is not your goal. Weight gain is your goal.
I recommend 5 – 6 meals per day. This will keep your body energy deposit or reserve in surplus, not in deficit. This will mean eating more calories. Up to 300 – 500 more calories per day.
- Drink water after eating not before
- Eat fruits after eating not before
You are observing this rule because you do not want to curb your appetite or minimize your food intake. Gradually increase your food intake on a daily basis.
Your body is a very smart incinerator so the moment you start progressive feeding overload, it will want to maintain the balance, so it will try to force you not to eat, by making you lose your appetite. Fight back. Eat even when you are not hungry and you know you should eat.
The foods you should embrace are
- Yogurt
- Oats with milk
- Nut butter on apple bread
- Yam
- Beans
- Soup with wheat Okra, vegetable soup cocoyam, and bitter leaf soup
- Vegetable stir fry with chicken
- Rice
- Sweet potato
- Fish
- Pumpkin (Anyu
- Egg
- Plantain
This is not an exhaustive list; add your own favorite food. Waiting till you are fainting of hunger before you eat is not recommended. Eat at least 20 – 30 minutes after getting up from bed in the morning.
Here is a sample 1 day meal plan for you.
BREAKFAST | MID MORNING | LUNCH | EVENING | DINNER |
Quaker oats with plantain | Apple and nut butter | Rice with vegetable stir fry | Cucumber with groundnut | Beans porridge with sweet potato |
Cardio? No thanks
Again, as I said to the skinny guys, stay away from prolonged cardio. Stay away from the treadmill and elliptical. You do not want to burn fat or lose weight. Training and eating like one does not make sense. Your approach should be different.
Do not jog and do not run either.
My reason for not recommending cardio is that:
- Cardio burns calories by breaking down fat and energy( remember energy deposit)
- Cardio keeps burning calories long after the workout. You do not need “afterburn”
Jumping jacks, step-ups and burpee is not your main focus now.
HIIT
Think about it for a second; Check out long-distance runners and marathon runners, they are tall lanky with no muscle definition. What of the 100 meters – Yes! Short distance, high speed. That’s what you need.
Exercise in this category includes; squat jumps and lunges.
SAMPLE HIIT 1 DAY WORKOUT FOR A SKINNY GIRL
Exercise | Break | Sets | Reps |
Warm-up and stretch | |||
Squat with weight | 2 minutes | 3 | 5-12 |
Bent over rows | 1 minute | 3 | 5-12 |
Lunge side jumps | 2minutes | 2 | 10 |
dips | 1 minute | 2 | 10 |
Overhead rows with squat | 2 minutes | 2 | 5-12 |
Go for heavyweights
No, you will not turn into the incredible hulk. Using 2kg dumbbells will help you build endurance but it will not give you those beautifully defined arms that look great in spaghetti strings. For that, you need weights that are challenging. When your muscle is challenged, it breaks down. It will take time to repair itself and that is what gives you a definition. Do not be tempted to do everything at once. Aim for progressive overload.
Start with 3kg weight, and then move to 4kg
Start with 2 sets and then move to 3 sets
Start with 6 reps then move to 8, 10 and12reps
Lifting or squatting to failure is not an option. It is not safe and it is not necessary. Listen to your body. Learn when to stop.
Use compound movements
Compound workouts are exercises that use multiple muscle groups at the same time. The overhead press is good but when you do it with squats, your buttocks benefits, your abs benefits, your arm benefits, and your legs benefits. Squats should be one of your go-to exercises.
“There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed squat”. Mark Rippetoe
Squats and lunges are beneficial to your body in several ways. They are your everyday movements. The squat is what you do when you sit or lift and lunge is when you walk or run. Your body is not a stranger to these two compound movements. You are just adding certain things like curtsy and jumps to make it more challenging
The Jump squat
Other compound exercises include
- Dips
- Lunges
- Planks
How to do a perfect squat
Stand with your feet hip-width apart and your head straight. Your back should be straight, not rounding or arching. Your tummy tucked in and tight. Gently drop your booty down as if there is a chair behind you and you want to sit down on it. Make sure your knees do not hover past your toes. Your weight should be on your heels. Go as low as is comfortable for you. As you come back up push away from the ground, tilt your pelvis and squeeze your buttocks.
Your aim will be to train 4 -5 times a week. Persistence is important. Do not stop working out. Your body does not need any excuse to lose weight. It is very good at it. The moment you stop lifting and eating right, you may find yourself going back to your rail thing self.
“Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” ~ Jacob A. Riis
Above all learn to rest
This is not the time for late-night social media. When you do not go to bed on time, you won’t get enough rest. You will get up tired and unwilling to get up and workout or go to the gym.
Going to bed early makes you feel more energized in the morning. The more energized you are the more likely you are to work out.
For you to gain weight you need to rest and learn to manage stress in a positive way. Yoga is a good form of relaxation.
It is very important for you to rest in between sets. This will help you regain the energy you need to finish your workout.
“Patience can’t be acquired overnight. It is just like building a muscle. Every day you need to work on it” Eknath Easwaran
Every day you have to eat right, and then 4-5 times a week, you work out, using everything you have just read. The result is going to shock you. In as little as 2 weeks you may start seeing results if you follow the steps. Keep trying out new things till you find what is the perfect workout and food for you, then stick to it.
Remember to take your before and after pictures, take your measurement and keep a food and activity journal to help you with your weight gain and curvy journey.
TIP OF THE WEEK
If you are using weight and you can do 20 lifts without muscle fatigue, then it’s time to change to the next higher weight.
Author: Nkeoma DND Agu