I'm currently living in Kochi-ken which is on the fourth largest island in Japan, Shikoku. Does anyone have any experience with purposely gaining weight utilizing a Japanese diet? If so what kind of foods do you recommend I eat? There aren't any gyms in my town so supplements + weight training is next to impossible.
I've always been skinny and have trouble gaining weight but recently my friend mentioned that I looked even skinner than before. I'm a little self-conscious and I don't want to appear like I'm a pale pile of skin and bones. Any recommendations on a diet? What do SUMO wrestlers usually eat? Is it something practical that I can make myself?
Weight Gain and Japanese Diets
Sumo wrestlers...
1. Skip breakfast. By depriving their bodies of food after eight hours of sleep, their metabolic rates stay low.
2. Exercise on an empty stomach. If their bodies have no food, their metabolic thermostats are turned down even lower to conserve fuel.
3. Take a nap after eating. The Sumo secret for gaining weight is that, after eating, they sleep for at least four hours.
4. Eat late in the day. Going to bed with full stomachs means that their bodies must respond to the huge flood of nutrients with a rush of insulin, forcing their bodies to store some of it in the cells as fat instead of in the muscles and organs as nutrients.
5. Always eat with others in a social atmosphere. According to leading researchers, a meal eaten with others can be at least 44 percent larger and with 30 percent more calories and fat.
Source: diet-blog.com
--- groink
1. Skip breakfast. By depriving their bodies of food after eight hours of sleep, their metabolic rates stay low.
2. Exercise on an empty stomach. If their bodies have no food, their metabolic thermostats are turned down even lower to conserve fuel.
3. Take a nap after eating. The Sumo secret for gaining weight is that, after eating, they sleep for at least four hours.
4. Eat late in the day. Going to bed with full stomachs means that their bodies must respond to the huge flood of nutrients with a rush of insulin, forcing their bodies to store some of it in the cells as fat instead of in the muscles and organs as nutrients.
5. Always eat with others in a social atmosphere. According to leading researchers, a meal eaten with others can be at least 44 percent larger and with 30 percent more calories and fat.
Source: diet-blog.com
--- groink
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nikochanr3
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kotaeshiranaihito
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moving thread to jp section.....
yeah, when i had thoughts about moving to japan, i also thought about the whole weight gain thing. when i was younger, i had a tough time gaining weight (now i have trouble keeping it off!!
) and i knew it would be even harder to do so in japan with the cost of food. and i was pretty serious about moving, so i thought up a plan....
this is my recommendation (and this coming from a guy who's as outta shape as i am....):
eat well. try rice or noodles (starch) in large quantities. i would go to my favorite - yoshinoya - all the time. eat everything and drink everything you get at a restaurant. they say eating about 4-6 small meals a day is good. fruits would be great too, but they can be expensive. avoid junk food, though.
no gym, right? do pushups and situps. use good form. when you wake up, do 10-20 (each). when you watch tv - during commercials, do 10-20 every commercial set. before you go to bed, do 10-20. kotae's chinup idea is good, but you gotta find a sturdy bar and you have to be strong enough to lift yourself up. when you first start off, it's difficult.
let me know if you need more tips.
yeah, when i had thoughts about moving to japan, i also thought about the whole weight gain thing. when i was younger, i had a tough time gaining weight (now i have trouble keeping it off!!
) and i knew it would be even harder to do so in japan with the cost of food. and i was pretty serious about moving, so i thought up a plan....this is my recommendation (and this coming from a guy who's as outta shape as i am....):
eat well. try rice or noodles (starch) in large quantities. i would go to my favorite - yoshinoya - all the time. eat everything and drink everything you get at a restaurant. they say eating about 4-6 small meals a day is good. fruits would be great too, but they can be expensive. avoid junk food, though.
no gym, right? do pushups and situps. use good form. when you wake up, do 10-20 (each). when you watch tv - during commercials, do 10-20 every commercial set. before you go to bed, do 10-20. kotae's chinup idea is good, but you gotta find a sturdy bar and you have to be strong enough to lift yourself up. when you first start off, it's difficult.
let me know if you need more tips.
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albertoavena
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Re: Weight Gain and Japanese Diets
You might want to ask yourself a few questions to address your situation.Fociis wrote:I've always been skinny and have trouble gaining weight but recently my friend mentioned that I looked even skinner than before. I'm a little self-conscious and I don't want to appear like I'm a pale pile of skin and bones. Any recommendations on a diet?
1. How many meals do you eat a day?
2. Are you always hungry?
3. Do you try to eat when you're hungry?
4. How much sustained walking (low-level cardio exercise) do you do in a week?
5. What kind of food is in your everyday diet, grain, meat, dairy, etc?
Input on some of those questions.
1. Bigger meals in lesser frequency reduces your metabolism and increase weight gain. Inversely, smaller meals in higher frequency increases your metabolism and prevent weight gain.
2. If you're always hungry AND skinny, that means you're not eating enough to match the caloric-need of your body. This probably related to how active you are and your metabolic rates.
3. If you skip meals even when you're hungry, it's difficult to see how you can gain weight.
4. Walking for at least 30-45 minutes a day is probably one of the best way to lose weight. Living a generally active lifestyle just prevent you from bulking up. In your case, you might be moving around a lot in your everyday life (while that is very healthy for you) so you probably will have trouble gaining weight.
5. If you really want to gain weight, you probably DON'T want to use a sumo wrestler diet. Obviously, it's not a very healthy lifestyle. You might want to increase your protein (chicken, fish, nuts, soy, and eggs (whites only) are all good sources), dairy (cheese, yogurt, ice cream, etc), and fruits (complex sugar and vitamins) intake. Follow that with some weight training and you should get good muscle developments. Remember, muscle weighs more than fat. If you can't do weight training, then a consistent regiment of push ups, crunches, and lunges will provide you with plenty of muscle growth.
If you can eat right and keep up with a daily regiment of 20x3 push-ups (increasing the reps as you get stronger), 20x3 crunches, 20x3 lunges for 2-3 weeks you should begin to see your body firming up and a good healthy weight increase of 3-6 pounds.
I don't think you'd want to get fat. But rather eat a lot of protein and lift so you get bigger with muscles instead of with fat. Tuna, chicken, and I think it was beef that has a lot of protein for natural foods. I'd recomment natural protein instead of powders, pills, etc.
You don't need to have a gym to work out, you can buy a lifting set that comes with everything from benching, shoulders, dumbells, etc. Or you can always to conventional methods like pull ups, push ups, etc.
So my recommendation is don't force yourself to become fat, but rather work out to get thick. After working out, just eat a lot of foods with protein as they help you grow your muscle mass. And you need sleep for it to grow.
You don't need to have a gym to work out, you can buy a lifting set that comes with everything from benching, shoulders, dumbells, etc. Or you can always to conventional methods like pull ups, push ups, etc.
So my recommendation is don't force yourself to become fat, but rather work out to get thick. After working out, just eat a lot of foods with protein as they help you grow your muscle mass. And you need sleep for it to grow.
you're right. it's not strictly for gaining weight. but if you read Fociis' post, he didn't seem to mind being skinny before, but is now getting skinnier. my suggestion wasn't going to pack on pounds, but prevent him from losing too much of it AND tone him up at the same time.albertoavena wrote:^--So this is for gaining weight? I would think this would be used more for losing weight with the exercising and the fruit and the avoiding of junk food...
daijobu and Felguard has excellent suggestions, and i've seen some other good ones too. but i'm also trying to keep in mind that Fociis is in japan where everything is expensive as heck. i went to a health store there and looked at the cost of creatine and protein powder, and it was ridiculous. i haven't used either in years, but it does help when you're younger and you have a high metabolism. my guess is Fociis is not a millionnaire.
given the cost of food, the portions of meals, the lack of a gym, i'm trying to give him a realistic program (and i'm not saying to ignore the other suggestions. the info is terrific.).
Hmm... I remember the days of a hyper-metabolism...
Some of the above suggestions would definitely be helpful. Not too familiar with what you'd refer to as a Japanese diete per se, but there are some general guidelines you can use to add a bit of muscle and gain some weight on a budget, you just need to be a bit creative and consistent.
Since you sound like you're pretty (too in your eyes?) lean already, a few small investements and some dietary alterations would definitely help. A few general guidelines I've used to help hardgainers in the past:
Food: Eat first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. Shoot for between a 1:1 and 1:2 protein to carb ratio every meal, fats can vary. If your diet is like most Asian diets I've seen (my family eats Chinese pretty much daily), your protein intake is probably on the low side and your metabolism probably burns through whatever carbs you throw at it. Protein and carbs both spare muscle breakdown for different reasons. Some easy ways to add protein to your diet without killing your wallet would be adding extra tofu, fish or chicken, beans, and eggs (whichever you like and can get fairly cheap). Milk is good too, but since most Japanese are lactose-intolerant to a degree, you can go the soy milk route if regular milk irritates you.
For workouts, if you're able to obtain a few simple things, you can put together a pretty complete whole-body workout. A doorway pullup bar can be used for pullups, bodyweight rows, drag curls, etc. and a cheap set of pushup bars can help get much better results from pushups. An adjustable dumbbell set and a couple of chairs and you can do dips, flys, curls, etc.
Isometric exercises are also good for toning and require no equipment. If you've got a hill or long set of stairs close by, uphill sprints are excellent for toning and developing your legs.
Lots of ways to go about it, so try some different ones for a few weeks and see what works for you and that you'll actually do. A simple small program that you'll do regularly will beat a killer world-class personalized routine that you never get around to doing much of.
If you have access to supplements, the best and most economical ones would probably be (in order) 1. A good multivitamin, 2. Protein powder, 3. Creatine, 4. Glutamine.
There's a ton of other stuff floating around (especially here in California..), but as a beginner with limited access to training equipment and I would guess time and money, they'd be pretty much a waste of your money.
Some of the above suggestions would definitely be helpful. Not too familiar with what you'd refer to as a Japanese diete per se, but there are some general guidelines you can use to add a bit of muscle and gain some weight on a budget, you just need to be a bit creative and consistent.
Since you sound like you're pretty (too in your eyes?) lean already, a few small investements and some dietary alterations would definitely help. A few general guidelines I've used to help hardgainers in the past:
Food: Eat first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. Shoot for between a 1:1 and 1:2 protein to carb ratio every meal, fats can vary. If your diet is like most Asian diets I've seen (my family eats Chinese pretty much daily), your protein intake is probably on the low side and your metabolism probably burns through whatever carbs you throw at it. Protein and carbs both spare muscle breakdown for different reasons. Some easy ways to add protein to your diet without killing your wallet would be adding extra tofu, fish or chicken, beans, and eggs (whichever you like and can get fairly cheap). Milk is good too, but since most Japanese are lactose-intolerant to a degree, you can go the soy milk route if regular milk irritates you.
For workouts, if you're able to obtain a few simple things, you can put together a pretty complete whole-body workout. A doorway pullup bar can be used for pullups, bodyweight rows, drag curls, etc. and a cheap set of pushup bars can help get much better results from pushups. An adjustable dumbbell set and a couple of chairs and you can do dips, flys, curls, etc.
Isometric exercises are also good for toning and require no equipment. If you've got a hill or long set of stairs close by, uphill sprints are excellent for toning and developing your legs.
Lots of ways to go about it, so try some different ones for a few weeks and see what works for you and that you'll actually do. A simple small program that you'll do regularly will beat a killer world-class personalized routine that you never get around to doing much of.
If you have access to supplements, the best and most economical ones would probably be (in order) 1. A good multivitamin, 2. Protein powder, 3. Creatine, 4. Glutamine.
There's a ton of other stuff floating around (especially here in California..), but as a beginner with limited access to training equipment and I would guess time and money, they'd be pretty much a waste of your money.
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Néa Vanille
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This might be a given, but doing a blood test should clarify some things. I remember a girl from HS who looked as though she was anorexic and that was even though (!) she ate more than me and most of the other normal-weight girls. Eventually, she went to see a doctor and was diagnosed with an overly active thyroid and too much thyroxine in her blood. She got some medication and managed to gain a little weight, though she always stayed rather skinny even until now.
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Prince of Moles
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albertoavena
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Yep, sadly, us Americans can't control our eating habits too well as Japanese can (And any other country for that matter) Also, I guess in America, dieting and losing weight is one of the biggest industries as someone else pointed out in this thread (I think)Prince of Moles wrote:People in Japan are more or less at the correct weight. It's us in America that are fat. Losing weight is probably a good thing. :p
I guess I know what you mean. There's healthy skinny or thin is a much better word and then theres just skinny which is bad. At least, I think that's what you mean.jholic wrote:you're right. it's not strictly for gaining weight. but if you read Fociis' post, he didn't seem to mind being skinny before, but is now getting skinnier. my suggestion wasn't going to pack on pounds, but prevent him from losing too much of it AND tone him up at the same time.albertoavena wrote:^--So this is for gaining weight? I would think this would be used more for losing weight with the exercising and the fruit and the avoiding of junk food...
yes, i don't believe being skinny or chubby is bad, as long as you're healthy and making an effort to stay that way.albertoavena wrote:I guess I know what you mean. There's healthy skinny or thin is a much better word and then theres just skinny which is bad. At least, I think that's what you mean.
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