If you want to know how to gain weight and bulk up muscle, then be prepared to revised some of your ideas on what dieting really is. It is not just a matter of eating less in order to lose weight, but also of eating to gain weight. And what you eat is not necessarily chocolate cake, but it could be!

There is no difference between losing weight and gaining weight other than the amount of exercise you carry out, or, to put it more scientifically, how many calories you burn. Many people don't believe in calorie counting, but something has to be counted to measure the energy you take in and that you use up in exercise. Whether it is calories or any other energy measurement doesn't matter, so I will call them calories.

If you eat more calories that you use in exercise, you put on weight. If you eat less calories than you use in exercise you lose weight. If you want to lose weight then do the latter, and do the former if you want to gain weight. There is not getting away from that basic equation, irrespective of how you calculate your energy intake and usage, or whether you eat sausages and an Atkins diet, or lettuce and a rabbit diet, or even chocolate cake on a chocolate cake diet. It makes absolutely no difference. It is cast in stone!

So eat your sausages and bacon, or eat your lettuce and carrots, and enjoy your chocolate cake with ice cream or snails. If you want to gain weight and bulk up muscle you have to eat more calories than you use, and that's a lot of carrots! Especially when you have to work those muscles very hard that you want to develop, and use up your calorie intake that way. Recommended foods for building muscle are high protein foods such as chicken and steak, and also fat if you want, but you have to work a bit harder to use up the fat calories. Chocolate cake will take a long time, but you can do it.

Also, make sure that you have a good intake of the chemicals needed for your metabolism, such as L-carnetine and Coenzyme Q10 that enable you to convert fats to energy, and you will find it easier to make your goals. However, the whole equation rests on energy in and energy out. Take in calories, and then work the muscles you want to build up. That increases the blood flow through those muscle tissues, and builds them up by creating more muscle tissue.

The muscle tissue will be increased by the amount of energy you take in over what you use in exercise, and the paradox is that if you exercise too much, you will first build up the muscle tissue, and then remove it because it will be needed to provide the energy, or calories, for the excess exercise. When the body needs calories for exercise, it will first use up what is provided form the normal diet. When it has used that up it will use up the energy stored in liver's glycogen reserves and then start using muscle tissue.

That is why you have to take supplements while body building: because your normal food sources are providing insufficient calories for the muscle mass you are trying to build up. The secret of body building, and bulking up your muscle weight is to make sure that you are taking in the calories needed for all that heavy anaerobic exercise you are carrying out. Anaerobic exercise uses fat deposits and calorie intake to provide energy for the muscle building process, while aerobics strengthen the cardiovascular system and the lungs.

There are many arguments as to what diet should be followed when building muscle bulk: high protein, complex carbohydrates, or whatever. The end result is that it doesn't matter too much. You have to take in more calories than you use in your exercising to gain weight, and must exercise your muscles while using up these calories to bulk up muscle.

That is the start and the end of the calorie intake-usage equation whether you eat chicken or chocolate cake and ice cream. I know which I prefer, but I also know what is quickest!