Gaining weight as an ectomorph

Geschreven door Nathan Albers

Geschatte leestijd: 4 minutenComing as an ectomorph presents its challenges. How do you transform a skinny pole into a muscular Adonis or a bootylicious Venus?

Many people struggle with maintaining their weight balance. Most people struggle with overweight, which generally means they consume more calories than they burn daily. However, there are also people who are very slim and struggle to maintain weight, such as someone with the build of an ectomorph. In this article, we describe how energy intake and expenditure are related and what factors are involved in achieving the right energy balance.

Energy balance

There are four types of nutrients that provide energy to the body:

Carbohydrates: 4 Kcal per gram
Proteins: 4 Kcal per gram
Fats: 9 Kcal per gram
Alcohol: 7 Kcal per gram

Energy expenditure: The number of calories you burn consists of:

Metabolism (Basal Metabolic Rate) (60% to 70% of your energy intake)
Physical activity (20% to 30% of your energy intake)
Digesting food (5% to 10% of your energy intake)

Energiemerbuik

What your calorie requirement is exactly composed of needs some further explanation:

Your basal metabolism, also known as BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), refers to the amount of energy (calories) your body needs at rest to maintain itself throughout the day. Even if you spend the whole day on the couch watching TV, your body is still maintaining itself. Your heart beats, you breathe, and your organs are working. This means that about 60 to 70 percent of the calories you eat are needed for this purpose.

A calculation to determine approximately how many calories are needed for this:

A man burns about 1 kcal per kilogram per hour as BMR.
So if he weighs 80 kilograms: 80*1 kcal/kg = 80 kcal per hour.
So for a whole day: 80*24 hours = 1920 kcal.
For women, the same formula applies, only 0.9 kcal per kilogram per hour is used.
So if she weighs 60 kilograms: 60*0.9 kcal/kg = 54 kcal per hour.
So for a whole day: 54*24 = 1296 kcal.

It is important to mention that these are estimates and can vary greatly from individual to individual, sometimes up to 25% to 30%. Factors that can increase basal metabolism include: muscle mass, gender (men have more muscles), pregnancy, caffeine, and tobacco consumption.

Physical activities such as sports and exercise also require energy. Approximately 25% to 40% of the amount of calories you consume are needed for this. Of course, this can vary greatly and depends on how active you are.

The third and final category that influences your calorie expenditure is digesting food. Consider how hard your organs are working to break down your food and process the nutrients. This accounts for about 5% to 10% of your daily energy needs. Meals high in protein require more energy because it’s harder for the body to digest and store them as fat.

Types of energy balance

You are in balance when your calorie intake through food and drink matches the amount of calories you burn through your metabolism, physical activities, and digesting food. This means you maintain your current weight.

Positive energy balance

This means you consume more calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight gain.

Negative energy balance

This means you consume fewer calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight loss.

Normally, gaining or losing weight is as simple as described above. Therefore, it is good to measure how many calories you consume in a day. It is a bit more difficult to measure how many calories you burn, but there are also applications for that. Check out www.myplate.gov and supertracker to determine how many calories you consume and how much your calorie expenditure is.

Other factors

There are several factors that can affect your weight gain. Not everyone is the same, and for many people, it is much more difficult to maintain a healthy weight. Examples of these factors may include:

Genetic factors

There are more than 600 genes that can influence obesity. To what extent exactly is still being researched. Genes influence your body size, the distribution of body fat (where fat is stored), and metabolism. If both your parents are very overweight (obese), then as a child, you have about an 80 percent chance of becoming overweight too. This does not mean that as a child of overweight parents, you cannot be slim. If your parents are overweight, it means they may eat too much and not healthy, or they do not get enough exercise. As a child, you often eat what your parents put on the table, and if your parents are not athletic, the chances are high that you will also grow up with little exercise and movement, which can lead to you becoming overweight too.

Physiological factors

Metabolism (Basal Metabolic Rate) at rest and hormonal balance.

Lifestyle

What are your eating habits? And how active are you in a day? Making healthy choices regarding your food is of course very important and influences finding a good energy balance. Many people move much more than others, and that may play the biggest role in finding the right energy balance.