Finding The Right Weight Gainer For You

For a hard gainer, the best way to get that protein is in the form of a gainer. But not all weight gainers are created equally, and below we take a look at some of the qualities that they should have and some of the popular types of gainers so you can make an informed decision before you spend your money.

The evolution Of Gainers

Originally, weight gainers used to be fairly cheap protein powders loaded with sugar and fat to up the calorie content. The serving size would be something like 128 oz and the serving would contain 3000 calories. Not exactly a practical serving, and all that sugar kind of went against the idea of eating clean. Plus, the quality of the protein in the gainer was usually poor. Although many gainers like this still remain on the market, fortunately, the supplement industry has come a long way.

A quick side note on what we mean by "protein quality." The quality of a protein is determined by how well your body can use it, a factor termed "biological value," BV for short. This rating is calculated by taking the total nitrogen retained from eating a protein and dividing that by the total nitrogen absorbed by eating that protein. Basically, it refers to how well and how fast your body actually gets and uses the protein. So a protein like whey isolate (BV 159) is the most readily absorbed, while a milk protein like casein (BV 77) is absorbed less readily and is said to be of less quality. Now, sometimes it's good to eat lower BV rated proteins because you want to absorb it slowly, like before you go to bed.

However, ideally, you want protein with a higher BV rating, because your body is getting more of the protein you’re ingesting, and more quality products use higher quality proteins.

Here's a list of some common proteins with their BV:

Whey Protein Isolate -15
Whey Protein Concentrate - 104
Whole Egg - 100
Egg White - 88
Chicken / Turkey - 79
Casein - 77
Soy - 74

Keep this information in mind whenever you buy a gainer, so you'll be an informed customer when buying it.

Another thing to consider is how much sugar is contained in the gainer. Excess amounts of sugar have been shown to give an insulin spike, as well as increase levels of serotonin. This has been shown to give most people a feeling of drowsiness, irritability, and headaches. This doesn't affect everyone, but some people are more sensitive than others. Plus, the insulin spike sets your body to storing fat. Look at the nutrition label on the gainer, and see how much sugar it contains, listed under the carbohydrates. Somewhere in the 30-60 gram range is pretty good.

This brings up the question of what you want in the carb/protein/fat ratio. You need carbs to help protein absorption, and you know you need the protein. Fats are definitely your friends in a gainer (though not saturated fat), as they seriously up the calorie content. A general rule of thumb is twice as much protein as fat, and twice as many carbs as protein.

Popular Weight Gainers

So there you have it. Hopefully, this will help you in making a decision the next time you go to buy a weight gainer. So much of it is personal preference, but there are a lot of factors I hope I've demonstrated that make some gainers better than others.

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Finding The Right Weight Gainer For You

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