How to Gain 30 Pounds in 6 Months

If you want to learn how to gain 30 pounds in 6 months, you have come to the right place. Gaining weight can either be an art or a nuisance. It is up to you to decide which one it is going to be.

Since you have come across this article, I am just going to assume that you are struggling to put on weight. This is something that I know all too well.

I struggled for too many years as a skinny guy. It was obnoxious. I thought I was eating so much food, and then I would come back to the scale after a week of “eating big,” and I would have lost a pound.

If you can relate to this, you are not alone. There are tens of millions of people around the world that struggle with this.

Unfortunately for us, the fitness industry is designed around people losing weight. Maybe that is because over 73% of the U.S. population is overweight.

Not to worry. In this article we are going to discuss what it will take in order for you to gain weight at a rapid pace and how to make the fat gain as minimal as possible.

Before we get started, go ahead and download our app All Workouts: Personal Trainer (iOS | Google Play). If you are going to gain 30 pounds in 6 months, you are going to want to be building muscle.

Making sure that you are eating enough

If you are going to learn how to gain 30 pounds in 6 months, you are going to have to learn to eat a ridiculous amount of food. But how can you be so sure you are eating enough? Learn how to calculate your maintenance calorie number.

Once you have that number, you can eat at a massive caloric surplus. Here is the thing. When someone goes on a bulk to build muscle, I would normally tell them to eat at a caloric surplus of about 500 calories per day over their maintenance number.

Unfortunately this caloric surplus is geared towards people who want to gain around a half pound of muscle per week with minimal fat added on to it. If you want to gain 30 pounds in 6 months, you are going to need to eat more than that.

A half pound per week isn’t going to cut it. You have 26 weeks to build 30 pounds of muscle. Which means you need to build a little bit more than 1 pound per week on average.

This is completely doable, and there have been spurts in my life where I have achieved over a pound per week gain.

I wrote an article titled Struggling to eat enough calories? Do this. In it, I talked about adding shakes to your diet. I used to struggle to actually eat enough calories. I thought I was eating a lot. That is until I found out my true maintenance calorie number.

Once I realized that I physically could not eat as much as I needed to, I came up with the 1000 calorie protein shake recipe. If you are struggling to put on weight, this shake is going to be an incredible addition to your diet.

Working out alongside your eating

One thing I always tell people is to be careful about caloric surpluses AND caloric deficits. When you eat at a caloric surplus, you are going to put on weight. When you eat at a caloric deficit, you are going to lose weight.

The simplicity of this concept is not lost to me. But the type of weight that you gain or lose is dependent on if you are working out or not.

Sure, if you eat 1,000 calories over your maintenance every single day, you are going to gain weight. But if you aren’t working out, that extra weight is going to be pure fat. Therefore it is important to do weight training 3-4 days per week alongside your caloric surplus.

On average, the maximum amount of muscle that you can gain per week is about a half pound. Keep in mind that this might be slightly higher or lower depending on genetics.

Knowing this, we can determine that in 6 months (or 26 weeks), the maximum amount of muscle that we can gain is 13 pounds (26*.5 = 13). The rest of the weight will be fat. But don’t worry, depending on your current body fat percentage, this could be a good thing.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned downloading our app. We have multiple FREE workout plans that will help you build this muscle.

If you don’t have a phone or would prefer to follow along on our website, we have a couple workout plans that you might like. Our beginner bodybuilding routine for mass is a favorite of many.

Maybe you don’t have access to a gym. Not to worry, our 3 days a week workout plan at home will get you started.

Managing expectations

I have mentioned multiple times that you must understand that you will only be able to gain about a half pound of muscle per week. The rest is going to be fat. If you want to learn how to gain 30 pounds in 6 months, you are going to have to come to terms with this fact.

So that means that in 6 months, if you have hit your goal of gaining 30 pounds, 13 of those pounds will be muscle, and 17 of those pounds will be fat.

Most people try to avoid gaining that much fat, but I personally support it if your body is very underweight to the point where you and others notice.

When I started bulking, I took the slow road, and gained a little bit over 20 pounds per year for 3 years straight. It was definitely one of the best decisions of my life to go this route.

I want you to keep in mind that gaining 30 pounds in 6 months is not sustainable. When you achieve your goal, you are definitely going to want to pull back and make sure that you are monitoring your situation.

This might be a great time to re-evaluate your goals. Learning about realistic fitness goals for beginners will be a great start.

All in all, gaining 30 pounds in 6 months is definitely possible, but your expectations should not be that it is all going to be muscle. That type of muscle gain is physically not possible. At least naturally.

Main Point: How to gain 30 pounds in 6 months

We are at the end. We have learned how to gain 30 pounds in 6 months. Was it what you expected? I think a lot of people are turned off by the fact that more than half of the weight that you put on in that short amount of time is going to be fat.

But that is just the way it is when it comes to gaining weight in a rapid amount of time. If you are willing to put in more time, you can dial in your diet so every week you are gaining muscle with minimal fat.

Your first priority should be calculating your maintenance calorie number. I put a link to how to do that in the first section. Once you have that number, then you can focus on eating at a caloric surplus.

Don’t skip a day! Don’t think that you can slack on your plan for a day and you will still be on track. Your body doesn’t care how much you ate in one day if the next day you ate just 1,000 calories.

Think of calorie consumption as an average over time. As long as you are on your target over time, you will be on track.

Remember, if you are eating at a caloric surplus, you are going to gain weight. Make sure that you are working out as well so you can maximize your caloric surplus by building muscle.

If you are struggling to gain weight, do not be discouraged. Just follow the principles of this article and you will be to your goal in no time. Also feel free to check out more from our blog. We have a ton of content geared towards building muscle and losing fat.

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