can someone explain "weight gainers" to me...

[Italian44]

Okay so im a small 18 year old 5'5 kid who weighs 180. I dont have a big belly, but i dont have big muscles either. I was just looking thru vitacost.com and saw something called MASS FUEL by Twinlab...but my question is, do weight gainers make u GAIN fat or muscle? I workout 4-5 days a week, so im guessing if u workout a lot and hard, itll pack on the muscle? If not, itll pack on fat??? Or are weight gainers for skinny people??? Yeah someone please explain to me weight gainers, and if anyone has tried MASS FUEL by Twinlab, u can explain that too...thanks.

[Lift2Live]

Weight gainers are just simply, a way to add a lot of calories to your diet. If you look at the calories per serving, you will see a pretty large number. Every weight gainer differs in the amount but that's the basic concept. It is the same thing as adding that amount of calories to your diet through food so, if you were to eat say 800 calories in extra food per day, it would be the same as a weight gainer shake that has an 800 calorie serving size. It is up to you to workout hard wether you use one or not. It can be a significantly cheaper way to add calories though if you find that your finances aren't keeping up with your food intake needs.

[beefcurry1]

before you go out and buy a jug of the first thing you see you need to check the lables. most of them are a LOT of sugar. i take muscle milk (i dont know if you would consider it a weight gainer or not. it has around 600 cals with 2 cups whole milk). it has 19g fat but im pretty sure its good fat. just check the lables with whatever you get and you should be ok

-beef-

[RichUK]

Basically what Lift2Live said, except that if you can get your cals through food it's better to do so.

Most weight gainers have about 10-20 grams more whey protein than normal whey powder, so they have to get the cals elsewhere. Many of them just whack in a load of maltodextrin which can add fat quite easily if you're not careful with the rest of your diet.

I've taken them in the past though and have been pleased with the results. I don't have a lot of time to eat during the day, so I made the cals up in the evening post-workout. Prolab's Nlarge2 is quite good but can add the fat easily if you don't watch it. Also Reflex do a weight gainer which uses oats for carbs rather than malto. I've got some, it tastes foul, but it does the trick! :

Rich

[RichUK]

Ahem - I need to learn to type faster :P

[beefcurry1]

: Nlarge2 :

tastes good but like rich UK said, watch out to make sure you arent getting fat from it. also, better to get too many cals and work them off then too few.

-beef-