A gainer is a sports nutrition product that contains large quantities of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and other beneficial substances. A cocktail made from it helps to gain muscle mass. Therefore, the gainer is very popular both among athletes who have just started training, and among professional bodybuilders.
Sports nutrition stores offer many ready-made gainer options, which are available in powder form. You just need to dilute it with water and the drink will be ready to drink. However, some people prefer the homemade version of this product. Recipes for making a gainer with your own hands will be given below.
Time to take Gainer
In fact, Gainer is a meal replacement. It is convenient to use when it is not possible to prepare healthy food for yourself. Therefore, you can use it at any time, but due to the content of carbohydrates in the Gainer (both fast and slow), it is better not to drink the Gainer in the evening and before bed. Whey or casein protein is usually taken at this time.
An hour before and half an hour after training is a great time for Gainer. Carbohydrates provide energy before and replenish it after exercise, and protein protects muscles from catabolism and ensures their growth. It is not recommended to consume Gainer (or any other food) earlier than half an hour after training. The stomach needs some time to prepare for the absorption of incoming proteins and carbohydrates.
Do not forget that Gainer is a liquid food and do not replace several meals with solid food.
A properly constructed power supply scheme could look like this:
- breakfast
- Whey Protein
- dinner
- Gainer (pre-workout)
- BCAA amino acids or whey protein (optional, 30 minutes after training)
- dinner
- whey protein or casein (optional if you are missing protein/calories per day)
It is necessary to take into account the calorie content of Gainer when planning your daily diet. If you eat too many calories, you will gain a lot of excess fat along with your muscles.
Gainer recipe with slow carbohydrates[edit | edit code]
Below is a recipe for a slow-carb gainer from Boris Tsatsouline.
Technological gainer on your own. Author: Boris Tsatsouline
Ingredients:
- Oatmeal (flour from oat or barley grains, which are pre-steamed, dried, fried, peeled and pounded), unlike flour, is already ready for use
- Bran (a natural source of fiber, a by-product of flour milling, which is the hard shell of the grain), reduces the absorption of oatmeal and the glycemic index
- Fructose (can be replaced with an equivalent amount of sweetener)
- Protein
- Milk
- Berries for taste and aroma
Cooking method
50 grams of oatmeal + 10 grams of bran (more is undesirable, as it may cause digestive upset) + fructose to taste 5-10 g (has a low glycemic index) + 1 scoop of protein (it will slightly reduce the glycemic index) + berries (for taste and aroma ) + 200 ml milk (more is possible) = mix in a blender.
Bottom line
The prepared gainer contains approximately 40 g of slow carbohydrates, and is several times cheaper than the fast carbohydrate gainer sold in the store.
Note[edit | edit code]
If bran is soaked for 10 minutes, it will become completely soluble in water. The remaining ingredients do not require a blender. That. You can add all the ingredients to a shaker, add milk and after 10 minutes the product is ready for use.
Alternative to main ingredients[edit | edit code]
Gainer at home
Alternative to oatmeal
- Oat flour
- Buckwheat flour
- Barley flour
- Soy flour (about 40% complete protein)
- Pea flour
These products are not heat treated, so using them raw is fraught with digestive disorders.
Bran alternative
– microcrystalline cellulose (sold in pharmacies, the disadvantage is that it is expensive)
Differences between gainers with fast and slow carbohydrates[edit | edit code]
- Gainers with maltodextrin and other fast carbohydrates do NOT cause any particular difficulties with absorption, they are absorbed quickly and easily, but also quickly give rise to glucose spikes, so you want to eat them more often;
- Gainers with slow carbohydrates take a long time to digest, so one serving at a time is enough. 2-3 glasses of this mixture per day will be enough.
Selection of products for preparing Gainer at home
Protein
Suitable sources of protein include cottage cheese (liquid and/or dry), milk (the less fat, the fewer calories in the finished product), yogurt, nuts, whey or casein protein.
Carbohydrates
The carbohydrate component of Gainer is oatmeal, bran, fiber, fruits and berries, honey, jam and sugar. Again, for those who recover easily and quickly gain weight, it is better to replace jam and sugar with a sweetener (sucrazit, stevia), and use fruits and berries that are sour or not too sweet (apples, pears, cherries, currants).
Fiber and bran are used to make the gainer more satisfying, but the ratio of protein to carbohydrates was 1 to 1. This option is for mesomorphs and endomorphs who quickly gain fat. If you are an ectomorph and your appetite is not very good, use oatmeal.
Egg white gainer
To prepare this gainer you need:
- chicken eggs – 3 pcs. (can be replaced with quail 6-9 pcs.);
- oat bran – 50 g;
- milk – 300 ml;
- honey - to taste.
Preparing this composition is very simple. First you need to separate the yolks from the whites. Then mix all the ingredients together with the whites using a blender.
Recipes for making Gainer at home
In each recipe, you can add additional water for a thinner consistency. Also, the use of sugar significantly increases the carbohydrate component of homemade gainer, so a sweetener is used. However, if you are making a recipe with banana, the sweetness may be enough. Use sugar if it fits into your daily caloric intake.
| Ingredients | KBZHU |
| Recipe #1 | |
| 443 kcal 28 g protein 50 g carbohydrates 17 g fat |
| Recipe #2 | |
| 340 kcal 30 g protein 28 g carbohydrates 14 g fat |
| Recipe #3 | |
| 350 kcal 46 g protein 34 g carbohydrates 4 g fat |
| Recipe #4 | |
| 574 kcal 35 g protein 70 g carbohydrates 20 g fat |
| Recipe #5 | |
| 523 kcal 28 g protein 95 g carbohydrates 7 g fat |
Any Gainer recipe can be changed at your discretion to fit it into your daily caloric intake. The main thing is not to get carried away with simple carbohydrates - fruits and sugar. Another high-calorie component is nuts. They have a lot of protein and healthy fats, but the recommended amount per serving is about 25 grams (the calorie content of nuts is on average 600 kcal).
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Complex carbohydrate gainer
This analogue is suitable for breakfast. It helps stimulate metabolic processes. To prepare it you will need:
- buckwheat – 100 g;
- cottage cheese (6-9%) – 100 g;
- milk (2.5-3.2%) – 300 ml;
- to taste - banana, berries, honey.
Cooking begins with boiling buckwheat. Then all ingredients need to be placed in a blender and blended until smooth. If the composition is too thick, you can increase the amount of milk.
Taking gainer according to the rules
It is best to take the supplement before and after physical activity, as well as during the day. It is strictly not recommended to use it before bedtime. This option is possible only in the case of ultra-fast metabolism, when there is a pronounced deficit in mass, and there is no way to replenish it.
- Before training, the cocktail is best consumed half an hour before training. This will give you a boost of strength and energy. It is advisable to time each serving of the supplement by counting the number of calories expended for each exercise and workout as a whole. To do this, you can use special tables to calculate energy costs for a certain type of physical activity;
- Consuming the mixture after exercise will help the athlete regain strength and replenish the amount of protein spent on muscle building. If you have already taken the supplement before the start of the training, then you should not take it again immediately after the end of the training process. You need to wait at least half an hour, and to “dull” the feeling of hunger a little, you can drink water;
- You can use the cocktail 1-2 times a day between meals, or replace one of your meals with it.
Description, benefits and harm
For those who are unfamiliar with the topic of the article, a gainer is a food supplement in the form of a protein-carbohydrate mixture with a high calorie content. Carbohydrates are used by the body to provide energy to the body, and proteins are used to build muscle tissue.
In addition, minerals and vitamins are added to gainers. The name of these mixtures is associated with the English word gain, which means “increase, increase.”
Sports nutrition stores are filled with various gainers, but now we will discuss how you can make such a nutritional supplement at home. For this you will need a little time.
It is difficult to say whether there will be fewer chemicals in your diet, or whether health and digestive problems will decrease if you begin to actively use a homemade gainer. At least it is no less healthy than regular food, but its value lies in the fact that it consists of the correct proportion of proteins and carbohydrates, and also contains a minimum of fat.
To turn regular food into a gainer at home, you will have to work a little, highlighting the nutritional value of each product and calculating the overall results.
It cannot be denied that amino acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals from vegetables and fruits will make a homemade cocktail healthier than its factory-made counterparts. Therefore, focus on the quality of the preparation of food mixtures.
What sports nutrition sellers won't tell you?
Considering the fact that factory-made gainer contains many chemicals and additives, its frequent and excessive use can lead to liver and kidney diseases. The home option can lead to loose stools (diarrhea).
Gainer action
The main goal of mixtures called gainers is to gain weight. The effect is achieved by saturating the powder composition with carbohydrates and other beneficial substances. By taking protein-carbohydrate mixtures, you can significantly increase the number of calories entering the body, which will allow you to adjust a person’s weight upward.
In fact, a shake that consists mainly of carbohydrates is an energy bomb. At one moment, many “units” of energy enter the body. He will immediately process some of them, restoring strength after training. Any excess of carbohydrates can lead to a situation in which the body begins to lay down extra “bricks”, filling fatty tissue.
The gainer lasts only a few hours, ideal for use immediately after training, while the protein-carbohydrate window is open. During periods of non-training, it is recommended to take it only for those who have a calorie deficit in their diet. Most often, this type of sports nutrition is used by ectomorphs, given the fast metabolic rate.
People who are prone to obesity should not take the supplement due to the large number of calories. It is better for such people to drink protein shakes.
The best sports nutrition for burning fat.
Find out here how many calories you need to consume per day to lose weight
Body drying for men.
Ideal gainer formula
A mass gainer is not a magic product that will build muscle better than a regular protein powder.
It is intended for people who cannot consume enough calories and nutrients from regular food. This is mainly true for athletes aiming to gain muscle mass and people with fast metabolisms.
A commercial mass gainer is a combination of a fast-absorbing protein source, such as whey protein, and a cheap carbohydrate source, maltodextrin.
While whey protein has an excellent amino acid profile, maltodextrin is a fast carbohydrate that has the ability to raise blood glucose and insulin even faster and higher than sugar. Therefore, a gainer prepared at home with the addition of natural products will be more useful.
Gainer can be consumed at breakfast, before, during and after workouts, or before bed.
General information about the gainer
Any gainer is a high-calorie supplement with a carbohydrate to protein ratio, usually 3:1. There are two types of this product, which differ in the rate of release of glucose into the blood:
- The first type (G No. 1) - contains fast carbohydrates, the glycemic index of which has indicators like sugar, so they quickly enter the blood;
- The second type (G No. 2) includes slow carbohydrates, which have a low or medium glycemic index and enter the circulatory system slowly, without a sharp jump in sugar.
Basically, the first type of additives predominate on the sports nutrition market.
For muscle growth to occur, you need to maintain a positive balance of calories, that is, consume more than you burn. Therefore, to gain weight, it is necessary to increase the calorie content of the diet by about 25-30%. In words, this is quite simple, but in reality, “stuffing” an additional 700-800 calories of solid food into the body is quite problematic. This is where high-calorie protein-carbohydrate mixtures come to the rescue.
Gainer is the best option for such athletes:
- Ectomorphs;
- People with a high metabolic rate;
- Athletes whose exercise is predominantly aerobic in nature;
- Having difficulty eating large amounts of food or not being able to eat fully 5-6 times a day;
- Lovers of natural remedies in sports.
