For you hardgainers out there, getting enough calories is crucial in order to build more mass and muscles but how do you consume all of those calories when you need so much? This is where mass gainers or weight gainers can be super useful. Here are some of the best ones.
Best Mass Gainers
1. Serious Mass
2. Real Gains
3. True Mass
My ratings are based on a variety of things such as cost per calorie, price, and taste. In the break down, I calculated the numbers by the gram since they have different serving sizes and vary in weight. There hundreds of brands of mass gainers out there and although I’ve tried a lot of them, I obviously haven’t tried them all. I found these based on other people’s ratings and gave them a try myself.
Some taste great, some taste like crap (Weight Gainer 2000 by GNC.. yuck), some are pretty cheap while others are super expensive. These are my top 3 picks of all the brands I’ve tried. For every brand, I got the biggest size available in order to save money.
Serious Mass
This is at the top of the list due to being the best bang for your buck. The taste is pretty decent and you can make it taste even better if you add things like fruits and berries. Since it’s from Optimum Nutrition, you know the quality is good. They usually lack in the taste department but throw in a banana or some berries and it tastes quite good. I’ve tried Chocolate and Vanilla.
The Break Down:
3.74 calories per gram
20,000 calories per container
About $0.00227 per calorie (May vary depending on the current price.)
Real Gains
This one costs a tad more per calorie compared to Serious Mass but the taste is better in my opinion. Obviously, it will depend on what flavors you buy and what flavors your tongue likes. I’ve tried Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberry Ice Cream, Banana, and Cookies & Cream. Aside from the banana flavor, they all taste great. The banana one taste fine but was a bit sweet for me. I’d rather get one of the other flavors and throw an actual banana in. A friend of mine who tried the Cookies & Cream one said it tasted too artificial for him. To me, it tasted pretty good.
The Breakdown:
3.88 calories per gram
18,662 calories per container
Around $0.00276 per calorie (May vary depending on the current price.)
True Mass
This brand tastes pretty good and packs a lot of calories per gram. I rated it #3 because of the price. I’ve tried Chocolate Milk Shake, Cookies & Cream and Vanilla Ice Cream and all of them taste pretty good.
The Breakdown:
4.24 calories per gram
11,200 calories per container
Around $0.00339 per calorie (May vary depending on the current price.)
Price wise, Serious Mass is the best. Since taste is subjective, your experience will vary. Personally, I use Real Gains since I like the taste. True Mass is pretty good too but it’s more expensive.
I remember drinking the weight gainers I bought at GNC a long time ago. With 2000 calories per serving, I was able to gain weight but it was a struggle to drink that stuff. The taste was just horrible but I was determined to gain weight so I just sucked it up. I still have flashback to those days of standing in front of the sink while trying to mentally psyche myself up to down the nasty tasting weight gainer.
With these mass gainers though, I don’t need to do that. They taste good enough where I can just casually drink it without having to mentally prepare. Good times.
Tip for Blending Mass Gainer or Whey Protein
Not everyone experiences this but many do: You add water to your blender then add in the powder and hit the blend button. After a few seconds, you stop the blender, pick up your spoon, remove the blender cap and start scraping the sides of your blender where all the powder is stuck. This can get annoying. Here’s a tip to avoid having to do that.
Put water into the blender and whatever fruits and other ingredients you want but don’t put the powder in yet. Turn your blender on and wait until everything is blended. If you only use water or milk, then just turn the blender on. The blender should be at a speed where you can remove the cap and not have liquid splashing out.
While the blender is still on, add the powder from your mass gainer or whey protein into the center. By doing this, your powder will be sucked down into the blades and mixed with the liquid so it won’t be able to stick to the sides of your blender.
No more needing a spoon to scrape off powder that’s stuck to the sides of the blender.
How to Gain Weight and Muscle
Being a hardgainer myself, I know how hard it is to put on weight. When it comes down to it, it’s all about calories in and calories out. If you consume enough calories consistently, you will gain weight.
The challenge is getting the required amount of calories each day. If have a hard time gaining weight, then you either have faster than normal metabolism like I do or you simply can’t eat that much. These mass gainers help by giving you a large number of calories in a relatively small serving.
Drinking a serving of these mass gainers is pretty quick and easy compared to eating a full meal to get the same amount of calories. One serving of Serious Mass is 1250 calories. You’d have to eat a pretty big meal to match that amount of calories.
The key to weight gain though, is consistency. You can’t just consume more calories than your body burns for a few days and expect to gain weight and keep it, it has to be consistent.
These weight gainers are just supplements. They’re there to help you reach your daily calorie intake when eating regular food isn’t enough. You should rely on actual food first and use these to provide you with the missing calories. In other words, don’t just drink these mass gainers all day, you need to eat actual food as well.
Then there’s also working out. If you just drink these high calorie shakes and don’t workout, you’ll gain weight but a lot of it will just be fat. I made this mistake back in the day and although I gained weight, I also developed love handles which I never had before. Getting rid of those love handles is a pain in the ass.
When you gain weight, you’re bound to gain some fat as well but you’ll also be gaining muscle at the same time. So lift weights and get enough calories with the help of these mass gainers and you will see some good results over the next few months.
Mass Building Program
If you want an effective program to follow in order to put on weight and muscle mass, the gaining mass program by Anthony Ellis is great.
It’ll tell you everything you need to know from what to eat to what sort of exercises to do to put on muscle mass quickly. Over 100,000 people have gone through this mass building program.
You could find all the different pieces of information you need by searching online but if you want to save time and trial and error and just follow a proven weight gaining program, this program is great.
Everything from what to eat from day to day to how many sets and reps to do on what exercises using how much weight and how long to rest in between sets and exercise days, it’s all written out for you. All you have to do is follow the plan.