Building a big body is like building a wall—you need plenty of bricks and mortar. Weight-gain supplements work like bricks and mortar for your body. They provide the raw materials that feed the appetite of growing muscles and maintain hard-won gains.

Who Needs a Weight Gainer?
If your sport of choice depends on size and muscle power, or your goal is to build a big, ripped body, you’ve got to add pounds. After all, you don’t see too many 150-pound linemen at football games.

But getting big isn’t easy for everybody. Whether it’s from genetics or an improper diet, “hard gainers” have trouble building up to the size and weight they want. That’s where weight gainers come in. These supplements are designed to help users bulk up and increase size and weight—without packing on a lot of fat. And since most weight gainers come in easy-to-use powders, it’s a snap to mix a shake and keep fueling up throughout the day.

It’s All About the Protein
Weight-gain supplements vary in their ingredients and formulations, but they’re all built around big doses of protein. And the best protein for muscle-building comes from a few select sources.

Whey comes from milk, and it’s one of the best proteins for muscle building and weight gain. It’s clean burning, absorbed quickly into the muscles, and comes packed naturally with lots of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), which help build strong muscles. Many of the most popular weight gain supplements, like CytoSport’s Muscle Milk and CytoGainer, and Prolab’s N-Large2, rely heavily on whey protein.

Egg whites are another great source of protein, but eating lots of eggs also means adding lots of fat and cholesterol to your diet. Supplements that use eggs as their protein source get the protein from egg whites, which are lower in cholesterol than whole eggs. Egg proteins are released more slowly into the body, so some supplements mix egg proteins with whey to give the body a consistent protein source throughout the day. BSN True-Mass is a good example of this mixture.

Of course you could get your protein the old-fashioned way—eat lots of meat. Some supplements, like Champion Nutrition’s Heavyweight Gainer 900, use beef products as their protein source. You can’t get any more natural than that!

Get the Right Mix
Weight gainers contain a lot of calories. They have to. But where these calories come from is important. When weight gainers first hit the market, they tended to be very heavy in calories, but a lot of those calories came from fats and sugars—better for building a big gut than building big guns.

The best weight gainers will be high in protein and low in sugars. You need carbs for energy and some fat for the calorie content—though you should try to stay clear of saturated fats. MHP Up Your Mass, CytoSport Muscle Milk, and BSN True-Mass vary somewhat in their blend of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, but all of them keep fat and sugar levels under control.

An Addition to Your Balanced Diet
Even the best weight gainer isn’t a substitute for a balanced diet, so keep eating three squares (or more) a day if you’re trying to gain weight. But for convenience and efficiency, you can’t beat what weight gainers bring to the table. So check out the available products, mix up your shakes, and get building.

—Ken Nail