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Hi, I know this is a fitness website and that the main concern is about building, modeling muscle bodies and for that sometimes you need to lose weight... but, some of us need to do the opposite thing, we need to learn how to gain weight so we can model them into great muscles...... any idea.... besides protein shakes, eating like 10 times a day.... some real, simple and easy advice to follow.......

Thanks!

Here's a Realjock article on the subject:

http://www.realjock.com/article/90/

For your weight, you need to be eating: 2380 calories a day. To get this, yes, you need to be eating atleast six times a day. This needs to be a diet rich in protein, fiber, water, fruits and vegetables. Remember this: 4:4:8:8, that is 4 servings of meat including eggs and beans, 4 servings of dairy (yogurt, milk, cheese), 8 servings fruits and veggies, 8 servings of bread (pasta, cereal, oats). If you are atleast trying to eat this amount, you are yes, continually stuffing your face. However, if you watch any documentray about bodybuilders, the most startling trend you will notice is how much they eat. I still fall short somedays, but there is no getting around it, you are eating a lot. Protein shakes are easy, with the right gainer you can put away an excess of 1,000 calories in one setting. For you, since your calorie intake is so low, you might want to considere it if you don't want to pound so much food. However, as you gain, your calorie intake will increase and you'll still need to eat more. I don't like shakes, food just seems to show up faster to me.

I've been doing the tuna thing: 1 can gives you almost fifty grams of protein and accounts for two servings of meat, but it feels like one, however, the can says two servings. I think it's about 120 calories. I've been eating 2 cans for lunch everyday, right out of the can like the real deal.

Advice: eat these in plain public view: men are drawn to it like bees to honey, but some just automatically recognize you as a bodybuilder in the making because noone else would eat it that way. If you start at six, you should be eating about every three hours until you hit meal six. Utilize your car and backpack to keep food handy.

If you cheat, count those calories too, they count. You need to be reading labels and counting calories. In the next week, when you count it will let you down. First time I counted, I found I was deficient 1500+ calories. It really is a working progress. For starters, try to get up to that first figure. It'll be a task. Basically, math and eating, get used to them both. I got your estimated calory intake by multiplying your weight by twenty.

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Follow this as a template, dear...and remember, fats, salts, sugar, and oil is in the pyramid, do not cut it out alltogether. I wish I could have offered a diet including numbers, but wow, that is entirely too much math for me to be doing in public. Hmmm, you'll have to get a math gay to help you work in 4/4/8/8 into 2380. Givin your calorie intake, some of those servings are not whole servings. I am ontop of something now, if it works, I'll post it and all of its figures here.

Double Decker sandwiches, you can pile on a good two servings of meat, a serving or two of veggies, 2 servings of cheese and four servings of bread with 1 sandwich.

Cheap bulking foods are tuna, bread (buy them from a bread store), sandwich meat (not that gourmet butcher cut either, pickle loaf and bologna), spaghetti (pasta), and lettuce is cheap too.

Again, foods that include different things, likes soups, stews and sauces are great because you make enough to last a while and can include meat, vegg, dairy, and grain in one pot and eat it over bread, rice, or pasta. I even put oatmeal in my spaghetti sauce (half a cup)....it blend in nice. Really, oatmeal is important, but I HATE oatmeal. I blend up a dry cup with juice or protein shake and then chug it. 1/2 cup is a serving so you'll knock out two servings of oats in one gulp. Ofcourse, you cook 1 cup and it cooks up into huge mess to put away.

LOL, I'm finished.

thanks for the answer, it was quite completed.... i will try to do as u recommended......... i will let u know If I managed to do it well and gain some weight!

Thanks!

GuiltyGear's got his shit pretty well together there. I'm a bit more liberal in my appoach...

I just eat and eat and EAT and EAT AND EAT until I hurt.

Then I go back for more!

I did a practice run for a contest back in April and May, kept close count of my calories, and found I was pushing 4500 a day. My metabolism was so high I wasn't needing to take insulin for most of my carbs (I'm diabetic) and I was burning through my calories so fast I'd get sick if I didn't eat every hour and a half.

My bodyfat during the five-week run dropped from 10% to 5%: I had veins all down my back, chest, and had some starting to show on my legs. I was doing heavy interval training six days a week for my cardio, for weights I was doing extremely high volume (6 sets of 12-16 reps for each exercise), and I was not only getting freaky lean, I WAS GAINING MUSCLE. I gained about 15 lbs from 200 lbs to 215 lbs AND got leaner.

Blood tests were coming up with fantastic cholesterol levels of 120-130, blood pressure of 115/80 at rest, and my HBA1c tests were sitting at 120mg/dL (means my blood sugar was sitting almost at the levels of a healthy person).

Part of being able to gain is just to cram in as many calories as you possibly can and keep them clean (i.e. no cheeseburgers). The other part is you must be eating often enough to support a blast furnace-level metabolic rate because it makes your body more efficient in processing and utilizing the proteins you eat (bodybuilders frequently jump-start their metabolism with a little thyroid hormone* rather than interval training, but both have the same outcome).

Do at least three solid meals a day so you're meeting nutritional requirements for your micro-nutrients, then use liquid supplements (protein shakes, weight gainers, and corn starch**) to fill in the rest. It's a real drag trying to eat solid food for all 12 meals

*Thyroid hormone's playing with fire, guys. Don't do it without medical assistance. (And besides, the interval training just FEELS better!)
**Corn starch f*cking ROCKS for easy carbs: it's complex and easy to get down. Just remember to mix with a little fiber because it'll make you kinda runny.

GG's approach is very complicated. I keep things easy by giving myself one gram of protein per pound of body weight. When I'm bulking I take my weight and multiply it by 3 to determine how many grams of carbohydrates I'll take in.
So for a 200lb in who is not overweight but in decent shape he would eat 200g of protein and 600g of carbohydrates.

For fats I take either flax or olive oil and eat a few Brazil nuts or walnuts.

Drink plenty of water.

Get your green veggies in and fruits are good. But don't eat sugary fruits late at night. Have them early in the day so your body can use this quickly available energy source and not have it stored as body fat. This happens when you eat sugary foods late at night and then go to bed.

Remember to count any food item you put in your mouth. If you have a post workout drink with a 100g of liquid carbohydrates then deduct that from your daily requirements.

I also recommend some sort of activity for fat burning. Either try HIIT or the standard older method of losing fat that only has your heart working at 60-65%. It's reliable and really worked for me but it's a bigger time commitment compared to HIIT. I know you want to gain weight but let's keep it lean body weight and not fat tissue.

Good luck.

Thanks guys! I will try to follow your advice..... I used to take protein shakes and gainers when I started to work out, but then I quit them... I will try them again... I was advised to take them an hour before training and after.... is it right? or should I take them as complement to my diet, between meals... like between breakfast and lunch and between lunch and dinner?


What about Creatine? i was told to take them with my protein shakes?

I don't have much experience in this calories count, but I will try to sort it out

I realized that I have lost weight, damn it!!!!

Thanks for the advice!! please, keep in touch for any further questions I might ask...

Joe

If you have lost weight my simple advice is to count your calories, this time keeping in mind how much activity you are doing. There should be a list online that tells you how many calories a particular activity burns. Your simple goal is to eat more than you burn, but not so much you turn into a rolly polly.

If your metab is as high as i suspect, that is a good thing, but to me, an indicator that you are pretty active. Many would suggest you calm down, but I tried that. My metabolism is an inferno, i tried to calm down to offset it, but all i did was get soft so i got active again because I like to be hard.

Stay active, but I've found that the only thing that allows me to be active, stay hard and gain is to continually eat. my friends tease me because I always have my mouth full (don't you dare MuchMore! :lol

Didn't mean to get away from you before, but my simple advice, count your calories, try to figure out how much you are burning, eat your heart out....and as MuchMore said, eat your fruits and deserts in the early day. However, i suspect this revs up our metabs more. Bottomline, we need high metabs anyway. Am talking myself into a migraine so till next time.