Post: #51

(12-06-2016 04:36 PM)Steelex Wrote:  Ok...

A little back ground on me. I'm 26, 6'2, 250 lbs. I used to be 184, but trained and ate my way up to 250. I bench 4 plates. I'm very qualified to give you advice because I have walked the walk.

First place, you need to quit this cauliflower and spinach thing you're on. You need at least 6000 calories a day, with plenty of protein, carbs and fat. Don't worry about gaining fat, you can diet it off in 3 months if it bothers you.

Start lifting 3x a week and quit the cardio. Do mark rippetoes starting strength program the way it is written. Buy the book. Lift hard.

You gotta eat some damn food. Protein shakes, gallon of milk a day, hamburgers, chicken Alfredo, ect. Eat 4 honey buns and drink 32 ounces of milk.

You will never gain weight like you want till you start eating the way you never did. Fuck clean eating, you need some mass so you dont look so damn fragile.

Is that what you did to get from 180 to 220+ or did you start with something like 4000 calories and ramp up from there?

Post: #52

Man I've used many different types of diets and it took me a long time to figure out what works for me. I read voraciously on the subject and experiment a lot.

You can start off lower and then add calories as needed. I think a key point though is that clean foods tend to make you feel more full, so if you're trying to gain weight it's much more difficult on clean foods, especially if you need a lot to grow. If you eat protein with your meals you can somewhat negate some of the negative effects of eating unclean foods by slowing the insulin response. For instance if im going to down a bag of Oreos, it'll be with a casein protein shake to slow digestion slightly.

Post: #53

GOMAD drunk a gallon of whole milk a day.

Post: #54

I agree with steelex.
Also...you should feel nauseous by the end of the day. Like you just want to quit. Thats when you know your eating enough. This feeling will subside after ~2 weeks. Don't bother with any checmicals yet. There a waste of money until you hit your natural limit.
The key to obtaining your fitness goals (or any fitness goals for that matter) isn't a question of "am I eating enough" or "hows my diet look" but the adjustment. Every 10 pounds you gain, you need to eat 200-400 more calories and vice versa on a cut. The adjustment is key!

And please understand you will not get it right on your 1st time, or 2nd or even your 17th time fine tuning your diet. Its trial and error and takes time to get everything right. But once you do...

Post: #55

Canned tuna fish, 12 pack of ramen, peanut butter and bread. These are cheap foods that will put calories in you.

I agree with Steelex you need to eat. I am 6'1" and before I started getting serious about lifting and gaining weight I was about 185 lbs skinny fat. I put on about 20 lbs over the course of 6 months not by counting calories and eating clean but by eating whole milk/peanut butter/banana/whey protein smoothies 2 times a day, going through tons of milk and chocolate milk, and eating shitloads of fatty read meat, eggs, and potatoes.

Post: #56

How much fat can one expect from such caloric intakes? For example, I could eat much more, but prefer slowly increasing intake each week.

Post: #57

Dude it's all dependant on you, how you eat, what you eat, ect...

The real question is whether or not strength gains are following weight gains.

I wish I could give you like the secret formula here but it's different for everyone. I eat a lot, I train with a focus, and im concerned with my progress every day. At night I make sure my kitchen is ready for the morning. When I wake up the first thing I do is crack eggs in a pan and some oatmeal in the microwave. On the way to work I drink a shake. A couple hours later I eat a meal. Now that's just what works for me but you have to find what works for you, and if you're really passionate about it, you'll focus on it because it will hold an important place in your mind. Changing your body RADICALLY is just as much of a focus as running a business, you're involved from the time you wake up.

It's like having a second job except that you pay to work at. You'll only make it work if you like it for what it is, not for the chicks or whatever you think it'll give you. It should be because you personally like how it looks in the mirror.

Post: #58

Missed this thread. One thing that I find works well is to add

4 eggs + 2 tablespoons of olive oil

two times a day. It'lll be gross the first few times, but after a while your body starts craving the extra calories if you're working hard inside and outside the gym.

I also find that I get oatmeal down easier if I pour warm water on it instead of heating it up in the microwave. When the oats swell up I find that they take up too much space in my stomach and kill my appetite.

As everyone has already said, it will depend on you and your dedication.

I find apps like myfitness pal to be very useful for this. Ignore the macros they set out for you and just use it to track your calories. I find that for skinny guys like us, it often hinges upon dietary consistency. If you eat 3000 calories one time every few days, it won't budge your weight, but if you're getting in a consistent high protein 3000 calories day in and out, you start seeing results.

Crib sheet:

Add more fat to your diet
Eat more eggs
Cut some of the veggies and add more hearty carbs like rice and oats.

The thing with veggies is that if you're a light eater, veggies will fill you up, but 100g of bok choy is only something paltry like 20 calories, but 100g of rice is a calorie bomb.

TRACK.EVERY.SINGLE.THING.YOU.EAT

After a certain point, you start looking forward to eating however many calories you need to eat.

Post: #59

How's the progress?

Also just realized Steelix is saying he benches 4 plates- is that 4 per side or 4 total? I'm going to assume that's per side (400 lb bench), which is a pretty large number, and I'm not totally sure if the OP can reasonably expect to be hitting numbers like that, even after a year or two of training.

Post: #60

(10-16-2017 01:43 PM)Sonoma Wrote:  How's the progress?

Also just realized Steelix is saying he benches 4 plates- is that 4 per side or 4 total? I'm going to assume that's per side (400 lb bench), which is a pretty large number, and I'm not totally sure if the OP can reasonably expect to be hitting numbers like that, even after a year or two of training.

No not after a year or two. But he could definitely hit 315 in a year and a half assuming he's a young man and isnt of a muscularly disadvantaged ethnicity. He could do it as a somewhat older fellow as well with a little bit of gear.

The thing is, most people never get to see what they can actually do because they fall off the band wagon periodically. They'll train hard and do good for a month or two, then slack for a couple weeks. Most people can make absolutely crazy changes in 2-3 years if they are actually dedicated and consistent, and don't have these little lapses in dedication. But people typically are not like that.

This applies to a lot of other things in life too. If you CONSISTEBTLY gave a great effort for 3 years to building a business, a website, writing a book, moving to another country, saving money, paying off debt, ect... You can actually do it.

You can build a million dollar lawn mowing business in 3 years.

You can become exceptionally fluent in a language in 3 years.

Bodybuilding is the same, because the results are largely input based.

Post: #61

^ Steelex is no bullshitting you. If you look over my progress thread (specifically my latest post) you will see consistency is king.

I made the same amount of gains over the past 4 months that I made the entire year of 2016 simply because over the past 4 months I was more diligent about actually getting to the gym and continually pushing myself.