Trouble Gaining Weight!

Drakmord

Hey Guys,
I'm just wondering if someone had a similar problem.
I'm been lifting weights for about 8 months now but I'm having difficulty gaining mass.
I'm 75kg and 6'1 and I was about 70kgs when I started.
I've increased the portion sizes of all my food and I've tried eating everything in site but I just can't seem to put on any mass.
In the last month I can't seem to increase my weights.
The whole thing is very frustrating.
My body fat is low, I can see my abs.

Can anyone suggest where I'm going wrong?
The fact that I've stopped getting stronger is really annoying, + I still look fairly scrawny.

InKonspikuou2

Post up your diet in full. What you are eating, portion sizes and at what times.

You say you are eating a lot but it could be the wrong stuff.

Drakmord

Ok, here's an example:

Breakfast: 8:00
2 Bananas
2 Bowls of Rice Crispies
1 Glass of Juice
Multi Vitamin

Lunch 1 11:00
2 Peanutbutter + Jam Sandwiches with Milk

Lunch 2 14/15:00
Bowl of Pasta, with grated chedder + Milk

Evening Snack 18:00
Same as lunch 1

Dinner
My main meal
Fish + Potatoes + Veg

I also snack throughout the day, usually tea, chocolate bars, apples, bananas etc

Thanks!

Brendygg

Try replacing the rice crispys with porridge or unsweetened muesli.

Add in more protein into your meals, like tuna, chicken and eggs.

Replace the snacking of chocolate bars with nuts and try drinking 1litre of milk a day, plenty calories in both!

Kevster

...me too! - and I'M now laughing at how little sense that post makes. I have to admit though - OP - you eat a lot of food during the day. I thought that I was bad, but I only eat aroumnd a third of what you eat. I'm 5"11 and am just above 10 stone. I'm very well toned, however, and i think that's all that really matters. You might very well be losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time. Ever consider that?

Jimmy Bottlehead

Change your evening snack to something else. Eggs are mighty for a protein boost. Also, throw in another meal after dinner. Drink even more milk. In the gym, try the Starting Strength program, or at the very least make sure you incorporate squats, deadlifts, military press and bench press.

Oh, and eat even more. Seriously.

PeakOutput

im starting this programme on monday

http://www.scrawnytobrawny.com/

from a very well respected nutritionist and trainer

pm me if you want more info

im 6'2 and weigh 90/95kg and the formula in the book puts my food requirements at around 4700-5000 calories a day for my goals yours probably arent too much lower than that so i would say you need to eat a ****e load more

Inspector Coptoor

OP

Drink Milk
start off with trying to get up to 2L a day.
then work it up to four, then eat some more.

putting on weight is not hard.
eat small meals 6-8 times a day and chug them down with milk.
try it for a month

enfant terrible

If your trying to gain weight cut out all cardio out of your training

PeakOutput

enfant terrible wrote: »

If your trying to gain weight cut out all cardio out of your training

not necessary if you just eat enough

enfant terrible

PeakOutput wrote: »

not necessary if you just eat enough

Seems silly though trying to gain weight and running on a treadmill.

itsallaboutheL

enfant terrible wrote: »

Seems silly though trying to gain weight and running on a treadmill.

indeed, i mean who needs to improve their aerobic capacity these days.

Drakmord wrote: »

Ok, here's an example:

Breakfast: 8:00
2 Bananas
2 Bowls of Rice Crispies
1 Glass of Juice
Multi Vitamin

Lunch 1 11:00
2 Peanutbutter + Jam Sandwiches with Milk

Lunch 2 14/15:00
Bowl of Pasta, with grated chedder + Milk

Evening Snack 18:00
Same as lunch 1

Dinner
My main meal
Fish + Potatoes + Veg

I also snack throughout the day, usually tea, chocolate bars, apples, bananas etc

OP or you a pescetarian by any chance??

Regardless you need to up your protein intake considerably, you're also eating a woeful amount of carbs compared to your Protein and Fat intake.

enfant terrible

itsallaboutheL wrote: »

indeed, i mean who needs to improve their aerobic capacity these days.



OP or you a pescetarian by any chance??

Regardless you need to up your protein intake considerably, you're also eating a woeful amount of carbs compared to your Protein and Fat intake.

I think he wants to gain weight going by the topic.

PeakOutput

enfant terrible wrote: »

I think he wants to gain weight going by the topic.

no reason not to incorporate high intensity cardio twice a week on your non weight days will keep the fat gain in check while you put on lean mass

corkcomp

yeah no problem doing cardio, either HIIT, steady state or both, id rather eat back the calories used during cardio than end up with poor aerobic capacity, its actually scary the number of people that end up winded from running 20 seconds to the car in rain etc!

op, it also sounds like you have added lean mass, even if progress slow so just increase your calories by a few hundred and keep a it. I would advise you to drink 4l of milk a day, but thats IMO and advice will vary

Drakmord

Hey Guys,
Thanks for all your replies.

I actually drink a lot of milk already, around 2 litres a day.
I don't want to get rid of the cardio in my training, I'm working on improving my fitness level.
I'm not a pescetarian, I just eat fish when I'm at college, I'll have beef whenever I can get it.

I'm thinking of starting whey protein as well. Would that help with increasing my lifts?
Btw, I can bench around 75, but in the last month or so, I can't seem to increase it.

rccaulfield

A very serious lack of lean protein in your diet. Eat chicken/tuna/protein shake/salmon every 3 hours 5/6 meals per day 30-40g. Ease back on the weights a bit maybe take a week or two off and build slowly back to your pbs, then you'll see loads of gains and new obs. Your diet is very poor and you thought you had that perfect mate- have a look at your training aswell, its probably way off because these are the basics of gaining for me and you didn't know them, hope this helps!

Transform

Drakmord wrote: »

Hey Guys,
Thanks for all your replies.

I actually drink a lot of milk already, around 2 litres a day.
I don't want to get rid of the cardio in my training, I'm working on improving my fitness level.
I'm not a pescetarian, I just eat fish when I'm at college, I'll have beef whenever I can get it.

I'm thinking of starting whey protein as well. Would that help with increasing my lifts?
Btw, I can bench around 75, but in the last month or so, I can't seem to increase it.

your weight gain so far is actually not too bad (5kg) but you simply have to just up your portions and get stronger - if you are not getting stronger you need to address your program - exercise selection, reps, sets etc

InKonspikuou2

Drakmord wrote: »

Hey Guys,
Thanks for all your replies.

I actually drink a lot of milk already, around 2 litres a day.
I don't want to get rid of the cardio in my training, I'm working on improving my fitness level.
I'm not a pescetarian, I just eat fish when I'm at college, I'll have beef whenever I can get it.

I'm thinking of starting whey protein as well. Would that help with increasing my lifts?
Btw, I can bench around 75, but in the last month or so, I can't seem to increase it.

5 kgs in 8 months while trying to add mass isn't a great reflection on your diet. With your lunch and snack meals you should include some sort of lean meat. For example a 140g breast of chicken would be around 30g protein and the 200+ calorie mark. But you could vary it daily with steak, mince, tuna, other fish types. If you added them i bet you would notice your strength increase.

And i'd change the rice crispies for oats in the morning. Other than that it's fine. And you said you might start taking whey. 2-3 times a day would up your calories big time. 1 scoop in the morning with water. 2 scoops after training with water. And 1-2 scoops in milk before bed.

Also you should try separate your fats from carbs if you are a hard gainer. Some carbs give you an insulin spike and that's not a good time to be eating fats. Putting peanut butter in your porridge etc would be fine though.

And definitely keep the cardio. I never understand why people tell those who want to gain weight to cut it out. Not only is it great for your heart but it can reduce the amount of fat you put on while bulking.

Regarding your benching or plateau in general. Try changing something. If you are doing barbell flat press change to dumbells for a week or two. Or incline. Shock the body and keep it guessing as to what is coming next. You may be doing too many exercises and working out too long. Not resting enough in between sets. Increasing the weight too quickly. Not working supporting muscles. Another option is to take a week off and just continue the cardio. Sometimes you need to regress to progress.

trapsagenius

Liam Henners257 wrote: »

OP

Drink Milk
start off with trying to get up to 2L a day.
then work it up to four, then eat some more.

putting on weight is not hard.
eat small meals 6-8 times a day and chug them down with milk.
try it for a month

Four LITRES?FOUR litres?FOUR LITRES??That's a bit much.Around 1-2 litres of milk a day is fine OP, imo.I'd also recommend buying some whey protein and having a shake once a day or so.

Jimmy Bottlehead

trapsagenius wrote: »

Four LITRES?FOUR litres?FOUR LITRES??That's a bit much.Around 1-2 litres of milk a day is fine OP, imo.I'd also recommend buying some whey protein and having a shake once a day or so.

Whey's only good after a workout or first thing in the morning for an instant protein kick. Casein would be better, nice steady supply over the next few hours.

InKonspikuou2

Jimmy Bottlehead wrote: »

Whey's only good after a workout or first thing in the morning for an instant protein kick. Casein would be better, nice steady supply over the next few hours.

But you'd only use a shake 2-3 times a day. So why buy casein separately for just one shake when you could mix whey with some milk before sleeping and pretty much get the same effect.

Inspector Coptoor

trapsagenius wrote: »

Four LITRES?FOUR litres?FOUR LITRES??That's a bit much.Around 1-2 litres of milk a day is fine OP, imo.I'd also recommend buying some whey protein and having a shake once a day or so.

yes, four litres.
2 times 2 litres.
Milk helps calves grow big and strong.
can do the same for people when coupled with a decent weight training regime.

You could mix the whey protein with the milk a couple of times during the day.

d'Oracle

trapsagenius wrote: »

Four LITRES?FOUR litres?FOUR LITRES??That's a bit much.Around 1-2 litres of milk a day is fine OP, imo.I'd also recommend buying some whey protein and having a shake once a day or so.

It isn't.

There are a lot of people using this approach.
There are coaches and trainees who post on here who have observed great success.

corkcomp

All I can say is that anybody ive ever seen drinking that much milk is fat, no mater what they are lifting. it may be possible that people can drink 4 litres of milk a day and not end up fat, but I have yet to meet such a person.

I would echo transforms advice, op's weight gain respectable (but not huge) - however, it sounds like it has been all / mosly lean muscle.

Inspector Coptoor

FFS.
the point here is weight gain.
Not necessarily the type of weight gained.

Obviously if you drink that much milk and eat a shed load of calories without burning them all off, you are going to put on weight and some of it, maybe a lot of it will be fat.

The point is to put on the weight while building muscle as well.
give the muscles as much nutrients as possible so they will grow and then grow some more.

when you have completed the bulk phase, then you can cut back on the milk, feed the muscle with enough protein for maintenance and strip off the fat using a calorific deficit.

the whole process can take a long time.
I;m taking a year to do it.

Last June, i was 105kg, drank milk and ate pizza for 6 months and hit 118kg, now im down to 110kg and looking to hit 100kg by this summer.

I;m a lot stronger now than i was then and i dont think i could have got that kind of progress by eating a little bit more than i needed.

corkcomp

Liam Henners257 wrote: »

FFS.
the point here is weight gain.
Not necessarily the type of weight gained.

.

yep, that is very obvious from the replies posted.

d'Oracle

corkcomp wrote: »

All I can say is that anybody ive ever seen drinking that much milk is fat, no mater what they are lifting. it may be possible that people can drink 4 litres of milk a day and not end up fat, but I have yet to meet such a person.

Sure people will put on fat, but they will also put on muscle, and then they can loose the fat. I have found fat loss a lot easier to comeby than muscle gain.

I'd like to hear from one of the guys at Crossfit who did GOMAD to see what they think.

Either way, I have lamped on 5kg in a month, I am a bit fatter, but I'm seeing muscle come on.

corkcomp

the point is, you only need a small calorie surplus to build muscle, and if you are lifting two or three times a week you dont need to be taking in too many excess calories on the other days. Anybody who is taking in a large surplus of calories is risking eating themselves into the early stages of insulin resistance, I know people wont like that being mentioned but its true.

d'Oracle

corkcomp wrote: »

the point is, you only need a small calorie surplus to build muscle, and if you are lifting two or three times a week you dont need to be taking in too many excess calories on the other days. Anybody who is taking in a large surplus of calories is risking eating themselves into the early stages of insulin resistance, I know people wont like that being mentioned but its true.

I don't agree.

Mainly cos on a small surplus, I didn't see much results.
And also talk of Insulin resistance/glycogen etc and the like usually sets my BS radar mental. Particularly when we are talking about people who exercise.

And I don't mean any offence by that.

billyhead

Folks,

Say your 6ft and around the 142ib mark how many grams of protein would you recommend would be needed daily to bulk up?

corkcomp

d'Oracle wrote: »

I don't agree.

Mainly cos on a small surplus, I didn't see much results.
And also talk of Insulin resistance/glycogen etc and the like usually sets my BS radar mental. Particularly when we are talking about people who exercise.

And I don't mean any offence by that.

it is very far removed from BS. People who exercise have way less chance of having any insulin regulation issues, absolutely. But, what we are talking about is consuming so many excess calories that you start depositing fat (even while exercising), anybody who doesnt see a problem here would really need to do some good research. IMO anybody gaining a lot of fat is taking the surplus too far.

g'em

Liam Henners257 wrote: »

Milk helps calves grow big and strong.
can do the same for people when coupled with a decent weight training regime.

I'm not getting into the milk debate again but I had to quote this for sheer ridiculousness. Calves drink milk to get big and strong and so we should too? Maybe try looking up just how wildly different a calves' stomach is to ours before repeating that in public. If we look closer to home at other primates we see that gorillas eat grass all day and look how big they get so I guess we should stick our noses in the front lawn as soon as the frost clears up right?

We don't drink milk because calves do, we drink milk because it's an easily obtained source of protein and calories. We are not designed to drink cow's milk, are not physically capable of gaining the same benefits of milk that cows do, but our bodies, by and large, tolerate it just fine, and it works.

Milk is not a magic drink, it's is simply protein, fats and lots of calories. The getting big and strong part comes from coupling all those calories with an appropriate training regime.

d'Oracle

corkcomp wrote: »

IMO anybody gaining a lot of fat is taking the surplus too far.

I think thats a fairly important bit though.

Inspector Coptoor

g'em wrote: »

I'm not getting into the milk debate again but I had to quote this for sheer ridiculousness. Calves drink milk to get big and strong and so we should too? Maybe try looking up just how wildly different a calves' stomach is to ours before repeating that in public.

Which stomach g'em?
stomach 1,2,3 or 4?
or maybe you are talking about the lack of the enzyme to break down milk in the human digestive tract after the first 6 months or so of life.

I am a biochemist by qualification so i do know these things. I also appreciate that many people don't.

the fact is, as you stated, milk is an easy available source of calories conatining lots of protein and fat.

and i did mention that the benefits can only be seen with a proper weights regime.

g'em

Liam Henners257 wrote: »

Which stomach g'em?
stomach 1,2,3 or 4?

The abomasum, the only stomach developed at birth in cows

That's fair enough, I thought you were equating calves drinking milk and getting bigger naturally with humans drinking it.

I just get a little irked when I see people advocating drinking huge amounts of milk to put on weight when the type of weight it'll encourage largely depends on the kind of training being done alongside it.

Liam Henners257 wrote:

the point here is weight gain.
Not necessarily the type of weight gained.

See I'd argue that the type of weight gain is important - I just don't see the point in telling people to get big when the "big" is largely fat, but that's just my pov.

token

d'Oracle wrote: »

Sure people will put on fat, but they will also put on muscle, and then they can loose the fat. I have found fat loss a lot easier to comeby than muscle gain.

I'd like to hear from one of the guys at Crossfit who did GOMAD to see what they think.

I posted my results before and got a few people telling me it was all fat :pac: I was one of four people who did it I put on 10kg in 8 weeks with that being about the average each of us put on. The calpier readings put it at about a 50/50 split of muscle to fat. Not the greatest ratio I guess but it's still 4 to 5kg muscle in 8 weeks which can't be sniffed at. I've been back doing full on crossfit conditioning workouts for about a month and I'm down about 2 or 2.5kg while still eating quite a bit to keep up with training. Another 4-8 weeks and all the fat I gained should be gone.

I plan on finishing the year doing the same thing for 8-12 weeks, maybe not quite as extreme second time round. I want to keep closing in on the 2.5 bodyweight deadlift, 2 squat, 1.5 bench. I got to 2BW on the deadlift in the 8 weeks of GOMAD.

d'Oracle

token wrote: »

I got to 2BW on the deadlift in the 8 weeks of GOMAD.

Good work.

corkcomp

d'Oracle wrote: »

I think thats a fairly important bit though.

agreed! but there is a fine line... no point being muscled if its covered under a layer of fat. of course people training for strength ONLY will have slightly different goals...

Inspector Coptoor

corkcomp wrote: »

agreed! but there is a fine line... no point being muscled if its covered under a layer of fat. of course people training for strength ONLY will have slightly different goals...

rccaulfield

Another thread full of rubbish calves drink milk to grow so shud we- Try genetics for dummies there mate and look up growth hormone in adolesence while ur at it! 4 litres of milk a day- yea look up hydroenchephalaus there. Hope you have life assurance. This forums full of people who think theyv learnt sumtin then a few months later realise it was bull**** and u never hear from them again.

d'Oracle

rccaulfield wrote: »

4 litres of milk a day- yea look up hydroenchephalaus there. .

Just did.
No results.

Inspector Coptoor

rccaulfield wrote: »

Another thread full of rubbish calves drink milk to grow so shud we- Try genetics for dummies there mate and look up growth hormone in adolesence while ur at it! 4 litres of milk a day- yea look up hydroenchephalaus there. Hope you have life assurance. This forums full of people who think theyv learnt sumtin then a few months later realise it was bull**** and u never hear from them again.

nothing like a bit of experimentation to prove things pal.
proof of the pudding is in the eating for many people.
drinking lots of milk and lifting weights with a well rounded, solid programme will put on weight and help muscle growth

The reference to calves was probably a bad analogy but drinking milk is still a good way to get the calories in, if that's what you want to do.

as for the genetics, while far from an expert, I know a good bit as it formed a large part of my degree.


i also googled the condition you mentioned.
seems like something you made up

is this what you meant?
hydroencephalitis

Drakmord

Hey Guys,
Thanks for your replies.
I think i'll try the four litres of milk a day for 2 weeks and see how it goes.
I also got my whey protein.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again