Gaining weight and bulking

jimtryon96

Hello, I have been using MFP for over a year and started my journey around COVID. I lost 15lbs at the time and was sitting around 136lbs. I’ve since got my weight back up to 147lbs. My goal is to get to 170lbs at a height of 5’11”. I go to the gym at least 5 times a week.

I eat around 3000-4000 calories a day, but I’m finding it hard to eat any more than that. I take in almost 150-160 grams of protein. I’d like to consistently eat around 8000 calories a day. I feel so full after just reaching 4000 calories. Do I need to eat that many calories? I want to know if there is an easier way to track all that in MFP and some ways to hit my goal for calories.

JBanx256

Are you gaining on the 3000-4000 cal/day currently? If so, at what rate?

If you were to start slamming 8000 cal/day, the vast majority of the weight you'd gain would be straight up fat, which I kinda doubt is your intention?

Not sure what you're asking when you say ,"I want to know if there is an easier way to track all that in MFP" - what are you looking to simplify in terms of logging etc?

sijomial

"I’d like to consistently eat around 8000 calories a day"

Why????
Where did the idea of 8,000cals come from and what do you think that would achieve?

SuzySunshine99

How did you calculate that you need 8,000 calories?

When people come here wanting to lose weight at an unrealistic rate, they are advised that slower is better for your health and for sustainability. The same goes for gaining weight.

How quickly are you wanting to gain those 23 pounds?

Even if you are lifting heavy, if you are too aggressive with your calorie goal, most of what you gain will be fat. Building muscle takes time.

jimtryon96

I’m currently eating between 3000 and 4000 calories. I’m gaining between 1lb-1.5lbs when I check every month. The intention with 8000 calories is that I want to gain weight quickly. I’d like to be at 200 by next year and 170-180 within 3 months.

I read some of the posts about using a digital food scale to track your calories. I was looking for more tips such as that and tracking your food.

I’m starting to lift heavy and since I want to gain a lot of weight, I thought I need to increase my calories. My friend said I should double my current calories and that would put me at 8000. I don’t want those calories to be stored as fat.

sijomial

Your friend is stuck in a 1980's time warp when drug-fuelled professional bodybuilders went on crazy dirty bulks. Followed by severe and unpleasant cutting cycles to shed the blubber they gained along with some muscle.

Eating huge amounts doesn't boost your personal limit on how much muscle you can gain or how quickly you can gain that muscle, all it would achieve is getting very fat very quickly. Plus feeling bloated and horrible which really wouldn't help your training performance.

Your current rate of weight gain looks fine as you said you don't want to add a lot of fat.

Rather than maximizing your eating I would suggest maximizing the effectiveness of your training with a good program as that is what drives muscle gain. What does "going to the gym" mean to you?

JBanx256

jimtryon96 wrote: »

My friend said

Don't take any further nutrition advice from this friend. All he's doing is (albeit unintentionally, I'm sure) setting you up to become a fat, bloated mess.