In need of encouragement
I am nearly at my wit's end. I just need some encouragement, as I am losing motivation quickly. I'm the only person I know who is trying to gain weight, but I am middle aged, and I'm getting so much conflicting information about what someone in my position should do. Eat a ridiculous amount of calories and lift as heavy as someone half my age? Stop with the bulking mindset and just aim for general, overall health instead? I really want to stay healthy, but I am getting so tired of feeling stuck constantly. I am a hardgainer, so that makes things extra frustrating. Any encouragement would be really welcomed.
Replies
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Have you worked with a weight training and nutrition coach before that can provide some oversight and routines for gaining? Just a thought that could help if you haven't.
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Yes, I worked with a trainer who recommended eating at a modest caloric surplus and lifting 3 to 4 times a week. She advised against ego lifting or trying to lift as heavy as younger lifters would. Yet I hear others saying "no, you need to eat a ton more over maintenance and lift as heavy as possible regardless of how old you are."
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I'm sorry you are having a struggle with this…the war is real whether trying to gain or trying to lose. I hope you find the answer you are looking for!
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Thanks very much, appreciate it. it. 🙏
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FWIW, I think your first trainer gave you better advice, assuming - as I'd guess - you want to add mostly muscle, not mostly fat. Eating "a ton over maintenance" will almost certainly add fat.
You mention running out of patience: That's understandable. No matter what, gaining muscle is quite gradual, requiring persistence and patience. As we age, that can get even more true, but it's still possible.
On the eating side, if no gain is happening at X calorie level after a few weeks, it may be that that's not the right calorie goal for you, no matter what some trainer, calorie calculator, or fitness tracker says. (Those estimates are close for most people, but it's just a statistical average of similar people. Not all of us are statistically average. Being far off is rare, but for me nearly 10 years of logging experience tells me I need around 500 more calories daily to be weight-stable than either MFP or my good brand/model fitness tracker - one that estimates well for others - tell me. 500 is a lot of calories.)
If you don't gain any weight of any kind in trending weight after say 4 weeks or so, then I'd suggest adding up to 250 calories daily and seeing what happens in the following 4 weeks.
From reading your other posts, I think you may have more lifting background than I do, and for sure our demographics are wildly different. I'm certainly not an expert in strength training, but merely have had phases where I did it routinely (for up to a couple of years at a time), and don't strength train in the conventional sense much at all right now. I'm not the best person to talk about this part, for sure. That said:
As far as lifting, I'm not sure what "lift as heavy as possible" means. As someone old and female, my "heavy as possible" is very different from a 20 y/o guy's "heavy as possible" for a variety of reasons, but probably also quite different from a statistically average woman my age. At this stage for me, I'd be considering total useful stress/workload , and - because of some personal physical issues, in part - when lifting regularly I usually go up in reps or sets before going up in weight, for example, even though that's not necessarily the speed track to progress in the abstract. Clearly, any of us need to challenge our current strength in order to increase strength or mass. For myself, I'd be looking to find that kind of challenge within my personal range of "possible".
In that sense, @nossmf's thread has been useful to me, but you may already know all this:
For sure, I added muscle mass in my 50s and beyond, even as a woman, generally and primarily without an optimal strength training program, but it took an extra long time, like years. Also, I'm aware of research studies showing people gaining strength and muscle mass in their 80s, though I admit those were usually cases of people whose starting point was quite depleted, even sarcopenic.
Whether 3-4 days a week is right/optimal is really going to depend on the program being followed, not just its general quality, but also appropriateness to current stage of development and other factors. Details of that are absolutely not in my wheelhouse.
I'd like to be encouraging, because I suspect pretty strongly that you can make gains . . . but I think it's realistic to expect them to be gradual, requiring patient persistence, plus ideally the right calorie level, good nutrition (especially protein), and the right program personalized to your individual needs.
Best wishes!
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IIRC, you and I are not far off in age. Which means our number one goal needs to be injury prevention, since recovering from injury takes SOOOOO much longer than when we were younger. By that standard, the idea of "lift as heavy as possible" needs to go out the window, since it's the number one cause in getting guys like us injured. The phrase "the number one source of injury to older men is acting like they are younger men" is valid in the weight room.
That said, we absolutely can still lift relatively heavy, and I still do. I just have swapped my days of heavy singles and doubles for sets of five on the main lift of the day, sets of ten elsewhere. I also incorporate several of the strategies I outlined in the post tagged by @AnnPT77 above in my personal training, such as pauses, supersets, EMOM, slow-moving negatives, etc, as these all help towards muscle gain.
But we also need to be expanding our time table for when to expect results. Be thinking "rest of life" not "next week" to see muscle in the mirror. Trust the process of eating right and training right, and the muscle WILL come. In the meantime, focus on how your training is improving the quality of the rest of your life…stairs are easier, carrying grocery bags is easier, moving furniture to meet your significant other's idea of room aesthetics is easier, etc.
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Thanks so much, that was all very detailed and helpful to remember. It's so mentally exhausting trying to determine the right path when there is so much conflicting information out there. I won't even get started on social media fitness posts. That stuff is toxic.
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You're right about remembering injury prevention at our age. I'm currently recovering from golfers elbow which has taken so much longer to heal than I would have hoped. It's all really about having the right perspective and mental position, isn't it?
I've been trying to shift my approach to the slower negative part of lifts and doing more reps with less weight lately. Train smarter, not harder.
Thanks for the reminders to be patient. I get so caught up in the day to day grind that I get derailed. I'm just sick and tired of feeling like the skinniest or smallest guy in the room.
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I mean this in the most detached, neutral, grandmotherly way possible, not trying to chat you up. Granny don't play that way.
If that's you in your profile picture, you're not "the skinniest guy in the room" unless maybe the room you're picking is entirely full of roided-up bodybuilders. Smallness, dunno, assuming that's about height, but . . . who cares.
We all may have aspirations about self-improvement and how we'd like to look. Often, that aspiration brings with it some self-criticism that distorts our internalized self image. Give yourself some grace, some credit.
If you're not doing it now, take some front/side/back progress pics, maybe with a little bit of a post-workout pump in the mix, and some flex in the pose. Take some tape measurements. Work hard and consistently. Then repeat in a few months.
Like Noss said, progress will come. Like I said, it will be gradual.
I do think you'll see progress longer term. Or, when it comes to photos, it may be that you don't see it (y'know, that body image thing again), but other people would likely see it. Given more time and distance from those photos, high odds even you will see it yourself, even if you don't see it at the moment you take the photos. (That happened to me with weight loss: I thought my face looked the same post-loss, just as plump. It didn't. Now I can see that in the photos, even though I couldn't right then. Brain stuff can be weird.)
For sure, be proud of yourself for putting in the work. Lots of people have aspirations. Only a fraction of those people put in the work. You're putting in the work. Keep up that goodness.
P.S. So glad Noss explicitly brought up the injury prevention dimension. That's the biggest thing I feel has changed as I age: It takes longer to recovery from any injury, and I detrain faster. That puts "avoid injury" very high on the priority scale. Another aspect - for me, maybe not everyone - is that with age, I need to be smarter and more structured about recovery, building it into my workout schedule and life in general. I'm not as resilient as I was at age 20! 😆 Yeah, I don't much lift right now, but I am still athletically active - the same principles apply when it comes to injury and routine recovery.)
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Well thank you for that nice compliment. Yes, that's me in the profile photo. I have started taking some progress photos recently, so I hope that will be a visual record of any progress over time. Body dysmporphia has been a struggle for a long time. I'm trying to deal with it.
You have some great fitness wisdom to share, so I will keep it in mind. ✌️
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