Sick of being skinny, excited to bulk up

hartsig

Hi all -

First, my stats: 26 male; 5'9"; 135 lbs.

About 5 years ago, I decided to bulk up. I did my weights and ate my food... a lot of my food. I got up to 180, most of which was fat. For some reason, I did not bulk the right way? Anyways, was lazy but changed my lifestyle and picked up running and eating healthier. Dropped a lot of weight, got an ED, and am pseudo-comfortable with gaining weight.

Anyways, so now I want to bulk up.

My plan is to follow a PHAT type program, with four days of lifting a week (2 days upper body, 2 days lower body) with cardio on the other three days.

According to IIFYM, I need to consume 2600 calories a day to "cautiously" bulk up.

My macros: 56% Carbs; 31% Protein; 12% Fat - does this look right?

MityMax96

2600 calories and you are still going to run?

I don't know....doing cardio while trying to bulk, means you will need to add in a lot more calories.

thesophierose

Dont do so much cardio... it kind of defiles the point of bulking.

neandermagnon

Look up Mark Rippetoe's programme Starting Strength, including his GOMAD eating plan. It's ideal for men your age to put on a lot of weight. Forget split routines for now, you need a beginners level programme that's going to make you gain mass and strength, that means full body 3x a week. Whether you're a beginner or advanced is not about how much training you've done before, it's about whether you've done the kind of programme that I'm recommending before or not. Seriously, I made that mistake, was faffing around with split routines and advanced level programmes and not getting very far, until I started stronglifts 5x5 while eating at a surplus, I gained huge amounts of strength, and 10lb in weight, most of which was lean mass (I'm female so that's a lot, young men typically gain a LOT more than that on the same programme). Stronglifts and Starting Strength are the same kind of programme. Stronglifts is downloadable for free, but Starting Strength is a lot better as it has a lot more useful info with it and there's a DVD. it;s not that expensive either, just the normal cost of a book and a DVD.

To bulk successfully, you need to have the stimulus for your body to build muscle, i.e. training the right way, and also the energy and raw materials to build it, i.e. enough calories and enough protein. I concur with the others on this thread who said that too much cardio is counterproductive. If you've found it hard to gain weight in the past, then the reason would usually be that you find it difficult to eat enough to put the weight on, in which case all cardio will do is burn a whole ton of calories, meaning you have to eat back ALL those calories and then a surplus on top of that, to actually gain weight. Weight gain only happens if you eat more than you burn off, the weight training programme is what makes your body put that weight on as muscle, not fat. Without a surplus of calories you won't gain weight, muscle or fat. You can still gain strength without gaining mass but its seems from your OP that it's mass that you want.