how many people have gained weight?

AliceDark

Weight gain can be really hard, it depends on the person's appetite... just as some people struggle to lose weight because they still feel hungry even after they've eaten enough.............. some people feel full after eating a certain amount and forcing themselves to eat more just makes them feel nauseous. So yeah, it can be really hard to gain weight. They need to focus on foods that have a high calorie density, so they can get in more calories before they feel full. As the person above says, doubling up on broccoli isn't going to work.

This. I had no idea how hard it was going to be when I started! Losing weight is a breeze compared to trying to gain, at least for me.

It's really just finding the right combination of "eat more" and "pick up heavy things, then put them down." The trouble is that everyone's combination is different, so it's mostly just experimenting until you figure it out. Plus, if you're a woman and you've heard nothing but diet tips your whole life, be prepared for it to completely spin your head.

chrisdavey

yep. Used it for bulking cutting and maintenance. Turns out the laws of thermodynamics are true :happy:

jimmmer

yep. Used it for bulking cutting and maintenance. Turns out the laws of thermodynamics are true :happy:

Ha ha!

What a shocker....

jimmmer

thx finally an answer other then just eat more.

If you're not gaining weight then the answer IS to eat more.

Now, how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

So the gain weight part is easy: eat more. Maximising how much of that is deposited as muscle is the tricky part...

Fithealthyforlife

thx finally an answer other then just eat more.

If you're not gaining weight then the answer IS to eat more.

Now, how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

So the gain weight part is easy: eat more. Maximising how much of that is deposited as muscle is the tricky part...

That's not strictly true. I'm not picking on you or your answer specifically. I just want to clear up misconceptions...

There are people who can eat a 400 to 500-calorie surplus each day and gain far less fat than would be predicted. Such people are fairly resistant to fat gain. How? The body finds other ways to burn the calories up, like moving more, etc. (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Usually such people are male, young, and thin with low bodyfat. I'm one of these people. I gain less fat than most people from overeating. The only way I can gain significant weight, is a combination of eating a surplus AND working out hard enough to cause muscle growth. If I just do one or the other, very little happens. (On a surplus alone I gain fat, but less than most people. I also feel disgusting when I do that.)

If you believe in body types, I am half and half what you call "ecto" and "meso"...right smack between the two.

Bottom line, just because someone is not gaining substantial weight does not necessarily mean they're not eating enough. It could also mean their strength training simply isn't up to snuff. And the response to eating and working out varies from person-to-person as well as over an individual's own lifetime.

edwinning

This is my third year hitting the gym fairly consistently. I weight about 125lbs @ 5' 7" when I first started. In the first year I gained about 15 lbs. I now weigh about 141 lbs and slowly adding weight still. I'm fairly active and my daily calorie intake is at 3200.
I was hitting the gym after work 4 days a week for the first 2 years. I just switched to 3 days a week (full body) to change things
a bit.

MFP is really great (just started using it) and very easy to use!

jimmmer

thx finally an answer other then just eat more.

If you're not gaining weight then the answer IS to eat more.

Now, how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

So the gain weight part is easy: eat more. Maximising how much of that is deposited as muscle is the tricky part...

That's not strictly true. I'm not picking on you or your answer specifically. I just want to clear up misconceptions...

There are people who can eat a 400 to 500-calorie surplus each day and gain far less fat than would be predicted. Such people are fairly resistant to fat gain. How? The body finds other ways to burn the calories up, like moving more, etc. (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Usually such people are male, young, and thin with low bodyfat. I'm one of these people. I gain less fat than most people from overeating. The only way I can gain significant weight, is a combination of eating a surplus AND working out hard enough to cause muscle growth. If I just do one or the other, very little happens. (On a surplus alone I gain fat, but less than most people. I also feel disgusting when I do that.)

If you believe in body types, I am half and half what you call "ecto" and "meso"...right smack between the two.

Bottom line, just because someone is not gaining substantial weight does not necessarily mean they're not eating enough. It could also mean their strength training simply isn't up to snuff. And the response to eating and working out varies from person-to-person as well as over an individual's own lifetime.

So I eat more. So I subconsciously become more active. Thus my TDEE is higher. Thus I must eat more to be in a surplus. I've still got to overcome my TDEE (which includes stuff like NEAT)

So what? Basically, you're overthinking it (It's ok, you're in good company on these forums).

You estimate your TDEE using whatever method seems best to you. You eat that + X% to get the weight gain you want. 2 weeks later, if you didn't gain the amount you wanted, re-estimate based on the new data and try again. Rinse. Repeat. Eventually, you'll be eating enough to gain at the rate you want. You can't up NEAT unconsciously indefinitely... you'll out-eat it in the end.

sugermonkey37

Look at pictures of how you wanna look

Fithealthyforlife

thx finally an answer other then just eat more.

If you're not gaining weight then the answer IS to eat more.

Now, how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

So the gain weight part is easy: eat more. Maximising how much of that is deposited as muscle is the tricky part...

That's not strictly true. I'm not picking on you or your answer specifically. I just want to clear up misconceptions...

There are people who can eat a 400 to 500-calorie surplus each day and gain far less fat than would be predicted. Such people are fairly resistant to fat gain. How? The body finds other ways to burn the calories up, like moving more, etc. (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Usually such people are male, young, and thin with low bodyfat. I'm one of these people. I gain less fat than most people from overeating. The only way I can gain significant weight, is a combination of eating a surplus AND working out hard enough to cause muscle growth. If I just do one or the other, very little happens. (On a surplus alone I gain fat, but less than most people. I also feel disgusting when I do that.)

If you believe in body types, I am half and half what you call "ecto" and "meso"...right smack between the two.

Bottom line, just because someone is not gaining substantial weight does not necessarily mean they're not eating enough. It could also mean their strength training simply isn't up to snuff. And the response to eating and working out varies from person-to-person as well as over an individual's own lifetime.

So I eat more. So I subconsciously become more active. Thus my TDEE is higher. Thus I must eat more to be in a surplus. I've still got to overcome my TDEE (which includes stuff like NEAT)

So what? Basically, you're overthinking it (It's ok, you're in good company on these forums).

You estimate your TDEE using whatever method seems best to you. You eat that + X% to get the weight gain you want. 2 weeks later, if you didn't gain the amount you wanted, re-estimate based on the new data and try again. Rinse. Repeat. Eventually, you'll be eating enough to gain at the rate you want. You can't up NEAT unconsciously indefinitely... you'll out-eat it in the end.

Unfortunately, you missed my whole point...

Some people ramp up NEAT in a surplus When they're NOT working out hard enough. It's the body's way to get us to "work out", but it's not effective in helping one to bulk. It does minimize fat gain though. The solution, assuming you're gaining a little bit of fat, is not to keep eating more and more carbs/calories and get really fat. The solution is to perfect the training routine, imho. Training hard will reduce excessive NEAT and allow the calories to go to muscle repair. A 1000-calorie surplus shouldn't be necessary, for example. But if one keeps upping calories too much, one could get to that point, imho. Granted there wold be a lot of fat gain...and maybe NEAT, too. BEAT the NEAT! LOL. ;-)

jimmmer

thx finally an answer other then just eat more.

If you're not gaining weight then the answer IS to eat more.

Now, how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

So the gain weight part is easy: eat more. Maximising how much of that is deposited as muscle is the tricky part...

That's not strictly true. I'm not picking on you or your answer specifically. I just want to clear up misconceptions...

There are people who can eat a 400 to 500-calorie surplus each day and gain far less fat than would be predicted. Such people are fairly resistant to fat gain. How? The body finds other ways to burn the calories up, like moving more, etc. (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Usually such people are male, young, and thin with low bodyfat. I'm one of these people. I gain less fat than most people from overeating. The only way I can gain significant weight, is a combination of eating a surplus AND working out hard enough to cause muscle growth. If I just do one or the other, very little happens. (On a surplus alone I gain fat, but less than most people. I also feel disgusting when I do that.)

If you believe in body types, I am half and half what you call "ecto" and "meso"...right smack between the two.

Bottom line, just because someone is not gaining substantial weight does not necessarily mean they're not eating enough. It could also mean their strength training simply isn't up to snuff. And the response to eating and working out varies from person-to-person as well as over an individual's own lifetime.

So I eat more. So I subconsciously become more active. Thus my TDEE is higher. Thus I must eat more to be in a surplus. I've still got to overcome my TDEE (which includes stuff like NEAT)

So what? Basically, you're overthinking it (It's ok, you're in good company on these forums).

You estimate your TDEE using whatever method seems best to you. You eat that + X% to get the weight gain you want. 2 weeks later, if you didn't gain the amount you wanted, re-estimate based on the new data and try again. Rinse. Repeat. Eventually, you'll be eating enough to gain at the rate you want. You can't up NEAT unconsciously indefinitely... you'll out-eat it in the end.

Unfortunately, you missed my whole point...

Some people ramp up NEAT in a surplus When they're NOT working out hard enough. It's the body's way to get us to "work out", but it's not effective in helping one to bulk. It does minimize fat gain though. The solution, assuming you're gaining a little bit of fat, is not to keep eating more and more carbs/calories and get really fat. The solution is to perfect the training routine, imho. Training hard will reduce excessive NEAT and allow the calories to go to muscle repair. A 1000-calorie surplus shouldn't be necessary, for example. But if one keeps upping calories too much, one could get to that point, imho. Granted there wold be a lot of fat gain...and maybe NEAT, too. BEAT the NEAT! LOL. ;-)

The thing is I am taking all the things you should do consciously as given: Workout with sufficient intensity, create a non-retarded schedule that has sufficient volume and recovery (there are plenty available online if you need a ready-made one) and eat sufficient food with a high enough protein count. If you can't even manage to consistently stay on a proper training schedule with sufficient intensity, then you're already doomed to fail. It's ridiculous to talk about people bulking and not working out properly.

Anyway, if you increase NEAT unconsciously, then you've just increased your TDEE. All other factors being in the shape I describe above, the solution is to eat more. I'm not talking about trying to plunge into a 1000 cal surplus - I'm not sure where you got that from. If you want to gain a 1/2lb/week, just shoot for eating enough to make that happen. Then you'll be roughly about 250 over a day (increased NEAT included). It's not magic.

As far a achieving a favourable p-ratio I believe my original post included this:

how much of that goes to fat and how much to muscle will depend on the size of your surplus, macronutrient composition of your diet, your gender, genetics, age, training experience, starting leanness and current training regimen.

Many factors you have no control over (age, gender, etc) and many you do (bf% at start of bulk, training regimen, diet, macro, size of surplus). Basically, don't worry about the ones you can't change and focus in with laser-like intensity on the one's you can. You're going to deposit some fat in a bulk even if you have all the advantages in the world going for you - probably best to accept that fact and just schedule in a decently managed cut at the end of your bulk.