IIFYM

emsavluk
emsavluk Posts: 5
in Health and Weight Loss
So for basically all of my life, I've played sports and exercised regularly. Even though I lifted weights and exercised everyday throughout high school, I was maintaining a pudgy 170 lb frame. Two summers ago, I decided to do Insanity. I did the workouts everyday, but ate the same food that I normally ate. I ended up losing about 10 lbs and slimmed down and toned up quite a bit. During my freshman year of college, I continued to lose weight. Once last summer hit, I decided to start eating what I thought was healthier to increase my results. I basically stopped eating anything that was fattening or had a lot of carbs in it. Now, I've dropped to about 134 lbs and I'm looking to gain weight.

So this semester, I downloaded the myfitness pal app and started actually counting my calories. To my disbelief, I have only been consuming about 1500-1800 calories per day. Now that I am trying to gain lean mass back, I have been researching numerous ways to do so. The best way seems to be the IIFYM system of flexible dieting. So I've used several calculators and they've all told me that I should be eating about 3000 calories per day to gain weight.

So my question is, should I make the jump from 1800 to 3000 immediately, or gradually work my way up to it?

Additional info: My workouts currently follow along with the MP45 program. I'm not sure how many calories I burn in a day, but It is a vigorous daily program with lifting and HIIT cardio.

Thanks

Replies

  • Chrisparadise579
    Chrisparadise579 Posts: 411 Member
    Dude your story is almost exactly like mine haha, ive always been athletic but i stayed around 175 throughout high school and was alittle pudgy, I changed that about 9 months ago with p90x and went down to 150. Now im bulking as well and follow IIFYM and eat 3200 calories as of right now. My best advice to you would be to gradually increase your calories by about 100-200 per day every 2 weeks this will limit the amount of body fat you gain on the way up. It took me about 2 months to get from 1800 to 3200.
  • mrPopoBrah
    mrPopoBrah Posts: 10
    Do not increase calories by 100-200 a day. You will put on fat very quickly. Rather aim to increase BMR to 3000 SLOWLY over 6 months to a year. For example increasing carbs by 10g and fat 5g every wk. You will manage to keep bf% low whilst putting on lean muscle.

    Dr. Layne Norton has a great video on this. YouTube "Metabolic Damage" if you have 20min to spare lol

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