Muscle gain for fast metabolisms

[korny]

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be making a serious effort to work towards my goal of putting on 20lbs of muscle within a year. I honestly have no idea if that's even realistic for someone with a metabolism like mine, but I have never exceeded the 125lb mark. I fluctuate from 120-125lbs and it is very rare that I ever hit the 125.

For the first time in my life, I've been feeling a little self-conscious about my size these past few months. Also, I have found someone in my life who is nothing short of amazing and I feel naturally motivated to want to look as good as I possibly can for her, even if she accepts me as I am. I've always sort of accepted the fact that I'm just a small guy, but recently felt the need to start bulking up. I have no desire whatsoever to be a muscular dude, I simply want to be fit, toned, and of a noticeably larger build than my emaciated frame.

I know that in order to gain any sort of weight for someone with a metabolism like mine, you have to really increase the amount you eat, especially protein. Basically, is it truly just a matter of increasing my appetite, perhaps drinking creatine shakes, legitimately working the muscles to where I'm sore beyond measure but not overdoing it etc? Are there any products and things I can do in particular other than the aforementioned that can really help me out here? I am open to all suggestions. I intend to take this very seriously and could really use some advice here.

[Reach]

So you want to build some muscle. That means you'll basically be eating and training like a 'muscular dude' until you reach your goal (at which point you can cut back until you stabilize).

I will lay down the core components of building muscle. These apply to absolutely anyone. If you follow these principles you will build muscle. I will also order them in terms of importance.



1. Eat enough food to gain weight. Your metabolism is irrelevant. You need to eat enough to increase your bodyweight beyond 125 lbs. If you want to gain 20 lbs of muscle I would probably shoot to reach 155 lbs by the end of the year.

This means regular weigh ins. Get a scale, weigh yourself every morning or every few mornings, right when you get up, after using the bathroom (you want to be as consistent as possible. If your weight, on average, is not increasing through the week, you need to eat more. More total calories.

For protein, stick to 100-125 grams per day.

For you, this will probably be the biggest problem. I recommend stuffing more things with extremely low satiety into your face in the evening even when you are completely full. You may feel sick at first because you will be over-full, but you'll need to do it to gain weight. Low satiety foods -> ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate milk...things like that. Get them into you in sufficient quantities to start increasing the number on the scale.

2. Progressive overload of resistance. You take a resistance exercise (e.g. bench press), and the goal is to increase the amount of weight you move over time while maintaining the same number of reps and sets.

e.g. if you start off benching 100 lbs for 8 reps, your goal for your next session is 105 for 8. I recommend 3 sets for most exercises.

3. Rest sufficiently. Give any particular muscle group 48 hours to recover before you work them again, and make sure you are sleeping lots every night. Muscles grow during rest, NOT at the gym!


Summary: You build muscle by overloading your total caloric intake in combination with the amount of weight you lift. The excess energy you get from the excess food provides the substrate for building muscle, and increasing the weight you move is the stimulus that tells your body to build.

From there, you rest and your body builds some muscle.

In terms of toning, this is usually a separate process referred to as 'cutting'. After you have built your desired amount of muscle, you decrease calories while maintaining the amount of weight you lift and let your body burn fat while maintaining your new found muscle.

[Reincarnate]

korny: I may be completely wrong on this, but my understanding is that "metabolism" tends to be given too much credit (or blame, depending) for things. People who tend to "have a fast metabolism" are likely not eating as much as they think they are (in terms of calories).

[Poison-]

Reach pretty much nailed it. Follow what he said and you'll reach you goals if you put the effort in. Good luck, man.

[NorthStrong]

Lift weights and eat more than you want to. You probably don't eat much.

[SCWolf]

You're in the same position as me when I started, besides the girl thing.

Reach pretty much summed it up.

I'd say start counting calories, and expect this diet change to be difficult. You're probably going to eat until you feel over-full for the first little while until your body adjusts. If you're looking for ways to get all your calories in within the day without feeling like death, it's probably best to start off with 3 meals (morning, afternoon and night). As you become more experience with your dieting and your body's needs, you can do pretty much whatever floats your boat. But at the beginning it helps to have a guide.

The "Dieting for the lazy" thread might help you out a bit.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

korny: I may be completely wrong on this, but my understanding is that "metabolism" tends to be given too much credit (or blame, depending) for things. People who tend to "have a fast metabolism" are likely not eating as much as they think they are (in terms of calories).

As much as you know most of this, I'll expand on it to give him some more information.

In biochemistry we talked about this pretty exhaustively, and variances in metabolism don't seem to account for more than 500 calories at the absolute most, if you standardize other directly contributing factors such as muscle mass. And 500 calories would be a dramatic outlier; most people deviate much less than that from the mean.

i.e. it's not really that relevant. Two far more important factors are 1. Appetite and 2. Activity level.

Appetite is interesting because it's the most important factor, yet people don't really think about it much. You get hungry, you eat, but what people don't realize is that this is actually controlled neurologically and not in the stomach/intestines, and that this can actually vary quite substantially.

(As an aside there are feedback mechanisms in the stomach and intestines to help regulate hunger but they do not drive it. Additionally you can very easily feel hungry even with food in your stomach and you can not feel hungry despite having nothing there. It's more neurological than it is related to food itself)

Ideally appetite should match with caloric needs to prevent weight gain but often times that is not what is actually happening. For many people, appetite is higher than what the body actually needs, and you will feel hungry if you eat normally. This is where people most often drop the 'muh genetics' card when trying to explain why they're fat, and while it has quite a bit of merit that isn't to say it's not controllable if you're smart about it.

On the flip side, Korny probably has the opposite problem. Appetite is below where caloric needs are and he has lost weight to the point that he's quite small compared to the average person before finally leveling out.


As for activity level, some people are just more active than others and this causes them to burn off more than others, allowing them to eat more. So you get the illusion of eating tons of food while not gaining weight. However, this isn't usually the root of the problem because appetite often adjusts itself to activity level. This is why weighing yourself is so important. Most studies show that people eat back proportionally to how much they burn off assuming they are not counting their calories! The brain keeps track of these things and will stimulate higher degrees of hunger in response to higher degrees of exercise.

In Korny's case it will be his brain suppressing the urge to eat, especially at first. As I said before, the biggest fight will be psychological, fighting the urge to stop eating. Trusting this urge will maintain your weight. The body's best mechanism against eating in surplus will be to make you feel sick, which will definitely make you want to stop eating. Chris can probably directly attest to this because I remember back when he started lifting and wasn't making progress. I tried to get him to eat more but he got really sick consistently and it was a battle (that he eventually won ;) )

Your biggest weapon against this is to eat as much food as you can that has nearly no satiety at all. This includes liquid calories and foods extremely rich in carbs and fat. It will be very important to avoid dry foods high in protein but low in fat and carbohydrates. They're too filling. E.g. if you want to eat chicken, eat the legs with the skins attached. Avoid 'clean eating', as you've probably heard many bodybuilders eat this way. Not necessary; it will probably be counterproductive in your case as it will make you feel too full to continue eating.

[Reincarnate]

Reach: How different is your diet when cutting vs bulking, in terms of needing to switch from high-satiety to low-satiety foods?

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Reach: How different is your diet when cutting vs bulking, in terms of needing to switch from high-satiety to low-satiety foods?

Well when I'm bulking I focus on filling up in the evening on low satiety foods, other than vegetables if I'm adding those in. I add in things like ice cream and peanut butter and milk all the time (now if we want to talk about why I think it's fine to eat these things in moderation, contrary to popular belief, we can start another thread).

Cutting? High satiety foods are a must, unless you like going insane.

Though I usually leave enough macros in my diet to have something 'dirty' almost every day. I do this again to retain sanity. Dieting for months at a time while trying to remove 100% of the junk from your diet is stupid IMO because it increases risk of relapse and increases total cheating.