[benguino]

Originally Posted by Reach

Well, I used to body build, so I can give some advice here.

It's true that you need to gain weight in order to gain muscle, but not necessarily because your body will 'burn muscle' if you don't. Your body generally doesn't burn muscle for energy; it would only ever do so if you had no carbohydrates left in your body and you were burning fat at an excessive rate (i.e. you were starving to death. Typical in anorexic people).

You need a caloric surplus in your body to repair damage to muscle tissue during a workout, and also to give your body the resources it needs to build additional muscle on top of existing muscle.

The whole goal of lifting weights for muscle is basically to strain your body enough to signal the fact that you need more muscle. All of the actual muscle building occurs between workouts, using the additional calories you need to ingest into your body.

As such, rest often when bulking up. You only need to workout 2-3 times a week, with large rests in between. However, when you workout, you need to push yourself to the breaking point and you need to lift with emphasis on heavy weights, not reps. Somewhere between 10-15 reps is usually optimal, for 3 sets. If you're doing more, you need more weight.

In the meantime, eat more protein, eat more often, eat more fat, drink lots of water and take a multivitamin. If you normally ingest some 1500 calories a day to maintain your body weight you're going to need to go for more like 3000-4500.

Thanks for the advice. Also, about how much should the weights that I'm using weigh?