Mind->Muscle Connection ISN'T The Same Thing As Muscle->Mind Connection!

What the Heck do I mean by that?

Half the people swear that Mind/Muscle Connection is a thing. Though in the most literal sense, if you successfully move a weight (say, you press a load over your head), then you already HAVE a mind-muscle connection. Does that make sense? If you MOVED the weight, then your mind-muscle connection is functioning correctly.

But you have a camp of people that insist you get more benefit from feeeeling the muscle fire.

Like really focusing on the sensation of the movement, rather than just moving it in the prescribed manner. (What do I mean by 'prescribed manner'? I mean not mindlessly swinging the weight, but using the correct tempo of concentric vs. eccentric). But if you're spending one second up, somewhat explosively, and using a controlled 2-3 second descent, or whatever, it really doesn't matter where your head is at during the repetition. The Mind is "connected" in both cases!

If the same time-under-tension is being applied rep-per-rep in each approach ("fiber-focused" versus "just-move-the-weight"), then what benefit does greater attention to the firing pattern confer? Does the practitioner of weight-moving realize any additional degree of adaptation from subjectively experiencing the contraction?

No. I want to say no. (Caveat: I should have opened with "I'm 50/50 on the MMC thing"). But I want to say "NO", there's no added benefit. If the weight you're lifting is going up over time, and an appropriate volume of challenging stimulus is being applied progressively, size & strength will improve completely independent of your mental locus.

 

So I want to propose an alteration to the definition of MMC. (This is in the same vein that "Time Under Tension" is often mis-applied, to mistakenly mean "the speed of the reps" rather than "total time under the bar"). The Mind/Muscle-Connection ought to be understood to mean "The mind getting better at directing the muscle", rather than "The muscle gets better at speaking to the mind".

Is that somewhat clear? The Mind is in the Driver's seat, baby. The mind is the Force and the AGENT which pulls the puppet-strings of tendon and flesh. The brain is not a meek observer, looking & listening for instruction from the muscle and the load itself. Of course, it's aware of the feedback coming from the bar through the hands, and up the spine. That goes without saying.

But it's the MIND itself which is pushing the muscles to go where they will. The muscles themselves will lie to you. They're sneaky. The musculature, like the appetite, will often fabricate a narrative of its own agenda. Such as "You've already done enough; you really should just listen to your body." or "Why do one more rep? You're good". (I'm not encouraging poor technique, I'm just saying don't give up easy).

See, MMC is a close relative of that bastard child, "Perfect Form". P/F is the voice that tells you 12 clean, perfect reps with even tempo and no form-breakdown is somehow superior to 12 reps where the first 9 are solid, the next two slow down, and the last one is a total grinder. This is balderdash. If you never see form breakdown, if you always have more than 5 reps in reserve, you might not really be doing challenging work. In this same way, MMC often tricks lifters into going too slow, with too light a load.

If you want to improve Mind/Muscle-Connection, work on pushing past your self-imposed limitations.

If you've never done a set of 20 squats, start there. Observe safe proper technique, of course.

But learning to PUSH further past the point you would normally tap out?

That's what it means to improve your MMC.

FEED CONVERSION RATIO: A Simple Fact of Gaining

What is the FEED CONVERSION RATIO, and does it have any relevance to hard-gainers? Yes, so tuck in for a long read. You need to know that foods you eat are not 100% utilized. You do not digest everything you eat. Some of the calories you eat slip out the other end. Digestion is never 100% efficient. How can we know this? Well, pardon the "yuck"-factor, but if you've ever seen corn or peas in your stool, you know it. If lactose makes you gassy, that attests to this. The very fact that 30% of nuts you eat are eliminated, if not well-chewed, is also proof of this. THIS is why I often say, "You're not a hard-gainer, you're a hard-digester". This is often the result of mal-absorption.

See, it's not how much you can eat, it's how much you can digest. And some people are just "not as good" at digestion. This isn't your "metabolism", this is poor food utilization. Additional factors contribute to our ability to process the foods we eat. Food calories can be lost in other ways, to other physiological processes. But we want to maximize the conversion of our calories into weight gain, correct? This is why I wanted to take a moment to have a closer look at this concept of Feed Conversion Ratio. Where does this ratio come from? And does it have any relevance to a hardgainer simply trying to put on good weight?

This Feed Conversion Ratio comes from the livestock industry. These are the folks who fatten up pigs and cattle, to get them to market. These are the people who are highly invested in getting their animals quickly to a certain weight. The animal's gains are literally the farmer's profits. And it would be ideal if each pound of feed produced a pound of meat. But it's nowhere close to this number! The ratio averages 3:1 in the example of a pig. It takes roughly 3 pounds of feed to yield 1 pound of weight. As an example, you might feed 665 pounds of feed to a pig in the weeks it weighs between 40 pounds and 280 pounds. You would calculate the ratio as "665 pounds of feed divided by 240 pounds of weight gain for a score of 2.77". You could thus say "the Feed Conversion Ratio is 2.77:1" in this instance.

Now, every animal has a different score for feeding efficiency. For beef cattle, FCR calculated on live weight gain of 4.5–7.5 was in the normal range with an FCR above 6 being typical. Some data for sheep illustrate variations in FCR. An FCR (kg feed dry matter intake per kg live mass gain) for lambs is often in the range of about 4 to 5 on high-concentrate rations. As of 2011 in the US, broiler chickens has an FCR of 1.6 based on body weight gain, and mature in 39 days. A lower first number in the ratio is desirable, as less feed is required to yield the same amount of meat.

If it requires 6 pounds of feed to make each pound of beef, versus 3 pounds of feed to produce a pound of pork, versus only 1.6 pounds of feed to grow a pound of chicken, then it's obvious that chicken is more economic in the simple sense that you spend less on animal food to grow the animal for market sale. But even on a species-by-species basis, there is variance within the species breed-by-breed. Sure, the average for a pig is 3:1. But some breeds of pigs might require 3.5 pounds of feed, on average, to gain a pound of weight, while another breed of pig only needs 2.6 pounds of feed to gain that same pound of pork. The latter breed gains weight & muscle with less food.

By this logic, we must extrapolate a conclusion that even among human people, there is not an equal ability to convert food into weight with an identical efficiency. We cannot assume that everyone responds to food (calories) in an identical manner. Is this due to "metabolism"? Largely, NO. Studies in metabolic wards have confirmed that although some people do have higher basal metabolic rates (resting metabolism), the effect is very slight. It's on the order of about 150-200 calories. Of people with identical height, weight, and body composition, one person might burn 150 more calories in a day. That's really not a lot. So what's going on with hardgainers who swear up & down that they're eating so much more than everyone else? Is this really happening?

First, can we even find a Feed Conversion Ratio for humans? It doubtlessly exists. But that would be beyond the scope of this article. Moreover, it would be highly impractical as well as unethical. For starters, we aren't eating an iso-caloric pelletized food kibble for all of our food intake needs. We also aren't looking at basic-rate growth from infancy-to-adulthood based on per-pound of feed; we're looking in the particular context of weight gain in response to resistance-training hypertrophy. But we don't need to know a rate of efficiency. It's enough to know that the absorption & assimilation of food is variable. And it's affected by other variables, besides enzymatic digestion.

Environment and Temperature can have a big effect on appetite. A pig’s environment can affect its food consumption and conversion. The ambient temperature of the pen must be kept in the thermo-neutral range or it will have a negative influence on a pig’s appetite. Pigs that are cold will eat more feed. Pigs that are hot will eat less. High humidity can also reduce appetite, as can poor ventilation. As a human goes, I can personally attest that I don't want to eat as much when it's too warm, or too stuffy. If "poor appetite" is a complaint of yours, this could be one explanation: Your environment is simply too warm for you to get the signal to eat for warmth! A meal should make you warm, due in part to the thermic effect of food. Digesting food requires your body to ramp up, and if you're already warm, hunger may be blunted or muted altogether. And conversely, if it's far too cold, animals will eat more, but also burn more, for heat. Some calories will be lost to heat, when they could have been used for growth.

Are we pigs in a pen being raised for food? Certainly not. But is it unreasonable to assume ambient temperatures play a factor in appetite, as well as metabolism, in the human? Burning body fat for heat is an element of "calories out", and it's the largest component of non-exercise energy expenditure. Are you guilty of insisting on wearing a T-shirt in the house during Winter, instead of bundling up a little bit indoors? Not-eating when too warm can impair appetite some of the time, coupled with over-burning when exposed to cooler temperatures and needlessly burning calories for heat another part of the time, can both contribute to impaired weight gain for two different reasons.

Animal Stress also factors into appetite strength. If the density of pigs in the pen is too high, they will experience stress which results in eating less. I'm aware that only so many extrapolations can be made from our pig-farming corollary here, but this also bears legitimacy: People, too, often eat less in times of stress (some are known to eat more, but that's not our demographic). Common stress can play a big role in appetite impairment. So it goes without saying, you might be experiencing stressors in your life, even if unbeknownst to you. Making time to relax before eating a meal might help unlock some of that. A simple 10-minute walk to clear your head and get some fresh air can work wonders in giving your appetite the boost it needs. Mindfulness & meditation may also promote de-stressing.

To shift back to another topic, there is also an effect that results in poor food utilization, which I call the "Novel Meal Phenomenon". This is the result of an excessively varied diet, to which the body does not have sufficient time to adapt. This is something you can observe if you've ever had a dog: They acclimatize to their particular brand of dog food and this produces a firm healthy stool. But if you switch food brands suddenly, they'll typically have loose stools for the next couple of days while they adjust to the different macro composition and nutritional profile of the food. This is why it is recommended to mix a little of the new food with the food the dog is already accustomed to, in order to gradually transition the dog to the new food over a couple of weeks, rather than switching all at once. This gives your canine companion some time to re-calibrate its own production of digestive enzymes.

When you are exposed to many of the same foods on a regular basis, your body starts to anticipate them and becomes more efficient at processing them. And although there's still not 100% conversion to usable calories for energy, repair, and growth, more of the total food value is harnessed. If you are often troubled by loose and sloppy bowel movements, it might be due to the novel foods that you've eaten; you've thrown your gut biome a curve-ball. (It's not that those foods are necessarily "bad", and had you eaten only those meals, you likewise would have adapted to them over time, by modifying your endogenous enzyme profile). It's a demonstrable fact many people are enzyme-deficient. Some have a poor stomach pH, and will not absorb foods the same way as someone else can. But this is easily remedied. There's a limit to what enzymes you can make, but not to which enzymes you can take.

This is why I'm continually recommending either supplemental digestive enzymes, or enzyme-rich food sources, or both, if you're trying to gain meaningful mass. If you provide digestive support, you will convert more of the foods you eat into mass. If you're hell-bent on running GOMAD (Gallon of Milk a Day), but milk always makes you gassy and crampy, Dairy is probably not a desirable candidate food. (Though if you're determined to attempt it, it would behoove you to either drink only lactose-free milk, or take a lactase-containing digestive supplement alongside it each time. What sense is there throwing a food into the mix, if you're unable to process a component of the food?) Additionally, there is value in probiotics for gut biome support. 

Simply lowering the stomach pH (making it more acidic) can also help. Eating more citrus fruits, berries, and fibrous greens is another tactic to improve digestion. You'll be getting necessary vitamin C, valuable polyphenols and other micro-nutrients, but the biggest value is in digestive support. They also contain fermentable carbs that nourish the gut biome. These are the intestinal bacteria that help digest your other foods. Some of the things you cannot digest, your gut flora will digest for you. Then, you digest the gut flora, and the circle is complete. A thriving gut biome is absolutely necessary not only for raw digestion, but for overall health. At times, I've also kept a bottle of lemon juice in the fridge (not lemonade, but un-sugared, un-watered-down pure lemon juice), of which I drink a Tablespoon-sized shot after a large and bloating meal; it greatly assists in breaking down foods.

Further, this is also why I recommend sticking to 3 or 4 of the same meals which comprise 90% of your bulking diet. Find a handful of meals you don't mind eating all the time. Beef & rice, chicken & pasta, chili & cornbread, beef & bean burritos, tuna sandwiches, whatever your jam is. Rotating through the same small selection of meals will make food prep easier, it will make calorie tracking easier, and it ultimately helps take the guesswork out of what to eat next when it's time to eat again. But equally important, your delicate gut biome will become more adept and adroit and maximizing food absorption. More of the calories you consume will convert into usable energy, primarily in the form of meaningful weight gain. Try thinking of your stomach & intestines as a living creature you have to take care of, like an exotic pet. And when you provide for all the needs of this magical animal, it returns the favor by nourishing and growing YOUR body in return. When it is happy and healthy, it will bestow great gains upon you!

EAT With Purpose! We're All Gonna Make It!

A Tale of Two Lifters: "Bulky Bob" & "Gaining Greg".

 

Lifter 'A', let's call him Bob. Bob wants to "bulk" to build muscle quickly. Bob is probably already too high in fat to begin a massing phase, but he heard about "newb gains" in the first year of lifting, so Bob dives in with reckless abandon. He signs up at a local gym, eager to get jacked.

Bob starts with an incorrect TDEE estimation he thinks he can trust, since it came from a TDEE "calculator". But it's only an estimate based off of self-reporting of activity level. Bob fancies himself as far more active than he is, though in actuality he will be adding only 3 or 4 days of gym stuff to his otherwise sedentary life. Bob avoids cardio & conditioning work altogether, because he heard it will make building muscle harder. He only wants to do enough lifting to grow, and nothing more. Bob is lucky if he follows any program at all...

What Bob does for the first 6 months is not a proper program, it's just a routine; it's just a list of exercises, and some of them he doesn't bother with. He does the same 3 sets of 10 for a couple lifts, mostly arms; and he doesn't squat at all because he thinks his legs are large enough. His leg size is mostly due to fat, though. Or maybe he squats once or twice per month. Because he wants extra definition. But hitting legs sucks, and is demotivating. He adds a little weight to the bar now and then.

Bob does some flat bench, some light overhead dumbbell work, plenty of bicep curls of course, cable-flyes etc., but no real pulling to speak of. Yes, he does some lat pull-downs, because bodybuilders do them. But Bob cannot do a single pull-up, because he's "training for size, not strength", whatever that means. He certainly doesn't deadlift, because Bob heard horror stories about shattered backs & slipped discs. Besides, he doesn't really see the point. Bob is mostly preoccupied with his one-rep max for bench. But he also misses days here and there, worried that he shouldn't train while sore; or let's be honest, he just didn't feel like it.

Bob started out roughly counting calories for a month, but this turned into estimates, and soon gave way to just eating anything and everything he wanted. "It doesn't matter, I'm bulking!". If a pound per week is normal, 5 or 6 per month should be okay, maybe even better? He surely doesn't wanna waste those "newb gains" he heard about. Bob eats pizza, burgers, anything, everything, but he always remembers to drink a scoop of whey twice per day. Protein will make this happen! He wants to make the most of this Dreamer bulk he's on, and he plugs away at the same minimalist program month after month. Maybe half-way through the year he finally tries to follow an odd program he found somewhere, but Bob doesn't really push himself.

To be fair, Bob did see some real progress in the first month or two, since he was using some of these muscles for the first time. They responded with a little growth, because new lifters will respond to anything. He looked & felt even bigger in the third month, since everything was definitely "bigger". He was holding more water overall, but then fat cells started filling up too. Bob kind of fucks around in the gym for about 60 minutes, when his workout routine would take anyone else only 30 minutes to complete, between all his mirror-posing and trips to the water fountain. He is good at tying up equipment.

Bob weighs himself only once every two weeks or so. Six months go by. Eight months. Bob feels huge, and he is. Oh, Bob does not train abs because "you can't see them, anyways!" Bob did not even start his bulk with abs, so he had no "abs" to lose. He knows "some" of the mass in his midsection is fat. Or is it? Is it food? Yes, it is also food, some of it from the day before. But Bob is stoked because of all the "sick gains" he's making. He knows he should "cut" as some point, to get shredded and reveal all the muscle he thinks he has built. But he still wants to make the most of this first bulk...

A year goes by. Bob has gained 50 pounds; five of them were water, ten pounds (at most) were muscle. Bob has 35 more pounds of fat now. Bob has fucked up his bulk. He is bummed and blames his "bad genetics".

Lifter 'B', let's call him "Greg". Greg also wants to start lifting, and build muscle. He will likewise dedicate his first year of lifting to this task of bulking. Greg has read a little more beforehand, on such topics as training and diet, so he enters this thing a bit more knowledgeable. He has found a good free program online, and he rearranges a few things in his schedule to accommodate lifting 6 days per week.

Yes, he's a full-time student, and also has a part-time job. But he's always been enthralled by a well-developed physique, so he will prioritize this. Sure, some things are on hold. He still has a good social life. Greg wakes up early to lift first thing in the morning. He is fortunate to join a gym that's only a 12-minute bike ride from his home. He eats a snack in transit, squeezes in a full session at the gym in only 43 minutes, rides back, showers, and drinks a meal-replacement shake. Then he properly begins his day.

He'd prefer to not lift so early, but that's what works for Greg at this time. He is mindful to follow his program, increasing weight when prescribed. He hits a different main lift each day in the gym, followed by a supplemental variation of the main lift, and then several accessory movements including opposite muscle groups and some isolation work. Greg is able to super-set the last 3 exercises in the interest of time. In all, it's compact & well-structured. It works well!

All his compound lifts are going up, and he is visibly more muscular after only four months. He started on a decent introductory program which worked well enough, then Greg found a better program with more volume and a greater focus on certain body parts, and greater frequency for his favorite lifts. He was better prepared when he switched to it, since he'd built a base of strength first. He even looks forward to squatting & deadlifting!

How does Greg eat? For the first 2 months he ate only slightly more food, because he was clearly hungrier from the additional effort. But he wanted to get a good baseline approximation of his personal calorie intake, since he was still learning to track calories accurately. Greg invested in a food scale, and a small amount of containers with lids; he settled on 3 or 4 different meals he didn't mind eating regularly. This was in addition to his post-training meal-shakes, and several snacks. He made a point of eating more protein overall, mindful to include green veggies, and healthful fats. Carbs made it easier to hit his calorie targets.

After ironing out the kinks of cooking, meal-prep, and bringing a cooler with food to re-heat while at work etc, Greg also arrived at a good figure for how many calories he now burned in an average day, in response to the amount of activity he now performed. It was only then that he decided to eat in a clear calorie surplus. He settled on +350 calories more than he burned, with the goal of gaining roughly 3 pounds per month.

Greg quickly weighed himself each morning after the bathroom, and recorded the number. This only took him 20 seconds. He would find his average weight each week, to track his rate of change over time. And although he bicycles to the gym in the morning (and to work!), he also added a brisk 1/2 hour walk twice per week, in the interest of minimizing fat gain while bulking. Around 6 or 7 months in, Greg started getting sincere compliments from extended family members (not just, "my, how you've grown!", but, "Wow Greg, you're starting to look jacked!"). Classmates also responded with more attention, and he began to exude confidence.

Every couple of months, he would need to adjust calories slightly, to maintain the same gain over time. He makes it to the end of a year of consistent lifting & disciplined eating. How was Greg's bulk? His scale weight went up a solid 30 pounds! Yes, he probably added 10-12 pounds of fat, but the rest was all lean body mass. And since he started out lean, he still had good definition in his stomach. Abs slightly blurrier, but still there. His arms were more vascular. Greg even had some striations in his chest and shoulders. In all, it was a very reasonable massing phase.

At this point, Greg chooses to cut for 10-12 weeks, in order to trim some of the fluff away. He wants to realize a little more muscular definition before bulking again, yet at a slightly slower rate this time. Bob, however, has not yet started his cut, because he's afraid to "catabolize" his hard-earned "muscle". Bob is currently an outspoken member of NattyOrJuice, shouting down pictures of guys such as Greg, claiming his physique can't possibly be attained by a natural drug-free lifter in such a short period of time...

The END

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note: You may notice there are no witty images to accompany this Tale. The intention is not to body-shame a physique, and I didn't want to depict a failed bulk with an unflattering photograph. The purpose is simply to highlight many of the common training mistakes. Likewise, as efforts & results will always differ, the results of an optimal first bulk for you will also vary. As long as you begin the journey to achieve your own personal best, that's all that matters.

Let's All Go Forth And Gain in 2021!

You're GOOD to GROW. Don't waste time "re-comping".

I'm seeing a lot of talk lately about "Main-Gaining". What the heck is this? It's just "Lean Gains" repackaged, evidently. I guess that's okay. At least it's not "re-comping". You know who thinks re-comping is a good gaining strategy? People who've been lifting for a year or less; people who've usually only trained for 12-18 months at most, and think it's the greatest idea ever. But trained individuals with solid experience don't really use re-comping to facilitate their strength & size goals. Sure, they've likely tried it; but after a period, the re-comp gains grind to a halt, and they discard the notion. They realize if you want to grow, you must BULK.

"Build Muscle While Burning Fat!" Yeah, that's a great idea. You'd be a fool to want anything else. But you wanna know the only reason why the notion of re-comping is so popular? BECAUSE EVERYONE WANTS to build muscle and lose fat. 0% of people who train want to lose muscle and gain fat. Hence, its popularity. The concept of Re-comping has only gained traction because EVERYONE wants what re-comping supposedly offers. It's like those "Add 1-2 inches to your penis!!!" advertisements; just about every guy would say, "Sure! I'd happily accept another inch. Hook me up!" And that's why dick pills sell. Because of hope. Because why not, just maybe it will work?

Well, again, surprise, we'd all love to add muscle and lose fat at the same time. Of course. But just because a method purports to do something, doesn't make it effective. It's just empty claims with enough hand-waving to get your hopes up. And again, if it's your first year of lifting or so, yes, you can enjoy a modest re-comping effect. But after you've been at it for a while, it just stops working. You can't get leaner and more muscular forever, while maintaining the same weight. Eventually, you must eat in CLEAR SURPLUS if you want to add a noticeable amount of muscle. You have to overcome your fear of fat, and start eating with purpose.

I'm not saying you must GET fat, I'm just saying you must not FEAR fat. Why all the push-back? Why are skinny guys terrified to properly bulk? I can only imagine it's because of the number of obese people they've observed in their lifetime, who can't seem to drop fat no matter what they do. Much like when smokers try to give up cigarettes, people who are prone to over-eating have often tried to "diet" 10 or 12 times yet never have success. Unfortunately, this has the result of skewing the perception of the "difficulty level" of cutting fat for a leaner individual. Obese people distort the reality of how easy it is for skinny people to cut fat.

You're a hard-gainer? Naturally skinny? Great, me too. I share your pain. But here's something you don't realize: HARD-GAINERS are EASY-CUTTERS. If you have a hard time putting on fat, you'll have an easy time cutting fat. It's really that simple. If you have a hard time putting on mass (or just weight in general), you can stop being utterly pre-occupied with fat gain. The very reason you're lean now is because you don't have an abundance of appetite, nor do you have a natural inclination to overeat. If you couple this fact with a clear, but controlled, calorie surplus (350-500 calories), and combine it with an effective weekly volume of resistance training, you'll be well on your way to adding quality mass.

You just have to get the fat-fear out of your head.

You are Good to Grow!

You don't need ABS, You need MASS.
Because you're TOO DAMN SKINNY!

Another Weight Gaining Secret: THE MIGHTY BOWL

What is the "Mighty Bowl"? Quite simply put, it's a nice large bowl you will eat most of your meals out of.

Stop eating out of small bowls and from flat dinner plates! I want you to choose an over-sized microwave-safe bowl you can fill to the brim with obnoxious amounts of food. Nothing elaborate; I recommend a 1.5 quart or 1.5 liter mixing bowl made by Pyrex or Anchor Hocking, something like that. It should look vaguely like this:

I'm going to wager you already have one of these in your kitchen cupboards somewhere. Probably several. This bowl will be your one-size-fits-all method of food delivery. You can fill it with 3-5 times more than a normal cereal bowl will hold. You can fill it with oatmeal, you can stuff it full of Mac-&-Cheese or chili & rice; whatever you eat, fill up this bucket and you won't have to go back for seconds. It's like a feeding-trough.

"Okay, so this is just another way of saying EAT MORE?"

Heck yes, it is! But it works, and I'll explain why. Here's the science behind this: You will eat more from a larger container. This has been established through various studies. You are much more likely to continue grazing if there's still food to eat. Here's a way-too-long excerpt (but it will totally explain this phenomenon) from the book SWITCH - How to Change Things When Change is Hard:

One Saturday in 2000, some unsuspecting moviegoers showed up at a suburban theater in Chicago to catch a 1:05 p.m. matinee of Mel Gibson's action flick Payback. They were handed a soft drink and a free bucket of popcorn and were asked to stick around after the movie to answer a few questions about the concession stand. These movie fans were unwitting participants in a study of irrational eating behavior.

There was something unusual about the popcorn they received. It was wretched. In fact, it had been carefully engineered to be wretched. It had been popped five days earlier and was so stale that it squeaked when you ate it. One moviegoer later compared it to Styrofoam packing peanuts, and two others, forgetting that they'd received the popcorn for free, demanded their money back.

Some of them got their free popcorn in a medium-size bucket, and others got a large bucket - the sort of huge tub that looks like it might once have been an above-ground swimming pool. Every person got a bucket so there'd be no need to share. The researchers responsible for the study were interested in a simple question: Would the people with bigger buckets eat more?

Both buckets were so big that none of the moviegoers could finish their individual portions. So the actual research question was a bit more specific: Would somebody with a larger inexhaustible supply of popcorn eat more than someone with a smaller inexhaustible supply?

The sneaky researchers weighed the buckets before and after the movie, so they were able to measure precisely how much popcorn each person ate. The results were stunning: People with the large buckets ate 53 percent more popcorn than the people with the medium size. That's the equivalent of 173 more calories and approximately 21 extra hand-dips into the bucket.

Brian Wansink, the author of the study, runs the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, and he described the results in his book Mindless Eating: "We've run other popcorn studies, and the results were always the same, however we tweaked the details. It didn't matter if our moviegoers were in Pennsylvania, Illinois, or Iowa, and it didn't matter what kind of movie was showing; all of our popcorn studies led to the same conclusion. People eat more when you give them a bigger container. Period."

No other theory explains the behavior. These people weren't eating for pleasure. (The popcorn was so stale it squeaked!) They weren't driven by a desire to finish their portion. (Both buckets were too big to finish.) It didn't matter whether they were hungry or full. The equation is unyielding: Bigger container = more eating.

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It's so much easier to sit on the couch with a huge bowl of food instead of a plate. There's a lot to be said for "the Grazing method" (it's not atypical for me to take 45 minutes to eat a meal sometimes!) You can always pop it into the microwave halfway through to re-heat food if you need to; you can also cover it and toss it into the fridge if you just can't finish. But learn to settle in with a nice large bowl of food and tuck into it.

Eating can definitely be a meditation of sorts, but meals don't always require mindfulness. "Zoning off" while eating, in the presence of a distraction, is often a sure-fire way to inevitably eat more. Again, this is a habit many people do accidentally during the process of (unknowingly!) gaining weight; but we can employ this technique as an active strategy for bulking up, as it will make eating easier for the hard-gainer as well.

There's really only so much more I can add to this post. "Eating More" always comes down to . . . finding a way to eat more. Hopefully this is one more tool you can add to your box of tricks to get more food down. Get a bigger container for food, fill it up with more than you think you can eat, take your time, and keep eating!

(Here's what a fully-loaded "Mighty Bowl" could look like: 1200 Calories of Chicken & Rice!)

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Eating More Involves Eating More,

There's No Other Way Around It.

So . . . find a way to eat more!

BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO DAMN SKINNY!

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"Gain-tastic Chili" Meal-Prep Adventure!

As I sit and think about the struggle to gain weight, I realize one of the biggest challenges might simply be finding foods that taste appealing. The amount of times I hear people say they "can't eat enough", and just "don't have an appetite" makes me wonder what the heck they're currently eating, if it doesn't inspire a voracious appetite. A healthy appetite should be good & normal, and tasty foods will help encourage this. If you don't crave food, you might want to start with a hard look at what you eat now, and maybe switch it up to include more delicious foods. With this in mind, I would like to share my one of my favorite recipes with you!

If you've only ever had "chili" out of a can, you're missing out. If you haven't enjoyed a good batch of home-cooked chili, you may be surprised how much more flavor it can have. Good chili ought to blow your mind! We're also going to couple this recipe with a straightforward explanation of meal-prep, so you can refrigerate a bunch to enjoy at a later date. Meal-Prep makes mealtime efficient and convenient, since you wouldn't want to make this meal 6 times. You make it once, and send the leftovers into the future to be devoured by future you. I want you to think of your fridge as a time-machine: When you're standing in front of it 4 days from now wondering what to eat, you'll see a serving of tasty chili ready to be reheated, and you'll thank your past self for sending you this package.

Alright, let's start with an overview of all the materials, tools, and ingredients you'll need. It's generally a good idea to make sure you have everything ready in advance, before you dive in. Basic kitchen stuff: large/small knives, spatula, mixing spoon, can-opener, 1/4 Cup, Tablespoon, half-Tablespoon, teaspoon, cutting board. We're also going to need a colander, a medium-sized frying pan, and a 6-quart stock pot.

Additionally, you might want to invest in six Pyrex containers with lids, of either the 2-cup or 1-quart size. You can re-use these for years. Tupperware also works. In a pinch, you could really just fill up regular bowls and cover them with foil or Saran wrap. As a last resort, you can just refrigerate the chili in the stock pot, and eye-ball out portions as you go. Once cooked, it will keep for 5 full days without spoiling. You can alternately freeze several of them, which will stay good for 3-4 months. Freeze some of your leftover meals, and you'll always have prepared food ready to be reheated & eated. This makes meals so much easier!

Ingredients:

- Two 15oz. cans of Black Beans

- One 15oz. can of Pinto Beans

- One 15oz. can of Kidney Beans

- 36 ounces of 93% Ground Beef

- 12 ounces of Tomato Sauce

- 20 ounces of Water

- Four ounces of Butter

- One Tablespoon Olive Oil

- One Tablespoon of Coconut Oil

- Two Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar

- One Tablespoon of Maple Syrup

- 1/2 Tablespoon Spicy Brown Mustard

- Five large cloves of Garlic, diced

- 1/4 Cup of White Flour

- 1/4 Cup of Dark Red Chili Powder

- Two Tablespoons of Cumin

- 1/2 Tablespoon of Ancho Chili

- 1/2 Tablespoon of Salt

- 1 rounded teaspoon Black Pepper

- 1 teaspoon of Dill Weed

I've separated the ingredients into the main bulk elements of the recipe, the wet ingredients, and the dry ingredients. This will simplify how everything goes together. (A well-stocked kitchen should have most of this stuff on hand at all times). Alright, this is where we finally get started! Remove the lids on all four cans of beans, and pour them into the colander. Rinse them under cool running water, drain them, and put them into the stock put. Next, use the bottom of a drinking class to squish those beans into a pulpy paste. Sure, you could leave them whole, but increasing the surface area adds more places for added flavors to cling to.

Okay, set the stock pot aside for a bit. This is when you want to dice up the garlic cloves. Put a Tablespoon of Coconut Oil into the frying pan (we're using coconut because it has a high smoke-point), and set the stove to medium-high; add the garlic and lightly brown it. Then add the beef to the pan, all of it! Add all 36 ounces of ground beef, mix it into the garlic, and mix it occasionally as you brown the beef.

We want the ground beef to be browned throughout, and then turn the heat down to medium-low, while you prepare the spices. Spices are easy, just measure everything out into a separate bowl. All the dry spices are going to be evenly mixed first, then half of this mix will be added to the browned beef. Thoroughly mix them in, cover every bit of the beef with the spices. Believe it or not, this adds more flavor than just adding all of it to the bean paste.

While the spiced beef stays warm on low, start the stock pot with beans on a separate burner ten minutes ago, on medium heat. You will have added 12 ounces of tomato sauce and 20 ounces of water, and evenly mixed that into the beans. Add 4 Tablespoons (a half stick) of butter to the beans to melt, and mix it evenly.

(The purpose of the added fats is not only for nuanced flavor, but also to help emulsify the essential flavonoids in the spices. By solubilizing the spices, the oils will carry and distribute the taste throughout the chili). Beef is still resting on low-warm. Add all the other wet ingredients to the water/sauced bean paste: Vinegar, Olive oil, Maple syrup, Mustard. Stir and mix these in very well, then add the other half of your pre-mixed herb & spices powder, and stir them in too. The pot should be hot, steaming, starting to smell good. You should be using the flat spatula to bring up beans from the bottom, so they don't stick. After cooking on medium for about ten minutes, you're good to add the pre-cooked, pre-spiced ground beef. Also add the quarter-cup of flour. And again, mix everything thoroughly.

I forgot to include the large measuring cup in the picture of tools above, my bad. So here it is now. (As a side-note, it doesn't need to be fancy boxed organic strained tomatoes. A can of Campbell's condensed tomato sauce will work just as well. And if you want to use 85% ground beef instead of 93%, that's fine too. It's just going to have even more calories!)

So on to the easiest but most important step: The chili needs to rest for 30 minutes. This is absolutely critical! If you tasted it now, you might be tempted to flavor it further, but as it sits and steeps, all the flavors will marinate and marry. The flavor will develop over time. Continue to keep the heat on medium-low, and stir the pot every 7-8 minutes. This step is non-negotiable. The acids in the tomato & vinegar will penetrate the meat, which help tenderize it. The soluble fiber in the beans will sponge up the flavor moisture. All those little flavor molecules will work themselves into every little bit of the chili. TIME is the final ingredient that completes this dish...

Must Be About Time To Wrap This Up

While you're waiting for the chili to finalize, set up your meal-prep containers. This recipe, using all the ingredients in the listed amounts above, will yield a total of roughly 3840 Calories. If this is divided equally among 6 containers, there will be 640 Calories per serving. The total macro breakdown looks like: 51g Protein, 24g Fat, and 55g Carbs. If you prepare a half-cup of rice to go along with it (or 3 cups ahead of time), you can add 360 Calories more, for a total of 1000 Calories per Chili & Rice Meal! Please note: You will require Quart-sized containers to fit both a serving of chili and a serving of rice. Let cool 15 minutes before lids & fridge.

There's so much more to Life than "peanut butter / oatmeal protein shakes". Like, they help, and they serve a specific purpose. Most people don't want to spend time preparing an elaborate meal right after coming back from the gym, and "drinking your calories" is definitely a valid strategy to get additional calories in. But generally speaking, solid foods are so much more mouth-watering and satiating, especially warm foods. There's still an element of convenience when eating prepared food. Instead of making 6 meals, you're making one big pot of food, once. This chili meal can be done start-to-finish in under an hour. You go from cans to containers, then into the refrigerator or freezer, and you've just made 6 full meals. Do this once or twice per week, and it will simplify meal-making. Call it "Meal-Prep-Sunday", get it done, and now you've got food for a week waiting to be enjoyed! The small investment of time will be appreciated at each tasting.

That's All I Got For Now!

Something, something...

TOO DAMN SKINNY!!!

Why Would You Re-Comp? (As A New Lifter)

What the heck is "Re-comping"? Re-comping is the Art of Body Recomposition. Re-comping, hopefully, means building muscle while you burn fat. Although there's no specific definition, Recomping is generally accepted to mean "exchanging one pound of body fat for one pound of muscle, while remaining the same weight". If you start out weighing 150lbs (68kg), after a year of recomping, you would still weigh 150lbs. (I might extend the definition to suggest you could transit slightly up or down, maybe .5lb/month would be the cut-off. One pound gain per month is still "lean-bulk" territory. If you went from 150 to 162 in a year's time, you slow-bulked, you didn't recomp. But going from 150 to 155; ehh, maybe? I'll say that counts).

So, why would anyone do this? (Spoiler: I sit squarely in the middle of this issue! There's a time & place for re-comping). I must admit, however, it sounds appealing to use stored body fat to fuel your workouts; eat just enough to synthesize new muscle protein, while you build muscle & burn fat at the same time! That would be the "Unicorn" of Aesthetic Gains, right? Keep your abs the entire time, never have to go through the discomfort of cutting, grow forever? Sign me up! Full-stop, here, Gainers: If re-comping was this simple and effective, EVERYONE WOULD BE DOING IT. Repeat, we would all be on board with it. You would also see it happening "accidentally", if it was readily possible. You would see many, many more successful body-transformations of people who had harnessed the power of the Recomp. But alas, we do not.

Simply put, it's just too slow to make meaningful changes. Or let's say you're skinny-fat, you know you need to build muscle & burn fat, why not "kill two birds with one stone"? That's the appeal. But that bird-murder metaphor, while commonly employed to mean "a more efficient use of time", or "convenient", is anything but. The statistical odds of success waiting for those two birds to line up in a straight line, coupled with a trajectory precise enough to slay them both in single shot, is anything but simple or effective. It would be a miracle shot. No, to kill two birds with one stone, you're going to have to use the same stone twice. You take the time to line up separate shots with dedicated aim. Throwing all your effort into only one bird or the other will always yield greater likelihood of nabbing both birds, eventually. Waiting around for the perfect dual-shot, quite bluntly, is a shitty use of your time. THIS is why only bulking or cutting is recommended. Pick one bird.

Just As Difficult With A Rifle!

If you're just starting out, you stand to add roughly 25 lbs of muscle to your frame in the following year or two (doing things right, not fucking around etc.) You will gain the most muscle at the outset of your lifting journey, with less muscle added each following year, despite consistent effort and calorie surplus. (By some estimates, you can gain 18-27 lbs in your first year. This should be typical & expected. You might gain half this amount the following year, or 9-14 lbs; at the end of the third year, half again, 5-7 lbs; then, after lifting for 5 years, you may only put on 1-2 new pounds per year... Them's the facts!) No one who lifts consistently with a good program, eating & sleeping well, puts on 25 new pounds of muscle in the 4th year of lifting as an un-enhanced natural lifter. Size and strength gains inevitably slow down over time. This is why you should add your first-year size steadily, without reservation. If you started out at 125 lbs, and haven't added 20 pounds at the end of your first year of lifting, you messed up. I don't know what else to say.

Shepherd Gains. Natural?

Look at this statue of David. Did Michelangelo start with the abs? Did he carve out the details and fine features right at the beginning? Most certainly not. Large chunks of marble were removed, large amounts of mass were dealt with. Great big changes to rough out the basic shape first. There's simply no other way to get there. Is there any point worrying about "vascularity", when the arms don't even exist yet? That would be silly. Definition is cool, but it's not the point you start from. You need to make the big, huge, sweeping changes first; you only pursue the exquisite details after you get most of the way to your goal.

Think about how you get to school or work. If it's 10 miles, are you really going to want to walk those ten miles? True, you could travel exactly to the place on foot, but would this be more efficient than a bus ride that "overshoots" your destination by a couple miles? Let's say the bus travels 12 miles out, requiring you to back-track the last 2 miles on foot. Isn't this still going to be much, much faster than the first option? Trying to re-comp your way to your goal would be like walking ten miles, when you're pressed for time, yet also have access to a vehicle. There's no good argument for walking instead. It would be excruciatingly slow and tedious.

If you would benefit from gaining 20 lbs of muscle, and losing 10 lbs of fat, those are two entirely different destinations. They're effectively miles apart, and in the opposite direction. One is 20 miles North, and the other is 10 miles due South. You can't catch those two birds with one stone, when there's 30 miles between them. (Had you already made the bulk of your gains, those goals might seem closer together and in a similar direction. If Bulksville & Shred-town were only 3 miles North, and a mile apart, you could definitely visit them more often!) But bulking and cutting do not really co-exist well simultaneously. They are opposite processes. On one hand, you have AMPK-signaling pathways which regulate fatty-acid oxidation. On the other hand, you have mTOR which governs muscle protein synthesis. I won't pretend to have an deep understanding of them; all you need to know is sticking with one modality enables you to build momentum in that particular direction.

A session of resistance-training doesn't even burn a significant amount of calories. A rough figure might be 150-250 calories burned after an hour of lifting. (So if you're hoping to re-comp, without also including some cardio, fat-burning is even less likely to happen!) Weight-training will burn a little fat, but you're also burning through muscle sugars, as heavy lifting draws heavily on glycolytic reactions. And although stored fat is a fuel source some of the time, these stored triglycerides don't convert to glycogen. (Excess sugars can sometimes be stored as fat, but stored fats don't become sugars). Stored fats are really only burned for fuel, they don't serve to replenish muscle glycogen. You require a surplus of calories to recover after a workout, not stored fats. Adequate calorie surplus is a requisite for building new tissue.

How Would Re-Comping Affect My Caloric Requirements?

TDEE Approximation For 150lb Male

A point of fact few people consider is this: You should not find yourself eating at maintenance throughout a recomp. If the calorie intake required to "maintain" your identical weight does not steadily increase over time, you cannot confidently assert that you've gained muscle. "Eating at maintenance" isn't the same thing as "maintaining your weight". Does that make sense? If you start out at 150 lbs and 15% bodyfat, and need 2200 calories each day to stay at that weight, you will require even more calories than this, to sustain 150 lbs and 10% body fat, in the future.

Muscle is Metabolically Expensive.

On the left is the Katch-McArdle revision to the TDEE estimate for our vaguely-inactive, 150lb, 18-year-old male. (He is actually 20% bodyfat, but let's humor him and assume he's 15% for the benefit of the doubt). Well, at 15% body fat, his TDEE equals roughly 2230 Calories. (Just a hypothetical estimate, of course.) If he continues to eat 2230 for months on end, while training properly & sincerely, he will never hit 10% body fat, at the same calorie intake. This is because he will require roughly 2331 Calories just to "maintain" a 10% body composition (at the identical activity level), should he ever reach it. Instead, his strength gains will slow, then eventually stall, if he does not eat the elevated calorie requirements to fuel growth. This is also called "spinning your wheels". And here's the other sad fact: It requires even more energy (calories) to synthesize new muscle tissue, than it does to retain that same muscle, once you've built it! So, not only does he need 100 more Calories per day to hold onto (more) muscle at 10% body fat, it will take even more Calories than that, to add it in the first place!

What does this mean for our hypothetical 150lb "re-comper" in the example above? It translates into this: A Calorie requirement of 2230 at the start of the year, 2331 + (125?) at the end of the year's re-comp (roughly 2,456 Calories to sustain 10%, plus the minumum required to still stimulate new growth); while in the middle, at the 6-month mark, his body would only need 2343 Calories (this is to both maintain current weight, and maintain current rate of growth). Oh, and this is assuming the recomposition process is perfectly flat & linear, dietary Calorie intake is tracked with total accuracy, output of Calories due to daily activity, exercise activity, and thermo-regulation remains perfectly constant... And this person is expected to make seamless calorie micro-adjustments every several weeks to drive Calories steadily upwards over time? All of this, without being able to rely on any accurate body composition estimates, with nothing but a bathroom scale to guide him, by trying to keep himself the "same" 150lb bodyweight? (Some days or weeks he'll eat a little too much and still accrue fat, while other weeks, he will inevitably eat too few calories to meaningfully stimulate muscle protein synthesis, and this will result in sub-optimal recomposition). Whew! This sounds like a recipe for failure.

Can you see how much of an uphill battle this would be? Even more so, when you consider how difficult it is for most people to track calories with any semblance of accuracy. You are far more likely to build muscle while burning fat, while losing weight, than build muscle & burn fat, while staying the same weight. For the truly overweight who want to drop fat, who also begin lifting concurrent with calorie-restriction, recomping plays a role on the way down, as their scale-weight drops. Gaining 10-15 lbs of muscle in the process of losing 50-80 lbs of fat can be somewhat realistic. But for the skinny guy hoping to drop just 10 lbs of fat, when he still has yet to put on at least 20+ new lbs of muscle, it is an entirely different phenomenon. It really would be an uphill battle, I don't know how else to put it. If your goal is to stay the same weight, and eat the same calories, you can't gain a significant amount of muscle. So what does it matter, if you are skinny without abs now? You don't get abs first. You need to chisel out the first 40 pounds of marble. Pack on mass first, then whittle it down later.

Don't Bother Re-Comping In The First Year...

Because You're Too Damn Skinny!

This Guy Wants To Re-Comp. He Ought To BULK.