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.

But You Can't Figure Out How to Track Calories?

So we're here to gain weight, meaningful weight. For most people, this means mostly muscle with minimal fat gain. In order to accomplish this, it will be greatly beneficial to our goal, if we track both our ever-changing body weight, and the daily, dietary calories we need to sustain growth without gaining too quickly. If you can learn to implement these two skills, you've just realized over 90% of the mental hurdle in either gaining or losing weight. When you can track calories & weight with accuracy, you can more easily alter your physique. This is just a basic outline of what I do, what works for me, and how I approach it.

Is this necessary? No. Plenty of people are able to gain and lose weight intuitively, but the vast majority do not. Most people cannot determine when they've had enough to eat, and you cannot trust relative "hunger" to guide you. Calorie & Weight Tracking works because it is based on Scientific Method. The Scientific Method works because it deals with variables that are: 1. Observable. 2. Measurable. 3. Repeatable. If you can observe a phenomenon, and quantify it as a hard number, you'll be much more able and likely to reproduce it. This is the key to making small changes over time.

This is What Two Years & One Hundred Days of Daily Weight Tracking Across 3 Bulks & Cuts Looks Like!

Let's use an automotive illustration: You are tasked with filling your car with engine oil; the engine holds 4 quarts. Would you grab a jug of oil, and just start pouring? How would you know how much to add? How would you know how much was already in the car? And how would you know when you had added enough? (If you don't add enough oil, the engine will overheat and become damaged; yet if you add too much oil, the engine will also be damaged). Would you EVER just add oil "intuitively"? No, you would first check the dip-stick, right? And then you would add oil until it comes up to the "full" point, and then stop. Simple tracking.

More than any other variable, more than even protein, the most significant figure in weight manipulation will be the Calorie. Calories supersede damn near everything else. Macros, eating-windows, meal-timing, glycemic-index . . . all of this is in the backseat, while Calories are driving the vehicle. You can mention hormones, we can discuss genetics, but at the end of the Day, it's the total number of CALORIES that drive your bodyweight up or down. This simple fact is indisputable. So in order to gain muscle, we need more calories. In order to not gain fat too quickly, we need to ensure the calorie surplus is defined and not exaggerated. The best way to accomplish this is with a daily calorie target.

Basic Digital Bathroom Scale

With this in mind, we're going to track our daily calorie intake, and also track our daily weight as it responds to our daily calorie intake. Every morning, after bathroom / before breakfast, start by taking your fasted morning weight. You will obtain a more accurate number by weighing yourself at roughly the same time each morning. WRITE THIS NUMBER DOWN. (Some people use an app for this. I like to use a physical calendar just for this purpose, however).

At the end of every week, say, Saturday, add up the previous 7 days of weigh-ins, and divide by seven to find your AVERAGE WEEKLY WEIGHT. Write this number down as well. This number matters more than your daily weight, because day-by-day fluctuations will go up and down in response to hydration, activity, meal composition etc. Your "average weekly weight" is the snap-shot we will use to compare rate-of-change, week-by-week. That's how you know how much to adjust calories. All adjustments to calorie intake is based off of weekly changes.

Basic Digital FOOD Scale

The other tool in our kit is the food scale. I can not underscore the importance of accurate portions for food enough. I understand that weighing out food might sound a little obsessive, but you do this every time you follow a recipe, right? If you made cookies, you would precisely measure out butter, sugar, and flour, by the Cup and by the Tablespoon . . . the only difference being we're going to quantify the number of calories in everything, in order to obtain a sum total of our food energy. The total of all meals yields total daily calorie intake.

The bathroom scale & the food scale are our daily companions on the journey to gaining weight. They are as indispensible as a hammer & tape measure for a carpenter. If we track calories and weight, we can arrive at a much closer figure for Total Daily Energy Expenditure, rather than relying on a vague estimation. Even if we don't know the exact calories burned through exercise and activity, we can still determine if we're eating enough to support whatever training we do in a week. As long as our weight goes up incrementally every week, we know that we're in an established calorie surplus. You can find a digital food scale & digital bathroom scale online for around $25-30 total, including shipping, without looking too hard.

Okay, So Now What?

So what might meal tracking look like in practice? What kinds of things do we weigh and measure? I will take you through a typical day of calorie tracking several example meals. For many things, the information on a label is close enough. Let's say I make an omelet; I use four eggs at 70 calories each, and 1/2 Cup of Greek yogurt for 80 calories. The only thing I must weigh is the cheddar cheese, which at 2.5 ounces x 120 calories per ounce (according to the label) equals 300 calories even. So the total of 280 + 80 + 300 = 660. (The hot sauces I use have negligible calories). I record 660 somewhere, to be added with the other meals of the day.

Or maybe I'm making my standard oatmeal: 2/3 cup ground oats is 200 cals, two Tbsp brown sugar is 90 cals, two Tbsp butter is 200, and just for fun I'll grind an ounce of almonds, mostly for flavor, which contains 170 calories. I cook it in a pint of water, and add 1/2 cup of milk to help it cool so I can eat it faster, which adds another 75 calories. Oh, and to help me hit protein, I'll have a full cup of Greek yogurt on the side, which has 160 calories. (I keep a slip of scrap paper to math stuff up; I can usually total up everything in the time it takes for water to boil!) So this meal has 200 + 90 + 200 + 170 + 75 + 160. That equals 895, but heck, I'll just round up to 900. That's close enough. And it really didn't take any extra time to do this.

For lunch we'll keep it simple stupid. 13 ounces of chicken breast is 350. 3/4 Cup of steamed white rice is 540. Maybe a small head of broccoli on the side? Don't count that if you don't want to, but it's probably about 50. Don't weigh it or worry about it. I pan-grill the diced chicken with low-calorie cooking spray, and when it's done, I pour a couple Tablespoons of Olive oil and a generous amount of hot sauces over it, and salt, pepper etc. 350 + 540 + 260 + 50 = an even 1200! This is a true Gaining Meal, here. And the math isn't remotely difficult; it's just simple math, not rocket calculus. Don't overthink this; you'll get faster & better at tallying stuff up, especially if you prepare many of the same meals on a regular basis.

Stop Being Skinny Through Subliminal Programming

Where am I getting some of these calorie values from? My favorite site is nutritiondata.self.com. I have zero affiliation with them; it's just the one I like to use. Let's say I don't know the calories or macros for a single Kiwifruit; I just go to the site and search for "kiwi". Or maybe I'm eating a half-avocado, I can find it listed by the ounce, cup, per 100 grams; whatever. When you measure rice, USE DRY WEIGHT. Same for pasta. Rice packs into a measuring cup fairly tight, so I don't weigh that. But pasta is irregular, so I'll weigh that in grams. A "serving" is 56 grams, for 200 calories? Weigh that in a bowl, after "zero-ing" out the scale (re-calibrate to not include the weight of the bowl). Chicken, Beef, etc. is weighed RAW, not cooked.

I know the ease & convenience is why peanut butter protein shakes are so popular, but at some point you need to learn to make real food, and this is what that looks like. Sure, you can eat everything out of a box or a bag or a can, but you don't really want to do that. Find some recipes online, or figure out your own. Write them out on 3x5 cards so you can refer to them in the future. Meal-replacement shakes are just a tutor, to teach you how to fit a lot of calories in easily, but at some point the training wheels must come off, and you've got to sink your teeth into solid foods. Make a goal of writing up 5 meal-cards; with recipes for chili, mac & cheese, chicken & rice, steak & potatoes, anything. Keep adding to it over time.

Here's a Freebie. Now you only need four!

Working off of pre-drawn-up recipe cards will make meal-time much easier. Have a look at this card on the left. Simple-basic Macaroni & Cheese. Start the water, boil the noodles for 15-18 minutes, brown the beef while you wait for the noodles; drain the pasta, add the milk, butter, ranch, salt, pepper, chili. Mix in small handfulls of cheese at a time, melt evenly, add the browned ground beef, mix thoroughly. Home-made Mac & Cheese is great! I eat this several times per week, and it's delicious.

This will yield 2400 Calories, so you may want to break it down into thirds, and save two meals for a future date. Hello meal-prep! You get 3 meals for the time investment of making one meal. Super-convenient; it eliminates the guesswork of counting calories later. Do you see how easy this can be? Much tastier than stuff that comes in a box, and much better for you. If you add a cup of frozen peas to the noodles a minute before they're done, they heat up instantly, and now all of the food groups are represented. High protein, carbs, fats, fiber. It's got it all.

I almost forget, it's the end of the day now, so we gotta tally up these three huge meals! Oatmeal / Yogurt Breakfast, Chicken/Rice Lunch, and Mac & Cheese Dinner. (Honestly, I might swap the last two; re-heat the mac in a microwave for lunch, and save the chicken meal for a big dinner. But that's just how I wrote it out). So that's 900, 800, and 1200, for a DAILY TOTAL of 2900 Calories. Record this, somewhere. (I write my daily calories on the same calendar I use for weight tracking, so I have a hard copy). I also enter daily calories & morning weight into the TDEE 3.0 Calculator, as illustrated below. It is free online; just Google if you want it. Very simply to use, you just enter your morning weight, and total daily calories, and it does the rest!

What About the Weight-Tracking Stuff?

Screen-Capture of 5 weeks of Morning Weight & Daily Calories on TDEE 3.0. Thank You, nSuns!

Here is 5 weeks of my data entered into the TDEE 3.0 spreadsheet: I gained .57 pound the first week, and only .31 pound the second week. When it spikes to 1.6 lb in the third week, I bring calories down slightly for the fourth week, and it normalizes with zero weight change. I bring them up again, slightly, in week five, and gain another .77 pound. The total weight gain for these 5 weeks is 3.25 pounds, or 2.6 pounds per month. This is exactly what I was wanting to see: The steady gain of 2-3 lbs per month, for the duration of this massing phase. Assuming I'm putting forth the proper effort in the gym, this gradual gain ensures that most of the weight will be muscle rather than fat.

Note: EVEN IF you ate an iso-caloric diet (identical calories & macros every single day), AND burned the exact same calories every single day, your weight is going to fluctuate, so don't fret over a single weird day, or even a weird week. Just set a calorie target, try your best to hit it, and only make small calorie adjustments if your weekly average weight changes too fast (or too slow!) If your weight gain stalls, simply add about 150 calories to your daily calorie target, then see what the next week or two does. Sometimes you will increase calories, but your weight does not immediately go up, BUT THEN it still starts to go up after a week or two. Just be patient in this process. Gaining more than a pound per week will not force faster muscle gain!

To wrap it up, tracking calorie intake and daily weight changes doesn't have to be complicated or stressful. It's a fairly straight-forward process. Now, obviously you can't carry a food scale with you everywhere you go. When you can, prepare meals ahead of time and bring them with you in Tupperwhere or Pyrex containers with lids. Meal-prep "left-overs" ahead of time. If you can't track a meal, just estimate it. If you miss a daily weigh-in, just repeat the number from the day before; we're only looking at long trends over time. Like everything else, this gets easier the more you do it. You will have a much stronger influence over your personal physique when tracking, rather than not tracking.

TRACKING CALORIES ACCURATELY

~ Will Help You Not Be ~

TOO DAMN SKINNY!

So You Want to Gain Muscle Without Fat, But You Don't Want to Do Any Cardio??? (part 3)

(Part Three is going to be a proper rant, simply because I cannot fathom why you would be skipping cardio & conditioning-work while bulking, especially if you're utterly pre-occupied with avoiding fat gain at all costs. We're way past "be okay with a little fat gain on a bulk". We've arrived at this point where many gainers take a lazy departure from logic; so rant I must).

I am sitting at my desk, angry and befuddled. Every single day, I see multiple posts from people trying to bulk up, asking why they're putting on fat faster than muscle. When I ask them what their cardio/conditioning-work looks like, they say they aren't doing any. What the Fuck, people? Really? What the actual fuck?

Whew, take a breath. Let's back up, and ask a far more serious question:

Should you even be bulking? Why are you even bulking right now?

This guy should probably be bulking RIGHT NOW...

People are always asking whether they should bulk or cut, but for many people, especially people just starting out, eating at maintenance is likely the best option. You've decided to make a change. You've decided to start lifting. Cheers! Hooray! Pat-on-the-back, all that stuff. I'm glad you want to build size and strength. That's the first step. Do you need to immediately get on a regimen of "bulking" in order to "maximize your newb gains"? Maybe not.

If you've just started lifting in the last month or two, almost all of the strength gains you experience at this point are neurological in nature. "Neurological adaptation" simply means your muscles are getting better at firing. You're getting better at utilizing your existing muscle. Just because you have 4 cylinders in your engine, doesn't mean they all fire. Just because you have four dogs, it doesn't mean they all come when you call...

What you are learning, at the outset of lifting, are the skill sets related to muscle fiber recruitment, and coordinated muscle-firing-patterns. Your body is not in any hurry to build new muscle, before you figure out how to use the muscle you already have. Does that make sense? Your rapid "strength gains" as a newb are mostly related to the optimizations of your nervous system, not muscle growth.

Further, most of the size gains you experience in the first several weeks or months are mostly due to better nutrient partitioning. Through training, your body becomes adept at storing more muscle glycogen (sugar), in order to provide fast energy for certain types of activity. The average, sedentary individual has about 400 grams of glycogen in reserve, but through consistent training, you are able to store roughly twice that amount. (You also produce more blood and plasma, etc). This is the other component of newb gains.

But again, better nutrient partitioning simply means you have a larger fuel tank; not necessarily a bigger engine. Muscle/Liver Glycogen counts towards "Lean Body Mass", although categorically, it's not muscle. You "gained LBM", but it's not the gain of contractile muscle tissue; it's not true muscular hypertrophy. Does that make sense? Most of your "Newb Gains" are rapid strength gains due to neurological adaptations, and rapid size gains due to physiological adaptations.

It only complicates matters further, that many people are only lifting on 3-day per week, introductory-programs, whose volume of lifting is almost too low to justify an every-day-surplus of 500 calories. It is because of these reasons, I no longer recommend new lifters go immediately onto bulk. The exception is for grossly-underweight, borderline-anorexic individuals. Otherwise, you will make strength gains just fine eating at maintenance for the first 3-5 months after beginning your journey into the land of resistance training.

Your Blood Sugar Goes Up & Down After Meals.

We Will Refer To This Graphic Later In The Text.

 And this is where we pick up our rant, again. WHAT is your extreme reluctance to perform any kind of cardio or conditioning work? Have you reasoned that if you only lift weights, and do nothing else, you will make the most gains possible? Or maybe you have heard somewhere that cardio will burn muscle? Or that you will somehow steal calories from your body that could have been used to build muscle? Is this what you think? Holy Crap, knock it off!

How many athletes are on strength/size-building routines, but also, you know . . . spending time running back & forth across the full length of a football field, or the basketball court, or whatever they are training to improve, without "burning" all their hard-earned "gains"? These guys "lift" to build sport-specific muscle, but they're also incredibly active, running & moving their body through space. Quite vigorously, in fact. But as long as you eat more than you burn, you will put on weight. Rest assured.

Do you really think a little running several times per week is going to dissolve your hard-earned muscle into a little puff of smoke? It's not going to "steal your gains", I promise you. Your desire to skip out on conditioning-work is most likely plain-old, textbook laziness. It's an excuse to not put forth the additional effort to improve. Will you please come clean, and admit that to yourself? You are being lazy by avoiding it. And then, after several months of poorly-tracked bulking with zero cardio, you have the audacity to wonder why you're adding tummy fluff...

Whether you are bulking, whether you are cutting, whether you are re-comping, cardio/conditioning-work should be considered MANDATORY, in some capacity. The battle-cry of the Lazy is "You can't burn fat in a calorie surplus!" Why yes, you can. You're not only in surplus, or only in deficit. It's not like a toggle-switch, wherein only muscle-building / fat-burning is happening at once. BOTH processes are happening simultaneously, most of the time throughout a 24-hour day.

Holy Crap, if you have gym access to a Prowler,

but you aren't pushing it around, why even exist?

Some of the time, even in surplus, you burn stored body fat (specifically during the overnight, as you sleep). The question is whether you burn it faster than you deposit it. If you are eating close to maintenance, or even in slight surplus, your body will definitely dip into fat stores, if energy demands are not too high. Obviously, sprinting or heavy lifting is going to primarily burn muscle sugar for fuel, but your RER (respiratory exchange ratio) will be increased such that you burn more fat later in the day and evening (search the "Afterburn Effect").

But daily Low-Intensity work (think "brisk walking") can also help chip away at your fat stores. Stan Efferding, a world-renowned bodybuilder, coach, and diet consultant, cites a study wherein one group of people who walked for 10 minutes, 3x per day, burned more fat than another group who "logged 10,000 steps per day", even though the 3x10-minute group only logged roughly 7,000 steps on average. This is because they walked briskly, with purpose, and didn't just idly collect dis-continuous steps throughout a day of semi-passive activity.

This means you don't need to suit up & break a sweat, and devote an additional couple of days each week to perform mind-numbing hamster-wheel "cardio". You can help mitigate fat gain during a massing phase by simply taking three 10-minute walks per day. (The emphasis here is on BRISK walking; upbeat, up-tempo walking, preferably up hills if you can!) So at the very least, get your 3 walks in every single day. You will be burning primarily fat, and you won't be diverting any calories from muscle-building. You'll burn stored fat.

Candles? You Guessed It: We're Burning Fat!

Should you also do Low-Intensity Steady-State? I would. Take one day per week to walk that incline treadmill for about an hour. It will only do you good. It assists recovery, and elevates insulin sensitivity. If your knees occasionally ache from squatting, this really helps. Should you also do "High-Intensity Interval-Training"? I would do this, too. It can be hill sprints, box jumps, Prowler pushes, Concept2 rowing machine, or something as simple as skipping rope. The point is to get completely winded. This will make you a more well-rounded athlete, and generally harder to kill. This will also translate into improved lifting capacity.

An HIIT session should only last 12-15 minutes. If you can go for 45 minutes, is it really "high-intensity"? You should completely and utterly gas yourself out during this window of time. The "pause" portion of an interval should be no more than 10-20 seconds at most, or as long as it takes to return to somewhat normal breathing. Get at least one of these in, each week. LISS is much easier to recover from, and can be done more often; but once or twice per week is recommended while bulking. And notice, the HIIT session & LISS session(s) are in addition to your daily 3x10-minute walks.

This is a general template for general cardio & conditioning-work, separate from whatever resistance-training program you are following. If you're coming from a point of zero-cardio, this may be a shock and a wake-up call as to your true state of "fitness". Bring this work in gradually, if you must, so you can acclimatize to the increase in output. You may even have to increase your calorie surplus slightly, to keep pace with your expenditure. (You may find your "+300" is now only a +100 surplus, or worse!) If your weight gain stalls, increase calories slightly.

I can just about guarantee these 3 things:

1). As long as you stay slightly ahead of maintenance calories, and you're eating enough to recover from this, you will still add muscle; you won't burn it off.

2). Rather than additional fatigue, you will find you have even more energy, and the ability to lift greater weight with less effort. You will recover much faster.

3). Provided your calorie surplus is slight (roughly 300-500), you will be much less likely to accumulate fat during your massing phase. You will minimize it.

__________________________________________

The Reason You're "Skinny-Fat"

Is Because You've Been Avoiding

CARDIO & CONDITIONING!

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But You Don't Want to Add Fat? (part 2)

THE DESTRUCTIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAT-PHOBIA,

AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PUTTING ON WEIGHT.

I've spent much time now, several years, surveying the online population of underweight people who desire to gain meaningful mass. Daily have I read of the constant struggle for some people to put on pounds. Please believe me when I share this assessment: Your inability to gain weight is less likely to be due to physiological reasons, and more likely to be due to psychological reasons!

I'm writing part two as a follow-up to part one, simply because I wanted to clarify some of the finer points, as necessitated by some of the responses to the first piece. The point was not to bash the "leangain" approach, and I'm certainly not encouraging you to try to gain fat. I'm also not advocating dirty bulks, for the average gaining practitioner. Of course we want to gain as little fat as possible; of course an aesthetic physique is one of our stated goals. Okay? So bear with me.

Yet still, the point remains, being too conservative with your approach is not an efficient use of your time. Here's the thing: I feel like people are trying to be needlessly clever here, "How can I put on muscle, but not fat?", or, "What if I bulk & cut every-other-day, can I burn fat while I gain muscle?" You are looking for a shortcut. You are trying to "out-smart" fat gain. You're looking for that infamous "one-weird-trick", but...

FAT IS SMARTER THAN YOU.

FAT and fat-storage is a mechanism that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, to keep you alive. Fat has kept your ancestors alive through times of famine; fat has fueled their bodies in the absence of grain. Fat serves a purpose. (It's an insult to FAT that you hate it so, and that you find the slightest fat gain shameful. YOU MUST LET GO OF YOUR FEAR OF FAT! Fat is our ally & friend).

Fat is darn-near sentient, with a mind of its own. I'm not saying that as a figure of speech; it's more accurate than you think. So it's no surprise your feeble attempts to block fat gain at all costs will be met with resistance. It is silly to imagine it would be simple to suppress what evolution has carefully worked out over many millennia to be best for you. But yes, there are work-arounds. We can successfully modulate our body composition.

Now, what has Nature worked out for us? Has Nature dictated that foods be perpetually plentiful, and always in a state of artificial abundance? Certainly not. The food supply is tied to the seasons, and ebbs & flows with the harvests. With this in mind, do you think bodybuilders "invented" bulking & cutting? Or did they just discover it? Societies have been "bulking & cutting" long before the advent of physique manipulation: They ate plenty in times of plenty, and ate less during the lean times. However, mass-production of foods has altered this process.

But rather than follow the cyclical rhythms of abundance & restriction, people imagine they can devise a strategy wherein they gain only muscle; and if they do it correctly, they will "avoid" fat deposition, and never need to cut. They worry they'll burn their hard-earned muscle while in deficit, negating some of their effort. "If you slow-bulk slowly enough, you may never need to cut!" This sounds wonderful on paper, but not only is this slower, it runs counter to what Nature desires.

You can't have it both ways: You can't claim Hardgainership in one breath, and then in the same sentence, place multiple conditions on how you want to gain what kind of weight. Does that make sense? If you're coming from a point of the (perceived) inability to add weight, you don't get to say, "I'll only add muscle if there's no fat". You should be so lucky! But you don't get that option. If you want strength & size, accept the fact a pound of fat hitches a ride with each three or four pounds of muscle you pick up. Because you're going to trim it at a later date.

Will anyone notice if this guy gains 5 pounds of fat?

What about TEN pounds, distributed evenly?

HOW does our psychology sabotage us? Fat-Fear makes you squeamish. It makes you reluctant to devour a meal with reckless abandon. A little voice sits in the back of your mind that constantly warns you, "Don't eat TOO much, I might get . . . FAT!". You're terrified of it, admit it. Well, STOP IT. I realize anyone can say, "Oh, you can't gain weight? Just eat 6 Big-Macs each day, you'll gain". Of course the solution is to eat more, everyone knows this. If only it were this easy. You've got to learn to shut down that voice.

There's two phenomenon going on: Your stomach is quite literally atrophied from under-use; it's folded up to the point that a small amount of food activates the stretch-receptors, triggering a false sense of fullness. The solution here is to stretch it out. Eat a full meal, then chase it with a pint of milk, or even just water. Send a message to your stomach to stretch out, to prepare for the larger meals you'll be stuffing in there. You "feel like you might vomit"? Well, do you actually vomit, or just feel that way? Push through; in time, that feeling will go away.

But the other phenomenon which hinders your growth is that voice, the "Don't-Fat" voice. It's the same voice that makes you avoid dietary fat, for fear of becoming what you eat. It's related to the voice that makes you not try, because you "don't have good genetics, anyway". It's the voice that makes you wonder if you can even make gains, with your small-diameter wrist bones. It's a voice that makes you give up. But you WILL put on weight, and it really will be mostly muscle, if you're making the appropriate effort in the gym. 

This picture only serves to break up a wall of text.

It's a visual representation of "effort in the gym".

You've got to trust in the process, and pursue the goals you really want, rather than second-guessing yourself. Most of the time people think they're getting fat too fast, it's due to stomach-bloating, from perpetually having food in their stomach & intestines. They slack in front of the mirror, with garbage posture, and decide they're putting on fat too quickly, which then results in doubts about bulking. Maybe it's not fat at all, just poor posture? (Side-note: But they don't want to work abs & core when bulking, because they "can't see them", but also don't hit abs & core when cutting, because "you can't build muscle in a deficit"!) 

This isn't to say some people aren't getting fat. They'll try to rush the process, and see how much they can "gain" in 2 months. Muscle-protein-synthesis is a slow process, okay? Like paying money into a savings account, the results stack up over time. But because you weren't patient, now, instead of a "hardgainer," you classify yourself as "skinny fat". You say you "ARE" skinnyfat, rather than say you "became" skinny fat. It's like a new identity for you. Yet all through the massing phase, you avoided cardio and you avoided training abs. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

But, all good bulks must come to an end. No one ever obtained the physique they desired in a single bulk, or even in a single bulk & a single cut. Like the perpetual sowing & reaping of the fields, you will make cyclical progress if you are patient. Will you grow tomatoes in one month instead of three, if you provide extra water, sun, and fertilizer? NO, you can't. It simply doesn't work that way. You control all the variables you can, and wait for things to grow. Then you harvest your gains, and the process begins anew.

It's a meditation in patience. A 3-steps-forward, 1-step-back approach is always better than 1-small-step-forward-at-a-time. Sure, you may have the illusion of always "moving forward" in the single-step way, but the 3/1-step-path is demonstratably faster. If you show the same care and discipline in cutting as you should be in bulking, you can eliminate 100% of the fat you accumulate. It's always easier to burn fat than build muscle. It can be a controlled, methodical opportunity to reveal the definition that's hiding just out of sight. Believe it or not, many people enjoy cutting as much as the massing phase; it has an energy of its own! You will look forward to cutting, rather than dreading it.

"Genetics" isn't keeping you small, Fear is. If you come to this realization, you can finally move forward and cultivate some serious mass. You can eat with purpose, and develop a map you can follow to your destination. It's a prolonged but worthy endeavor. No one enrolls in college hoping to be "done" in 6 months. They settle in and devote years of their life to what they have decided is a noble pursuit. In a similar way, the investment in your physical strength & stamina will reward you with manifold dividends that will surely enrich various facets of your Life.

Gain at a reasonable rate. Not too fast, but not too slowly, either.

Because in case you haven't heard it recently,

You're too damn skinny!

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