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!

__________________________________________

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!

_______________________

But You Don't Want to Add Fat? (part 1)

THIS IS THE BIGGEST THING HOLDING YOU BACK.

Please read & re-read that. Fear of adding fat is the Biggest Thing holding you back from your dream of bulking up, and building a muscular physique. You know what, I don't think that really registered. Please, please read this one more time: You want to build muscle, build size, build strength . . . but you don't want to add an ounce of fat? Restricting fat gain is the biggest mistake you will make.

Let's back up a little bit. You think you have a high metabolism. You categorize yourself as a "hard-gainer" (both of these aren't true). But even if this were, wouldn't it follow logically, that you'll thus have an easier time metabolizing any dietary fats? Won't you, then, have a harder time gaining fat, if you really are a hard-gainer? That's the logic you need to embrace here, my friend.

Is this about "abs"? Somewhere you've made the false connection between visible abdominal muscles, and an excellent state of fitness. Do you realize you can be perfectly healthy, as well as incredibly fit, even if you can't see your abs? I'm guessing you already have "abs", and they are your only prized possession. You tell yourself, "I'm way too skinny, I have noodle arms and no shadow, but at least I have aaaabbss!"

I hate to break it to you, but abdominal definition in the absence of muscle size & strength means nothing. But it's true: If you have abs while weighing only 125 lbs, they're not even functional abs. They are "arbitrary abs"; they are a byproduct of being underweight, and under-nourished. They are nothing to be proud of. So let's start from this point of understanding: Abs you didn't build aren't abs you need to keep. You'll be exchanging them for "real" abs. Okay?

Trying to hang on to these silly, starving abs throughout the duration of bulking up will be pointless. If you're trying to gain weight and muscle, you're going to have to bite the bullet and kiss whatever-excuse-for-an-aesthetically-pleasing-midsection GOODBYE. Goodbye for now, we'll see you later. You shall return. Because in all reality, abs are the cherry on the cake, not the cake itself. Would you rather have just a cherry on a plate, or a plateful of cake, with no cherry?

STOP WORRYING ABOUT FAT! Stop restricting your intake of dietary oils & fats! Your body needs fats to grow, to develop, to be healthy. Healthful dietary fats contain many fat-soluble vitamins you are likely deficient in. They're called "essential fatty acids" for a reason! Your body needs sufficient fats to manufacture hormones. If you go too low on fats, you will hamper your ability to make testosterone; you will hinder your muscular potential. You don't want this, at all.

What's more, you can actually increase body fat, yet still remain the same body composition! Let's use this illustration: You weigh 100lbs, at 10% body fat. You bulk up to 200lbs, yet are still 10% body fat. In the first case, you have 10lbs of body fat; but after bulking, you now have 20lbs (10% of 200 is 20). Of course, these are just round numbers for simplicity. But the point remains, just because you add fat, doesn't mean you're getting "fat". Please embrace dietary fat!

Dietary fats are an incredible source of energy to fuel your training! Fats are calorie-dense, which means they make adding calories to your daily intake much, much easier. Becoming "fat" is a result of excessive calorie overload coupled with a sedentary lifestyle. But that won't be you. You'll be in a controlled state of slight calorie surplus, while also engaging in regular resistance training, plus occasional cardio/conditioning work. The obese figures you fear aren't doing any of these things. So don't compare yourself to them.

Yet still, FAT GAIN is part-and-parcel to the massing process. Muscle is metabolically expensive, and a little body fat goes a long way to help build & retain your new muscle. Building new muscle tissue is much easier when fat-fear is not a limiting factor. More than anything, muscle protein synthesis is hard and slow. Fat-burning in the future is relatively easy, by comparison. You WILL gain a slight amount of fat. But you WILL burn off this body fat at a later date...

Think about it like this: One job pays $10/hr, with no taxes. A different job pays $40/hr, but you have to pay out $15 for taxes out of every forty dollars you earn. Which would you rather have? Trying to "leangain" when you are monumentally underweight would be like accepting a job paying only ten dollars per hour. "It's 10 solid dollars per hour, tax free!" But although you pay back 15 dollars for taxes in the second job scenario, you take home 25 dollars, for every $40 you earn.

This is "The Fat Tax". You are effectively being taxed for your gains. Yet this is the most efficient path to faster results. Would you rather eke out a fat-free gain of 1 pound of muscle per month, or would you prefer to build 2.5 lbs of muscle which comes with 1.5 lbs of fat each month? 6 pounds of muscle in 6 months, or 15 pounds of muscle in 6 months? (The 9 lbs of fat can be cut in 2 months). So after eight months of training, you either build 8 lbs the fat-phobic way, or 15+lbs the fat-taxed way, but now you've dropped any added body fat. Simple as that.

Embrace the Fat. Gain a little fat. Build a bunch of muscle. Get hench.

Because you're too damn skinny.

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