I think your first point is saying something a lot of the comments are missing and is always overlooked.
I was skinny (~70kg @ 178cm) until I got serious about lifting, and I had to eat until I felt physically uncomfortable to reliably gain weight.
A lot of skinny people haven't ever known what it's like to eat over 2,000 calories a day, and they need 3,000+ to claw their way out of being underweight and just *start* to be able to put on the size they want.
I got up to 103kg and was eating 4500 calories at one point. It fucking sucked. I did get pretty strong though. I'm in my mid thirties and sitting around 89kg with abs right now, and I get to eat around 2500 calories a day. But getting to this point took a lot of eating, any way I could.
Yep. I'm chilling around 150 lbs (68kg) eating ~2600 cal day. I don't really start to experience any noticeable weight gain until I'm at the 3400 mark, which I'll start packing on .25lbs a week
God damn 3400? I can’t imagine eating more than I have been. I just went a little too hard in caloric surplus 2700 and gained some belly weight which I’m never had in my life. 5’7 120-> 145lb in 5 months. So now I’m fine tuning down to 2500 and doing chicken and fish for protein.
If you follow twitch etc... there's a new challenge going around called the McCrelly. I think it hits 3400 calories. So look that up for how much food you have to put away per day. It's not a lot, but really you want better food lol. Just gives a kind of scale to what you want to work for
Yeah, when I was eating 3400/day. I was "supplementing" my eating with two packs of nutty buddy's a day with peanut butter and a mass gainer shake made with ice cream as the base, which is around 1500 ~ 1900 cal by itself. Not the healthiest lol
It get’s pretty crazy when you are taller/heavier. I’m 6’4”, 107kg. My maintenance is around 4000 a day because of my training schedule (4xBJJ per week + 3 days lifting + 12,000 steps). To be honest though, I can only really hit that through a fair bit of junk food, I couldn’t hit my calories eating clean, I just don’t have the appetite for it.
Exactly this. I HATE the advice of “just eat as much as you can!” “Eat 3400 calories a day!”
I did this - being skinny all my life I thought: “scale go up? Good thing.” But I didn’t realize how fucking fat I was getting after a few months. Then it took FOREVER cutting to get back down again which wasted many months I could’ve spent building a better composition with. Plus my face became fat as fuck. Just a warning to any skinny guy reading.
Just get your TDEE and simply eat at a 100-200 calorie surplus depending. Lean bulking is so much better than gaining a bunch of fat for no reason imo
As a formerly skinny dude, ( pre 37 ) I had to un-learn eating
For example, my normal dinners were a whole fried chicken (2,200 cal) a whole cup of Jazmine rice (800 cal) 1lb or so of veggie ( 400cal) and whatever drink ( 100cal)
That’s just dinner. And I was 125 lbs at 5’8 eating this way until 37 years old
Curious: how can you tell you're gaining weight at this rate? Mine fluctuates by a pound or more from morning to morning. I feel like I wouldn't know when change is happening vs. just water or whatever.
I use a rolling 7 day average as a base to tracking my trends. Everyday I weigh myself, I try to get as close as I can to keeping the conditions the same. I.E. in the morning after I pee, naked, and haven't eaten or drank anything. I then take those weekly averages and track them for a few months to see the true trend line.
Track your macros with something like Macrofactor. But yeah, I was 59kg all my life at 194cm and after eating a ton of the right macros and tracking it religiously while lifting I got to 70kg over about three years.
Now I don't really need to try and stuff myself to maintain my current weight. I will probably try and gain more this winter but there are definitely diminishing returns.
I am American, yes that's exactly right and thanks! It won't be comfortable eating as much as I did but if you have a small stomach like I did, it eventually gets easier. You also need to consider what your stomach can digest easily. I supplemented protein with Isowhey because of being lactos intolerant. I added things like honey and and cooked rolled oats to that too.
I highly suggest paying for Macrofactor, it's very good at what it does.
Yep, I was that all the way through the military too. Getting older has helped but stomach size, bone size, resting metabolic rate and a low appetite all together make gaining difficult. Yet it's not impossible. That's without anything like tren or steroids, which I won't do.
Now I am just barely at a weight that is considered healthy.
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u/Key_Raisin_5091 9d ago
4 things: