[quote=“dagill2, post:2279, topic:249635, full:true”]. I’ll be doing it with the aim of gaining “some” weight, however I have absolutely zero experience of gaining weight without also getting fat so I’m not quite clear how to keep a handle on this. Any ideas or input massively appreciated, this is well outside my wheelhouse. @Voxel@alex_uk@Frank_C@aldebaran
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You tagged me by mistake right? I ate at least 3 donuts today I’m the worst bulker ever! (2 custard, 1 chocolate).
All I’d say is eat as clean as possible, plan and prep everything (overnight oats with plain protein is a great clean breakfast), eat similar meals each day so you can get an idea on where you are without counting and going mad, then it’s super easy to adjust and aim for a slow long gain.
I tend to agree with @Frank_C . Don’t plan cheats, life will give you some.
Honestly, just keeping a clean diet will do wonders. Not even acounting calories. At least that is what happened with me. When I diet, even though I’m in a decifit, having a good diet makes me feel so great and having gains. When I bulk, even very slightly and counting everything, I spiral out in bullshit and the gains qre subpar
Another idea, try to know what “cheats” are on the calendar (ie. birthday on Saturday, work party next week) then plan ahead for them. Or, if possible, control the timing and contents as much as possible. That way, you’ll know what to look forward to
Haha ok, I might be able to control my inner 10 year old for long enough to get semi lean and take some pumped up selfies. Problem is once I stop cutting I give up and semblance of healthy balanced diet and just eat really poorly.
Might be worth taking a transformation style selfie to see honestly where you are (and post here if it’s not too painful!), might determine whether bulking or maintenance is the route you want to go.
In terms of where to go I’d personally stay higher carbs lower fat, either bulking or maintenance. Get the usual 1g per lb of protein or there abouts, so probably around 185-200g protein 250-300g carbs and 50-75g fat, so 2200 on lower end, 2675 on higher, I’m guessing that’s probably a range between maintenance and slight surplus for you? But I confess to not knowing your stats!
And yet, that’s pretty much exactly the kind of ballpark I’m looking at.
This is exactly my issue: I’m really, really good at convincing myself I deserve more calories, I’m not good at moderating them.
I fully intend to, although I won’t be posting it on here until the next Transformation starts. The reason being that I was beyond disappointed in myself with previous years efforts, so I’d like to make an impact on the next one. That means maximum time between photos. I still pretend to myself that come January and June, people will no longer be able to politely ignore my photos because the difference will be noticeable.
I’ve never experienced not tracking while still caring, so I don’t know. And just to clarify, I’m far from strict in my tracking. I plan my meals a week in advance to hit certain targets, mostly to make sure I have the food bought and prepared for when I need it, but if life intervenes, I have no problem moving stuff around as long as I’m roughly in the right ballpark.
Appreciate the shout out. I know I wasn’t directly consulted on the matter, but just to throw in my 2 cents, it took me WAY too goddamn long to figure out how to gain weight correctly, so don’t beat yourself up over it @dagill2 if it’s tricky. And by too goddamn long, I mean I’ve been lifting weights for 20 years and figured this out like 2 years ago. I had accidentally stumbled across it on a few occasions and was too dumb to grasp what the hell had happened, but it’s as I’ve written a few times before: training drives nutrition. The times I’ve had the most successful weight gain experiences are when I pushed training so stupidly hard that I HAD to eat to recover from it.
5/3/1 Building the Monolith and Deep Water were the easiest canned examples of it, but my 2 other very successful runs both involved signing up for a strongman competition where I had to compete up a weight class and the pressing event was something WELL outside my wheelhouse. For my most recent one, it was a 275lb keg press, and the one before that was I believe a 260lb log press for reps.
This is giving me a chance to realize something cool, so please bear with me as I suddenly start thinking out loud, but looking at those things it’s clear to me now that it’s always been the press that drove positive weight gain for me. I actually deadlift better when I LOSE weight, but to press big weights, I need to get a bigger body, specifically in the muscles that are visually impressive (shoulders, traps, lats, triceps, and a bit of pecs too). Now, yes, I do inevitably put on some abdominal fat in the process, which ALSO helps the press, but my recent foray into leanness has taught me that, once that fat is cut away, those pressing muscles stay.
So maybe an idea to set for yourself in your training is a press specific goal and a deadline that is a bit of a stretch. It might be a good way to vector things.
I legit think I’m going to make a blog post out of this in the near future, so thanks for affording me the space in your log to think this out.
Thank you for the input. The opportunity to have a pwn approved blog post specifically addressing my targets feels like a pretty solid thing to be thankful for.
It also plays well into the fact that, in setting up this next run of training, the goal that I’m really excited to meet is the press goal so I’ll put some more thought into how that affects my planning and look forward to your next blog post.
The secret is doing a press with leg drive and confusing everybody by calling it an overhead press. By the definition of the word, you are telling the truth. Strict press is the thing that should be specified … but I am getting off track again.
For more tips on how to trick people into thinking you are strong, you can buy my ebook. Next tip will be the bench press.
