Adding Calories: Low Carb Diet

Nutrition
1

I’m currently trying to bulk once again after what I would say have been a couple of failed attempts to bulk correctly. In the past I have tried to bulk mainly with high carb/protein diets but didn’t really seem to work for me. I did put on weight considerably fast but on top of gaining, I think, more fat than muscle, high carbs made me tired and bloated plus shit all day.

At 210 and with a considerable belly I decided to cut down for spring break using a budget version of the velocity diet (college student with limited budget) which seem to work pretty well. I dropped down to 188 without losing much strength and being as lean as I’ve ever been.

However, being below 10% fat (id like to think so) it’s time to bulk once again. What I’m currently doing is very similar to the Anabolic Diet: low carb, high fat/ protein diet, with a carb load on the weekends. The two modifications I’ve made are to use carbs peri workout and only have a single carb load meal during the weekend instead of two whole days. Despise the cravings I get for carb foods sometimes I do think they are not too beneficial for me.

Well its been about 2 and half weeks on this diet and my body weight hasn’t changed too much. I’ve gone from about 188 to 189, although I do look considerably leaner in front of the mirror (I do use sneakers as a measure).

I used nutritriondata to get a rough estimate of what my diet breaks down to be:
4250 calories
2% carbs
45% fats
53%

Protein: about 3 pounds of mainly chicken breast plus leans meats throughout the day plus 5 whole omega 3 eggs at breakfast. 8oz cottage cheese 30 minutes before bed

Fat: Fish oil, coconut oil, olive oil. (taking several teaspoons of the last two throughout the day)

Carbs: about 90g peri workout

My question is (sorry about the long post), how should I go about adding calories?

According to nutritiondata Im already getting well above 2g protein /pound of weight.

Should I just increase fat intake?

Thank you for reading :slight_smile:

2

Yeah i would be throwing in some nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews…etc) that will do the trick for extra calories from fat. Almond milk in your protein shakes if you want even more calories…not during the peri workout shakes though. It would slow protein absorption which isn’t what you want during your workout.

3

Sounds good. I’ll try to include some nuts in my grocery list this weekend to snack during class. Any suggestions as to where to get them, price wise?

Thanks again

4

I am not sure what stores you have around so i couldn’t tell you. Buy in bulk and always buy unsweetened/unsalted and it should be a pretty decent price. The “100% organic” ones with the fancy labels are overrated if value is in mind.

5

Adding calories through fat could easily be done by nuts, more oil (coconut, butter, olive) animal fats (replace some protein with eggs and eat the skin on meats)