For a start, remember that you are only 18 years old. You still have the best years of natural growth ahead of you.
2/ You have to get a little more scientific about your approach to your training program and nutritional requirements. No matter how long or how often you have been training you have to have a positive caloric balance and a sound periodized muscle building plan to achieve muscular hypertrophy… (getting bigger)
So with that being said you need to find out what your exact bf % is, so as to find your bmr, you need to know exactly how many calories a day that you are expending which includes factoring in your energy output for the day. No guessing at all. Without this basic knowledge then your quest for ultimate muscular hypertrophy is going to be totally hit and miss.
You have the best years of natural growth ahead of you so don’t blow it listening to all sorts of bs advice from pseudo wannabe experts and gurus; getting confused and disillusioned and making only mediocre gains in the coming years. Get involved in the industry, you can get good online strength and conditioning, personal training education and certification relatively cheap. Your 18 are you going to college?.. if so why not take human movement, physical therapy, kinesiology, exercise physiology or something similar. Hell do a dbl Physical Therapy and Nutrition, you’ll be one of the most sort after guys in American bestowed with that knowledge. You obviously enjoy exercise and want to continue to learn about it, so you will benefit by academically learning about your physical condition and physically alleviating that condition because of knowledge gained put into practice.
The very first law of life and exercise is “the law of individual difference”. Every single human being bar a minute % are different from each other and have to be treated as such when health and fitness is concerned and especially dietary concerns.
Here’s a short example, and I am not even sure if it is relevant to you as I have no knowledge of you as an individual at all, and at the risk of seeming to insult other posters to your question, which is definitely not my intention, I say this… several times posters told you to drink more milk, without pre qualifying it with “if you can tolerate it” or “If your not lactose intolerant” or something similar. Now drinking milk is not a bad thing unless like a hugh % of the population one is in fact lactose intolerant. And to make things even more troubling is that many people don’t even know it. Throat inflammation, bad breath, IBS, stomach upsets, constipation and bad gas are just some of the nasties that people put up with because they don’t realize they are lactose intolerant. So someone is going to be really unhappy if their symptoms get worse because they have increased their intake of a veritable poision… to them at least, because some guy on a web site told them to or that 6’2 260 shredded bodybuilder guru guy at the gym said he does.
While your thinking about this, take a week off, eat rest and re assess your training. Get ur skin folds recorded by a trainer at your gym, he will give you a printout of your muscle/fat ratios. It might cost you 30 bucks but it will be worth it… There are plenty of online resources eg livestrong that can help you find your bmr and daily energy expenditure… I bet the trainer at the gym would even run all the numbers for you for the cost of a visit.
With a scientifically based periodized muscle building program combined with a sound and appropriate nutritional regime you will never have issues achieving your goals…
a 3 second google search pulled up these stats on lactose intolerance…