While I’m not a Guzman ‘fan’, I think he’s an alright guy. He tracks his macros, but I think the ‘hardgainer’ thing is just something to get viewers. I saw that video and I think he ate like a legitimate eggs/rice meal in the morning, has some candy, ate some chiptole, had some cereal and than had another ‘real’ meal of like 10oz chicken and rice. Which to me isn’t that bad. That’s 3 legitimate meat/starch meals + 2 bonus things to push carbs up.
The above example meal plan you gave, while it would work, is at least 300g of protein. That would make me feel like shit. lol. Unless you really like protein, Idk why you’d do that, at least as a natty (on gear obviously protein being higher will definitely have some benefits).
Now, with the food quality thing, I think what you’re kind of getting at is maybe just simple micronutrients, which people usually disregard when they go on a IIFYM yolo style diet. I’ve felt shitty before eating a ton of calories, but once i looked at my MICROS and saw I was devoid in certain things, I felt way better. I take a digestive pill now and again, I eat 2-4 servings of veggies everyday, and 1-2 servings of fruit. Honestly in a surplus, this next bulk I’ll probably add in a good deal of my carbs from fruit because of the nutrients, and I’ve noticed I have more energy since hitting my micros more, which leads to better gym performance. Another thing is fiber: someone eating your diet is going to have a LOT more fiber, their body will probably digest and utilize more of the food, so yeah in that regard I get where you’re coming from. Eating 500g of carbs from foods that you shit out an hour later won’t help much. lol
I guess what I’m saying is I think that the BB’ing ‘chikan rice and brokly’ thing DOES work, but for some it’s not feasible, and it work because of the MICROS that are easily obtained when hitting your MACROS with those foods. I genuinely feel someone could eat 500 carbs from mostly shit and all their protein from powder, but if they ate 8-12 servings of fruits and veggies and just made sure fiber game was on point, they’d be just as fine.
Sorry for the novel, just want to give a somewhat ‘agreeing’ perspective from coming from an alternative POV (my styles of eating and yours are obviously different as seen in the past lol)
TL;DR most the time ‘hardgainers’ are people who aren’t taking precautions to digest the calories they’re actually consuming
