So I haven’t gained a pound in a month. My lifts are going up, so I guess I’m adding muscle/losing fat maybe…but the weight hasn’t gone up. I’m eating 4500-4800 calories a day, which should be fine in theory for someone at 203 lbs, but I digress.
Yes, I need to add 300-500 calories a day and see if that works, but I’m also wondering:
Can you eat too much at once?
So I don’t really have time to snack on foods throughout the day. I usually have:
1200 calorie breakfast
600 calorie snack
800 calorie workout drinks (pre during and post)
1000+ calorie post workout meal
1000+ calorie pre-bed meal (whatever i need to finish up my calories)
I’m wondering if I’m just wasting away all of the food I eat because I eat so much so quickly, that it can’t all be digested the same way if I broke some of these meals up.
So uuuh…am I eating in a counter-productive manner, or should I not worry about it and just add another 300-500 calories/day?
Usually my crap looks pretty digested when it comes out. Does yours not? If you haven’t checked out your crap recently… then have a look. If it looks digested, then chances are good that your body has done something with it.
Edit: Not trying to be an ass. It was just the first thing that came to mind.
I don’t think you can eat too much at once. It’ll just take a little longer to digest and absorb the meal.
A study done where I come from actually showed that a strength training group who ate three huge meals a day gained more muscle than a group that ate the same amount of calories spread over eight meals.
It might be uncomfortable though.
you eat a big steak, it doesn’t get slammed into the muscle right away, it takes hours and hours to be broken down and delivered throughout the body. the whole max absorbtion rate per meal thing is BS imo
[quote]schultzie wrote:
you eat a big steak, it doesn’t get slammed into the muscle right away, it takes hours and hours to be broken down and delivered throughout the body. the whole max absorbtion rate per meal thing is BS imo[/quote]
Yeah I wasn’t basing it on science so much as intuition (you clog up the pipes, its not going to be as efficient at absorbing everything). Glad to see my habits aren’t bad.
Well, looks I have the sad task of eating even more food…what a shame…
I think you’re fine man. How intense are your workouts? How active are you in between meals? Are you working? What type of work do you do? Is it physical? Overall, I think you’re going to be fine. As long as it’s clean food, a lot or not, you’ll be good
[quote]dratner wrote:
I think you’re fine man. How intense are your workouts? How active are you in between meals? Are you working? What type of work do you do? Is it physical? Overall, I think you’re going to be fine. As long as it’s clean food, a lot or not, you’ll be good[/quote]
My workouts are ultra intense. At a minimum 90 minutes, usually closer to 120 minutes…super high volume (150+ reps per muscle, 2 groups per day).
So I get about 8 hrs in the gym, though the rest of my life is pretty sedentary (grad school research at a desk).
Berardi thinks about 4800 calories according to massive eating calculator, but its not working so I’ll bump it up to 5100-5300…thanks guys.
woooah that is a lot of time in the gym! holy shit. yeah, well you better be eating your ass off in order to prevent over training. No wonder you’re not gaining any weight. What does your post workout nutrition look like? Also, what time of day do you train? And how much fat are you eating? Are the majority of those calories coming from carbs or fat? I’m assuming you’re keeping your protein at 1.5 bodyweight?