It seems all the problems have been solved since I last engaged. That was an easy one, gents!
I do remember the ads and was so disappointed when my X-ray glasses didn’t work!
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I’ve seriously never heard of this. I’m now kind of worried it is something stressing my own teenagers.
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Not a single mention of Zoolander?
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Tom Platz used to chew rubber tubing to develop his face muscles, so maybe give that a shot.
That Liver King jackass did the same thing, but sold branded silicone chews instead.
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I was addicted to PB&J’s in my early twenties.
In the past, ten million skinny men worried if they gained muscle they would lose their abs.
These types of concerns are nothing new. But you will find the benefits of the muscle gained outweigh other changes. So my advice is not to sweat it.
You need to eat more calories than maintenance level to gain weight and optimize speed of muscle gain. To gain more muscle and less fat, this amount over maintenance level would be less. If it is minimal, you gain muscle very slowly yet cannot guarantee no other changes. Better to take the plunge and gain lots of muscle, losing the fat is far easier than gaining strength.
Trial and error will give you the answers you seek. Do not be afraid to experiment on yourself in this regard.
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And we all know the saying, “skinny guys with abs are like fat chicks with big tits.”
The biggest thing is realizing you don’t have to find a super secret codex puzzle to be successful in composition goals, until you’re trying to get to an unsustainable lean peak for a 2 minute stage show.
When bulking, increasing calories by 300-500 per day as a general rule of thumb works well. Aim for 1-2 grams of protein per bodyweight inside your calories.
If you’re a little guy or running a moderate routine start with 300. If you’re bigger or hitting the gym hard try 500.
You will not get fat cheeks. Worst case if you grossly overestimate caloric need or underestimate gym output, you can reverse unwanted fat gain by cutting the same calories back out, and pretty quickly.
You don’t need moose knuckle soup extracts, magic Indonesian flowering plant roots, trace minerals exclusively collected from a mountain top in the Andes mountains or any bullshit extreme diet.
Keep salt low if you’re worried about water retention, and understand the glycemic index for carbs. Cliffs notes are avoid candy and processed crap.
I think this kind of the thing for any of us getting locked into the over-analyses: none of this is a life sentence or irreversible. It’s not like you wake up tomorrow in this entirely new body you accidentally created. Tons of freedom to try things and make adjustments as we go.
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Absolutely. I think understanding the basics and then “just doing it” is 80% of the battle. Certainly enough for a bar tender to fill sleeves a little tighter and keep a pretty face.
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Now the popular thing with the kids is Sam Sulek’s chocolate milk bulk.
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So…. squats and milk are back?
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hell yes
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I actually wrote about this recently. Young trainees need these simple solutions because they don’t have the attention span for the necessary nuance. You tell them to count their calories and stay in a reasonable surplus and focus on whole foods and they just tune you out: tell them to drink a gallon of chocolate milk a day and eat PBJs and they’re all on board! And at least it gets them growing!
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When I was younger I was skinny, but had a fatter face. I began to appreciate the merits of this when I grew older since this also meant few wrinkles. Point being, a fat face has its advantages too and should not be great cause fur concern.
And there’s just so much margin for error at the ends of the spectrum. A young, skinny dude is not going to wake up fat. An experienced, hefty trainee won’t dump all his muscle by skipping a couple meals. Yet we all tend to jealously guard the thing we’ve already got in the bag.
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Yet we all tend to jealously guard the thing we’ve already got in the bag.
That, or come up with convenient excuses to prevent us from succeeding. I always equate it to saying “I don’t want to enroll in undergrad because I’m afraid of accidentally getting a PhD”. This idea that a perpetually underweight trainee is going to OVERsucceed and get fat, or that a sloppy dude is going to OVERsucceed and shed all their lean tissue is always amusing. But it’s a great way to justify all the bad choices that got us to where we are.
“I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas!”
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Do cardio.