Originally Posted by
taras0000
Most people who mention that don't realize how little they are eating. Obviously I can't weigh in on your dietary habits, but it is a common problem when it comes to hardgainers. Most people don't realize how hard it is to eat that much food. There are many people out there who are pretty lean and athletic, but don't have a high a metabolism as they may think. They are led to think they have a high metabolism because it's hard for them to put on weight. Weight gain and body composition are affected by more than just calories in VS calories burnt, namely gut environment,hormonal response, and the foods eaten. Often times people think they have a high metabolism, but in reality, they have an optimal gut environment, and consume the right foods in the right amounts, and they've been like this for a very long time. They are lean, trim, and fit, and don't have to work at being that way, so it's easy to make the assumption that they have a high metabolism. More often, the case is that they have a normal metabolic rate, they just don't eat junk, self regulate food intake well, and have a good gut environment.
The problem comes when these same people want to muscle up a little. They are such efficient digesters that they haven't needed lots of calorie to this point. Weightlifting consumes tons of calories, and people think that they are eating enough to not just keep up, but have an excess. Three months into their weight program, they are stumped as to why they aren't putting on weight because they ARE eating more. The problem is, they aren't eating enough. What's their problem? Remember that bit about self regulating calories? That's what they are doing. They have been eating what they need for years, and no more. Now they are needing more calories, so they consume more calories, but the internal regulatory mechanisms kick in and they stop once they've had enough. And because force feeding yourself is uncomfortable, they think they are eating enough because of that discomfort, not realizing that once that discomfort subsides you have to eat again.
So the problem comes when one wants to make changes to their diet, as our brains and bodies like when things stay "normal". Our bodies are pretty finely tuned to what and how much goes into it. Our hormonal system reacts to what, when, and how much we eat, and these hormones have certain effects on body and brain. Changes to these aspects of diet cause resultant changes in body and mind, and we subconsiously make changes to these ratios to get back to our "normal". This is why it's so hard to lose weight, because our hormonal feedback loop communicates with so many aspects of our biology, and they are all interrelated. Trying to "normalize"things by tweaking one or two things doesn't bring back your bodies "balance".
On another not, if you have a high metabolism, putting on muscle can be easy as long as you are eating enough. In fact, it's the best type of metabolism for building muscle. It is much easier to add calories and thrive than it is to reduce them and be in a good place (physically and mentally). A faster metabolism breaks food down faster, repairs the body faster, and allows one to either workout more often, or harder on the same schedule. More workout due to faster recovery, or more strenuous workouts on the same schedule will result in faster gains.
So if you're not gaining weight, you need to eat more, or if you really can't eat more, cut back on calorie expenditure.
There's a lot of good stuff in here. Something to think about if you're serious about gaining weight and want to do so "cleanly" is that you might be significantly aided using an app or program to track calories. MyFitnessPal used to be good but now it's bloated and sucks.
Secondly, most people are probably familiar with bodybuilding style "bulk and cut" schemes where bodybuilders gain significant fat and muscle and then diet to lose the fat. This is because their goal is to get huge and they're willing to accept gaining fat to gain as much muscle as possible. If you're not interested in this, you're going to probably want to shoot for something like 500-1000 extra calories a day, which works out to about 1-2 lbs per week. Also, if you've been eating at maintenance, you'll gain a bunch of weight right away when you start eating more because your muscles will fill up with glycogen, and it requires ~3g of water to store 1 g of glycogen.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is that the best way to gain muscle, and really recover from working out in general, is to spread your protein intake out throughout the day, in smaller 20-40g servings. If you eat little to no protein at all throughout the day and then eat 150g at dinner, your body is going to only absorb about 30-40g of that protein as protein and it's going to turn the rest into sugar/fat, and you'll excrete the excess nitrogen out.
It takes a big spike of leucine to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Leucine is one of the BCAAs, but it's also really common in all complete proteins. So you can skip the BCAA drinks and such as long as your protein intake is sufficient.