Dieting Rules for Skinny people?

[tbinnerarity]

Basically, I'm scrawny as hell. I'm 5 10" and 145 lbs. Baseball season just got finished, and I've been working out everyday (excluding sundays) along with taking you're basic supplements, some Test boosters, and multi-vitamin and fish oil. I gained about 16 lbs in 2 months right before baseball season, but due to practice everyday, i haven't been able to work out at all.

Being as small as I am, the past week I've been trying to eat 4-5 meals a day, and eating as much as i possibly can along with 2-3 protein shakes throughout the day.

My question to ya'll is: are there any "rules" i need to follow in order to gain weight and increase my strength and size. Just basics that I'm probably unfarmiliar with? Any advice would be a huge help. Thanks!

 

[Nitrox]

The rules for skinny people or hard gainers are not any different than the rules for others.

Your body must have surplus calories and protein to grow. Being a leaner person myself, I have concluded that hard gainers often just do not have a big appetite. So...

The best advice I can give to anyone is to make up a meal plan and stick to it. This will mean getting a food scale, measuring portions, and tracking calories with software or on a site like Fitday.com. This way you take the uncertainty out of trusting your appetite. Building muscle is a long term goal and every day that you do not take in surplus calories is a lost opportunity - you can't get it back.

BTW on a bulking diet you'll get more mileage out of 6-8 meals per day.

 

[tbinnerarity]

6-8 is more than double what i used to eat, it might take some working up to that. Thanks for the advice though. I don't count a protein shake as a meal like some people do though so idk it is do-able for me. I made an account on Fitday.com and I'll try to start logging everything I eat everyday on that starting monday I guess. I just don't know how many calories i am burning each day in the gym so idk how much calories i should eat each day! I'm new to this stuff if you can't tell already!...haha

 

[Zero V]

AS someone who suffers from this as well(but currently being 162) I can say just eat like a mad man, but make it healthy.

When I started lifting I went from 160 down to 130(pure shredded) then started growing, got up to 145. Since thing I have bulked, etc, currently 160 but after being off almost a year. This means I will probably lose weight even as I grow bigger.

 

[Nitrox]

6-8 is more than double what i used to eat, it might take some working up to that. Thanks for the advice though. I don't count a protein shake as a meal like some people do though so idk it is do-able for me. I made an account on Fitday.com and I'll try to start logging everything I eat everyday on that starting monday I guess. I just don't know how many calories i am burning each day in the gym so idk how much calories i should eat each day! I'm new to this stuff if you can't tell already!...haha

Technically a shake should count as a meal although if it just has the protein it won't have many calories...

Yes there is a bit of a learning curve to meal planning but after a while it becomes second nature. Just stick with it. I wish I had been given this advice 20 years ago.

A rough estimate for calories needed to bulk up is 20 times your body weight. So for you that would be about 3000 calories/day. However if you are playing a lot of baseball, still growing, or are other wise more active than average then it will need to be higher (possibly upwards of 4000). As I said, these are only estimates used a starting point for your meal plan. You need to test drive it for a couple weeks and then check the scale. If your weight has not gone up then you need to increase calories.

EDIT - Another thing you may want to revisit is your 6 day/week weight training routine; it is probably overkill. 3 or 4 days at 30-45 mins of weights (cardio + stretching extra) is plenty. Remember growing is done outside the gym.

 

[urbanski]

a firm rule is...eat more than you require for maintenance.
track at fitday.com, see what your actual intake is and increase it until you see results.