AlexPowell
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I see a lot of different threads and posts here with a few different questions and common themes popping up. This thread aims to tackle these.
Some of this article will be based on science and logic, some of this article will be my own personal opinion and is not backed up by hard science. I'll do my best to separate these in this thread and provide full disclosure on this.
First things first - maintenance calories.
The best way I get people to find this is to log what they are eating for a week and averaging out their calories. You can also use a TDEE calculator online. Finding your maintenance calories is not terribly important as generally most people are going to be making adjustments either up or down based on their goals. So don't worry about finding your exact maintenance calories. Just pick a number and run with it
Picking your macros
This is not terribly important. The best diet is the one that you'll stick to. If you'll stick to any diet then the best diet is natural foods that contain everything you require and digests quickly and easily. Get in your protein from real food and then fill up the rest of your calories with carbohydrate from real sources like rice, oats and potato. If you're required to eat a lot of food to grow or you're experiencing bloating, you're probably best avoiding wheat and barley based products. Northern Europeans do really, really well with gluten while the rest of the world doesn't so much. If you're eating real food like steak and rice then your macros are going to fall in the right place no matter what.
Gaining weight
So now you have your rough maintenance calories and want to gain muscle. Weigh yourself. Eat your new diet at maintenance calories for a week and weigh yourself again. If you gained at least 0.5kg / 1lb (half for women) then do not change anything. If you did not gain this much weight then increase your calories by 5%. You can increase your calories by either increasing carbohydrate or by increasing the amount of meat you're eating. If you're eating mainly chicken then you can get this caloric increase by swapping some out for beef instead. Or you can add more rice to a meal. Whatever you choose - do the same thing each day and don't do random things. You want to track everything very carefully so you know what each change is doing to your body. If you increase your steak to get a 5% caloric increase and nothing happens, next week you can increase your rice to see if that works better. So every week you weigh yourself and increase calories 5% for each week you do not gain 0.5kg or 1lb. For some people this will be every week, for others it might be one or two adjustments.
Losing weight
Likewise with gaining weight, losing weight is the opposite. Reduce your calories by 5% for each week you do not lose 0.5kg / 1lb (half for women). When you make an adjustment, keep the same adjustment for each day. Don't reduce the calories from rice the first day and from steak the next. You need to keep the variables the same and change one at a time. For losing weight you also have the option of adding activity. If you are not losing weight then instead of reducing calories by 5% you can add in a 10 minute walk each day. This will allow you to reduce calories a lot slower as 50% of the time you're adding an extra 10 minute walk to each day instead. After meals is a great time to add in any 10 minute walks
What food should I eat?
This is where we get out of the scientific realm and into my own personal
It's my opinion that red meat is a superior source of protein and fats. Nothing is more nutrient dense than red meat. If you include liver, you have 100% of what your body needs. I did not keep track of the number of times that I was helping someone with their diet and they were trying to gain weight with chicken or white fish. Even if they were eating 4000+ kcal a day, switching their protein to red meat allowed them to gain muscle on fewer calories and volume of food. When dieting, nothing kept their muscles full like red meat.
For carbohydrate, I recommend finding something that you like and sticking with it. The body gets better at digesting if you feed it the same thing every day. Rice is really, really easy to diet on as it's so easy to measure exact amounts and is very versatile. You can also sprinkle dextrose over it if you're having a hard time eating.
A note on drugs
Please, do not add drugs or modify them if you're also modifying your diet. If you find your maintenance calories, add 5% and then also start taking superdrol, you're going to add a fair amount of body weight. However how do you know if you're gaining muscle optimally or not? Your only metric of judging progress (the scale) is now unreliable and you don't know if the 5% increase is working or not. You might be doing great, you might just be gaining water and glycogen that will go away when you stop taking the superdrol. Increase your calories by 5% each week until you get to the point where you're gaining 0.5kg / 1lb for at least 3 weeks in a row without caloric adjustments, THEN add in your drugs. You now know 100% that you're eating enough food to grow and can keep track of how much of your weight increase is from food and how much is from drugs. Likewise when dieting, wait until you've been losing weight consistently on the same number of calories for several weeks before adding something like MK677. If you reduce calories then add MK677, you do not know if the diet is working by any objective means and have to resort to looking in the mirror. Wait until you're losing weight, add in the drugs, write off any weight changes as the drugs then start tracking progress again
Please ask any further questions and I'll update this as needed!
Some of this article will be based on science and logic, some of this article will be my own personal opinion and is not backed up by hard science. I'll do my best to separate these in this thread and provide full disclosure on this.
First things first - maintenance calories.
The best way I get people to find this is to log what they are eating for a week and averaging out their calories. You can also use a TDEE calculator online. Finding your maintenance calories is not terribly important as generally most people are going to be making adjustments either up or down based on their goals. So don't worry about finding your exact maintenance calories. Just pick a number and run with it
Picking your macros
This is not terribly important. The best diet is the one that you'll stick to. If you'll stick to any diet then the best diet is natural foods that contain everything you require and digests quickly and easily. Get in your protein from real food and then fill up the rest of your calories with carbohydrate from real sources like rice, oats and potato. If you're required to eat a lot of food to grow or you're experiencing bloating, you're probably best avoiding wheat and barley based products. Northern Europeans do really, really well with gluten while the rest of the world doesn't so much. If you're eating real food like steak and rice then your macros are going to fall in the right place no matter what.
Gaining weight
So now you have your rough maintenance calories and want to gain muscle. Weigh yourself. Eat your new diet at maintenance calories for a week and weigh yourself again. If you gained at least 0.5kg / 1lb (half for women) then do not change anything. If you did not gain this much weight then increase your calories by 5%. You can increase your calories by either increasing carbohydrate or by increasing the amount of meat you're eating. If you're eating mainly chicken then you can get this caloric increase by swapping some out for beef instead. Or you can add more rice to a meal. Whatever you choose - do the same thing each day and don't do random things. You want to track everything very carefully so you know what each change is doing to your body. If you increase your steak to get a 5% caloric increase and nothing happens, next week you can increase your rice to see if that works better. So every week you weigh yourself and increase calories 5% for each week you do not gain 0.5kg or 1lb. For some people this will be every week, for others it might be one or two adjustments.
Losing weight
Likewise with gaining weight, losing weight is the opposite. Reduce your calories by 5% for each week you do not lose 0.5kg / 1lb (half for women). When you make an adjustment, keep the same adjustment for each day. Don't reduce the calories from rice the first day and from steak the next. You need to keep the variables the same and change one at a time. For losing weight you also have the option of adding activity. If you are not losing weight then instead of reducing calories by 5% you can add in a 10 minute walk each day. This will allow you to reduce calories a lot slower as 50% of the time you're adding an extra 10 minute walk to each day instead. After meals is a great time to add in any 10 minute walks
What food should I eat?
This is where we get out of the scientific realm and into my own personal
It's my opinion that red meat is a superior source of protein and fats. Nothing is more nutrient dense than red meat. If you include liver, you have 100% of what your body needs. I did not keep track of the number of times that I was helping someone with their diet and they were trying to gain weight with chicken or white fish. Even if they were eating 4000+ kcal a day, switching their protein to red meat allowed them to gain muscle on fewer calories and volume of food. When dieting, nothing kept their muscles full like red meat.
For carbohydrate, I recommend finding something that you like and sticking with it. The body gets better at digesting if you feed it the same thing every day. Rice is really, really easy to diet on as it's so easy to measure exact amounts and is very versatile. You can also sprinkle dextrose over it if you're having a hard time eating.
A note on drugs
Please, do not add drugs or modify them if you're also modifying your diet. If you find your maintenance calories, add 5% and then also start taking superdrol, you're going to add a fair amount of body weight. However how do you know if you're gaining muscle optimally or not? Your only metric of judging progress (the scale) is now unreliable and you don't know if the 5% increase is working or not. You might be doing great, you might just be gaining water and glycogen that will go away when you stop taking the superdrol. Increase your calories by 5% each week until you get to the point where you're gaining 0.5kg / 1lb for at least 3 weeks in a row without caloric adjustments, THEN add in your drugs. You now know 100% that you're eating enough food to grow and can keep track of how much of your weight increase is from food and how much is from drugs. Likewise when dieting, wait until you've been losing weight consistently on the same number of calories for several weeks before adding something like MK677. If you reduce calories then add MK677, you do not know if the diet is working by any objective means and have to resort to looking in the mirror. Wait until you're losing weight, add in the drugs, write off any weight changes as the drugs then start tracking progress again
Please ask any further questions and I'll update this as needed!
