Bodybuilding Forums

At the beginning of January, I started the MANS diet and THT workouts - exactly as in total anabolism - at 177 lbs, with the goal of gaining mass. In the first few weeks, I dropped some fat, although I already had low (est. 14-15% bf) to start with. Undoubtedly, I traded some fat for muscle, but not a significant amount. For the next two months, up until about a week ago, I hovered around 173-174; not gaining much, just doing some trading.

Today I weighed myself, and I'm just under 170 - AFTER loading up on creatine, which usually makes me gain a few pounds (probably the water). What's the deal here? I'm eating as much fat as I can possibly stomach - at least 2500-3000 cals a day - in fact, I've puked a few times from trying to keep all these fatty foods down. Drinking olive oil gets pretty disgusting after a while. I'm also getting ~180g of protein a day, some days a little less, some days a little more possibly. I'm 6'2", 170lb, and ectomorph build with an apparently out of control metabolism, or a monster tapeworm. My carb-ups last from friday dinner to sunday - at first, they were only a day, but then I lengthened them hoping to gain more mass. I generally get 7-8 hours of sleep on a typical weeknight, more on weekends.

So what should I do here? I'm thinking of switching to something more like the GLAD diet, because I really don't know how I can eat any more fat. I've been supplementing with whey protein, glutamine, potassium, magnesium, omega-3, and whatever's in a multivitamin. I know there's multiple threads around on high fat foods for more calories, but short of eating a jar of mayo a day, I really don't know what else to do. Any recommendations?

Your body won't metabolize dietary fat directly to body fat; only the glycerol is directly useful.

What does a typical Saturday or Sunday carb-up look like for you? What are your meals on a typical low-carb day?

"Show me someone who claims to be a hard-gainer, and I'll show you someone who isn't eating enough." --Anonymous

--Matt B.

Haha redgiki, these fast responses are amazing. Perhaps I should hire you.

I'm not terribly concerned about gaining fat; I'd rather drop the bf% if possible, but the priority here is gaining muscle.

Typical Saturday or Sunday... well, I'm at college, so it depends a bit on what the dining hall (thank goodness for the all-you-can eat meal plan) has to offer.

Carb-up
Friday evening:
Dinner: A pile of roast turkey, ham, pasta with sauce, meatballs, and a good size salad with assorted veggies and soaked in dressing - topped off with some ice cream. Later in the evening, some pizzas and brews possibly.

Saturday:
Brunch: A stack of pancakes with syrup, whipped cream, chocolate chips, orange juice, coffee with creamer. (Usually I feel sick to my stomach after, why the hell I continue to eat this?...)
Throughout the day, almonds and cans of beans (~500 cals each).
Dinner: A few pieces of chicken, rice, breaded shrimp, usually some more ice cream (enough to stuff me), another decent salad.
Late evening: more beans, mixed nuts, usually some pizza.

Sunday:
Brunch: Chicken cordon-bleu (chicken, cheese, ham inside of some breaded thing), potatoes, gravy, mixed cooked vegetables, salad.
Beans through day again.
Dinner: Pasta, chicken, meatballs, mixed cooked vegetables, salad, ice cream with toppings.

Low-carb Week
Pretty much everyday is the same, since there's not a lot of low-carb options. There's basically two different days:

Day 1:
Breakfast (~9:40AM): Pile of bacon and scrambled eggs/omelet.
First Lunch(~12:30PM): Usually there's hamburger patties, a little bigger than the ones you find on dbl cheeseburgers at mcdonalds, I'll grab one of those with a few slices of cheese and eat it on the way back to get my gym gear.
Immediately after a Workout at 1:00- finishing with 25g scoop of whey protein with glutamine and a few other good things.
Second lunch(~2:00PM) : As much hamburger meat as I can stomach (~ 4 of those patties), salad with mushrooms, small amount of shredded cheese, and as much olive oil as I can soak it with.
Afternoon: sometimes a handful of almonds, depending how overly stuffed I feel.
Dinner (~5:30PM): As much pork soaked with olive oil (sometimes chicken) as I can stomach, another salad like lunch.
Evening(dinner to ~12PM): this is where it gets tricky. Usually some more whey protein, I'll drink olive oil, if I could sneak any pork or beef from the dining hall I'll eat that, almonds, whatever I can find around that's carb-less.

Overall, the daily plate puts it around 2,700 to 3,000 calories.

Day 2:
Breakfast - same.
First lunch: same as day 1, or sometimes there's chicken fingers instead; I'll eat as many of those as I can with as much mayo as possible, salad soaked with olive oil.
Second lunch: same as above.
Dinner: Whatever meat is available: chicken, turkey, meatballs soaked in olive oil usually, salad, etc.
Evening: same as above.

Overall cals are same.

The only option left I can think of is scraping together some cash and getting the heavy whipping cream, and seeing how much of that I can stomach in the evenings. I know to gain weight, I should be shooting more 4-5000 cals a day, but I can't figure out how I can get that much food in my stomach. In the last few weeks, as I really tried to up my cals, I also appear to have gained some bf% judging by the abs.

I can only go on what you've said but why not try adding extra cheese, maybe heavy cream mixed with whey, a big salad with extra virgin olive oil, I'm sure you know that already but I find it really easy to get enough calories, I'm taking in around 2500 so you may need more but heavy cream and extra vigin olive oil contain alot of calories in a small serving so it should be easy to get the calories in.
Have you tried marks monster whey shake or the homemade protein bars? Surely they would help.

Carb up look full though, maybe you could add some good old oats, love my oats on a carb up.

MEMAR: Measure, Experiment, Measure, Adjust, Repeat. Choose one of the following, and add the other if after 2-4 weeks you aren't seeing the results you expect.

Experiment 1: Try adding a mid-week carb-up and measure your progress after 2-4 weeks.

Experiment 2: Bump your carbs up to 50-60g/day on your low-carb days. My maintenance level on low-carb was 90-100g at around 210 lbs. Do this for 2-4 weeks.

The two together, plus sufficient caloric intake, should reverse your downward weight trend.

Regards,

Matt B.

I eating a MASSIVE amount of cheese until earlier this month, when I discovered it might not be the best thing to eat piles of. Do a search, the thread is somewhere around here. Since then it looks like I've been dropping about a pound a week.

Cream is pretty much the last option I have; I've gotta be careful on the protein though because I've noticed some more fat gains recently, which might be due to overeating on the protein. Unfortunately, without beef or pork, the fats get harder to find...

Its impossible to stomach any more olive oil. Every meal is soaked with it, there's a bottle in my closet, but the stuff seriously makes me sick to my stomach after drinking a few oz. I'm just a little perturbed as to this apparent fat gain recently, and why these extra calories aren't going toward muscle at all.

redgiki wrote:MEMAR: Measure, Experiment, Measure, Adjust, Repeat. Choose one of the following, and add the other if after 2-4 weeks you aren't seeing the results you expect.

Experiment 1: Try adding a mid-week carb-up and measure your progress after 2-4 weeks.

Experiment 2: Bump your carbs up to 50-60g/day on your low-carb days. My maintenance level on low-carb was 90-100g at around 210 lbs. Do this for 2-4 weeks.

The two together, plus sufficient caloric intake, should reverse your downward weight trend.

Regards,

Matt B.

During my first month with the MANS diet, I wasn't so good with keeping out the carbs. Occasionally I'd snap and devour 50g of carbs or so in the middle of the week - ironically, it was a mid-week carbup. I'd also eat more around 50g of carbs a day probably. Initially I dropped about 3 pounds (probably water and glycogen), and then slowly dropped to where I am now. May as well give it another shot... should the fat intake still increase then?

On the subject of the fat gain make sure your measuring weekly to make sure theres been an increase in fat gain because for me atleast I may look better in the morning than at night and it's hard to tell wether it's actually fat gain or not so measurments are great to determine wether fat has been gained.

Its hard to tell you what else to eat, you could try sesame seeds they are low in carbs and high in fat, they are actually very low in carbs but they dont taste all that good after a few handfulls. Try the cream mixed with whey or blended with a couple of strawberries and maybe add a spoon of splenda to sweeten it.

Alright, I picked up a few cartons of heavy whipping cream - we'll see if that helps.

i can only sympathize with you because i have a similar problem. to call me a hard gainer
would be an understatement. i never even had those beginner-gains.
i'm 170 cm in height, 134 lbs, tried many workout routines, creatine, gainer, protein powder. tried 4-6 and 8-10 rep ranges.
i paid heed to resting, calories, sleep, protein consumption, post workout meal tnd whatnot.
nothing seems to help, my muscles wont budge a milimeter.
i can lose fat but only to a certain degree, drop 2 kg and then it stops no matter how much cardio
and HIIT i do.
i'm planning to go on the MANS diet and follow mark's strategies but i doubt this will be the savior to my hopeless body, and also fear
there would be complications. and after i read your problem i feel that maybe there are people that simply dont have the ability reach
hypertrophy no matter what they try and that i'm one of them.
so we'll give this one a go and see how it rolls, if it does not work i'll give up trying, i'm tierd of this.