I can't gain weight?
 

Kid at the gym asked me yesterday why he couldn't gain weight. I told him to eat more. He said he didn't want to get fat. I was feeling snappy so I told him he could either keep doing what he was doing and keep failing, or he could listen to me and "get fat." He walked off without saying a word.

I used to get that a lot at my old gym. My line was (stole this from someone but don't remmeber who):

"If you want to be a solid 90kg's lean, you'll need to be a slightly sloppy 100kg's first."

LtL

People who say thry can't gain weight don't want put in the work it takes. They say they eat alot but obviously if you not gaining weight then you aren't eating enough.

Enabling.

Some people ask questions hoping to be enabled. Some ask questions because they really want help.

NEF = Never Enable Futility.

It's funny to me, that this idea of any body not showing very visible abs is somehow "fat." Magazines and TV do lead people to believe that huge and ripped bodies are made without ever losing site of your abdominal muscles.

Never thought of it like that, but I'd have to agree.

I guess it's hard if not impossible to get the muscle without a little fat sneaking in there too?

There is no way, one could "exactly" account for the way the body is going to "partition" its calories/macros, and this partitioning can deviate from one person to the next (age, sex, genetics, dietary trend, etc, etc). All personal calorie approximators (like Benedict, and others), are just estimates (though pretty accurate): but sometimes adjustments need to be made cause it doesnt take into account some peoples individual metabolism or one may miscalculate or under/over calculate activities.

Outside of a medical condition, and something the person is not specifiying clearly, in most cases (outside of the genetically gifted young one, roids, and some new to training simulus/dieting to stimulate growth), "most" will gain fat when trying to increase muscle mass. This is why it should be fundelmental knowledge to know your personal calories (to make adjustments), and fundelmental knowledge in how to manipulate the macro nutirients. Then when trouble times come (and they will), you are not holding your d$ck. Instead what you have in your hand is knowledge.

One more thing: Gaining and losing are Energy opposites. To lose a deficit (of some type) has to be created. To gain, a surplus. See the partitioning complication here? :)

tryin to stay lean and pack on mass at the same time is a extremely slow process. eating slightly above maintenance and getting huge will just never be a combination that will go together. to me i think a lot of people see what some huge BBer already looks like and then wants to eat and train the way that guy does to maintain his body. they don't see what it took for that guy to get where he is now. or in some cases it comes down to a natural wanting to be jay cutler without a realistic idea of what he takes along with those six chicken breasts a day. like it was already said tv and mags give people a distorted view of reality and nobody wants to hear or live in reality when it doesn't suit their needs.

It can be done, but it requires either excellent guidance or a lot of luck and quality beginner gains. Generally once you get past the beginner gains stage it's not something that is easy to do at all.

While I am not saying you should aim to gain a lot of fat, if someone has the goal of maximum muscle in the fastest amount of time they are far better off eating more calories than a normal bulking type diet than trying to be too fine and trying to keep their razor abs.

The natural gains curve (for a natural) generally looks like this:

(See this post for more info)

Year 1 - 16 pounds
Year 2 - 8 pounds
Year 3 - 4 pounds
Year 4 - 2 pounds
Year 5 - 1 pound

(These numbers are aimed at guys who are NOT underweight. If you are underweight you could gain more as your body seeks to normalize, add bone density, etc.)

Simply stated, the more you gain, and the faster you gain, the less you have to gain in the future, and the slower gains will come in the future.

Beginners can gain a lot of weight rapidly, so aggressive bulks are great choices the first 18 months to 2 years of training. After that point aggressive bulking becomes pointless. Most of the gains will be fat.

If you do bulk aggressively during year one and two and gain the average of 24 pounds of muscle, you could easily gain 12-20 pounds of fat.

If you start at 5'10" 160 pounds, you would end up around 200 pounds and have a lot of muscle mass. From there it is about a 8-12 week cut to drop 12 to 18 pounds of fat and whammo, you have dramatically changed your physique.

But if someone considers 200 pounds to be "way to fat", and chooses to slow bulk, well, odds are they will never experience quality beginner gains and might never gain more than 5 pounds of muscle. Look at all the gym rats in the gym never making gains. They don't train with progression nor eat correctly.

As an end note...I have seen some pretty darn amazing and FAST gains from guys in a short period of time who were willing to get aggressive with progression of weight and with eating. On the other hand, 98% of the guys on the other side of the fence don't look like they lift at all, even after years of training. They are not training with heavy weight and eating aggressively.

I am confident that I could take any one of these so called "hardgainers" from any forum anywhere, and in 6 months add quite a bit of muscle. It's not rocket science.

Eat like a twig, train like a twig...look like a twig.
Eat like a bear, train like a bear...look like a bear.

Some guys don't have to eat like a bear and train like a bear to make great gains, but most (99%) do. Don't believe me, go surf any forum and see how many sub-par physiques there are.

May of these guys also comment that "they don't want to look like a bodybuilder, they just want to be 180 ripped." Well 180 ripped is bigger than most natural bodybuilders. There is no middle ground, or easy way out.

Also, if someone is 18-20 and NOT eating like a bear and taking advantage of your metabolism...they are wasting an amazing opportunity.