The Blueprint for Gains When most hardgainers ask for advice, they’re told simply to eat more. Unfortunately, eating more doesn’t address the problems of raging metabolism, high stress hormones, poor digestion, and pathetic appetite that plague most skinny guys. But with the right guidelines and some hard work, you can say goodbye to your former skinny self – forever! Here’s the blueprint I used to pack 50 pounds of lean muscle onto my scrawny frame. Not only did it work for me, but it also worked for my clients and my athletes. It’s time for you to put the “gainer” back in hardgainer. 1 – Boost your appetite with the right amount of training. When it comes to building muscle, the most important thing is training. Even in situations that aren’t ideal, the body can build muscle to survive the threat imposed by training. Research has shown you absolutely can build muscle in a calorie deficit (if protein intake is high) (1). And anecdotal evidence from prisons shows that guys get jacked all the time, despite awful nutrition. This is not in any way suggesting that eating isn’t important. No skinny guy will gain a respectable amount of muscle without proper nutrition. However, you need to have your priorities straight. Muscle building starts with hard training, and perhaps surprisingly, hard training will improve your eating. Consider that one of the biggest obstacles a hardgainer has is a pathetic appetite. Hard training is one of the fastest, easiest ways to increase your appetite. It makes your body demand more food and this makes eating large amounts of food way easier. Oddly enough, your appetite can actually help you find your training sweet spot. Too little training will do nothing to increase your appetite. Too much training will actually decrease your appetite. The right amount of hypertrophy training will leave you ravenous! 2 – Tough out the two-week BMR increase and keep going. Research on lean, healthy subjects shows an increase in BMR (basal metabolic rate) for about the first two weeks with overfeeding (2). That means when you try to eat big, your body’s first response is to increase its metabolic rate. This is precisely why just eating more doesn’t always work for hardgainers. They take the advice, go out and start eating more for a couple weeks, and then find the scale won’t budge. Now the hardgainer thinks he’s a non-gainer. He gives up on nutrition and thinks some magical new biceps curl variation is the real secret to getting jacked. Look, this spike in your already naturally fast metabolism is part of the game. Don’t worry, it won’t keep increasing forever, but you need to be patient. You need time for your body to get used to consuming larger volumes of food. In fact, you may not even be able to eat and properly digest the amount of quality food you need to build muscle… yet. You need time to get used to eating more and following the other new lifestyle habits and strategies in this blueprint. Stay the course, let your body adapt, and the scale will start moving up. If you’re not in this for the long haul, you need a different hobby. 3 – Replace pre-workout stimulants with peri-workout nutrition. Hardgainers already have too many stress hormones pumping through bodies. As a result, losing muscle is fast and easy while gaining it is slow and difficult. Many hardgainers add even more stress to their bodies by abusing pre-workout stimulants. Remember, the only stimulant you “need” for a great training session is a strong mind, and instead of getting all hopped up on stimulants before training, fuel your body with peri-workout nutrition. It’ll give you extra protein, carbs, and calories without taking up room in your stomach or taking up time to prepare more food. Also, the insulin from the carbs has a powerful anti-catabolic effect, which shuffles the hormonal deck in your favor. 4 – Add menu items instead of increasing portion sizes. Think back to your childhood. Remember how you were so full that you couldn’t eat another bite of dinner? But then, when presented with surprise dessert, you regained your appetite. As a kid, I thought I had a separate dessert stomach. I now know it was just a case of palette fatigue. When you eat a lot of one type of food, your palette simply gets bored of that flavor and texture and you stop wanting to eat. When most hardgainers try to eat, they just eat more of what they’re already eating. They try stuffing down more chicken, rice, and broccoli, and it doesn’t work. Their palettes get so tired of the same stuff that they stop eating long before they reach the level of food necessary to build muscle. Instead of eating more, add more items to your meals. Increase the flavors and textures at your meal and watch the scale finally start to climb. For example, let’s say your typical breakfast consists of the following: 3 eggs 2 pieces of toast or oatmeal 1 apple Gradually add items until you get to this breakfast: 1 scoop Metabolic Drive® Protein in
Origin: 10 Nutrition Rules for Hardgainers