The Hardgainer’s Guide to Building Muscle and Strength: Hardgainer Nutrition- Part 4

In the last 3 parts, we talked about the strength training and work capacity aspects of hardgainer bodybuilding.  Now here, lets conclude with a basic primer of mass building nutrition for a hardgainer.  You can also refer to the muscle building 101 nutrition guide for a more comprehensive mass eating primer.

As a skinny hardgainer, you'll have to know what and how to eat to maximize your gains to avoid wasted efforts in the gym.  Bodybuilding nutrition is really very simple and easy to implement once you get the basics down.

First, the difficulty lies not in what you eat or what types of food, but rather in getting in the required and necessary amount of calories each day.  The biggest problem ever for most hardgainers on nutrition is that, they're usually not eating nearly enough to promote an anabolic response for building muscle.  As you probably know, you need a calories surplus with the right macronutrient ratios to gain quality weight...lean muscle tissue while minimizing fat gain.

Calories Excess Equation

Take a look at the equation below for calories surplus,

• Total Calories= Calories Intake (calories eaten) - Calories Expenditure (calories used)

Calories, in this respect, is the measured heat energy derived from food (food is the body's fuel for function and exercise).  If calories intake is greater than the amount of calories you expend, you'll end up with a positive total calories.  If you expend more than you take in, then you'll be in deficit mode.  The end of the equation will be a negative.  You'll lose weight.

Calories is energy.  Total energy balance at the end of the day must be positive.  You must eat more than you burn.  There must be calories excess. Thats it!  No way around this one.  This is simple energy balance.  Calories surplus/excess is the first key for quality weight gain.  So whenever you're not building muscle or gaining weight, it's probably because your diet sucks.  Eat more and build more muscle.

The amount of calories you eat to achieve surplus also needs to be over your maintenance calories requirement or the amount of food you eat to maintain your current weight.  Eat more than you're used to or normally eat.

To find surplus calories, normally my rule is to add 16 X body weight and add 500 calories to the figure.  But for hardgainers with ultra fast metabolism, I recommend 18 X body weight + 500.  So a 135 lbs hardgainer would need,

• 18 X 135 lbs + 500 = 2,930 calories

This is the recommended starting figure to work with.  There's no exact formula that will give you an exact and 100% accurate figure.  What you can do is take this basic formula and adjust accordingly to your results.  If you're still not gaining muscle weight, then you simply bump up the calories, add about 200-300 more calories until you gain.

Aim for 1-2 lbs of weight gain a week for the first 3 months. If you don't gain at least half a pound every week for the first 6 months of training, add 250 calories until you gain.  I would do this biweekly. Monitor your weight on the scale for 2 weeks.  If there's no weight gain, bump up the calories by 250 and you'll start to gain.

Eventually muscular weight gain will slow as you reach towards your potential, otherwise if you kept going 1-2 lbs, you're either going to be 500 lbs of pure muscle or really fast.  Not going to happen.

Expect some quick gains in the first 6 months of your lifting career if you're eating the required amounts of food and pounding those weights intensely day and out.  Don't be surprised to gain 20, 30, or even 40 pounds of lean muscle weight for the first 4 months of intense training.  The gains will then slow down.

Aim for 1-2 pounds of lean muscle weight every month afterwards.  Factor those gains for five years and you're looking at 50-60 pounds of additional muscle gains on top of your newbie gains.  You'll be bigger, stronger, and more muscular than 95% of the population by then.  Keep this perspective in mind.

Record weight and monitor body fat % using Accumeasure body fat caliper scale (available at accumeasurefitness.com).  If you dont gain at least 1/2 lb per week in the first few weeks, then add an extra 200 calories per day.  Keep adding calories until you see weight gain.

Macronutrient Balance with the 4 Rules of Hardgainer Nutrition

Macronutrient  balance is the next important factor next to calories surplus.  You not only have to know how much to eat, you have to know what to eat as well.  To keep this brief without getting all scientific on the many different diets out there, I have only 4 rules for you to follow,

• 1) Eat a 40/40/20 or 50/30/20 carbohydrate, protein, fats distribution of calories from different food types.  This is your c/p/f balance and the distribution of these macronutrients should make up your diet.  50/30/20 means that 50% of your calories should come from carbohydrates, 30% from protein, and 20% for mainly good healthy essential fats.

• 2) Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.  If you're 140 pounds, eat at least 140 grams of protein.  Protein are the building blocks of muscles derived from the essential and nonessential amino acids.  Provide plenty of building blocks for your muscle and you're set.

• 3)  Drink a post-workout drink within 45 minutes after a workout.  Drink or eat a light meal after a workout consisting of some carbs and protein for recovery purposes since a hardgainer generally has poor recovery abilities.  After a tough strength workout,  insulin sensitivity is high at its peak.  Your muscles needs fuel after a tough workout so give it what it wants.  This initiates anabolic activity for immediate repair and growth of muscle cells.   As a base, use ice, skim milk, yogurt, and whey and/or casein protein powder to make your shake.  Add in fruits like bananas, peaches, berries, applies as preferred and poor into blender. Blend all the ingredients well, pour the  contents into a shake bottle  and drink.  Each shake you make easily adds 500-600 calories.

• 4) Eat 5-6 smaller meals every day rather than 3 large meals.  This increase in meal frequency makes it easier to eat all those calories especially if you're not used to eating a lot.  Most hardgainers do not have big appetities. Break down  the 6 meals into 3 larger meals and 3 smaller meals/snacks.  Break it down any way you want as long as you get the required number of calories and meal frequency.  Better yet, eat something every 3-4 hours of your waking hours.  Don't let you stomach go empty for more than 4 hours (with the exception of sleep).  Eat a little bit of carbs, protein, fats for each meal.  It's also a good idea to eat a light meal/snack before bedtime.

This ensures you have something in your stomach every 3-4 hours during the day to prevent catabolism (breakdown of muscle tissue which is detrimental to muscle growth). The body is always in shifting states, either anabolic (where body repairs and grows) or catabolism( body burns off fat and lean muscle tissue).  This is the nature of your metabolism throughout the day.  The trick is to minimize catabolic activity and shift towards the anabolic state by the end of the day so you can build muscle and strength.

The bottom line:  more frequent meals will keep you in a positive anabolic state with a positive energy balance to lean mass growth, provided you eat a lot and have caloric excess.  Below is a list of my recommended food choices.

Food Choices

Carbohydrates

Complex carbs are the number one source of energy for all bodily functions and muscular exertion.

• all kinds of fruits and vegetables; (green beans, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, lettuce, onions, cucumber, berries, tomato, beet, string breans, asparagus, green peas, pears, apples, oranges, pears, mangos, etc.) you’ll also get your fiber with veggies and fruits

• whole grain breads and cereals

• whole wheat pastas

• oatmeal

• brown rice, wild rice

• beans

• yam, pumpkin, squash

• sweet potato

• corn

• raw nuts, lentils

• papaya

• plain, non-fat yogurt ( I like Dannon and Yoplait)

• kashi

• wheat pasta

• dry barley

• honey

• baked potato

• black beans

• red kidney beans

Protein

Protein are the building blocks of muscles.  Your muscle fibers are made up of actin and myosin protein filaments so it only makes sense to feed your muscle with more protein.

• lean cuts of red meat and poultry (chicken, turkey, ham)

• all types of fish, especially tuna, cod, salmon, halibut, and swordfish

• seafood and shellfish

• diary products; low fat skim milk, cottage  cheese, yogurt, eggs, powdered eggs

• plain or low-fat yogurt

• egg whites, egg beaters, egg yolk

• low fat cheese 2%/cottage cheese

• whey, soy, and casein protein

Fats

Fats help regulate metabolism, bolsters the immune system, recovers your muscles, cushions the vital organs, and keeps you in tip top shape for the gym.  They also reduce the risk of heart disease while lowering bad cholesterol and raising good cholesterol levels.  Stick mainly with the essential good fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats) and reduce saturated and trans fats intake (the fats you find in overly-processed, junk, friend, and fast foods).

• flax seeds, flax oil

• fish oil

• all types of fish

• egg yolk

• avocado

• dry roasted almonds

• low fat mayo

• peanuts

• sunflower seeds

• fat free margarine

• enova oil

So take these food choices and use either 50/30/20 or 40/40/20 macro ratio as discussed above to come up with a diet.  As a hardgainer, you don't have to eat 100% clean with all healthy foods.  A big mac or two a week can help add calories if you have trouble eating a lot even though the nutritional value of that junk is low. Though it might not be too healthy over the long term but one or two meals won't be too bad.

If you veer off for a few days, don't worry.  As long as you stick to eating correctly 90% of the time, you'll see great results.  In addition, drink plenty of water. I recommend at least half a gallon a day.  Keep your muscles well hydrated.  It'll improve your performance in the gym with better concentration and alertness.

A lot of people walk around half dehydrated and they don't even know it.  You don't have to feel thirsty to be dehydrated. When thirst comes, you've already been in the dehydrated state for an hour or more.  So drink up.

I want to re-emphasize eating as very important. You can have the best training program, but if you don't eat properly or enough to grow, you're not going to gain an ounce of muscle.  All the training you've done will be waste.  You will recover poorly without the necessary nutrients.

Supplements

Finally, we have supplements.  For newbies and starters, I don’t recommend you use a lot of supplements from day one.  Rather, eat whole foods.  Real foods.  Supplements are there to “supplement” a good muscle building diet.  They shouldn’t replace it.  Here’s a short list of supplements that I do recommend,

• whey protein powder

• casein protein powder

• egg protein powder

• creatine

• multivitamin; any will do, I use centrum

For a more detailed guide on supplementation and nutrition, check out Will Brink's "Bodybuilding Revealed" ebook.

And this concludes the hardgainer primer.  As a hardgainer struggling to build muscle, it all comes down to training with heavy weights using progressive overload (constantly adding weight, reps, sets to the bar and making the workouts more challenging and intense through the training cycles), eating a ton, and getting adequate rest and sleep. Don't make things more complicate than it is.  It takes consistent training and eating to see results.

Train Hard.  Train Safely.  Train Smart.

• The Hardgainer's Guide to Building Muscle and Strength- part 1
• The Hardgainer's Guide to Building Muscle and Strength- part 2
• The Hardgainer's Guide to Building Muscle and Strength- part 3
• The Hardgainer's Guide to Building Muscle and Strength- part 4

Feel free to send me an email at ZQH245@gmail.com or leave a comment below if you have any questions.

photo credits:
ssour
zawezome
Mauricio Pellegrinetti
Pink Sherbet Photography

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