Then, you want to focus on the right balance of macronutrients: protein, fat, carbohydrates. Macronutrients are the nutrients that your body needs in large amounts. As compared to micronutrients vitamins and minerals which are needed in smaller amounts. According to Washington State University , each of the macronutrients is responsible for these roles in your body:. Carbohydrates: fuel during exercise, spares protein, main energy source for your brain.
Fat: protects vital organs, provides insulation and energy reserve, transports fat soluble vitamins. When focusing on weight gain, your energy should come primarily from carbohydrate-rich foods. Lean proteins and high quality fats should make up the other half of your diet. They calculated that an acceptable macronutrient range is:.
Instead, pack your day with good quality protein, healthy fats, whole carbohydrates, and fruits and vegetables. Eating well will help give you energy to fuel your workouts and get you feeling your best.
Eggs are considered a gold standard when it comes to protein. This is because they contain all of the essential amino acids protein building blocks.
Eggs are highly bioavailable — digested, absorbed, and utilized efficiently by your body. They contain heart healthy fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. For some extra calories, aim for the versions that have been oiled. Beef gets a bad wrap for being fatty and leading to cardiovascular disease. But the trick with beef, is to have it in moderation, and eat the good quality cuts. Some red meats are high in saturated fat which could increase blood cholesterol.
However, new research has been showing conflicting results. Aim for grass-fed versions whenever possible because these contain more heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids. And avoid the processed versions such as highly processed jerky and deli meats.
Beans, beans are good for your heart; and also for hard gainers. This is because it can take your tummy some time to adjust to more fiber. Depending on the type of bean, one cup contains about calories. To make them even easier to eat, mash or blend them up. The variety of choices out there can be confusing.
Avoid the ones with lower fat contents unless you have high cholesterol or heart health concerns because these often contain added sugars to replace the fat. Yogurt makes for an excellent snack with some fruit and nuts. Milk is an excellent combination of fat, carbs, and proteins. It also contains lots of vitamins and minerals, including bone strengthening Vitamin D and calcium. It also contains branched chain amino acids which can boost exercise performance.
Studies show they are best absorbed in their natural state, such as in milk versus a powder or supplement. Since milk is easy to absorb, it makes for a perfect post-workout fuel. Is Milk Bad For Bodybuilding? Cheese is an outstanding source of fat, protein, calcium, and calories. Keep in mind that not all cheese is created equal and one serving is about the size of two dice so it goes quickly.
Aim for the hard cheeses like cheddar and ricotta. Check the ingredient list and aim for the cheeses that are more natural. Plant-based oils such as the ones from olives and avocados provide lots of calories and heart-healthy unsaturated fats. One tablespoon contains about calories!
Use caution when cooking with oils since some can get damaged when cooked at high heats. Add oil to your cooking, drizzle it on salad, and even consider adding a bit to smoothies for an easy source of extra calories. Avocados are an amazing source of heart-healthy fats and vitamins such as powerful antioxidants, vitamin E. I feel kinda left out right now.. Those are notorious for causing pretty fatty bulks, but you obviously also build a lot of muscle if you succeed in consistently staying in a huge caloric surplus.
In fact, us skinny ectomorph guys are the best at those kinds of diets, because of the adaptive metabolisms that I talk about in the article above.
There are many ways to prepare breakfast in no time. I usually have a smoothie. Some people have peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Some people like cereal. Just make sure your breakfast is mostly made up of whole foods and has enough protein to help you meet your protein goals. I am looking for a sustainable, feasible program to keep my fitness up and improve my health. I gained around lbs. I am not terribly skinny but am not fat either. I could lose weight rapidly if I chose to, although I would lose just as much muscle as I would lose fat.
But I am still unsure of whether I should consider myself as an ectomorph. As an educated athlete I feel like I already have a good grasp on a few things. I drink plenty of water everyday, get enough sleep, stay away from excess sugar including all soda , and warmup and cooldown effectively. Although I do not run competitively anymore, I still recreationally run 30 miles a week.
In addition, to keep my fitness levels up, I play basketball and swim recreationally. But now, I feel like it is time for a change. I am willing to get in the gym times a week, and sacrifice any of the other activities I am trying. As a student, I also enjoy the research links and the evidence based approach.
My current routine consists of a warm-up, 10 exercises squats, lunges, lateral shoulder raises, shrugs, incline bench press, dips, pull-ups, bent-over rows, deadlifts, and planks in that order , and a cooldown. I plan on doing this full-body routine 3 times a week. I feel like I might be expecting too much from my body with this routine, along with recreational running, basketball, and swimming.
Most of it is a pretty even balance of meat chicken, turkey, ham, steak, etc. I try to stay away from excess sugar, salt, fried foods, candy, starch, etc. Should other sports be relegated to the territory of active rest, or be actively promoted to increase fitness? I eat around calories per day these days.
Running a full 30 miles per week may be too high a volume to optimally help with either — it really depends. Improving general fitness improves your ability to recover and allows you do handle higher volumes of activity, so this stuff can all work really well together, depending on how you do it!
Where the emphasis lies will determine where the bulk of your results are. I gained most of my 55ish pounds over the course of three month periods, gaining 20 pounds in each and then just more or less maintaining in between those little muscle-building sprints. I think you sound like a good fit! Is it an ice cream scoop or a formula milk scoop? The direction says that you should consume 3 rounded scoops g. Is there an easier way to do this like how many spoons would be equivalent to 3 rounded scoops or grams?
Rounded scoop, means you stick the scoop in and whatever comes out of the whey goes in your cereal, etc. If you have any advice, i would appreciate it, thanks. Leaner … but also fatter. Your bigger muscles will also make you appear much leaner than before, since your muscles will now readily show through small amounts of fat. As a result you may be underestimating how lean you were back then and overestimating how lean you are now. Most skinny guys wind up with markedly more chiseled faces when building muscle leanly-ish.
When overeating sometimes guys store fat first in their face. When I bulk my face gets chubbier, and then when I stop bulking my face quickly leans out again. You can see that here. This puts it squarely in the realm of your doctor. Good luck! Hi Shane, great article! I have a much easier bulking diet now in terms of time, appetite and enjoyment, a little bit of which I discuss in the above article.
Now I bulk on a little over 4, calories. All of those traits I talk about in the article I have in a very exaggerated way. Only a few guys in the community need to consume as many calories as I do to gain weight. Although there are also a couple that need to consume even more! Have one small concern though. As a kid, I was always on the skinny side. I have a relative small bone structure. I guess I have skinny genes. Since I left school more than 23 years ago, I gained about 35 lbs in total.
Currently have some flab around the waste-line believe it or not and have some posture problems hunched over shoulders. Ectomorph is a term that means a collection of a bunch of different traits that result in a skinny body type.
Some people have all of the ectomorph traits like me but the vast majority of people are a combination of a couple different ones. You may have a small stomach capacity and smaller appetite i.
Could be any number of things. Mostly it sounds like you have a sedentary lifestyle and iffy nutrition habits. Thanks for your response, I really appreciate the effort and time.
You are spot on with iffy nutrition on my part. I have a fast metabolism and a small stomach and eat maybe meals a day. I guess there are quite a number of factors that keep me skinny. But I can eat about every hours. No problem with appetite. Struggling to drink a lot of water though. Mostly drink if I feel thirsty. Looking back, I now know that I approached it the wrong way.
Was caught up in the marketing hype and training programs of the BB magazines. I guess I have nothing to lose quite literally by trying it out. Seems that mono is not readily available, at least not the local brands. Do those combos work just as well as mono?
It tends to form clumps. During this period of time, they say they did lose some or even most of their gains, and not just fat. Or at least a lot of it. This is called muscle atrophy. This is true with any type of training adaptation.
That could be lifting weights, it could be sports, it could something else. This will keep you healthy, fit, mentally sharp and calm. It sounded like a nutrition problem so I upped the calories, my weight started increasing very VERY slowly but I have noticed fairly large increases in my measurements such as shoulder width even without weight increase. Any ideas? It sounds like things are going pretty well! I mean, the better your program is the more inclined your body will be to build muscle out of whatever you give it, but you also need to supply the calories in order to get into a surplus, especially in the early stages of the game.
Hey Shane. Longtime lurker and lifelong ecto here. I seem to be relating to most of the things I see described even though I still have a hard time believing you actually had as horrible of an appetite as I do when you were around haha. Anyway, my question is, how do your workout routines address such a crucial issue as having weak knees? I do use neoprene knee supports for my squats but I imagine that I will hit a weight plateau where adding anything more could compromise my joints and have severe consequences.
We start with regressions, and generally with regressions the goal is to teach guys to sit back deep into their hips. This takes stress off the knees and puts it in your hips instead, and your hips are more than powerful enough to handle it just fine. When you transition back into back squats hopefully the issue will have resolved on its own. Marco is very well trained in that. Never really had any muscle definition. Since i left college, i have put on weight but only in my gut, no where else.
Your program sounds intriguing but i would like to get rid of my gut as well as build muscle. Seems like your program involves eating more calories, i just dont want to get any bigger in my gut.
Ahaha yeah… that seems to happen to a lot of longtime ectomorphs. As the years roll by a gut begins to form. Combining a good weightlifting plan, a muscle-building nutrition plan and a calorie deficit is good for that. Love the website and great article. I just wanted to mention something about satiating foods. Initially I feel full but within like 10 minutes I have hunger like nothing else.
Maybe it fills the stomach and then gets digestive quickly, leaving you with a large, empty stomach perhaps? But I never actually thought of feeling hungry as an advantage! My guess would be that this has to do with the food being digested rather quickly, yeah.
Hey, Im pretty skinny so I wanted to know what should I eat to gain weight at first and then gain muscle afterwards and what exercises I should do for arm and leg muscle for a skinny person like myself.
First of all. Thank you for the articles. Very Nice read. I especially enjoyed the workout one. I have been lifting weights for a Year now. I am wondering if eating more, suggested by your article wise, would make me even store more body fat? I basically do all major compound exercises 5 times a week. Looking forward to a response.
As for the type of training that would optimize your muscle growth when overeating and help keep your gains lean , check this article out. The thing is. I think im kinda stuck. I did gain muscle but thats kinda stuck. Im going to throw in all the major coumpound exercises since you explained it in your article. Im kinda scared to eat more since i dont want the stomach fat to grow. But when it comes to gym, i never akipp a session and train really hard.
Im thin as hell but easily squat pounds. Do you think its a good idea to keep on gaining muscle by eating the right macros and lose the belly fat later on? It feels like a waste if id go on a cut right now. Im also trying a bit of carb cycling.. Again thanks. Its starting to become a bit more obvious to me. You might have a nice strong butt and fairly thin legs for example. In that case you might want to add in more accessory lifts for your hamstrings and quads.
You can always get stronger at squats too! Both by working up to, say, a pound squat. Or by working up being able to do 20 reps with those pounds. Both of those will add some serious size to your lower body! Your wrists, however, will stay thin. This is simply genetics and bone structure. You can change the size of your forearms and upper arms though! Carb cycling can work sometimes a little bit. If you eat enough to gain a slight amount on the scale each week—maybe even just 0. More would be riskier, but a slow pace, provided your program is a good one, is usually pretty safe as far as not getting fatter goes.
Finally some advice from someone that seems to know what their talking about! Thanks man ill definitely going to keep track of this website!
Im going to follow your advice and see what happens. By the way. You seem to be a guy with a taste for fast music.
Hi Shane! I weigh lbs and stand cm tall. A year ago, I began working out and since then I have gained only 10lbs. However, since the past 4 months, my weight has not changed one bit, and this is really bothering me.
Is my workout wrong or am I eating less? I also have muesli, eggs and two glasses of whole milk. If you could just help me out here, I would be really grateful Shane. Just a little addition to my comment. I can lift fairly heavy in my lower body workouts- lbs squats, lbs leg press, lbs deadlifts and lbs leg curls.
I follow a 4 day split routine- 1. Chest and triceps 2. Back and biceps 3. Shoulders and calves 4. Legs and abs Provided you with that info just in case you might need. Your workout plan may not be optimal, but if your weight gain has stalled the main factor is probably calories, and appetite manipulation strategies are probably your best bet.
Might be time to bake yourself up an apple pie to eat for dessert, or start having a glass of milk alongside meals, or start having a daily smoothie—that kind of thing. The Indian guys we have in the Bony to Beastly community seem to have good success with milk, as that seems a common strategy for Indian wrestlers, strongmen and bodybuilders.
It still retains some nutrients and you can consume it as you would a whole food. Kudos to you, for including personal experiences, rather than just stating facts and researches. Anyways your article is very useful. I still have a long ways to go.
I train times a week consisting of both Weight heavy reps and Calisthenics about 3 to 4 times a week also doing martial arts. Mostly plants fruits, veggies, rice, potatoes, grains, etc. That should get you enough fibre and micronutrients. Maybe a glass of milk alongside it.
That kind of thing. No need for anything fancy. Hi, Shane! Great article and great site! Is this true? Cheers from Brazil! With that said though, most of the healthiest cultures in the world eat a ton of whole food complex carbohydrates.
It works well for a while variety of people. I need help. Hey Alex, I know what you mean about being nervous to set foot in the gym. That would quickly go away once you get used to it, but if you want to avoid that awkwardness entirely, you could build a very simple home gym. The inconsistencies on the scale are normal. Getting more consistent with the circumstances of your weigh-ins should help.
Perhaps always weigh yourself in your underwear first thing in the morning on Sunday after peeing and before breakfast. Very carefully and thoroughly explained, I think you guys are doing a great job!
However I have 2 questions: 1 Altough I know that milk is highly recommended as an important part of bodybuilding diet and myself am a big fan of milk , I am lactose intolerant. Or should I remove it completely from my diet?
Milk is a great muscle-building food for a lot of people, but there are lots of great muscle-building foods. Sleep quality is important. Hello I have a question. And I was wondering: how much would it cost? And thank you! I also have a bit of a concave chest, which adds to my skinny effect. My main question is eating more in order to help gain weight, and ultimately look nicely beefy. What would you suggest in order to begin my journey on eating more? Also, I wake up early for school, and done always get in a good breakfast, or one at all.
What meal would you recommend I eat that not only is quick to make and high in calories, but will also assist me in beginning to eat more and more? If you could explain this to me, I would be greatly appreciative! Also, amazing article, finally someone has nailed it about us ectomorphs!
Eating bigger meals will expand the size of your stomach, but different people handle that with different degrees of success. Did you read the entire article? We have some appetite manipulation tricks in there that have to do with food choices. Another trick is to eat more often. More snacks, more meals. If you get some whole grain bread, some bananas and some peanut butter and maybe some jam then you could start the day with a toasted?
Maybe a glass of milk on the side. Another option would be getting a muesli cereal—whole grains, fruits and nuts—and having that with milk. Maybe some fruit on the side or some berries in the cereal. Another option would be a smoothie. If you want to gain fat, just eat more calories. Less bony, yes, but also softer in the face, less muscle definition, poorer health, etc.
Much better than gaining 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat and then needing to worry about cutting if you want to continue building muscle without looking fat. Could you also clear up whether you suggest a strictly lean diet, or continue to work out and eat to gain more fat? However I have run into a problem, I have developed a minor food aversion. How do you guys deal with this? Eating a lot of cal really has made me plain gag at some of my former favorite foods.
Is there something I can do to nip this in the bud before it gets worse? Sounds like your body is just healthfully responding to a caloric surplus. Have some hyper palatable and easily digestible foods that agree well with you.
My go-to is frozen greek yoghurt bought pre-made with raspberries and a hearty helping of maple syrup which is decently affordable here in Canada. The workout shake is a great way to do this too. We often suck at eating a lot, but eating often is rarely a problem once you get into the swing of things. The snacks remove the need to eat enormous meals, and removing enormous meals from the equation allows your appetite to fire more frequently. If your old favourites have grown boring, perhaps try to find some new favourites!
Take a break. Nothing wrong with dropping your calorie intake by per day for a week or three, maintaining your gains, and then when you feel motivated again, upping the calories again. If you feel worn down by the gym you could also take a partial training break, either by reducing your workout frequency perhaps twice per week instead of three , or better yet by reducing the volume per workout two sets per lift instead of four. Yes this all makes perfect sense, thank you for the reply!
I think some of these tricks will help. Thanks again! Interesting, good article. I swear the only muscle I can gain is abs. Which is actually quite easy to define them. But I digress.
Is your calorie surplus too big? Your protein intake too low? Is your workout routine not very good? Is your diet not very good? Are you sleeping atrociously? Lives down here in WA. I suppose i would need to find the right diet, [or rather, more increased one] and fix said sleep schedule. Sleep is surprisingly important factor. It will mess with your nutrient partitioning,causing you to lose more muscle when dieting and lose less fat , and gain more fat when bulking and gain less muscle.
My daily calorie need though is almost calories. What about the carbs and fats? What should be their daily intake if we want to look on our daily diet as a whole? But what puzzles me is how this should look for the entire day.
In fact, as little as 1. However diets higher in carbs tend to leave us ectomorphs feeling a little better, gaining a little more leanly and holding a little more glycogen which inflates our muscles a little. First of all, thanks a lot guys. Maybe I will join later! Because of that I felt constantly back to my starting weight of lbs. Right now I weigh lbs, still not much, but I can see improvements.
But I have diffuculties with my chest, just like Jared. Mostly around grams of protein, grams of fats and the rest is carbs I check this every day on MyFitnesspal. But right now my weight has stalled for about 3 weeks. Does this mean I need to eat even more? Is that possible at my bodyweight? Right now I eat Nutella in the morning en cookies during the day to reach the calories easier.
Thanks guys! Thanks for the kind words, Vincent. Sorry to hear about your struggles with antibiotics! That sounds frustrating. And props for pushing on anyway and gaining a solid ten pounds! Failing to gain weight on the scale means you should be eating a little more. Maybe another calories per day. Metabolisms are every changing, so you need to listen to what the scale spits out and adjust as needed.
Probably not what you were hoping to hear, but such is the nature of bulking as an ectomorph! Oke, just what I thought.. I think I will add some milk and a banana during the day to get the extra calories easily. I hope the scale goes up again within a few days. I heard this burns a lot of calories too. Short story my doctor put me an ecto on cytomel t 3 for health reasons. And my diet is always great.
I eat quite a damn bit also. My question pertains to when you mention carb cycling calorie cyling. Carbs low fat high on off days, while the oppisite on training days. Protein always 1glb. Does this sound aboutright!? Also what is your experince in regards to muscle memory. I mean actors like cristtian bale lost a ton of muscle but gained it back crazy quickly because of muscle memory.
Is this true in your experince? Hey Carson, glad you dig it! That sounds really frustrating. Carb cycling is an advanced concept, so I would first worry about getting your nutrition and training right so that you can gain weight fairly leanly each week. Otherwise you might worry too much about the carb cycling and too little about the things that will impact your results far more!
If you know the average daily surplus that will have you gaining your target amount of weight per week, you simple organize that as desired. Does that make sense? Muscle memory is a real thing, yeah. When you build muscle you pull more nuclei into your muscle cells. These act like little muscle-building construction workers.
The more muscle you build, the more builders you acquire. Ive done fine tuned diets with ease many times so the car cycling is easy! So the Next day eating low carb is relieving not to mention the added nutrient partitinong benefits and inuslin sensitivity etc. So far im enjoying it, im just trying to figure the right carb level. Most info I see is 1 gram per pound. Lyle Mcdonald and david kingsbury mention grams is good because protein breakdown will not occur at all.
Again thanks for your reply. I just sold my house and moving downtown condo so your build a gym article was good stuff thanks! Hey guys, first off I just want to say that your site is very professional and offers a lot of highly valued information. I can tell you guys are really passionate about helping others. I ran long distance and swam in high school because I always felt more comfortable doing endurance training than lifting weights. My weight always remained stable at around lbs and I could never put on any muscle.
In my second year of college with a desire to increase my size, I started training calisthenics with my friend for about a year. While I saw gradual improvements in my number of repetitions, I never saw much of a difference in my physique or weight. This caused me to quit my pursuits of gaining muscle and I attempted to focus on pursuing a healthier diet instead. People had always said I was skinny but after months on these diets with minimal amounts of exercise, they started to say I was nothing but skin and bones.
After about 20 minutes of eating I start to feel full and bloated even though my body seems to still be craving food. If I wait a few minutes the fullness usually goes away and I will start eating more fruit.
After doing a little more research I found that while a high carb-low fat diet is the most efficient for our bodies, some argue that we should be getting more carbs from starches like grains, tubers,and legumes. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and the type of diet you feel is most effective for muscle gain. After reading up on your program I feel that this may be a much more effective way to achieve my health goals.
However, I would like to stick to a plant-based diet high carb-low fat and would prefer not to take any supplements. I am particularly looking to increase my functional strength and build a lean, muscular body. I would also like to continue running a few times per week. While these are my ideals, I am not completely unwilling to change them. I definitely respect the amount of time and work you all have put into this program, therefore I would certainly be open to any suggestions you may have.
After giving you this background on my goals and history, do you think this program will be effective for me? Also glad that our passion comes through in our writing. I can definitely relate to gravitating more towards endurance sports, and then only wanting to go as far as callisthenics when it came to trying to build muscle.
If you want to stay out of the gym though, building a simple home gym is just as effective. This is why I have a lot of respect for people choosing to eat a plant-based diet. I think those valid moral convictions can cause a lot of biases when it comes to nutrition research, and that makes things really confusing.
The good news is that if you would like to continue eating a plant-based diet for whatever reason you can certainly build muscle perfectly well while doing it.
I think plant-based health supplements are pretty incredible these days, and certainly make things easier. However I know some supplements, like vitamin b12, are commonly taken by vegans to round out nutrient deficiencies, so I would discuss the health side of things with your doc. This program would definitely be effective for you. And we could help you adjust the diet to fit your own personal preferences.
Hey Shane, thanks for your feedback. You brought up a lot of good points, and allowed me to look at nutrition in a new light. So, this is the most important piece of advice I'm going to give you. It's common sense, but most people forget it: Experiment. Examine yourself. Rip things apart until you start seeing results. Bodybuilding is about constant analysis. This is why it's important to log everything down: how many calories, how many grams of protein, what kinds of carbs.
This is how bodybuilding is like a science. You change one thing, and you watch for results. You change another, and see what happens. Sooner or later, you'll find what works for you. Eating is work. For Joe Average, you don't need to do this.
But if you're looking to take your physique to the next level, you have no choice. Let's say 15 calories didn't work after 4 weeks. You feel strong in the gym, but you haven't gained any real weight.
Go to 17 calories per pound of bodyweight. Do this for another 4 weeks and gauge your results again. Keep going. You can do this, or just play guessing games like most people do. I can't afford to guess. I don't have the time or the luxury to guess. I got lucky. I've got good genetics. I also got hooked up with a bunch of powerlifters who showed me core exercises and outlined a rough diet.
It was ugly, but it worked. Sure, I had a big belly. I weighed pounds at 5-foot I could deadlift and squat more than pounds and bench I had inch arms. Then a friend talked me into doing a bodybuilding show. I researched everything I could about bodybuilding. I cleaned up my diet. In the first two weeks, I dropped 30 pounds. I started with the cardio. I threw in the thermogenics like Animal Cuts. Gradually, I increased my cardio. By the end, I was damn near doing two hours of cardio per day, training, plus posing.
When it came to the day of the show, I had dropped 90 pounds to I won the super-heavyweight class at my first show after only 3 months of dieting and training. Today, I'm still huge, but I've got abs too. My priorities are guts, balls, and heart. What separates first place from third place is discipline, dedication, and hard work. Too many bodybuilders wander this earth wearing sunglasses and acting like rock stars.
There are too many rock stars in this world. How can you expect people to respect bodybuilders when we act like celebrities? In my book, what matters is attitude. I don't want to be involved in this sport if I don't have any dignity or respect. And respect comes from training your ass off and doing things right. Not taking the easy way out. As my father used to say, if you're involved in something, take pride in it, or get out. Universal Nutrition and Animalpak.
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