What do you think is the most important ingredient for "gaining weight"? Should you pile down truckloads of calories and perform squats, dead-lifts, and bench presses three times a week? Should you slow down; you know, make sure to walk everywhere and never run? How about protein? Should you be taking in a gram, a gram and a half, two grams per pound of body weight? Will "eating cottage cheese" make you bigger?
The tactics listed within the questions above are all things you're being advised to do in one article after another. You've been told that you're different, burn energy faster than normal, and therefore need to simply eat a bunch of food and work out hard on "big" exercises. They're telling you that it's harder for you to put on muscle because you burn energy so fast.
I'll get straight to the point: If you are a thin person, you have no disadvantage in putting on muscle compared to everyone else. You'd be at a disadvantage in a fat-gaining contest, but I'll assume you don't want to enter one of those anyway. Every "expert" seems eager to point out that muscle can't turn into fat and fat can't turn into muscle. So what makes anyone think that a proclivity to not put on fat equates to difficulty in gaining muscle? It's not the same tissue ? it's not the same biological process.
You don't need to "gain weight" ? you need to gain muscle. If your muscle building routine is less than optimal and you start stuffing down more calories than you're burning, you'll have the joy of becoming a bone fide fat-ass like I did. When I see a testimonial from a guy who says he gained twenty-five pounds in eight or twelve weeks, I know he's either lying or he's gone from slender to fat. Muscle doesn't grow THAT fast. I've seen guys at my gym who've taken steroids and not gained that much muscle. Think about it; those are powerful drugs. What makes you think there are natural bodybuilders gaining solid flesh that quickly?
If you're really slender, there are probably three reasons for it working in conjunction. You probably burn calories fast which prevents you from gaining fat (good thing). You might also have small bones (genetic thing). You might also be starting out with naturally small muscles (also genetic, but reversible).
But you only want to gain muscle and that's the same formula for everyone. That's a matter of being diligent in your breaking down of muscle tissue and having it recuperate adequately. In fact, this is the number one ingredient for muscle growth. You simply need a long series of workouts in which you adequately tear down muscle tissue, coupled with a long series of recuperation periods between those workouts in which you adequately recuperate that tissue. It can work wonderfully even if you're skinny and it can work terribly even if you're fat.
So what does the above have to do with metabolism? If you work your biceps today, they'll need a certain number of days for protein synthesis to occur which will provide repair and growth. They won't repair and grow any faster if you stuff down mega calories. That's like thinking an old Ford Pinto will go as fast as a Maserati just because you topped off the gas tank on the Pinto. In fact, mega calories can be extremely energy-taxing on the body. We're talking about energy required for recuperation that ends up being wasted on simply processing excess food. That's how your quest to get big can turn you into a fat-ass without much muscle, like it did to me.
So there's the biggest ingredient for steady muscle growth. If you don't get that right, it won't matter if you use big exercises like squats and bench presses. It won't matter how much food you stuff down. It won't matter if you eat thirty grams of protein or fifty grams at each meal. The latest supplement breakthrough won't help. Psyching up for a workout will mean nothing. Eating cottage cheese won't make a difference.
If you don't have your muscle breakdown and recuperation schedule ideally worked out, everything else is meaningless conversation.
A couple years ago, I spent a summer as a personal trainer for a really slender college kid who had recently experienced a near brush with death. This young guy had the unfortunate habit of internalizing an enormous amount of stress when faced with his academic workload, especially during finals. There's nothing unusual about that ? right? Well, except for the fact that when he would get stressed (which was nearly all of the time), he'd stop eating. This combination of semi-starvation and adrenaline-inducing stress had eventually led him to having a devastating ulcer. When the ulcer opened up like a flood gate one day, he ended up hospitalized after being lucky that the severe internal bleeding didn't kill him.
Needless to say, he needed a lot of mind training before muscle training could reap benefits. The doctors found him so deficient of protein, he needed a daily iron supplement just to get his levels of this vital mineral up to par. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that protein deficiency is about as conducive to muscle growth as doing uphill summersaults to escape a tsunami. Steady intake of high quality protein is essential to muscle growth. Iron, present in meat, is important for adequate energy levels. If we didn't first improve his mindset toward healthy eating, none of the physical training would have amounted to even a few ounces of muscle gain.
So what's my point in sharing this story with you? Well, in my first article aimed at skinny guys, I really drove home the fact that stuffing down mega calories and haphazardly tossing weights around will rarely lead to mesomorphic nirvana. My point was that without having an optimal muscle breakdown/recuperation routine and schedule, all the calorie gorging one could partake in would just cause undue stress to the body and little or no muscle weight.
However, eating too little and too sporadically is detrimental as well. If you train like a tiger and eat like a bird, an optimal training/recuperation system will fail to deliver maximum results. In order to steadily gain muscle, you need to eat four to six meals a day consisting of 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. You must also eat enough carbohydrates to fuel your daily activity energy expenditures while having a few grams left over for the energy requirements of muscle recuperation. This is not such a tall order. However, it can be somewhat daunting for those who have an aversion to eating like the young man I was training a couple summers ago.
So how many carbohydrate calories above your daily expenditure do you need for gaining muscle? Studies have shown that we need no more than two or three hundred above what would keep us at our present body mass. That's about equivalent to eating a whopping three bananas or a couple bowls of oatmeal. Of course, you'd be best off by adding those few hundred extra carb calories evenly throughout your day. A meal every three hours with 40 grams of protein and 50 grams of additional carbohydrates is enough to put muscle on anyone, considering they've got the #1 key to muscle growth covered.
If this sounds inadequate, consider what I've done in the six weeks prior to this writing. I decided to get as ripped and low in body fat as I could. I reduced my calories and increased my activity until I was definitely burning more calories than I was consuming. Making sure to ingest enough protein, I ate a hefty 40 grams (at least) during each of my five daily meals. Not only did I NOT lose any muscle or strength ? I gained more. I actually built muscle while restricting my calorie intake.
That's the power of obtaining the optimum muscle breakdown/recuperation routine and schedule. With a few caveats (like eating enough protein), it remains the number one key to muscle growth.
Scott Abbett has sinced written about articles on various topics from Build Muscle, Hoodia and Health. Scott Abbett is the author of HardBody Success: 28 Principles to Create Your Ultimate Body and Shape Your Mind for Incredible Success. To see his personal transformation, visit