The best way to build muscle is a combination of lifting weights and eating a lot. However, keep in mind that when you first start to exercise, you may become hungrier than usual. You must increase the amount of food you you're your caloric intake, since your new habit of exercise is increasing your DCE, your caloric expenditure. If you want to build muscle, you have to have a positive balance. Thus, your output of calories are increasing, so your input has to increase with the output, plus a little more to result in a positive balance. In conclusion, you would need to eat a lot more, in addition to your exercise regimen.
I've been training at the gym for about a year now. At first I noticed I was hungrier than usual, but I did not get fatter: I just built muscle. However, after a few months into my training, things evened up and now I'm not building muscle anymore. What's
wrong?
Your experience is most likely a result of your training program. If you have been repeating the same types of exercises for some time, I recommend changing the exercise type, since your body is adapting to the repetitions of the same exercise. Try to mix up the exercises and it might help. In addition, if your body weight remained stable for the past few months, you are in a neutral caloric balance. To build more muscles, I suggest increasing your food intake a little and you might just start to build muscle again. If you don't, and even gain some fat, the problem probably lie in the program by which you train.
No matter how hard I train, I don't think I'm gaining muscle mass. My gym trainers have said that I may be a "hard gainer". Could this be the reason behind it?
Yes, it is possible. Your body type defines how quickly or slowly you will be able to gain weight. However, don't let this discourage you. You can still help yourself build more muscle by eating some more. Since you don't gain weight very easily, your metabolism is probably very active, giving you a very high calorie expenditure. If you're very lean, this may be your body type, so you will have to eat more to make up for your high rate of metabolism.
I want to burn fat, but there are so many ways. What do you suggest?
In short: do exercise, reduce your food intake. Exercise should increase your DCE, leading to a negative caloric balance. This balance can be made even more negative by reducing your DCI. Be careful tough: a good rate of weight loss to aim for is around 1 to 2 pounds or 1 % of your body weight per week. Anymore than that and you're at risk of wasting muscle mass, not just fat. Remember,
you want to keep your muscle mass because, over time, more muscle means a higher resting metabolic rate, and thus a higher daily calorie expenditure (DCE).
