Let’s speak candidly for a moment… I struggled for years not making any gains. I was so frustrated and didn’t understand why. I busted my ass in the gym. The gym owner used to tell me I was one of the hardest training guys there… so why wasn’t I gaining muscular body weight?
It might surprise you to hear it wasn’t improper supplementation. While that obviously plays a role, the main reason I had trouble gaining all those years ago was my diet. I simply didn’t realize how much food it took to gain muscle.
Think about it like this… Your muscle after a proper workout is like a glass looking to be filled up with water so it can grow. Knowing this, you go outside and hold the glass up in the rain, but it’s only drizzling a little (this is akin to inadequate/improper nutrition). How fast is that water glass going to fill up? The reality is IT’S NOT.
Now go outside in a downpour and see how fast your glass fills up! Get it? Your muscles need a ‘downpour’ if they are going to make gains. When I got really serious about my bulking cycle I was eating a little over 350 grams of protein per day, and heaven knows how many calories!
I didn’t count calories but it was a lot! I was eating at least six times a day and drinking a gallon of milk every day. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it was easy to stay on that schedule and eat all that food day in and day out. But was it worth it? I’d say so.
After about ten weeks I had gained 25 lbs with approximately 13% body fat. Granted, I put on some body fat but that’s a lot of muscle put on in only ten weeks! I was definitely in a “bulked up” condition with a slightly higher body fat percentage than I started with, but I sure was a lot bigger! And EVERYBODY noticed.
So if you’ve been on my list you’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again…
To Gain Muscle Mass You Have To Eat A Lot Of High-Quality Protein, Fat, Carbs, and Calories Spread Out Over 5 To 8 Meals… Every Single Day!
I have found that the easiest way to do that is by making 3 – 4 of those meals food and 3 – 4 of those meals ‘liquid’ with good protein and supplementation. We’ll get more into the specifics in some later posts, but I wanted to put this out there again, and enforce just how key diet was to my breakthrough.
