Eat Your Way to Gains
So you have been working your ass off for months now, yet you are not adding the mass you have been looking for. Most hardgainers have been in this situation and may still be in this difficult spot and are looking for a way out of it and into some gainz. Well here are some guidelines to your own gains. Given that I am not looking at any of your food logs, workouts or rest periods this will be very general information to guide you in the right direction.
#1 Eat!
The number of times I have been told this as a hardgainer myself is more than I would like to admit. It may seem like common sense but it also tends to be harder for hardgainers, this is why I would suggest eating at least 4 big meals throughout the day. Now "How do I decide what to eat at these meals?" I will tell you.
#2 Breakfast
So for your first meal of the day does not necessarily have to be ridiculously big and I would not worry too much about protein at this meal. The reasoning behind this is that your body spent all night recovering and rebuilding the tissues from your previous day's activity so protein to rebuild muscles are not a necessity. Unless you are lifting before breakfast, your first meal should consist of carbs and some fruits, this will get you feeling good and supply some energy to get the day going. My personal favorite choice is some cereal along with a banana or a cup of melons.
#3 Lunch v1
Lunch version 1, this would be your pre-workout meal but it does not have to be immediately before you workout, you could have it up to an hour before you actually workout. This meal is going to again be mostly carbs, but instead of fruit with it we will have some protein and some veggies to go with it. This is going to be to prepare your body for the workout, now your carbs will give your body the building blocks to build those gains. The protein will help add some valuable calories and begin some muscle rebuilding, making this a very important meal, this can make or break your ability to add mass.
#4 Snack
The snack portion of your day can come in where ever you may need some extra calories to keep you going throughout the day or to catch up on some macros you may not have had enough of up to this point.
#5 Lunch v2
Lunch version 2, in the course of your training day this would be your post-workout meal. Now this meal could probably be substituted with a protein shake, but for the sake of the article we'll leave that out. This meal will consist of most of your daily protein intake as this is going to help your body recover faster by giving it the nutrients to rebuild the muscle tissues. Along with that, you will want to have some carbs to replenish what reserves have been depleted during exercise. So if you go for the protein shake instead for this option you will want to avoid "low-carb" protein shakes.
#6 Dinner
Dinner will be a bit of an extension of your post workout meal with the idea of recovery in mind for this meal. This will probably be the meal you could go with low or no carbs at as you should have had enough carbs with your post workout meal to replenish your stores back to normal. Here you will want to have a very well rounded meal, with plenty of greens and some protein for your body to use overnight to help rebuild tissues some more.
*NOTE: You CAN have carbs at this meal they are just not as needed as much at this point in the day.
#7 Keep a Log
This is more of a tip to help you realize how much you are actually eating, it also can help you see where you are getting your calories from. Probably the easiest way to do this is using an app on your phone to help you keep track. My personal choice for this is myfitnesspal, it lets you look up foods, create your own or scan barcodes making it easy to use with whatever you are eating. Another great thing about this app is that it gives you a suggested amount of calories based on the info you input. This can help you decide how many calories you should have at each meal, making it easier to pick out foods by combining that information along with the advice from this article.
#8 Breakup Meals
This is geared towards the hardgainer who is having trouble eating because they feel full. If you are having this issue you can break up your meals into smaller parts, for example for breakfast you could have a bowl of cereal and then an hour later have a cup of fruit. You are still getting the same foods in and the same number of calories just over a greater span of time, although I would work on getting down to 4 meals/day. The reason is that you want to think of it as you are trying to fight against your metabolism, for an overweight person you would have them eat more meals to boost their metabolism to get their weight down, so logically to gain weight you would want less meals to slow down your metabolism a bit. This doesn't mean have 2 meals a day, you need to have a middle ground where you are eating enough to maintain strength while training and not so much that you are fighting against yourself by making your already active metabolism more active. I have found that 4 meals works best at this because you cover all the bases of what you need to eat throughout a training day.
The main idea is you need to consume foods and consume alot. The timing of what you eat though will help make the process more efficient giving your body the nutrients it needs at each stage throughout the day making it work for you and not against you. If you have any other questions about this article or anything else just drop a comment or send an email to williams.jacob460@gmail.com. Thanks for reading and go make some gainz!