My Personal Weight Muscle Gain
#174376 - 04/27/05 10:27 AM
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Here's the facts.
I am 5 11, 176 pounds, trying to add muscle.
People keep telling me, and they are right, that in order to gain muscle, I need to gain weight, I guess about 10 pounds would be good.
That's the easy part, here's the hard part, how do I gain 10 pounds of clean muscle that won't blow up my face or make my stomach more bloated?
You see, unlike a lot of Irritable Bowel Syndrome people, I have no problem gaining weight, I did this 2 years ago.
I decided it was time to add weight, because I was skinny, skinny fat because my stomach was bloated.
I went from weighing 167 in 8 months to almost 200, the result, people who see my picture then say I look tubby.
People who see me now say I am skinny.
I go from one end, weighting too little, to being fat.
The worst part is, right now as I get told I look skinny, my stomach as we speak is bloated, it's fat.
Therefore, I'm afraid about adding 10 pounds, who is to say it doesn't all wind in my stomach, making my stomach fatter, but my arms just as thin?
1) My question is, how can I diet so that I can add enough weight, which I have to, in order to gain muscle, and not just gain more fat in my stomach, or fat overall.
2) How many calories should I be eating?
3) I guess I should eat 1.5 grams of protein, how can I get this much protein?
Here is what I ate yesterday
Meal 1 (10:30)
Scrambled egg whites with honey (yeh, no more honey, caused bloating)
2 slices of Potatoe bread with margarine
Bowl of Rice cereal
Banana (mild bloated)
Meal 2 (1:30)
Bowl of Thai noodles with soy sauce
10 small slices of Turkey breast (bloated)
Then I drank about 32 oz of water through the next 3 hours, and my body was flucating, it was driving me crazy, one minute it would be extremely bloated, then not as bloated.
Meal 3 (5:00)
Panerea bread Turkey sandwich on sourdough bread with mustard, lettace, and onion (bloated)
Meal 4 (7:00)
2 servings of gefilte fish
1 slice potatoe bread
Meal 5 (9:00)
Chicken kabob (restaraunt)
Curry chicken
White rice with lettace and Light Italian Paul Newman dressing
8 oz Fat Soy Milk (bloated)
Pepperment tea helped the bloating for 20 minutes, then it came again
Meal 6 (11:30)
1 serving gefilte fish
1 spoon of peanut butter (12 grams of fat for 2 spoons)
8 oz Fat Soy Milk (bloated)
4) Did I eat enough to gain muscle, did I eat too much and will eating like this make me fat?
5) Did I get enough protein, how can I get more?
6) Did I eat too many carbs? I blame me blowing up in my face last time on having too much fat and carbs, I want to cut down on carbs so I don't blow up in weight, but I notice when I eat less carbs, I am a lot more hungry.
What can I do to gain muscle, not get more bloated but less bloated and limit any fat, I can't have it where I stay at 176 because I won't gain muscle, but I don't want to eat more only to add fat.
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Really your question has a lot more to do with the basics of weight training and nutrition than it does with IBS. You just need to modify standard advice on how to gain muscle mass to fit your IBS needs.
Basically you're right - you need to be consuming more calories than you're burning. To know this you need to be tracking your calories consumed and burnt - do you use fitday.com? If not, start. Take a few days and record EVERYTHING you eat and then see how much you're eating vs. how much you're burning. To gain mass, you just need to be eating more than you're burning by a few hundred (200-500) calories a day.
And yup, you need lots of protein. Don't eat carbs without protein. In fact eat protein at every meal - which should be 5 or 6 meals a day like you're doing. It's kind of hard to tell from your menu if you're getting enough calories or protein (use fitday for this), but you should be getting 0.8g of protein for every pound of bodyweight MINIMUM. A more standard number is 1g for every lb. This is not hard to do on the IBS diet - I get more than that usually. Just have small amounts of protein with each meal, and try a soy protein powder (or if soy is still giving your problems try a rice one maybe). On the IBS diet you need to eat some simple carbs since many of the safe staples are simple carbs - white bread, white rice etc. - but make sure you're also getting complex carbs as much as possible too. Oatmeal (if you can tolerate that?) and sweet potatoes are a good example. After you've got your protein requirements, for the IBS diet you should be getting about 10-20% of your calories from fat - NO MORE. I generally go for 10-15%. (You can see what you're getting from fitday). Then the rest will be carbs.
On top of this, you need to be training HARD otherwise it's not going to be muscle you're gaining. 3x per week 1 hour sessions (no longer!) with HEAVY weights. Use a spotter. 6-8 reps only. And skip the machines - only basic, compound lifts (bench press, squats, deadlifts, etc.) - HEAVY. And take good rest days where you reward yourself with calories. DO NOT skip rest days under any circumstances and do not workout on consecutive days! You can still do cardio (if you're doing it now) if you want but keep it to a minimum - 2-3x/week, 20 mins a session. If you have trouble gaining muscle you might try a Hard Gainer Routine.
And lastly but MOST importantly - it requires dedication and commitment. No cheating. No slacking off. No getting discouraged. Here's a good discussion about goals: web page. If you slack off on the training and keep eating lots, you're going to be gaining fat and not muscle. If you train lots but don't eat lots - well you're going to lose weight!
I also want to just qualify this before I finish - are you over 18? If not, you might want to reconsider your goals a bit since this kind of stuff is too hard on a teenage body that is still developming.
Good luck!
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Thanks retro for your help, I really appreciate it.
I understand the premise of my question deals with weight training, but Irritable Bowel Syndrome complicates this.
I know from what I have read that with a basic diet to gain muscle, you are supposed to eat complex carbs. However, I can't handle oatmeal, and with an Irritable Bowel Syndrome diet, I have to eat white bread, simple carbs, and can't have protein whey or protein bars, all of which most weight gaining diets preach.
What I would like to know is, how can I while on a Irritable Bowel Syndrome diet gain muscle, not fat, and have satisfied appetite if I am eating simple carbs?
You see, most weight training diets recommend having complex carbs, and having these early in the day less than protein, where Irritable Bowel Syndrome makes me eat simple carbs and at the begining of every meal because you are to start meals with soulable fiber base.
This worries me with a weight gaining diet, because I read that simple carbs first are more likely to add fat and they make you more hungray. Also, if you eat carbs later in the day, and eat more carbs period, it makes you fatter because carbs are for energy, but if you don't use all the carbs, the energy gets stored as fat. If you are eating more carbs, and having to eat carbs at meals later in the day, you are going to be increasing the amount of unused carbs which raises fat content.
Add in that simple carbs make you more hungry, which means it would be harder for me not to overeat. This could mean in order to quench my stomach I might eat more carbs, and have more enegry unused or I could just eat junk food, you know how people get when they are hungray.
This is my big concern with the Irritable Bowel Syndrome diet and weight gaining diet, I am worried that having to have soluable fiber, simple carbs, at all my meals is going to blow me up.
I read that for carbs, you should eat complex carbs at breakfast, lunch, and before you workout, but after that, through the night, you should not have more than a small amount of carbs if you do.
I am afraid that having simple carbs, to summarize, if I were to do so at just breakfast, lunch and before I workout would make me fat and lead to me being hungray, let alone having to have simple carbs at all the meals I eat now.
How can I gain muscle, not fat, on an Irritable Bowel Syndrome diet which asks me to have simple carbs all day, this seems impossible.
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I think you've got a bit confused here. Carbs are needed for energy, yes, but they don't equal fat on you! If you're working out then you will be burning those carbs...your muscles need the energy!
The reason simple carbs can make you more hungry is that they have a "bad" (can't remember if it's high or low  ) glycaemic index. You can lower the overall GI index of your meals tho, simply by eating specific simpler carbs and adding protein. I think rice and tortillas for eaxomple have a better GI inedx than bread and potatoes.
Tracking your food intake with something like fitday is a good idea too...that way you'll know if you're eating too many cals for the amount of exercise you are doing. If you are so worried about gaining weight, then you will need to exercise will-power...there is no reason why you have to eat sugary snacks or junk food just b/c you are hungry.
Also, you might find that giving up sugar helps with the energy thing. I've done that for my Fibro and it's helped loads. I've just been snacking on pumpkin seeds (bit high in IF but okay for me) and raisins (the sweetest thing I eat) and I feel so much more energetic than when I was snacking on sugary stuff.
Hpoe that helps. It's a bit all over the place...I haven't got my thoughts in order. 
PS. I've known loads of atheletes (inc. at Olympic level so these people know what they are on about) who eat TONS of pasta. If you're doing the exercise there is no way you can put on fat - it just gets used as neccessary energy.
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Yeah, marathoners and swimmers force feed themselves tons and tons of pasta to have the energy to make it through. There's nothing inherently wrong with pasta. 
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Lots of good advice given above. I just want to reinforce, that it is a simple energy equation. If you are meeting your basic protein requirements, the extra calories you need can come from simple carbs. As long as you are working out hard enough to stay on the right side of the energy equation, you will not get fat.
I also want to say that, although weight training is good for building mass, you can also achieve great results using bodyweight exercises, such as pushups, dips, chins, handstand pushups etc. without the need for equipment or a gym. You also have less chance of injury to your joints and tendons. When lifting weights, for the greatest mass gains, put most of your energy into compound exercises that recruit the greatest number of muscle groups.
A final thought, remember, muscle is mostly water, so be sure to stay well hydrated.
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Phil
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Quote:
Lots of good advice given above. Yes, very much so!!  I just want to reinforce, that it is a simple energy equation. If you are meeting your basic protein requirements, the extra calories you need can come from simple carbs. As long as you are working out hard enough to stay on the right side of the energy equation, you will not get fat.
I also want to say that, although weight training is good for building mass, you can also achieve great results using bodyweight exercises, such as pushups, dips, chins, handstand pushups etc. without the need for equipment or a gym. You also have less chance of injury to your joints and tendons. When lifting weights, for the greatest mass gains, put most of your energy into compound exercises that recruit the greatest number of muscle groups.
A final thought, remember, muscle is mostly water, so be sure to stay well hydrated. REALLY? I never knew that!!
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www.facebook.com/shell.marr
www.myspace.com/shellmarr
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Yes I've read those things too about carbs - only complex, no carbs after 6 or no carbs at all except for before and after workouts... I've also read things though that say that's a lot of really extreme bs.
Not all of it's wrong though certainly. Weight trianing is a different animal than other athletics like track and such that require endurance. For weight trianing you need about an hour of solid endurance (which is why you have carbs before your workout) and that's it. But still, this doesn't mean you need to cut out carbs the rest of day, really.
One definite truth though - complex carbs are best for you for muscle gain and fat loss so I do my best to get as much of those as I can, particularly in the evenings (as I workout in the mornings). Complex carbs I eat: oatmeal (I know you can't have this though  ), oat bread (I make this myself with oat flour - it may or may not be more tolerable for you...?), sweet potatoes, red and yukon gold potatoes boiled (these have a much lower GI than baking potatoes with the thick brown skins), pasta (believe it or not, pasta is actually a low GI food! They way that the semolina flour is in the gain means that it's realeased a lot slower than white bread or rice), whole grain sugar-free cereals (like Cheerios, Corn Bran etc.).
I do NOT stop eating carbs at any point during the day - my stomach would kill me! and I do have some simple carbs throughout the day too, such a a white english muffin in the morning, some white bread or rice now and then. If you can handle it you might also try mixing complex carbs with SF simple foods - like mixing some brown rice in with white rice. That bit of brown rice will bring down the GI of the whole meal, and in small amounts it may not bother you, but you'd have ot experiment with that yourself.
Really, I have had lots of success with training *heavy* and gaining muscle while staying strict on this diet! (hehe I'm esctatic, can you tell?) You should note that I also eat NO sugar and I NEVER cheat and or eat junk (having IBS makes it easier too - cheating for us has nastier consequences!). If you're worried about cutting out simple carbs, refined sugar (and honey for that matter too) will spike your insulin just as steeply as those foods and its much easier to cut out for IBS than the bread is.
In short, I've read a lot of places that say you don't need to be so extreme with cutting carbs to gain muscle without gaining fat - and a lot more, and more credible places to be honest, than those that say you need to be super extreme. That is, unless you're training for a contest in a few weeks or something! Moderate carbs yes (moderate being 50-60% of calories, with protein at around 30%, fat at around 15%), don't eat carbs alone yes, eat as many simple carbs as you possibly and safely can. FYI eating simple carbs with other foods like protein, fat, or complex carbs will significantly bring down the GI of the whole meal - so yes you have to eat some simple carbs, but not eating them alone will help LOTS.
Hope that answers your questions... good luck! 
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I'm having difficulty figuering out what to have after dinner.
I am trying to gain muscle, and I need to gain 10 pounds, but I don't want it to be fat and bad weight as before, I want the 10 pounds to be clean, I want it as muscle not fat, more.
Here is the question, what do I eat after dinner? I plan on having something such as 2 Turkey burgers, Rotessiere chicken, or chicken breast along with rice and vegetables for dinner between 6 and 8.
After this, I am not sure if I should have one or two more meals, and what and how big those meals should be.
I feel that I should not have a lot of carbs after dinner because I probably won't burn it off and it will be stored as fat, I figure I should have protein as my meal.
However, having chicken saled, chicken breat, turkey sandwich, chicken sandwich, or peanut butter can be repeitive, and with peanut butter I can't eat much.
Does anybody have any suggestions on how many meals, how big, and examples of meals I should have after dinner for somebody trying to add muscle as well.
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Generally I try to eat more during the day when my digestion is stronger and then have just a light snack after dinner, usually soy milk (protein fortified) and some applesauce, maybe a few almonds.
Don't worry too much about all those magazines that tell you not to eat after 6 or whatever because you "won't burn it off and it will be stored as fat." Your body needs energy all the time. When you're sleeping, your body still needs energy, albeit a lot less. Still, it's not like your stomach is going to be full all night just converting it into fat. Otherwise you'd wake up in the morning full and satiated. If you're like most folks, you wake up hungry, which means your body is on the verge of going into starvation mode and heading towards your muscle stores for energy! (Which, obviously, is what you *don't* want.)
I don't stop eating at a specific time during the day at all - for my IBS it's necessary for me to keep my stomach full at all times, so I'm particularly careful around bedtime and in the morning when my stomach needs to be empty for so long when I'm sleeping.
Have a small snack between dinner and bedtime that has SF and some protein and you should be fine. As long as you're eating healthy, clean food, more calories than you're burning, and a good amount of protein - and are training hard and heavy - go with whatever your body tells you is right. There are so many guidelines you could listen to and magazine articles you could read but most of it is just designed to sell magazines. It's really pretty simple and there are no secrets after a certain point
Keep in mind that when your gaining weight ("bulking up" as it gets called) you're going to gain *some* fat. The aim is to gain the most amount of muscle with the least amount of fat. Have you had your body fat % measured? This is a good way to see if you're gaining fat or muscle. You can get it done professionally at a gym (best most accurate way) or there are lots of places you can do it online for free (such as Body Tracker). However don't take the *numbers* that site will give you too seriously - what you're looking at mostly is the changes in the number. So take it today and then take it a week from now and then a week from then etc. and see if you're getting any changes. It's a much better way to monitor that weight because if you're just stepping on the scale you can't be totally sure if the weight you're gaining is fat or muslce. A quick glance in the mirror is a pretty good indicator too.
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