Crash Course in Athletic Nutrition for Noobs

[Double Jab]

This is very interesting. I am starting out and my question is this. 1) What if you wanted to gain weight, instead of losing it? I weigh about 140 now and I want to get up to 150 or more preferable 155. I have had trouble gaining weight my entire life, so what would I want to do? (after doing the formula, with my weight, it comes to 1540 calories.) 2) As far as the fat v. carbs v. protein, for weight gain, what would be a good ratio?

For amount of calories, I would say you should eat around 3300 calories. Here is the reason why (puts on sherlock holmes hat).

From the fact you have had trouble gaining weight most of your life, it seems like you have a naturally high metabolism, which means your body probably burns through 1800 calories like a joke while you could potentially watch TV.

Now, if you were to do one of the more basic, effective, and wonderful lifting plans for size and strength known as the 5x5 (5 sets of 5 reps of one exercise), a visit to the gym would burn roughly 300-500 calories if you worked quite hard. This would mean around 1000 calories would be used simply for recovery, if not more.

Problem being, excess glucose turns into adipose tissue, which stores fat. Anyone can get fat, thats not a good idea. You are going to want alot of carbs, still alot of protein, and a good deal of fat. I say considering how hard you should push yourself for weight gain, a ratio of 50/25/25 would be ideal.

438 g's carbs.
150 g's protein.
98 g's fat.

I knocked off some protein, because your body doesnt really use more that 1 g per lb of bodyweight, so 150 is pushing the envelope a slight bit.

As for actually doing the workout, two suggestions. Number one, under no circumstances, do any kind of cardio over 10 minutes. 10 minutes is your max, be it a warm up, or you need to sweat a little. If anything, high intensity intervals with a max time limit of 10 minutes. This is because you need all the extra calories helping your body recover, not burn off extra fat, you dig? Secondly, split your body into three areas, and work one of those a day. The constant exercise will increase testosterone as well as release natural HGH to get your body working and adapting to the new conditions (meaning increased muscle size and strength to deal with the strain).

The way I split my body is front, back, and legs.

Day one is front, I do Pecs, abs (both front and sides, meaning obliques), biceps, forearms.

Day two is back, I do lats, shoulders, traps, triceps.

day three is legs, which is legs.

Try doing two exercises per bodypart, meaning in one workout session, you will do 8 5x5 exercises.

Now, with 5x5, rest between sets is 1:30-2 minutes, you choose depending on intensity, and you have to use enough weight where you could probably do 7 on the first set, but it would be extremely difficult to do 5 reps on the last set without a spotter or a bit of a cheat movement.

Lastly, take sunday off, eat the 3200 calories as normal, make sure to do no cardio. If you workout extra, like boxing training or sports or something else high intensity, add an extra 800 calories. Why so much? Because your body will use the energy in the muscles, which are trying to heal. So you need the huge carb and fat boost so your muscles dont atrophy (eat themselves for energy). That means an extra 100 carbs and 45 g's of fat.

Long story short, with very very heavy lifting and boxing training, 4000 calories a day should help you gain weight just fine.

Hope this post made sense.