Damn that's a lot! What were your goals consuming that much? Were you trying to compete or become as big as you possibly could? Fast metabolism?

Just curious because that's like insane to me. I go for the Greg Plitt/Zyzz look.
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Im currently about 5lbs heavier than my HS weight.....at 39 years old. That's not a brag. It sucks.

Now granted, my body looks very different, despite the minor weight difference. And i was wearing a small size shirt in HS, and now i wear a large. When i see old pictures of 19 year old me, i'm a thicker person these days.

But the point being, ive struggled to gain weight my entire life.

And yeah, i know that i could do a better job with consistently eating more. But the fact that ive only gained 5lbs in 20 years.....and im talking 20 years of eating high calorie CRAP food...you'd think i'd have gained more weight by now.

Ive gained more mass, just not more weight.
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To bang chicks and psychological. When I was a kid everyone always made fun of me for how skinny I was. I just wanted to show them you know. But it was unhealthy imo and my body is not designed to weigh that much.

Never wanted to compete, really just be as big as I could. My genes are nowhere near good enough. I legit did no cardio but I still looked good due to just how I was gaining weight.
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I just use my Garmin watch. What's your Fitbit telling you?

I don't know exactly how it calculates, but apparently it's based on your pace and heart rate. Mine has gone up as I've lost weight, but my watch doesn't know my weight. However, my pace and probably heart rate have improved as I've lost weight, so that's not a huge mystery.

Whether it's accurate or not, it'll still be good for showing fitness trends. But if you're not making big changes, it mostly stays constant in my experience.

I've also wondered if there's an elevation effect. Being in Denver, I'm going to be taking in a bit less oxygen with each breath, which is going to impact my pace and heart rate. But I've run races at sea level and my VO2 Max didn't spike up in those races, which befuddles me. It seems like I should see an impact. We all run faster at sea level than in Denver.
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I must accelerate quickly.
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What is your resting heartbeat and VO2 max? I wonder if my VO2 max is any good since I've been inadvertently running with too high of a heartbeat for some time now, at least for endurance.
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I'm at 53 and 36 on heartbeat and VO2 Max. Apparently VO2 Max declines a lot with age, so google "VO2 Max by age" to get a better comparison point.

It's almost impossible for me to not run at too high a heartbeat. If I'm making any time at all, I'll be over 150.
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Protein Protein Protein...

I'm the same... at 57 I'm still hovering around the 165lbs I was in college. I've always been skinny at 5'11" but recently I have been loading up on protein and the fat has gone down and the muscle mass is increasing... wish I knew this earlier.
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FYI, weight gainer shakes are a waste of $. Almost all the extra nutrients just get shit out.

Three big keys to gaining healthy muscle mass.

1. Get your macros optimized.
2. Lift weights, with a plan not just showing up and doing whatever you feel like that day.
3. Sleep! Sleep is by far one of the most important PEDs.


I was 120lbs when graduating HS. 30+ years later I am just over 190lbs with a much lower bf% than HS.

Want to get to 200-210.

If you want to gain mass the only way is to eat to the level to support your goal weight. Force feeding when not hungry is one of the worst feelings.

One way to prevent this is to get 10-15 minutes of aerobic exercise after eating. No crazy effort. Enough to get heart rate up but also be able to have conversation without being out of breath.

This will help you digest so that you can be hungry at next meal plus it also helps control blood sugar spikes. If you had more sugar than you shuld have during the meal your body will use the excess blood sugar for energy vs converting and storing as fat.
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Yea that's what I meant.
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I feel like muscle size/mass/physique is a poor goal for most people. Of course, it's most men's goal earlier in life when we're dumb and also want immediate results. This video is a great example... says he's gained 30 pounds of muscle, but just sitting there you can't really tell.



It wasn't that long ago I started noticing filling out shirt sleeves and generally feeling like I've made really good progress from a physical standpoint... and that's 4.5 years in. Granted, there are obvious reasons it's taken a while... I've taken breaks and slowed down at times for mid-40s reasons, and besides protein intake I don't go out of my way to track intake, and I don't eat way above baseline. It hasn't been the perfect plan, but I don't think there's a timeline out there where I'm mass gaining either.

I think people online who say you can gain pounds of muscle for months on end as a n00b, and specifically someone like Jeff Nippard nonchalantly saying he gained 30 pounds of muscle in his first few years (not the same guy in the video above.. dude looked like Michelin Man from the waste up in his younger pics), are just setting people up for disappointment.

Building strength is a far better goal, IMO... you'll generally know workout to workout, or at worse for a while you'll know week to week whether you're progressing by adding a rep or adding a little weight, etc. As long as that's happening, you aren't failing.... and you aren't waiting months or years to see it in the mirror.

Nobody is going to spend 8 years with a goal of building strength before realizing they're doing something wrong or giving up all together... if you plateau for x number of workouts or weeks, you'll know to change things up.
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Interesting post, I agree and I don't.

I do agree with you that strength is a better goal for most than mass/physique, but then I actually really respect Jeff Nippard, he is a bodybuilder but he also values strength etc infinitely more than the average youtube fitness bodybuilder type, he has strength specific programs and has been a powerlifter.

I also don't find the 30lbs of muscle claim that crazy, and he probably did most of that with strength training rather than bodybuilding. It may also be worth noting that both of Jeff's parents were competitive bodybuilders so its actually more his access to knowledge that gave him a headstart over the average gym newbie.

I got into the gym initially via discovering Starting Strength and 5x5, and people add a ridiculous amount of muscle in the first year or so with those programs all the time. Those that don't, assuming they actually follow the workout plan, either they start overweight and have no idea the ratio of fat loss to muscle gain when they succeed, or those who start out skinny generally don't eat enough to max out their potential gains and hit the kind of gains Jeff did.
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Bit confused about how you said you struggled to put on weight and then go on to list all the weight you managed to put on. Why do you think you failed if you got from 125 to 185?
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His channel was one of the first I followed and I still watch pretty much every video he releases... he has a ton of great information and he really tries to keep it real in terms of knowing not everyone is a powerlifter and results vary drastically, etc. He also does a really good job of detailing what to do with information... he doesn't just say "studies say lengthened partials are amazing, just do those!"... but he'll say how he mixes them into his routine or how you can mix them in.

This is the picture I'm referring to...




...that's the same video when he mentions his parents were body builders, so there's all kind of advantages with that in terms of a workout plan, nutrition, recovery, etc.... and then he's obviously genetically gifted on top of all that.

Could I have ever looked like that? Yeah, kind of doubt it.

Pretty much all of those guys are very quick to pose throughout their video and tell you how much they lift, etc; so it can be a weird mix of information. He had a great video about where you should be at certain stages of lifting for bench, deadlift, and squat... and then it's oddly mixed with "by the way, I bench 800 pounds".

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with his approach or most others... they're first and foremost genetically gifted bodybuilders who figured it all out at a young age. Most of them are also personal trainers, so I think they gain a lot of perspective about the rest of us, plus through all of their studies and so forth.

Renaissance Periodization/Mike Israetel is someone I've followed more recently and I think he does a really great job or breaking a lot of it down even further to the everyday lifter... most of those guys do a great job of telling you what is optimal, what's the best exercise for a muscle group, etc; and Dr. Mike often takes it several steps further with all the variables that play a factor in results. He had a good one recently (that I may have posted here) where he details genetics from like 10 different angles and not just the "hard gainer" at 30k feet, and what 'average' really is, etc.
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I actually discovered Dr Mike recently too and have been enjoying his videos a lot too, helped by the fact he is fucking hilarious.
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