How to Eat More Calories, Increase Your Appetite & Gain Weight
Most naturally thin people struggle to eat enough calories to gain weight. Usually, that’s a good thing. Our genetics help us avoid the obesity that plagues almost everyone else.
But if you’re skinny, underweight, or trying to bulk up, then the same genetic advantages that keep you healthfully lean can also make it extremely difficult to eat enough calories to build muscle.
Gaining weight is difficult, but it isn’t impossible, and we can make it much easier. I’ve gained 70 pounds and comfortably maintained it for over a decade. We’ve also helped over fifteen thousand other naturally skinny people bulk up, including professional and Olympic athletes. We’ve learned quite a lot while doing it.
I’ve got 17 tips that will make it much easier to gain weight.
- Why is it Hard to Eat Enough?
- Stimulate More Muscle Growth
- The Junk Food Problem
- The Fibre Problem
- The Water Problem
- Coffee & Tea
- Chewing, Grinding & Blending
- Eat Faster
- Eat More Often
- Eat More Carbs
- Eat More Fat
- Eat More Protein
- Homemade Weight-Gainer Shakes
- Bulking Sauces & Dips
- Meal Schedule
- Grocery Shopping
- Meal Planning & Meal Prep
- If You Have to Eat a Big Meal
- High-Calorie Backup Meals
- Weird Bulking Diets
- Progressive Caloric Overload
- Free Bulking Recipes
- Full Bulking Guide
Why is it Hard to Eat Enough?
Naturally thin people usually have a hard time gaining weight because of some combination of an adaptive metabolism, a meagre appetite, and a small stomach.
An Adaptive Metabolism
An adaptive metabolism is one that adjusts to your calorie intake. When you eat more calories, your metabolism burns more calories, cancelling out the calorie surplus.
The main way we burn those extra calories is by subconsciously moving more. The extra activity can be as subtle as spending more time sitting upright instead of slouching. You probably won’t notice it. I wrote up a deeper explanation here.
You can still get into a calorie surplus, but you might need to eat more extra calories than expected. It takes about 800 extra calories to gain a pound of muscle, so you might think that 100–150 extra calories per day would be enough to gain a pound per week. In practice, though, skinny people usually need more like 300–500 extra calories.
A Meagre Appetite
The next issue is a meagre appetite. Appetite is complicated, but here’s a common example: most naturally thin people have fewer fat cells, meaning that fewer fat cells are calling out to be fed (study). That makes it far more comfortable to stay thin.
There’s no downside to that. Having fewer fat cells doesn’t hinder muscle growth. It just makes it easier to stay lean, helping you gain less fat while bulking. Even better, once you’re an adult, the number of fat cells you have doesn’t change. They just shrink and expand. You’ll keep your leanness advantage forever.
You might also get fewer pleasure hormones from eating, making eating less enjoyable. That also makes food less soothing, meaning you might be less tempted to eat when sad or stressed.
Stomach Size
In a famous 1945 study, AJ Cox found that the size of the human stomach can vary by up to 600% between people. In fact, according to Cunningham’s Textbook of Anatomy, “No organ in the body varies more in size than the stomach.”
That means the person saying you just need to eat more food might have a stomach six times bigger than yours. That can make it absolutely effortless for them to gain weight, making it hard to understand why it’s so difficult for us.
But just because it’s difficult doesn’t make it impossible, and there are actually quite a few ways to make it easier.
Stimulate More Muscle Growth
The very first step is to stimulate as much muscle growth as you possibly can. If you start eating more food before you start lifting weights, then almost all of the weight you gain will be fat.
If you’re naturally thin, then your body probably isn’t very interested in gaining fat, which can make it even more difficult to gain weight, and you probably wouldn’t want to gain that kind of weight, anyway.
Some people find that stimulating their muscles also stimulates their appetites, but that isn’t always true for skinny guys. In my case, working out makes me want to eat enough to maintain the muscle I’ve already gained, but it’s never helped me gain weight, even when I was 120 pounds, with a BMI of 16.
Most of us need more powerful methods.
The Junk Food Problem
The most famous appetite study is The Satiety Index of Common Foods (study). The researchers took a bunch of common foods and measured how full people felt after eating them:
The researchers found that boiled potatoes, white fish, and oatmeal were the most filling, whereas croissants, cake, and donuts were the least filling. No great surprise there, though it might seem a little weird how filling boiled potatoes are. I’ll explain that in a minute.
What makes this study special is that the researchers measured how many calories people ate in their next meals. They found that the less filling a meal is, the more calories you’ll eat later in the day.
For example, if you ate a boiled potato for lunch (323 satiety), you might eat 650 calories for dinner, whereas if you ate a croissant for lunch (47 satiety), you might eat 800 calories for dinner. That’s a difference of 150 calories. That might be enough to tip you into a lean bulk.
The problem is that the foods that make it the easiest to gain weight are all junk food. The foods with more protein, fibre, vitamins, and minerals in them are far more filling, making it harder to gain weight.
That’s why “dirty bulking” is so popular, where you bulk up by eating large amounts of junk food. That isn’t the best way to build muscle, though, especially if you want to build muscle in a lean and healthy way. So, let’s look at better methods.
The Fibre Problem
Fibre only has about 2 calories per gram, which is only half as much as regular carbs. That means that if you fill up your stomach with fibrous carbs (like celery), you’ll only get around half as many calories as if you had starchy carbs (like peas).
Fibre also slows digestion and keeps us feeling full for longer. That’s a problem because fibre also improves your blood sugar and blood lipids, helps food move through your digestive system, and strengthens your gut microbiome.
That means fibre is filling, making it harder to gain weight, but it also builds a stronger digestive system in the long run, making it easier to digest more food.
So, we recommend choosing foods that are high in fibre and starchy carbs. There are quite a few of them:
- Whole grains: oats, corn, whole-grain bread, brown rice
- Veggies: potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peas
- Fruits: apples, mangoes, and blueberries
- Legumes: beans and lentils
The Water Problem
Water doesn’t contain any calories. That means the more watery a food is, the fewer calories it has and the more room it takes up in your stomach. That’s why boiled potatoes are so infuriatingly filling. Same thing with other watery fruits and vegetables like strawberries, watermelons, apples, pears, broccoli, pickles, and carrots.
Broccoli vs peas:
- 1 cup broccoli: 55 calories, 6 grams protein
- 1 cup peas: 125 calories, 9 grams protein
Strawberries vs blueberries:
- 1 cup strawberries: 50 calories
- 1 cup blueberries: 85 calories
Bananas vs apples:
- 1 cup sliced apple: 60 calories
- 1 cup sliced banana: 135 calories
The best bulking meals tend to have a moderate amount of fluid. Having a moderate amount of fluid helps you digest food. Think of the chankonabe stew that sumo wrestlers eat, muesli cereal with milk, a high-calorie smoothie, or my personal favourite: chilli. The fluid makes them easy to digest, but they’re also high in calories, allowing you to comfortably fit more calories into your stomach.
If you like drinking a glass of water with meals, that’s fine. But you could bump your calories higher by swapping water for milk, soy milk, oat milk, or even fruit juice. They contain the fluid you need and are richer in calories and protein.
You can also drink as much water as you want between meals. When you drink water on an empty stomach, it passes through your stomach fast. Most of it will be gone within 10 or 20 minutes.
Coffee & Tea
Coffee and tea don’t contain any calories, and they’re full of water, so it might make more sense to have them between meals instead of with meals.
What’s interesting is that coffee stimulates the production of stomach acid about 30 or 45 minutes after you drink it, which can improve your ability to digest your next meal (study).
On the other hand, if you have a sensitive digestive system, then too much caffeine might trigger heartburn and acid reflux. (I’ve gotten heartburn a couple of times from drinking coffee right after eating a big meal.)
Chewing, Grinding & Blending
The more you need to chew a food, the longer it takes to eat, and the fuller you’ll feel. That means one of the best things you can do is soak, stew, grind, and blend your food so that it’s easier to chew and faster to eat.
Plus, the more you can break down your food, the easier it is to digest (study). You can break your food down by chewing it thoroughly, but blending and grinding can work just as well—sometimes better.
Ground Meat Meals
That’s why ground beef and ground chicken are such popular bulking foods. They’re way easier to chew than steak and chicken breast, making them much less filling. That gives us three great bulking meals:
- Texan chili (my favourite): ground meat, beans, corn, hot/bell peppers, and cheese.
- Picadillo: ground meat, bell peppers, potatoes, raisins, olives, and capers on a bed of rice.
- Monster Mash (from the Vertical Diet): ground meat, bell peppers, and chicken broth mixed with rice.
High-Calorie Smoothies
Fruits and veggies take a while to chew, too, so you can blend them up with yogurt, nuts, and seeds to make high-calorie bulking smoothies. Most research shows that drinking liquid calories makes it easier to gain weight, but smoothies are usually high in fibre and protein, making them unique (meta-analysis).
When you blend fruits and vegetables, it’s like chewing them very finely. They don’t lose any nutrients, they won’t spike your blood sugar, and they often digest a little bit slower, especially if you’re blending up seeds you wouldn’t normally chew through, like the seeds in berries.
What’s interesting about high-calorie smoothies is that even though they digest very smoothly, they still aren’t very filling. When researchers give people bulking smoothies for breakfast, they tend to eat more calories later in the day:
For example, in one study, the participants who swapped their usual breakfast for a 700-calorie smoothie ate an extra 300 calories per day, even though they weren’t trying to (study). That’s enough of a calorie boost to bulk at a pretty good pace. More on how smoothies affect appetite here.
The other benefit of smoothies is that they’re easy to make and drink, and you can pack them with nutritious ingredients. We’ve got two free smoothie recipes here.
Eat Faster
The faster you eat, the more calories you’ll be able to eat before you feel full. It takes a little while for your body to understand that you’ve eaten enough. If you eat fast enough, you can get ahead of your appetite, skipping over that moment in the middle of a meal when you feel too full to keep eating.
This will allow you to eat meals that are a little bit bigger than you would normally eat. That will stretch out your stomach, making it a little bit bigger over time, making it easier to continue bulking.
Your appetite might not fully catch up, either. The research is mixed, but if you can eat more in earlier meals, you should also be able to eat more later (study).
You still need to chew your food properly, but you can take bigger bites, chew them faster, and stop dawdling between bites. Focus on eating until you’ve finished eating.
Eat More Often
If you have a small stomach, it’s hard to eat bigger meals, so try eating more of them. It’s pretty common for bodybuilders to have trouble eating enough calories while bulking, so there’s a long tradition of eating 4–7 times per day. The benefits of eating more often were often exaggerated, but it definitely makes it easier to gain weight.
For example, this study found that if you have a 300-calorie snack after lunch, you’ll only eat 100 fewer calories for dinner. That puts you 200 calories ahead without any extra fullness.
In some fitness circles, intermittent fasting is touted as being a healthier way to eat. However, when you eat fewer meals, it’s harder to overeat (meta-analysis). Most people are overweight, so making it harder for them to gain even more weight improves their health. That seems to explain the entire benefit, and it wouldn’t apply to us.
Easy Bulking Snacks
Eating more often can be as simple as eating extra snacks, and those snacks can be as simple as homemade protein bars, some cottage cheese with jam, or some apple slices dipped in peanut butter.
That might still sound inconvenient, especially if you feel tired after eating. But that energy crash comes after large meals—especially when they’re high in fat, high in sugar, and low in fibre (study, study). If you’re eating more often, you won’t need to eat large meals, preventing energy crashes.
Easy Bulking Breakfasts
I recommend having your first meal pretty soon after waking up. If you’re like me, and you don’t wake up with an appetite, you can keep that first meal light and easy:
- Smoothie
- Protein shake with a banana
- Muesli cereal with milk
- Homemade protein bar
What to Eat Before Bed
It might also help to have a small snack before going to bed. Most sleep experts recommend avoiding eating big, high-calorie, high-fat, and high-sugar meals right before bed. It might also help to avoid eating meals that are salty or that have ingredients that can trigger acid reflux (like garlic and tomatoes).
So, think of light meals with protein and complex carbohydrates:
- A cup of cottage cheese with fruit (or a tablespoon of jam)
- Greek yogurt with (frozen) berries and a little bit of honey
- Muesli cereal with milk
- Apple slices with peanut butter
Eat More Carbs
Ketogenic diets are popular for a reason. Cutting back on carbs makes it harder to eat as many calories, making it harder to gain weight. We want the opposite of that—we want more carbs so that it’s easier to gain weight.
The other benefit of eating more carbs is that they pump your muscles full of glycogen, making them fuller and harder, improving your workout performance, and perhaps even increasing your rate of muscle growth (study, study, study). More on the muscle-building benefits of carbs here.
Of all those carbs, rice is the most popular with bodybuilders. Brown rice is a great bulking food, too. It’s chewier, making it more filling, but it also contains more calories, protein, nutrients, and fibre. Both are great, so eat whichever one you prefer (or both).
| Nutrients | White Rice (1 cup, cooked) | Brown Rice (1 cup, cooked) |
|---|---|---|
| Calories | 205 kcal | 215 kcal |
| Carbs | 45 grams | 45 grams |
| Protein | 4 grams | 5 grams |
| Fat | 0 grams | 2 grams |
| Fibre | 1 gram | 4 grams |
Another easy source of carbs is bananas. You can eat them as a snack, slice them into cereal, or blend them into smoothies. If they start to go bad, peel them and stick them in the freezer. Frozen bananas as great for smoothies.
There are plenty of other great carbs: whole-grain bread, beans, lentils, peas, corn, oats, fruits, veggies, yogurt, and milk.
Eat More Fat
Fat has 9 calories per gram, making it over twice as dense as carbs and protein. That makes it easy to fit more calories into your stomach.
Peanut butter is a classic high-calorie bulking food. It’s a healthy type of fat, and it’s also a good source of protein. You can spread it on whole grain bread, blend it into smoothies, dip apple slices into it, or eat it by the spoonful. A heaping spoonful of peanut butter has 150 calories and 6 grams of protein.
Cheese is great, too. I’m not sure if it’s controversial or not, but it’s a traditional, nutritious, well-studied food, and most research shows it has a neutral to positive effect on our health (study). I particularly like melting it on top of my chili.
The most powerful fat is extra virgin olive oil. It’s famous for having healthy polyphenols and being a good source of vitamin E, but it’s also extremely high in calories, with 120 calories per tablespoon. You can drizzle that spoonful on your veggies, mix it into your soups and stews, or add it to your sauces.
Another one of my favourites is dark chocolate, which seems to be good for our hearts, perhaps because it’s another rich source of polyphenols (study). I like to sprinkle dark chocolate chips over a cup of Greek yogurt with frozen berries. The chocolate hardens, giving it a nice crunchy texture that melts in your mouth, making it feel like eating chocolate chip ice cream. If you need even more calories, you can mix in some dried fruits, granola, whole-grain cereal, or muesli.
Eat More Protein
Protein is one of the more important nutrients for building muscle, but it doesn’t take that much to maximize your rate of muscle growth. Only about 0.7–1 gram per pound per day. That target isn’t that hard to hit when you’re trying to eat extra calories. There are grams of protein hiding in almost all the foods we’ve mentioned: ground meat, cheese, yogurt, milk, beans, lentils, peanut butter, nuts, seeds, brown rice, peas, and whole grains.
But you might still need to eat a little bit more than you’re used to. And that can be tough because when you eat protein, your body releases hormones that keep food in your stomach for longer, giving you more time to digest the protein (study).
When food leaves your stomach more slowly, you get a steadier supply of sugar released into your bloodstream. That keeps your blood sugar more stable, which might keep your energy levels more stable (study). But that could also make it harder to eat enough to gain weight.
The research on how protein affects appetite and weight gain is mixed (meta-analysis, study, study, study). Some studies show that eating more protein causes people to eat less, and that effect is stronger with leaner, chewier proteins like chicken breast, white fish, and trimmed steak. Other studies show no effect, and there are plenty of proteins that go down easy:
- Ground beef
- Ground chicken
- Salmon (and other fatty fish)
- Milk (and soy milk)
- Greek yogurt
- Protein shakes
- Bulking smoothies
Homemade Weight-Gainer Shakes
If you have a scoop of protein powder with water, you get about 120 calories and 24 grams of protein. That isn’t bad, but you could add a second scoop of protein, a tablespoon of ground flaxseed, maybe a little beetroot powder, some cacao, or maybe even a scoop or two of maltodextrin (which is a starchy carb, kind of like flour).
Now, your protein shake has up to 500 calories, with 50 grams of protein, some omega-3 fatty acids, 5 grams of fibre, and more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. All of these are powders, making it easy to bring the shake to the gym, where you can sip on it while working out.
I drank one of these homemade weight gainers every workout while gaining my first 50 pounds of muscle, and all of my health markers improved. Here’s my second bulk, showing +17 pounds in 4 months while drinking a homemade gainer:
We’ve also used variations of these shakes with hundreds of clients, including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
Still, some people are wary of protein powders, and even more people fear carb powders. That’s understandable. You can build muscle without powders or supplements.
Other people like using supplements, and that’s also perfectly fine. Some bulking supplements can make it easier to eat more calories, and there’s no reason to think that having reasonable amounts of protein and carb powders would be bad for you. More on that here.
We’ve asked a dozen other nutritionists, dietitians, and hypertrophy researchers about this over the years. They all said it was fine for thin guys who lift weights to use a moderate amount of whey and maltodextrin to help them bulk up.
Bulking Sauces & Dips
Sauces and dips are often packed with calories and nutrients and make your meals easier to eat. Adding jam to a peanut butter sandwich makes it go down way easier. So does adding mole to your chicken breast or a stir fry sauce to your stir fry.
I’m a big fan of “salsa” sauces, such as hot sauce and pico de gallo, but there’s also:
- Soy sauce
- Honey
- Hummus
- Guacamole
- Tahini
- Tzatziki
- Baba ganoush
Many of those sauces are good for you, especially if they have ingredients like olive oil, garlic, ginger, onions, herbs, peppers, tomatoes, or vinegar. Some of those ingredients also seem to help with digestion.
Even sugary sauces like jam, ketchup, and barbecue sauce are fine when they’re a small addition to a big nutritious meal. You don’t need to fear those extra calories when they’re a small part of a good diet that’s helping you build lean muscle.
Meal Schedule
Your digestive system follows your circadian rhythm. Your body prepares hormones, stomach acid, and digestive enzymes at your typical meal times to digest the sorts of meals you normally eat.
It’s much easier to gain weight when you get into a nice steady rhythm, eating similarly sized meals at about the same time every day. Your body will get into the rhythm of it, helping you digest that food.
Eating similar meals at similar times every day also makes it easy to eat about the same number of calories every day. That makes it easy to get into a steady calorie surplus without needing to track your calories. (Though tracking your calories also works, and some calorie-tracking apps are great.)
The problem is that when you’re bulking, you might not feel very hungry very often. So, instead of letting your hunger guide you, pick a schedule and stick with it, eating your meals at predetermined times.
I’m horrible at this. If I’m busy working on something, the last thing I want to do is get up and eat. Normally, that’s totally fine. My muscles won’t fall off. But when I’m bulking, I stick to the schedule, and I grab a smoothie or some Beastly Energy Balls from the fridge.
Grocery Shopping
One of the biggest problems skinny people run into is that when it’s time to eat, they don’t know what they should eat, and they’re too lazy to cook it anyway. So, stock your pantry full of beans, dark chocolate, rice, trail mix, and muesli cereal. Fill your fridge with yogurt, milk, milk alternatives, and leftovers. And keep some frozen mixed berries, salmon, and ground meat in your freezer.
That means if you feel lazy, all you need to do is pour some milk into some muesli, and you have a nutritious 700-calorie meal. Or, if you need to need something you can bring with you, grab some trail mix.
Meal Planning & Meal Prep
I only cooked once per week while gaining my first 50 pounds of muscle. I’d set aside a couple of hours every Sunday afternoon to get groceries. Then, I’d make a dozen servings of chili and a tray of homemade protein bars.
During the week, I’d have one or two bowls of chili, one of those protein bars, a smoothie, and maybe a snack.
If You Have to Eat a Big Meal
Sometimes, in a desperate effort to reach your caloric goals, you’re forced to eat a meal that’s uncomfortably large, leaving you feeling bloated and tired.
When that happens, the temptation is to lie down, which is usually fine, but I find it helps to stand up or go on a walk instead. That seems to speed up digestion, balance out your blood sugar, prevent acid reflux, and clear out any gas that’s building up.
High-Calorie Backup Meals
At some point, no matter how diligent you try to be, you’re bound to fall behind on calories, so you need some high-calorie emergency foods you can fall back on.
I would use shots of olive oil for this. A single shot contains almost 400 calories. I hated taking those shots, but it was either that or losing a day of progress.
It’s much better to have something more palatable on hand, like these Beastly energy balls. They’re a balanced and nutritious meal, a great source of calories, and far higher in protein. Plus, they only take a few seconds to eat. The trick is to already have them prepared in the fridge.
The other thing I do is eat Greek yogurt out of the tub. It isn’t as high in calories, but it’s very high in protein, and it’s easy to wolf down 8–10 spoonfuls before heading to bed. Muesli cereal is good for that, too.
Weird Bulking Diets
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is suddenly changing too many things, too dramatically, in too strange of a way. There are three common examples:
- Thousand-calorie smoothies: When I first started bulking, I would pack the blender full of as much healthy food as I could, including unsavoury ingredients like olive oil, raw eggs, and raw broccoli. I would blend up a full litre of that sludge, chug it down, and watch my stomach expand until I looked nine months pregnant, which didn’t feel very good. It’s better to start with a 500 or maybe 700-calorie smoothie. And you want to fill it with normal smoothie ingredients, in normal serving sizings. If that goes well, you can make it a little bigger.
- Weird bulking diets: Another mistake is to switch to a radical diet, like A Gallon Of Milk A Day (GOMAD). Milk can be a great bulking food if you digest it well, but you should have it in normal serving sizes as part of a balanced diet. A Litre A Day (LOMAD) is much more reasonable.
- Weight gainers: Most weight gainers have serving sizes of well over a thousand calories. That’s too large of a serving, and it’s too much processed food. It’s okay to have some protein powder and maltodextrin, but 500–700 calories is enough.
You might get lucky, but most people who bulk in weird and extreme ways wind up feeling bad and gaining fat. Probably not enough fat to cause a problem, but enough fat that you would wish that I would have warned you.
Plus, when you do weird things, you’re more likely to run into weird problems. For example, most foods have small amounts of nutrients that are bad to eat in large quantities. If you start eating 10x the normal amount, you can run into problems nobody would ever think to warn you about.
Progressive Caloric Overload
You don’t need to use all of these tips. Your calorie surplus doesn’t need to be that big. If you can add a 500-calorie smoothie on top of what you’re already eating, that might be enough to get the scale moving in the right direction. Or you could have a small glass of milk or soy milk with meals, snack on a few energy balls between lunch and dinner, or make your meals a little bigger and try to eat them a little faster.
So, at long last, the final tip is to start small and build from there, progressively overloading your calories, just like you progressively overload the weights in the gym. Your digestive system prefers more gradual changes anyway.
Free Bulking Recipes
I mentioned a few recipes in this article, including our Beastly Energy Balls and bulking smoothies. I’ve got those recipes here, free:
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Full Bulking Guide
If you want us to walk you through the entire bulking process, check out our Bony to Beastly (men’s) program or Bony to Bombshell (women’s) program. They include a 5-month workout routine, a bulking diet plan, a recipe book full of meals that make it easier to gain weight, and coaching from us in our online community:
That means we can look at your diet and give you personal advice about how to improve it. We’ll also review your progress as you go through the program, helping you get faster, leaner, and more consistent muscle growth.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, each with millions of readers. He's a Certified Conditioning Coach (CCC), has gained 70 pounds, and has over a decade of experience helping more than 15,000 people build muscle. He also has a degree in fine arts, but those are inversely correlated with muscle growth.
Cassandra Duquette
Cassandra Duquette is a certified nutritionist (CNP) living in Cancun, Mexico. She takes a holistic approach to nutrition, combining a good diet with exercise and a healthy lifestyle. She's gained 23 pounds, bulking up from 97 to 120 pounds.
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Is appetite also psychological? Being ectomorph, I likely have a small stomach, but I love to eat, I could easily down 6000 calories of protein and fiber. It would get me fat, as it has twice in the past! Even while lean bulking I really have to control myself to not overeat.
Hey Cole, appetite can definitely be psychological. One example of that is our desire to eat more calories when the food tastes good.
Not all ectomorphs have small stomachs, though. Sounds like you’ve actually got quite a large one. If you’re eating a surplus of calories and still not feeling even satisfied, then that makes it sound like you’ve got a VERY large stomach.
You might have other ectomorph traits, but I’d guess you don’t have this one!
how do i email or contact u guys i have a few questions.
like if i want to do sports but i still want gain mass (im 16).
Marco has specialized in working with athletes for most of his career, including working with high school athletes. We can absolutely help you gain mass while playing sports—that’s no problem at all 🙂
And, of course, you can always email us@bonytobeastly.com.
I hope you decide to join the program, man!
Is this good for females?
Hey Earlene!
Are the strategies in this article good for women? Absolutely! We use all of these same methods with our female clients.
If you’re a woman trying to gain weight, though, you might prefer our women’s bulking site, Bony to Bombshell 🙂
Isn’t true that high processed foods (white bread, rice, etc) trigger a spike in insuline levels which could be terrible mid-long term? Is that something we should worry?
on the same subject, would be okay to eat, for exemple, 3 bananas (only carb) for a meal, considering that they are easyly digested by themselfs, or we should again worry with the insulin spikes?
What about nutrient timing… Should we try to make an effort to eat most macros before and after the workout or would be okay to have a massive 1000 calorie breakfast even when working out only in nighttime? Can’t help to think that would be bad…
Anyway, thanks for the article, really appreciate your work.
Hey Rafael, those are good questions.
It’s true that carbs are more insulinogenic than fat. So, for example, rice will indeed cause bigger insulin spikes than butter. Protein is also quite insulinogenic, mind you, so having a whey protein shake will also trigger a hearty rise in insulin.
Whether that’s good or bad depends on where the insulin is carrying those calories. If the insulin is storing it in your fat cells, then yes, that would be bad in the long term, especially if you’re overweight. However, the whole point of bulking up is to get the insulin to help you store the extra energy as muscle. And more muscle is fantastic for your longterm health.
If you’re lifting weights, sleeping well, and eating a diet that’s made up mostly of whole foods, some bread and rice and whatnot shouldn’t be a problem, especially if you bulk up fairly leanly—and you should indeed definitely bulk up leanly. Always a good idea to clear these diet changes with your doctor, though.
Is it okay to eat three bananas as a meal? Something like trail mix would be better. Or a banana and a pint of milk. Those would also make it really easy to consume more calories, they’d also digest easily, they’d give you a wider variety of nutrients, and would include some protein. I don’t really see a big issue with eating three bananas, though.
Calorie cycling is effective, yeah. In the Bony to Beastly Program we also recommend calorie cycling though (along with a few other little tricks to further boost results). So having bigger meals with lots of protein and carbs surrounding your workouts can indeed help. That’s very minor compared to the fundamentals of building muscle, though (a great lifting protein, and the right amount of calories, protein and sleep). Also keep in mind that any meals within a couple days of your last workout are still going to be used to build muscle, especially if they contain sufficient protein to stimulate muscle growth (20+ grams). So don’t stress about that 1,000-calorie breakfast, just make sure there’s a protein source in there 🙂
I hope that helps, and good luck!
IF has a lot of positive effects hormonally which are great for gains. It brings down insulin while naturally boosting GH and Testosterone. This causes the body to burn the fat store during the long window of fasting which can help get rid of the skinny fat while the muscle mass only increases due to the increased GH and T levels when combined with lifting. And if you do IF, your appetite becomes so great that you end up eating the same amount of calories in an 8 hour window. So IF is really about fat loss and muscle gain (hence called LeanGains) which all body types including us skinny guys can only benefit from.
Hey RR, I disagree. First of all, I want to point out that this article is written for guys who are struggling with bulking diets, and who are trying to eat more calories. Many of these guys have naturally smaller stomachs, faster metabolisms, and appetites that don’t respond as expected.
With that in mind, yes, you’re going to be more hungry when you finish your fast, but your stomach isn’t going to be any bigger. For guys with naturally big stomachs, this isn’t an issue, but if someone struggles to eat a 1,000-calorie dinner, then having to eat a 2,000-calorie dinner because they skipped breakfast is a nightmare. Not only are they going to feel awful, but they’re at risk for developing issues like acid reflux (as I did when I tried to bulk using while using a LeanGains approach).
Now, this article is for guys who are trying to find a way to eat more calories, but let’s say you have a big stomach and you enjoy intermittent fasting while bulking. Would you get any muscle-building advantages due to testosterone or growth hormone? Yeah, sure, but you’d also be facing muscle-building disadvantages. For one example, you miss an opportunity to stimulate muscle growth by eating a protein-rich breakfast and you thus spend less time each day in a calorie surplus. And keep in mind that being in a calorie surplus is WAY more anabolic than the acute increases in growth hormone and testosterone caused by intermittent fasting.
I don’t want to make this sound like a big deal. Most of the muscle-building nutrition researchers, such as Dr Eric Helms, Dr John Berardi and Dr Layne Norton, agree that 4–5 meals per day is ideal for muscle growth. However, you can still build muscle just fine while intermittent fasting, just like you can build muscle just fine while eating 8 times per day. This is relatively minor stuff here. The main point I’m trying to make is that intermittent fasting makes it harder to eat enough calories, not that it’s bad for building muscle.
Here’s Dr John Berardi, who has researched intermittent fasting extensively: “I think periodic fasting (at most, once per week) could easily be included in an offseason bodybuilder’s schedule and would lend some unique benefits as long as the athlete ate more on the other six days of the week. Of course, you don’t have to use IF at all. Most successful bodybuilders don’t. And, to be honest, I prefer IF for guys who are simply interested in being lean and muscular for life, without the weight swings of the average competitive bodybuilder.”
(Keep in mind that most of our blog articles are written for someone who wants to gain 20+ pounds in just a few months. That’s a huge swing in weight, so we fall into the category of people he thinks should stay away from intermittent fasting.)
Dr Layne Norton takes a harsher stance against intermittent fasting for muscle growth. He argues that there’s no way to make up for the lost opportunity for muscle growth that comes along with skipping breakfast: “Research from our lab concluded that when it comes to optimizing muscle protein synthesis, overconsuming protein at one time of the day couldn’t make up for low protein at another time of the day.”
You know what, this merits a full blog post. I’ve got a lot more to say on this, there’s a lot more research to discuss, and obviously even in the ectomorph community there’s still some disagreement on this. Stay tuned for a full blog post titled something like “The Skinny on Intermittent Fasting.”
I appreciate your comment, I think it’s a great topic, and I hope you decide to comment on that upcoming article also so that we can have a deeper conversation about it. In the meantime, if you have any particular research you want me to delve into, or any arguments you find particularly compelling, let me know and I’ll take them into consideration when writing the post 🙂
Appreciate your long response, Shane. However there is a lot of conventional science quoted here that are getting debunked now. This idea of eating 5 meals a day throughout the day keeps the insulin level spiked up all the time that has all kinds of negative effects in the long term. Fasting in addition to increasing growth hormone and testosterone also results in building up body’s immunity (which prevents down times that are terrible for builders), improves digestion (which results in processing more food easily during the eating window), reduces triglycerides, slows aging and so many other benefits.
Dr. Jason Fung has been doing some good work on this topic and here is something I found on this topic from him:
“One common myth is that fasting will lead to loss of muscle mass. The book clearly describes the process of protein catabolism, explaining how your body actually downregulates protein catabolism and upregulates growth hormones in response to fasting.
“If you follow the biochemistry, your body stores energy as glycogen in the liver, which is links or chains of sugar, and then it stores [it as] body fat.
During fasting, you start by burning off all the glycogen in the liver, which is all the sugar. There’s a point there where some of the excess amino acids in your body need to get burnt as well.
That’s where people say, ‘That’s where you’re burning muscle.’ That’s not actually what happens. The body never upregulates its protein catabolism. Never is it burning muscle; there’s a normal turnover that goes on.
There is a certain amount of protein that you need for a regular turnover. When you start fasting, that starts to go down and then fat oxidation goes way up. In essence, what you’ve done is you switched over from burning sugar to burning fat. Once you start burning fat, there’s almost an unlimited amount of calories there. You could go for days and days.”
I’m not debating that there are benefits, just that you have to compare those benefits against the opportunity cost, i.e., eating a more traditional diet also comes with many benefits.
Regarding insulin, no. If you’re eating 5 meals per day you’d have a series of smaller spikes throughout the day. If you skip breakfast you’d have larger spikes at lunch and dinner. You don’t wind up with chronically elevated insulin in either case.
And that’s not really an issue that naturally skinny guys need to worry about anyway. Being lean raises insulin sensitivity, lifting weights raises insulin sensitivity, and building muscle raises insulin sensitivity. Again, this is an issue for overweight people that’s being generalized as if it applies to us equally. It doesn’t. In this case, we have separate issues.
Now, I totally agree with you (and Dr Jason Fung—what he’s saying lines up with the research I’ve read) that muscle loss isn’t a risk when intermittent fasting. I’d add that it’s a great way to reduce calorie intake in an enjoyable way. This makes it great for cutting. No argument there.
However, that has nothing to do with bulking. Bulking programs aren’t designed to minimize muscle loss, they’re designed to maximize muscle gain. Intermittent fasting isn’t optimal for muscle gain.
Moreover, this article is about how to eat more calories, and the main concern with intermittent fasting is that it makes it WAY harder to eat more calories. After all, the main reason intermittent fasting is so popular is that people find it helps them eat fewer calories without feeling as hungry.
Your articles are all so well written. Great explanations and thanks for the summaries
Thank you so much, Kaya!
One thing that’s been helping me bulk recently has been learning to bake.
Like the other week I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I did the math and I ended up with about 30 cookies at 215 calories each. Of course they taste better than the prepackaged store-bought version. All for a few buck’s worth of ingredients. I froze them and take a couple out at a time.
I know better than to base my whole diet on cookies, but they taste good and go down easy, so eating even one a day is a super-simple way to get in a couple hundred extra calories.
Oo, I love that tip! Cheap, fun, delicious, convenient. Plus, homemade cookies not only taste better than store-bought ones, they also tend to have better quality ingredients. (They’ll often include eggs, dark chocolate, oatmeal, butter instead of palm oil, etc.) And they taste great with milk, which will bring the protein.
Yeah, plus at this point I’m just trying a bunch of different recipes for the learning experience; doing what seems interesting or tasty.
I’m sure if I wanted to I could make some sort of optimized bulking cookie with lots of walnuts or peanut butter or whatnot to boost the protein and calories even higher.
You can even get protein powders specifically designed to be used in baking. That can be fun to experiment with, but even just veering more towards higher quality ingredients (peanut butter, butter, oats, dried fruits, nuts, etc) should do the trick. And even then, yeah, not every cookie needs to be a health food or protein bar. Sometimes a delicious cookie can just be a delicious cookie.
Nice article as usual 🙂
I always read about “Trail mix” but never googled it. I mean it made sense to me it is something like dried fruits you take on a hike and munch on it along the way. Finally I know what it is.
2 points I think about:
1.] Don’t drink water alongside meals.
This is my life time long problem. I always do this. I think it is more of a habit I guess. Interestingly enough my mum is the one telling me not to do. We had this “argument” again lately. Went to a restaurant, I pick up a glass, start drinking before the meal and I do drink during the meal. And yeah, it seems silly I am 32 yo and she reminds me all the time, she means well. Hard to get rid of this habit. I do it subconsciously but I think it comes down to me NOT drinking enough in general during the day so when the time of meal comes my brain goes: “Aha. Drink you fool, you are thirsty.”
2.] You might not need to drink as much water as you think.
I can tell when I am thirsty, obviously, I go to drink but I have hard time tracking water in meals / fruits, you name it. The app I use does not take this into account at all. I know well how much drinking healthy regular amount of water on daily basis during the day is beneficial but I really have to focus on this. It is one of those things I yet did not overcome oever the years and I drink well or enough only during focused bulk periods, be it one, two or three months. Once that is done I go back to my old silly me, not drinking enough. The question is how to tell how much I need. I know, headache, dark pee colour are all bad signs, but it is as if I feel thirsty every damn time only when it is late.
Cheers ~ Daniel
Glad you dug it, Daniel!
1. If you’re trying to eat more calories and drink more fluid, you can always just swap the water for milk (or another liquid that has calories). It will be similarly hydrating but won’t have you falling behind on your calories 🙂
2. Try starting the day off with a big glass of water as soon as you wake up. You could also add in a glass of water halfway between meals. If having water between meals sounds too boring or is too difficult to remember, you can always have some tea (or other flavoured beverage) instead.
PS your comment got auto-flagged as spam because of the embedded links of the typos, which I’ve removed and fixed (Thank you!). If you don’t see your comment show up right after posting it, that’s what’s happened.
In general I know I need to drink more water. I feel better when I drink more than “usual ” amount (which is not enough). I will try to unlearn this habit of drinking during meals. I already drink “extra” glass in the morning and also in the evening.
So 500 kcal more a day is enough? Can you recommend a calorie calculator to count your maintenance calories?
The most effective way to figure out your maintenance calories is to track how many calories you eat for a few days. Metabolism and activity levels can vary quite a bit. If you want a rough idea, though, My Fitness Pal tends to have good algorithms. Just be ready to adjust based on how much weight you gain.
Certified personal trainer with my own business and gym here; this site is a friggin’ goldmine of information!
I’ve been ecto my entire life, and managed to put on weight on my own with the majority of the info here (before even finding it here; years of intense full-time effort), and it pleases me to see someone putting this info out there! I got myself from 139 to 165 over the course of 5 or so years, and I’m still climbing. None of the books for certification (ISSA here) talk about gaining weight in a realistic fashion for us furnace types.
97% of my clients are looking to lose weight, and you’re so spot on about the industry being geared toward them. It’s insidious. Thank you for making this information available, corroborating my research, and supporting the theory of NEAT calorie burning via all the damn fidgeting, walking, feet tapping, nail biting (and in my off time) yo-yoing we do! Keep up the good work, Shane and team; the eBook is stellar!
Thank you, Jason! 139 to 165 is badass, and I’m stoked to hear from a fellow bony brother fighting the good fight 🙂
So crazy how personal trainers aren’t even trained to deal with our body type. I mean, yeah, it makes sense—it’s rare—but you’d think it would still be part of the mandatory training.
Thanks again for the comment, glad you dug the eBook, and keep it up, man!
I cannot drink milk, is it bad to drink 1 liter of fresh orange juice to get more calories (getting proteins is not the problem only calories)?
Yeah, getting more protein in your meals and then having orange juice on the side is similar to having more carbs in your meal and then having milk on the side. I don’t see a problem with that.
Just make sure that your meals have plenty of fibre and unprocessed foods so that the (natural) sugar in the orange juice doesn’t all hit you at once.
Shane my man I just want to say i think it’s great what you guys are doing!
Skinny guy here from the UK, 6’2″ 145lbs, platued and haven’t gained anything in 2018. Appetite affected from a history of anxiety issues, over that now though. Working my darned hardest to put on another 30-40lbs, incredibly difficult!
Thanks for the kind words, Dave. Glad to hear that you’ve managed to work through your anxiety and appetite issues. That’s great 🙂
Good luck gaining those next 30–40 pounds. Difficult for sure, but also totally realistic, and once you succeed, it should be really easy to maintain those gains.
Buenos. Yo soy de puerto rico y ahora in inglés oieste..
Im always working and dont have alot of money for snacks. Also i eat alot of ramen noodle and milk. penut butter and milk yogurt for breakfeast. i want to gain more but how can i manage my time to eat? What should i buy for high calorie snacks? gracias
Hey Bopper, greetings from Canada.
We’ve got a lot of snack ideas in this article, but make sure to download the PDF guide for some recipe suggestions and extra tips 🙂
Thx for this article Shane. It´s very important to realize there are other ppl struggling out there!
I would like to share my story and maybe warn ppl (but also motivate)
Force feeding doesnt mean overfeeding! Which means you eat more than your stomach is capable of. So did I – eating when I was full, without apetite, just to hit 3500cals/day – and then, after about an half a year I ended up with terrible Git problems(stomach pain, acid reflux, and other pleasant symptoms) which almost destroyed me (not literally) and is still chasing me- even after almost year. But w/e I was doin it for muscles, I wanted them so much. My friend was motivating me that my body will get used to it. But it didnt somehow I am in the category of small fragile stomachs, sup!
Now I am better but still got problems with acid reflux -always had since teenage. But still was able to gain 8kgs in about year – which is like fckim miracle with my stomach. At least least without fat, because what the heck is fat? Mirin a bit.
Doctors advise to my stomach issues? Eat less. Ecto requirements? Eat more. Fck genetics, fck life. I will make it. You will make it too, just be careful guys.
Sry, had to share it and here it is on its place. I hope it helps somebody avoid similar problems.
You do great job Shane with these articles. You help ppl and thats just great today.
Cheers
tom
Written on phone, excuse typos and form pls.
I’m sure you’ve answered this in previous threads, but if it’s scientifically impossible to gain more than 2 lbs of muscle per month, how can you advertise 20 pounds of muscle in 90 days? I understand that some of that will be water, bone density, and fat, is that true?
Hey David,
I might be missing something in your question. But it seems like:
90 days divided by 7 days in a week = 12.85 weeks.
2 pounds per week multiplied by 12.85 = 25.7 pounds.
I’ll also add that we do get some members who are clinically underweight in terms of BMI, like Shane and I both were when starting out, who can gain an upward of 8 pounds in their first week. Those people can and have gained even more in that time period because their body is literally starving for that extra nutrition.
We all have different starting points though. Someone who has been lifting for a number of years and has already gained an appreciable amount of muscle definitely shouldn’t be gaining as rapidly as a skinny guy could.
To add to what Jared said, Jared himself gained 33 pounds in 90 days (without drugs). The most I’ve gained in 90 days is a little over 20 pounds (also without drugs).
It’s not scientifically impossible to gain more than two pounds of muscle per month. It’s not even impossible to gain more than two pounds of muscle per week. There have been numerous examples of this in the scientific literature. However, like Jared says, the situations are normally extraordinary. For example, someone who is underweight, or someone who is recovering lost muscle mass, someone who has never lifted weights before, someone who has remarkable genetics, or someone taking drugs.
We cater to guys who are underweight or who have struggled in the past to gain weight. This means we can reliably leverage that period of rapid growth that comes when someone is far away from their genetic muscular potential. This is called “newbie gains,” and we’ve written about the science of that here: https://bonytobeastly.com/ectomorphs-newbie-gains-guide/
Moving beyond just gains in muscle mass (including glycogen, which is largely water), yeah, when people bulk up, they also tend to gain a variety of different kinds of weight: our muscles grow, we gain bone density, we gain some fat, our stomachs grow, etc. Even somebody who maintains the same body fat percentage while (say 12%) will gain some fat as they grow bigger (in this case 1.2 pounds of fat for every ten pounds they gain overall).
As you get closer to your genetic muscular potential, though, yeah, gaining around two pounds of muscle per month is realistic for a while. At a certain point, though, even that will become too rapid. An advanced bodybuilder can’t gain 24 pounds of muscle in year. They’d be lucky to gain 1/10th of that.
Thanks for the extremely informative, well-researched article. And it was free! You have helped a small man nurture his big dreams.
How to Eat More Calories (The Best Bulking Diet for Skinny Guys)
[…]Beating the addiction will take some reorganizing of your grocery checklist to exclude sugary sodas and processed foods, and to incorporate extra protein, excessive-fibre, and low glycaemic load foods.[…]
When I work out my joints hurt. They make noises all the time, but when I work out it comes with pain.
Elbows, knees if I squat, shoulder sometimes.
They didn’t used to. I used to work out before. Now I can’t and I’m not even that old (28)
One doctor told me that It was ligament laxity, but I don’t think so. They don’t have a super range, it’s not abnormal, they just do a loot of cracking noises and get inflamed and hurtful after even the lightst of the work outs.
Did you ever heard anything of the sort with anyone trying to work out?
I can’t diagnose you as I’m not a medical professional, nor can I see you, but I can share my own experience. I got into weightlifting due to tendonitis in both my arms, but I also had a bummed knee earlier from skateboarding as a teen (had surgery, etc.). Weightlifting and eating well helped to solve my tendonitis almost 100%. But one of the things I had also tried was supplementing with Type II Collagen since I had read it could help with tendons. I started taking it and noticed no improvements in my arms but suddenly my knees stopped hurting. It was something I had totally learned to ignore. Before I had taken the supplement, I had to be ultra-careful with my form, couldn’t squat very deep, the knee could go out past my toes, etc. Now it doesn’t hurt at all.
This is what I might do:
I hope the physio or some other solution can help you out, I know how much these types of aches and pains can affect life!
Awesome article. Way to represent us skinny fucks!
Shane, I just wanted to thank you for sharing this article and many more that you have written. I am a hard gainer eating 4000 calories a day and your articles answer so many of my questions on point so much. This was such an awesome find. I wish so badly that I had found it a year ago. I have been following strictly Michael Mathews BLS program and I have made great gains in the last year but I’m sure I could have done it faster with your tips.
Moving forward, Thank you so much.
My pleasure, Justin! So glad that I could help. We’ve had some members coming into our program who’ve also experimented with Michael Matthews and his BLS program. I’ve heard of it but I’m not that familiar with it. Glad to hear that it’s working, and congratulations on your gains! 😀
[…] skinny guy, and he’ll need all the stomach-stuffing tips he can get. Shane has a great article on how to eat more here. (If you’re skinny-fat, you can skip this step, you’ve already got a surplus built into your […]
[…] Eat a diet that’s made up mostly of whole foods. If you’re wondering what a healthy bulking diet looks like, here’s our guide for how to eat more calories. […]
[…] Read more at: https://bonytobeastly.com/how-to-eat-more-calories/ […]
[…] If you’re skinny and want to bulk up, that new muscle still to be built will need to come from food outside your body. Nutrition will play a key role, and eating enough to gain weight will likely be harder than doing the workouts. (There’s a great guide on eating more over at Bony to Beastly.) […]
how do i contact u guys here or lik is it by email cuz i got questions like how to gain mucle but lik be in a sport lik sprint cuz isnt usian bolt ecto he looks lik one but it looks lik from the artlicels i read that id need alot of cardio but he did it and is ripped so idk now really oh and im 16 and 6 ft tall if u guys needed to know that.
[…] more food is notoriously difficult for skinny guys. There’s a great guide here on Bony to Beastly on eating more. Some good tricks include eating more often, eating foods with less water in them like dried fruits […]
[…] Because we’re only interested in bulking, we can immediately discount the main advantage of intermittent fasting: appetite reduction. After all, we aren’t trying to eat less food. Quite the opposite, actually. This is a bulking disadvantage, especially for naturally skinny guys, as most of us already struggle to eat enough to gain weight. (If you’re struggling to gain weight, here’s our article about how to eat more calories and gain weight more easily.) […]
[…] Ectomorph bulking diet: how to eat more calories and gain weight more easily […]
[…] Given that my goal was to gain weight overall, I couldn’t do a fitness program, shred some fat, and wind up looking ripped. I needed a workout and diet routine that would help me add mass to my frame. I started following a bulking program, and I managed to gain 32 pounds while reducing my body-fat percentage. (The above transformation shows about 7 months of bulking, but I took a break in the middle because I was tired of having to eat so many damn calories.) […]
[…] our more recent article about putting together a good ectomorph bulking diet: Ectomorph Bulking Diet: How to Eat More Calories and Gain Weight More Easily. We’ve been helping ectomorphs bulk up for nearly ten years now, and we’ve learned a […]
[…] we’ve made a free guide for you. It includes our popular article about how to eat more calories, a sample bulking meal plan designed for ectomorphs (which is how I was able to finally gain 55 […]
[…] Furthermore, eating a bulking diet that’s overly high in protein can make it harder to gain weight, especially if you’re an ectomorph who’s having trouble eating enough calories. (Here’s our article about how to eat more calories while bulking up.) […]
[…] Here’s our Ectomorph Bulking Diet article about how to eat more calories. […]
[…] from different diets and workouts? For example, is there such a thing as an ectomorph workout or an ectomorph diet? Or do all body types benefit from the same types of exercise and […]
[…] an article explaining why it’s so hard for ectomorphs to gain weight, and another article on the Ectomorph Bulking Diet, which is designed to make it easier to eat more calories. Here are some quick […]
[…] you’re still having trouble gaining weight after adding a litre of milk to your diet, here’s our guide for how to eat more calories. It might make more sense to start adding in calories from other bulking foods, such as trail mix. […]
[…] However, there are ways around that, and that just so happens to be our specialty. Here’s our guide for how to eat more calories. It’s not specific to the ketogenic diet, but all the same principles still […]
[…] like to bulk leanly, too. That means stimulating a serious amount of muscle growth, shuttling all the extra calories we’re eating towards muscle growth instead of fat storage. That’s going to allow us to bulk more quickly […]
[…] have a full guide on how to eat more calories here, but to get you started, I want to give you four strategies that work especially well with vegan […]
I’ve bulked from 120 to 150 lbs during my lifting career but I have stayed at the plateau of 150 lbs in 2019. Recently, I noticed that my appetite decrease as I time pass further in a bulk. But when I go on a significant calorie deficit or maintenance calories, my appetite is good again. Struggling to consistently bulk for more than a month has made me stay around 150 lbs due to my appetite literally not letting me eat foods. Do you have a suggestion for my problem? My goal is an eventual 180 lbs
[…] common for us to have smaller stomachs and faster metabolisms, which can make it incredibly hard to eat enough calories to gain weight. That has a couple implications for which supplements we should […]
[…] we learn how to eat enough calories, hardgainers tend to respond incredibly well to lifting weights—with a proper bulking program, […]
[…] a good bulking diet with a good bulking workout routine and you’ve got the perfect environment for ectomorph […]
[…] It’s worth pointing out that frozen fruit counts as fresh fruit too, since it’s frozen when fresh. Dried fruit is also very nutritious while also being very easy on the appetite—great for those of us trying to eating enough to gain weight. (Here’s our guide for eating more calories.) […]
[…] masters of helping skinny guys eat more calories. But it’s still hard. And the more cardio you do, the more calories you’ll burn, and […]
[…] skinny ectomorph hardgainers—can build muscle if they learn how to exercise and eat a bulking diet that suits their body […]
[…] Most naturally skinny guys having a hard time eating enough to gain weight, but I was able to eat more calories without much effort. My weight was climbing higher. I was building […]
[…] we learn how to eat enough calories, hardgainers tend to respond incredibly well to lifting weights—with a proper bulking program, […]
[…] First, newbie gains. We have an entire article on newbie gains where we go over this science in even more detail, but long story short: when you first start lifting weights, your muscles will explode with rapid growth. It’s quick, it’s fairly easy, and you’ll grow as fast as you can shovel food into your mouth. (Mind you, eating that much food is hard, so it pays to learn how to eat more calories.) […]
what are some snacks i should be eating in the middle of meals?
Hey, Jonathan. I like snacking on trail mix while bulking. If not that, maybe some Greek yogurt and fruit. Or if I’m out, usually a protein bar (either store-bought or homemade). You can really snack on anything, though. We have a bunch of ideas here: https://bonytobeastly.com/best-bulking-foods/
[…] Pick more calorie-dense foods. Nuts, protein bars, whey protein, chocolate and dried fruit are all good choices. If you can’t get a large meal at a restaurant, you can supplement your calorie intake with one of those options or something else. When I was traveling in England, the portion sizes were much smaller than normal, so I’d often have a protein bar or something else to supplement my calorie intake. […]
Yess, i’m an ectomorph female and have done the clean eating/lean gains thing for a long time, obviously having a hard time making gains past the newbie gains. Due to injury I stopped training for quite Some time (lost all the gains), and so now starting out as a newbie again! Found your articles quite helpful! Determined to max out the newbie gains! Greetz from Holland.
So glad we could help, Maaike! In case you haven’t seen it yet, we have a bulking website for women, too: Bony to Bombshell.
[…] because you aren’t lifting right (or you aren’t lifting at all), you aren’t eating a good bulking diet, you aren’t sleeping well, or you haven’t been doing it consistently for long […]
[…] principle holds true. We need to challenge our muscles enough to stimulate growth, then recover by eating more calories and getting good sleep, and then challenge our muscles again—doing more than last time. This idea […]
Good info and I think butter definitely should be on the list. It’s easy to add to most meals and easy to eat. Also kefir is good to drink with meals. Don’t know how available it is in the states tho. Some ethnic stores must have it if the supermarket doesn’t. Possible to make at home also. It gives calories, tastes good and strengthens digestion. But don’t drink much over 4 glasses per day which is about 500 calories. Sometimes I drink heavy cream before bed if I’ve had a physically demanding day and haven’t had time to eat enough. It’s not too bad if you manage less some days tho. No need to stress about it. Try to eat a little more the next day.
Hey Rannar, thank you!
I’m not sure how widely available kefir is in the states, but it’s quite common in Canada. I love kefir. It’s one of my favourite bulking foods for sure, and one of my favourite drinks in general. We have it listed as one of the best bulking foods. Not only is it great for digestion, but it’s also easy on the appetite and surprisingly high in protein (even when compared with milk).
Butter is an okay bulking food. Mind you, we aren’t necessarily trying to intentionally raise our intake of saturated fat higher. Not that we need to avoid it or anything, but when adding in tons of extra calories, we normally recommend getting them from sources that aren’t especially high in saturated fat, especially if that person is already drinking more milk and eating more meat than normal (which will already raise their intake of saturated fat). So when adding oils, we often default to extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter or coconut oil.
[…] the “buffet” effect. In a Bony to Beastly article on eating more food, Shane discusses the idea behind different flavours driving eating. It’s a lot easier to eat […]
Hardgainer here, age 48. 6′ 3″ was 170lb for many years, now down to 160lbs. Used to do routine workouts and hit the protein shakes/bars HARD, but over time this stressed liver enzymes (itchy skin, etc) and wasn’t a sustainable way to keep muscle and weight on. Am now retooling for a whole foods lower impact nutrition plan at this stage of my life.
One shortcut I’ve found to be very useful is making HUEL smoothies. I buy their unsweetened powder and mix with 1/2 banana, 1/2 avocado, healthy handful of almonds, cashews, and walnuts, a big sprig of kale, sprinkle of liquid stevia (NOW Better Stevia tastes great), 1 square of dark chocolate, Silk almond/cashew protein milk, frozen blueberries, and frozen mango/strawberries. Makes two smoothies I drink two hours apart for about 600 cals each, 55carb, 26g protein… an ideal mixture with complete amino acid profiles and terrific nutrition ratios. Pop a probiotic and you’re also on the way to healing your digestive system.
Tip: Invest in a Nutribullet 900 Pro. Yes, it’s worth the upgrade. The above smoothie comes out smooth as milk… and that’s what you want because “chewy” smoothies are gross.
Thanks again Shane for that informative article. I was recently on 220 grams of protein a day diet for about 7 months, under the guidance of a personal trainer. Like you mentioned in your article it was an uphill battle to get carbs in and the protein in. The important thing was I got the protein in but not the carbs. I had a lot of stomach issues and acid reflux, but I pushed through the issues and got the protein in. My energy was low and I did not have an appetite, I guess because I was filling my stomach up with high-protein foods all the time. I made some good gains but I quickly lost them when I slowed down my eating. Now after trying a more modest amount of protein—160 grams of protein—and getting more carbs and calories, I gained 5 pounds. As you mentioned in your article, you gain muscle at a faster rate when you eat your carbs and calories, and I feel good again. A really good energy lesson learned. Thanks again, Shane. I hope to be joining your program very soon!
Really glad you liked the article, Gregory 😀
I am trying very hard to gain muscle. How many calories do I have to eat in a day if I am 58 kgs? I want to increase my muscle mass and gain weight to weigh 75 kgs.
Hey Miiie, to gain weight, you need to eat enough calories to gain weight. To gain a pound on the scale per week, that means eating around 500 extra calories every day, i.e., 500 more calories than you’re currently eating. There’s no way to say exactly how many calories that will be, but eating somewhere in the neighbourhood of 18–22x bodyweight in pounds per day is usually enough for a skinny guy to gain around a pound per week. Then, depending on how much weight you’re gaining on the scale each week, you can adjust your calorie intake accordingly. Also, keep in mind that it’s a moving target. As you gain weight, and as your metabolism adapts to your new diet, your calorie needs will change. So the important thing is to take a stab in the dark, weigh yourself, and adjust as needed 🙂
I’m 55 and weigh 110 lbs. I am 5’4”. I’ve essentially weighed 110 my entire life with exceptions when I was pregnant. I am finding it increasingly difficult to build muscle at my age. I’ve been told I’m not eating right – need more protein. Can you refer me to resources I might use for dietary plans. I eat very healthy but probably not the correct makeup. Please advise.
Hey Lizette, I hear ya. I had the same problem as you, albiet at 120–130 pounds at 6’2.
We’ve got a full article for women about how to eat for weight gain and muscle growth 🙂
Hi there, Shane.
Very nice info here and I’d would have loved to know this fifteen years ago, when I managed to bulk up 12 Kg in four months, while eating “clean”. It was hell, lol. The funny thing is, that I kind of suspected I didn’t need to do that, because I started at 59 Kg and my height is 1.73 m. 😛
Anyway, there’s one thing I’d like to ask. The thing about milk… are we talking about regular cow milk here? Because, according to other sources, the amount of estrogen milk contains in industrialized countries is too much to ramp up its consumption. Certainly not to use it as a substitute for water! xD
What do you guys think about this?
Soy milk, cow milk, kefir, goat milk—any sort of milk that’s rich in calories and high in protein. There can be hormones in it, but if I understand it correctly, we’re ingesting (as opposed to injecting) those hormones, mitigating their effects. But, as you say, that doesn’t mean we should be drinking milk like water. It also doesn’t mean that you need to drink any milk at all! Milk is just one of many sources of calories/protein 🙂
Thanks for replying, Shane.
I actually did some “research” around and it seems there’s no solid evidence of what I’ve heard from other (non-academic) sources. In fact, things like soy flour and beans (!) have several orders of magnitude more extraneous estrogen than cow whole milk.
And that without considering other factors like absorption rates, as you mentioned. So we’re safe, lol.
So… it seems to me that some people want to reinvent the wheel, and they’re trying to convince us all that a square-shaped one will a better job. 😛
Now I only need to find inventory to make me a home gym in this crazy pandemic dare-not-go-to-gym times we’re living in. Not easy at all.
My pleasure, man!
While you wait to get your lifting equipment, check out our bodyweight bulking article 🙂
Ooh, very nice, thanks!
Now… where I can find myself a calf? 😀
Great article, Shane and Marco!
I have a couple of questions about calorie intake though:
– Let’s say my target is 3,000 calories, is this taking into account the workouts in the bulking program or 3,000 after subtracting what has been burned from exercising?
– Also, if on one day I end up missing 300 calories should I add that to the next day or just continue with my normal daily target?
Thanks!
Hey Harrison, thank you!
If you’re trying to gain a pound per week, the idea is to add an extra 500 calories per day. If you’re also adding extra exercise, then yeah, you’d factor that in. For every extra calorie burned, you’d add them back in with your diet.
But most of the rougher estimations already factor in that you’ll be lifting weights 3–4 times per week. If you’re taking your weight and multiplying it by 18–22 to get your initial calorie goals, it already accounts for exercise.
Most importantly, these targets are very loose at first. You’re shooting in the dark with those initial estimations. The trick is to weigh yourself, see how much you gain (or fail to gain), and then adjust accordingly. Check this article out. We cover how to track your weight and adjust your calorie targets.
For your next question, there’s no clear answer. If your main goal is to gain a pound per week, what matters is your calorie surplus per week. If you undershoot your calorie target one day, you’d want to overshoot it the next day to balance it out. But what can happen is that on the day where you undereat, you aren’t building as much muscle. And then on the day where you eat too much, you’re gaining extra fat. So ideally what you’d want to do is keep your calorie surplus pretty consistent from day to day. That’s how you’ll get the fastest, leanest muscle growth.
With that said, you’re talking about a fairly small difference. If you’re aiming for a calorie surplus of 500 calories, and one day you’re in a 200-calorie surplus, and the next you’re in an 800-calorie surplus, that’s not all that big of a problem. It’s still better to be more consistent, but, eh, you’ll still get great results that way 🙂
Hey guys, I recommend you look into Blood Type Diet. To eat only blood-compatible foods to prevent sicknesses, diseases, syndrome, etc. and of course the bloating and discomfort. I cut oats and milk as they are not for Type O and the improvement was HUGE.
Hey Ecto,
From what I can tell, when the Blood Type Diet was published in 1996, there was no evidence to support it. In 2013, a systematic published by Cusack et al still concluded that there was no supporting evidence for it. Then in 2014, a study by Wang et al looked into the Blood Type Diet directly and found that someone’s blood type had no impact on which diet they responded best to.
However, there are lots of good diets, and different people respond best to different ones. So when people adopt one of the Blood Type Diets, they often see benefits, regardless of what their blood type is.
You’ve seen benefits and that’s awesome. Sounds like it’s working for you 🙂
Hi Shane,
You mention that even if a hardgainer significantly increases his calorie intake, his metabolism seeks to adapt to that amount constantly, this leaves me with 2 questions:
1. Is this metabolic adaptation to bulking indefinite, and if not, where exactly does it cease?
2. Is it then possible to bypass this metabolic adaptation through certain methods?
For example, if a person needs a 3000 weekly surplus, eating a 1000 calorie surplus every other day, or only bulking 2-5 days of the week to minimize the metabolic adaptation thus keeping calories low while bulking successfully, is this possible?
Hey Em, those are good questions.
1. You’re right that hardgainers tend to adapt to higher-calorie intakes by burning more calories. This adaptation has limits. It’s still possible for us to gain weight. The more food we eat, the higher our metabolisms will get, but the more weight we’ll gain.
When you reach your target weight, you can stop eating in a calorie surplus, and your metabolism will settle back down. For instance, maybe as a skinny person you eat 2,000 calories per day to maintain your weight. You start your bulk by eating 2,500 calories, gaining around a pound per week. A few months later, after gaining 20 pounds, you need to eat 3,000 calories to keep gaining weight. But you’ve finished your bulk, so you stop overeating. Over time, your metabolism will settle back down. Those extra 20 pounds might burn an extra 120 calories at rest, so maybe you eat 2,200 calories to maintain your new weight.
2. The main reason our metabolisms increase is because of subconscious movement. The best way to burn fewer calories, then, is to intentionally move less. Instead of sitting in a chair with your knee bouncing, lie down on a couch. Or instead of going to grocery store, order your groceries online. Instead of spending 45 minutes standing up cooking a nice dinner, order takeout. That kind of thing. But I’m not sure that would be good. Having a high metabolism is difficult, but it isn’t bad. It’s probably better to be more active, burn more calories, and eat more food. Harder, but better for us.
[…] Nobody should be blackpilled. Even the skinniest of hardgainers can build plenty of muscle. But I worry that if people get whitepilled, setting unreasonably lofty initial goals, they might never accomplish them. I worry that if people tack a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger to their wall, they’re setting themselves up for body dysmorphia. And I worry that if people fail to account for their genetics, as I initially did, then they won’t learn how to lift and eat in a way that suits them. In my case, I had to put a disproportionate amount of effort into eating in a sustained caloric surplus. […]