One thing that’s always bothered me about workout diets is the calorie calculations. For example, they will typically say something like, “eat 12-14 times your weight in calories/day”, but sometimes they use fancier calculation methods with BMI and other factors. Unanimously, they calculate I should maintain my weight at about 2000 calories/day and gain at about 2500 calories/day. The thing is, I normally maintain my weight at 1300-1400 calories per day and have gained with as little as 1500-1600 calories per day. I’ve tried higher calorie levels such as 1800, 2100, 2600, and 3500 which yielded no better results in terms of gaining than 1600, but gave me many belly aches
Does this sound weird to people? Have others had a similar experience? I’m not sure how to determine how many calories to eat to gain.
The equations you find online are estimates that get the average person in the ballpark for gaining. They are not absolute, set-in-stone universal requirements. While they can give you an idea of how much to eat, ultimately you will need to tailor it to your own physiology through trial and error.
To determine how much you need to eat to gain… start eating until you start gaining weight. Increase the calories until you are dissatisfied with the rate of return (i.e., you start putting on more fat than you are comfortable with), then scale back to where you are making progress you can live with.
However, eating to gain is, for many, a difficult thing to do when first starting out. Stomach aches can be common while your body adjusts to the added bulk. To make optimal progress, base your needs off of the results you see in the gym and on your body, not necessarily how comfortable you are with the process or what a math equation says is SUPPOSED to work best for you. Oftentimes, one might need to “eat through the pain” to get where he needs to go, but it isn’t a requirement for success. Lifting shouldn’t always be an AnimalPak ad… suffering for the sole sake of suffering might make you feel hardcore, but it ultimately isn’t going to put any more muscle on your frame.
If you find need to eat more, eat more. If you don’t need to eat as much, good for you… save a couple of bucks at the grocery store.
And, yes. You ARE weird. A fuckin’ god damn, bonafide, Grade A, bearded-lady-juggling-on-a-unicycle, high-octane octo-mom freak show.
But that has nothing to do with your caloric needs… just a general observation.
what is this? the school nurse’s office for 2nd graders?
What did you notice, aside from belly aches, when you more than doubled your calories from 1600 to 3500? Anything? [/quote]
that made me laugh I wanted to avoid using more graphic language.
My stomach was a mess at those levels and stool came out as a semi-liquid slurry of pain. At 2600 I was eating 50c/30p/20f but the volume of food was hard for me to cope with. I felt full and bloated 24/7. At 3500 I tried 30c/40p/30f to make it easier, but it was still difficult.
To answer the question, No, I didn’t notice any difference at those levels over 1600 other than the bloatedness and discomfort. I weighed a couple of pounds more at 2600 which I’m guessing was huge amounts of food passing though my intestines (I lost them as soon as I went back down to 1600). I did not notice an increase in strength or muscle, but maybe I didn’t held that calorie level long enough. Any advice on how to cope with those problems?
Is the consensus that I should try to hold the higher calorie levels? The lower levels seem to work. The maintenance calculations seem to be greatly inaccurate.
what is this? the school nurse’s office for 2nd graders?
What did you notice, aside from belly aches, when you more than doubled your calories from 1600 to 3500? Anything? [/quote]
that made me laugh I wanted to avoid using more graphic language.
My stomach was a mess at those levels and stool came out as a semi-liquid slurry of pain. At 2600 I was eating 50c/30p/20f but the volume of food was hard for me to cope with. I felt full and bloated 24/7. At 3500 I tried 30c/40p/30f to make it easier, but it was still difficult.
To answer the question, No, I didn’t notice any difference at those levels over 1600 other than the bloatedness and discomfort. I weighed a couple of pounds more at 2600 which I’m guessing was huge amounts of food passing though my intestines (I lost them as soon as I went back down to 1600). I did not notice an increase in strength or muscle, but maybe I didn’t held that calorie level long enough. Any advice on how to cope with those problems?
Is the consensus that I should try to hold the higher calorie levels? The lower levels seem to work. The maintenance calculations seem to be greatly inaccurate.[/quote]
Just to address the issue of eating vastly different amounts of food and gaining at the same rate: I think that one common issue for peole is that they do more physical activity when eating more without realizing it. Especially for people who have been essentially starving themselves for a while. At least in my experience, when I jacked up the calories for the first time after eating way too little for way too long, I found myself moving around and such a lot more without even realizing it; but also, I would extend my workouts/cardio/etc for fear of getting fat, to be honest. If you are doing any of these things, then that would certainly factor into it.
I wanted to avoid using more graphic language.