Big Gains, Now No Gains. Help.

I have been trying to gain weight. I started eating more and doing stronglifts 5x5 EXACTLY 4 weeks from today. After 2 weeks my weight went from 136 [starting] to 143. Now 2 weeks later I am still at 143. I am assuming I should be gaining weight every time I weigh myself. Nothing has changed in my diet or lifting habits since I started.

I gained 7lbs in 2 weeks and now nothing. I simply need advice as to is this normal, or should I add something like a mass gainer. I have definitely gained some fat since I started all this, but I guess I am OK with that. Any advice is great.

Eating routine:

7AM-Breakfast
5 Egg whites plus 3 regular eggs
1/2 cup of oatmeal

10AM-Snack 1
1 cup of cottage cheese
1 Whole wheat english muffin with 1Tb spoon of natural peanut butter
1 Protein Scoop + 1% Milk 12oz

12-AMLunch
7 oz of chicken/turkey
1 serving of veggies/Broccli/Spinach

2PM-Preworkout
1/2 Oatmeal + 1 Protein Scoop

3PM-Workout
Jack3d Before + BCAA during

4PM-After workout
1 Banana
1 Protein Scoop + 1% Milk 12oz + Creatine + Fishoil + MultiVitamin

7PM-Dinner
7 oz of chicken/turkey
1 serving of veggies/Broccli/Spinach

10PM-Before Bed
1 Casein Scoop + 1% Milk 12oz

11PM-Sleep
ZMA

Don’t weigh yourself every week. When gaining who cares? Weight gain is not linear for BBers. But if you must, the same thing happened to me last time when I did weigh myself weekly. If you don’t gain weight over a 2 week period, eat more. For example, my breakfast is 2 cups oats with 30-50 g protein, usually whey. Just up the portions on everything. Cutting is easy, put in the work, and know that I’m in the same boat as you lol.

How tall are you?

[quote]hlss09 wrote:
Don’t weigh yourself every week. When gaining who cares? Weight gain is not linear for BBers. But if you must, the same thing happened to me last time when I did weigh myself weekly. If you don’t gain weight over a 2 week period, eat more. For example, my breakfast is 2 cups oats with 30-50 g protein, usually whey. Just up the portions on everything. Cutting is easy, put in the work, and know that I’m in the same boat as you lol.

How tall are you? [/quote]

I do weigh myself every 2 weeks.

I will try to eat a CUP of oats instead of half a cut every time. I may also look into a mass gainer to drink with lunch of something.

I am 5’10

Cool. I just finished “cutting” and counting all my macros and being paranoid about what I eat. That’s fine - that’s when you hsould be worried about what you eat. Just make sure to hit AT LEAST x amount of protein, and then who cares about the rest. The big guys on this site (holymac, waylander, kingbeef, austinbicep, bugAD, ebomb, etc) have all just eaten. I’ve talked to just about all of them, and they all have one thing in common - they never got overly OCD or paranoid about macros and all that shit.

I’ve been paranoid for a long time, and as a result, I spun in circles for a LONG time. Just eat. Fuck a meal plan, save that shit for cutting. That’s just my opinion. And of course, nobody is saying to eat like shit, but personally I just keep a mental note of how much I’ve eaten and roughly estimate how many grams of protein I’ve had and make sure to hit 1-2 grams protein/ pound BW.

For what it’s worth, weight gain comes in spurts for most people.

People like to talk about x weight added per week but generally it’s an average.

Last winter I put on more mass all of a sudden after the stress of the school year ended and I’ve been training for years, so it was kind of unusual.

Try adding more food and just keep plugging away.

[quote]hlss09 wrote:
Cool. I just finished “cutting” and counting all my macros and being paranoid about what I eat. That’s fine - that’s when you hsould be worried about what you eat. Just make sure to hit AT LEAST x amount of protein, and then who cares about the rest. The big guys on this site (holymac, waylander, kingbeef, austinbicep, bugAD, ebomb, etc) have all just eaten. I’ve talked to just about all of them, and they all have one thing in common - they never got overly OCD or paranoid about macros and all that shit.

I’ve been paranoid for a long time, and as a result, I spun in circles for a LONG time. Just eat. Fuck a meal plan, save that shit for cutting. That’s just my opinion. And of course, nobody is saying to eat like shit, but personally I just keep a mental note of how much I’ve eaten and roughly estimate how many grams of protein I’ve had and make sure to hit 1-2 grams protein/ pound BW.
[/quote]

Alright I will just try to anything in my path. Following this logic I can finally add some bread with my eggs and lunch. Hopefully everything goes well.

If you really want to gain weight bump up the amount of carbs and fast absorbing protein around your workout period.

Yeah, I went down the same path. I stuck 100% to a diet in my last ‘offseason’ attempt, and was generally worried and anxious about hitting the perfect daily allotment. I realized that friends get pissed, girls think you’re weird, life kinda sucks, and it’s just unrealistic. I realized that the only time one should be so ‘anal’ about food is if they’re dieting for a reason (contest, etc…). I then bolstered this belief when dieting myself. I was anal and paranoid about the foods I ate, avoided going out b/c I wouldn’g have chicken breasts, blah blah blah. That’s fine when dieting, but after 10 weeks I switched into a gaining diet, and realized that offseason eating is more about hitting a MINIMUM rather than precision eating.

4 principles to follow though (these are mine, not necessarily for everyone, open to interpretation, but this works for ME)

  1. Always do cardio - right now I’m doing HIIT one time per week…but I walk to and from the gym, which is over a mile each way.

  2. Eat as much as you want, but keep it CLEAN - clean is pretty subjective, but also pretty obvious. What I mean by clean is that foods should have natural ingredients. Hamburgers, fresh pizzas, hot dogs, falafel, steaks…are all clean in my book. A pizza, for example, is just crust,
    cheese, and meat…nothing wrong with that

  3. Have 2 ‘cheat meals’ a week - I usually order a large pizza from Little Ceasars and maybe some extra oats on Thurs nights (legs day, need more kcals), and then on Sat night I’ll usually have some candy and a quart of ice cream.

  4. Limit sugar to those 2 ‘cheat meals’ and/or peri workout. Surge Recovery or Coke or whatever float your boat are all sugars, but they’re fine around workouts. Just don’t wolf down candy all day er day and use bulking as an excuse.

  • One of my favorite posters, DeltaOne, made INSANE progress rapidly. Almost freakishly fast. In his log he said that he eats as much as he wants, as long as its clean. I PERSONALLY shoot for 350-500 g carbs / 250-300 g protein / 50-100 g fat a day. That yields aroudn 3,00-4,000 kcal a day, except for my two ‘cheat meal days.’ I also sometimes hit up a buffet after training, whatever.

  • The guys who look like they lift weights all didn’t give a fuck about getting a bit soft in the pursuit of muscle. Read MODOK’s thread about how you gotta almost trick your body into adding muscle. PM Prof X (who used to be a skinny dude). Just keep pushing. Get your weight up. I am 6’2 190ish right now. Unacceptable. So I posted in the BOI and told a few individuals that I vow to be 220-240 by December. I can do that without turning into a loaf, without sugar, and without dropping cardio. Just get nasty with the weights, know that food is arguably more important than the program you’re following, and live life without ‘majoring in the minors.’ I’m fairly new to this mindset, but feel free to PM me or anybody else on this site who (hopefully) knows what they’re talking about. Oh, and always bring a towel…

[quote]hlss09 wrote:
Yeah, I went down the same path. I stuck 100% to a diet in my last ‘offseason’ attempt, and was generally worried and anxious about hitting the perfect daily allotment. I realized that friends get pissed, girls think you’re weird, life kinda sucks, and it’s just unrealistic. I realized that the only time one should be so ‘anal’ about food is if they’re dieting for a reason (contest, etc…). I then bolstered this belief when dieting myself. I was anal and paranoid about the foods I ate, avoided going out b/c I wouldn’g have chicken breasts, blah blah blah. That’s fine when dieting, but after 10 weeks I switched into a gaining diet, and realized that offseason eating is more about hitting a MINIMUM rather than precision eating.

4 principles to follow though (these are mine, not necessarily for everyone, open to interpretation, but this works for ME)

  1. Always do cardio - right now I’m doing HIIT one time per week…but I walk to and from the gym, which is over a mile each way.

  2. Eat as much as you want, but keep it CLEAN - clean is pretty subjective, but also pretty obvious. What I mean by clean is that foods should have natural ingredients. Hamburgers, fresh pizzas, hot dogs, falafel, steaks…are all clean in my book. A pizza, for example, is just crust,
    cheese, and meat…nothing wrong with that

  3. Have 2 ‘cheat meals’ a week - I usually order a large pizza from Little Ceasars and maybe some extra oats on Thurs nights (legs day, need more kcals), and then on Sat night I’ll usually have some candy and a quart of ice cream.

  4. Limit sugar to those 2 ‘cheat meals’ and/or peri workout. Surge Recovery or Coke or whatever float your boat are all sugars, but they’re fine around workouts. Just don’t wolf down candy all day er day and use bulking as an excuse.

  • One of my favorite posters, DeltaOne, made INSANE progress rapidly. Almost freakishly fast. In his log he said that he eats as much as he wants, as long as its clean. I PERSONALLY shoot for 350-500 g carbs / 250-300 g protein / 50-100 g fat a day. That yields aroudn 3,00-4,000 kcal a day, except for my two ‘cheat meal days.’ I also sometimes hit up a buffet after training, whatever.

  • The guys who look like they lift weights all didn’t give a fuck about getting a bit soft in the pursuit of muscle. Read MODOK’s thread about how you gotta almost trick your body into adding muscle. PM Prof X (who used to be a skinny dude). Just keep pushing. Get your weight up. I am 6’2 190ish right now. Unacceptable. So I posted in the BOI and told a few individuals that I vow to be 220-240 by December. I can do that without turning into a loaf, without sugar, and without dropping cardio. Just get nasty with the weights, know that food is arguably more important than the program you’re following, and live life without ‘majoring in the minors.’ I’m fairly new to this mindset, but feel free to PM me or anybody else on this site who (hopefully) knows what they’re talking about. Oh, and always bring a towel…[/quote]

wow thanks for all this info. I am going to read it few more time, and try to absorb all this information. Basically just going to eat more.