Skip to main content

Those who are chronically underweight (within reason) and exercise - do you attempt to put on weight by eating more to bulk up or do you lean into the slenderness to be shredded? I have such a hard time gaining weight and I lift weights 4x / week. I'm starting to accept that I may never gain bulk and am now leaning into getting shredded. Since I'm slender my muscles seem to standout more which is a benefit. I focus on upper body muscles, as I don't want to put pressure on my abdomen with leg workouts. I take creatine everyday and have noticed that my muscles really swell up nicely when I'm lifting weights. I drink a lot of fluids to ensure I am excreting correctly and to avoid kidney stones. Is this a silver lining of being skinny?

Original Post

Stating the obvious here but you have to consume more food than you need to in order to gain weight.  If you're maintaining your current weight with, for example, 1500 cal/day, then you'll have to bump that up to, say 1750 cal/day.  You'll eventually gain a little weight, then plateau.  At that point bump your intake up again to 2000 cal/day.  Repeat the process until you hit your target weight, and you'll have to continue at this level of caloric intake to maintain that weight.  Protein and fats will be your greatest ally, but don't avoid carbs.  I try to stay around a 60/30/10 % ratio with protein, fat and carbs.  Resistance training is a fine thing to be doing but it isn't necessarily going to make you heavier.  You should actually focus on lower body exercises.....your quads are the largest muscles in your body and consistently engaging them in resistance training will cause a more profound response from your central nervous system to focus repair/regrowth on the entire musculoskeletal system.  Squats, deadlifts and chest presses are the vital core group of movements you should be doing.  I generally have a day for horizontal push-pull movements, a day for vertical push-pull movements, and a leg day, spin bike on the alternating days.  I'd definitely encourage everyone to work themselves into a training and diet program and stick with it, it has been a profound positive aspect of my daily life for close to 20 years.

Add Reply

Post
Copyright © 2019 The J-Pouch Group. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×