Advise for a confused new guy on how to eat?

[CarrTM]

Hello, I was hoping someone with more experience than me could provide a little advise. I'm 6 foot 5 and struggling to hit 200lbs. When I was younger I was always a big kid and I hated it, so during college I dieted and lost some weight. This, combined with my growth spurt what developed into a fast metabolism, left me fairly thin, and weak, especially for my height. I thought I'd be happy thinner but it didn't really help things. I started doing Crossfit about 6 months ago, and I know I'm getting stronger but not at the rate I had hoped, same story for bulking up and my overall size. I've read the articles on here about Paleo and cutting certain things out, but I've also read that to get bigger I need to just eat more and frankly at this point I'm just not sure which one is the right choice for me. I'd like to get, and of course look stronger, but I'm not sure if the right decision is to eat smarter (normal amounts of decent stuff) or eat more to attempt to bulk up. I'd like to get bigger and stronger, and I want to gain weight but I want it to be muscle not just fat so I'm a little leary about just eating. I do crossfit 3 times a week and am attempting to eat smarter overall regardless of the volume of food, but I'm just hoping for some advise from someone similar to me. Thank you in advance.

 

Tom.

[mevre]

hey Tom. i can't say that i'm similar to you, but i think i know a little bit about bulking up just from reading so much and interacting with people who are getting bigger. the key to gaining weight, be it muscle or fat, is to eat at a caloric surplus. [this, as opposed to eating a caloric deficit to drop weight.] Steve, our fearless leader here at NF, talks about his journey to bulking up quite a bit in his articles. his first steps in this direction included the "see food" diet. [if you see food, you eat it!] this involved a lot of fast food and the like, and he said that thinking back on it now makes him feel a little sick just considering how poor the food was nutrition-wise. but for where he was in life at the time, it worked for him, and he put a couple of pounds of muscle on. the GOMAD [gallon of milk a day] diet also comes up on NF fairly often, and is a great way to add calories to a diet. these two diets seem to work best for people who do A LOT of lifting heavy things and/or who naturally have a hard time gaining any weight at all. [if you're one of those guys who can eat a tub of ice cream before bed every night and be a few pounds lighter each morning, for example, you're one of these people. it's an exaggeration, but you get my point.]

 

after his experiments with "see food" and GOMAD, Steve has cleaned up his diet quite a bit, and has been gaining muscle and dropping fat more efficiently than before. he has also mentioned that, while eating paleo is great, certain foods that are not paleo help him when he's trying to put bulk on. long-grain wild rice, quinoa, and similar grains in particular are what he mentioned. as we know, not all grains are created equal. eating well-portioned Wonder Bread [or even highly processed "whole wheat" bread] is not going to be as beneficial as eating well-portioned wild rice.

Staci talks about her eating habits here: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/07/21/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/

[about half way down, under the heading "WHAT STACI EATS"] keep in mind that this is the dieting habit of a successful powerlifter who is a 5 foot 4 female. adjust according to your own health status, gender, and height.
 

so, to make a long story short, here is my answer to you: eat a greater number of calories than the number you burn each day. while this can be in any form [healthy food or not] the best and fastest results will likely come from eating clean foods full of nutrients. the people over at whole9life have a good guide to eating, including normal meals, as well as pre- and post-workout meals: http://whole9life.com/book/ISWF-Meal-Planning-Template.pdf
but as you probably know by now, the whole9life folks are strongly paleo-leaning, so keep that in mind if you decide to alter this meal plan in favor of some healthy grains.

good luck with your fitness goals! keep us posted on your progress!

[Endor]

From my limited experience (only been lifting a few months), I just couldn't seem to put muscle on at the rate I wanted so I took the plunge and got my eat on. Think you eat a lot? I bet you don't. You've got to eat heaps to put weight and muscle on, especially if you are eating good quality food. This will doubly apply if you are crossfitting and burning up megawatts of energy on intense cardio and lifting.

 

How many calories are you eating per day? I'm guessing you should be at something like 3000, pretty difficult number to get if you're full Paleo in my experience.

 

You can get some ideas of what lifters here are eating from the warrior food threads:

 

http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/33631-shit-warriors-eat/

 

http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/37187-shit-warriors-eat/

[CarrTM]

Thank you both for your input. I greatly appreciate the help. Since writing this I've been working with my Crossfit instructor and doing some more research and I believe I've found what seems to be a happy medium between eating enough, since the number of calories that I need is huge, and eating well enough( or atleast better than I ever have before). I'm going to keep following this website and soaking up everything I can like a sponge and see where it leads me. Thanks again for the help.