This is the compliment to the Help, I’m Skinny and I can’t Bulk Up workout plan I wrote last week. Men who claim to be unable to gain weight and add some muscular mass to their frames have one common dietary thread, they don’t eat enough. From my experience, they don’t eat enough overall, but also not anywhere near enough protein. Protein provides the building blocks of life, amino acids. In order to grow, you need enough protein to supply the amino acids, and enough overall calories to support growth.

I broke down the basics in this post about common sense eating. There you’ll find the best protein, carbohydrate and fat sources for your daily diet so we can keep this post focused on how to put it together for mass gaining results.

Keys to success:

• Eat 6 meals each day. That’s every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• Divide your protein equally among your six meals.
• Based on your results, which you will check weekly, manipulate your carbohydrate intake.

 The first thing to do is establish a baseline.

• Fix the protein at 1.25 grams per lb of bodyweight each day.
• Fix the added fats at .25 grams per lb of bodyweight each day.
• Start with carbohydrates at 1.5 grams per lb of bodyweight each day.

For your standard thin man weighing in at 175 lbs that translates to:

• 218 grams of protein
• 44 grams of added fats
• 263 grams of carbohydrates

You’ll notice I mention “added fats.”  There is fat naturally occurring in your protein and some carbohydrate sources. You will add in healthy fats from the list in this post to some of your meals, usually the ones with no carbohydrates. I recommend eating all your carbohydrates in the first four meals of the day, leaving the last two carb free. In those meals, eat only protein along with the free foods from this post and add your healthy fats.

Typical diet for a training day, 175 lb thin man:

Meals 1-4:

Protein: 40 grams

Carbs:    65 grams

Added fat: 0 grams

Meal 5:

Protein: 40 grams

Carbs:     0 grams

Added Fat: 22 grams

Meal 6:

Protein: 20 grams

Carbs:    0 grams

Added fat: 22 grams

Keeping the carbs front loaded allows for plenty of fuel for your workouts and day’s activities. Toward the end of the day, you’ll keep insulin levels low. This will help to limit bodyfat accumulation.

Putting it all together:

Once a week, first thing in the morning, you will weigh yourself in your birthday suit before you’ve had anything to eat or drink (do go to the bathroom first). Write down your results and ideally, snap a picture of yourself in the mirror. We’re going to shoot for a weight gain of 1 lb each week. More than that, you’re adding too much bodyfat. You may not gain exactly 1 lb every week, but under no circumstances should you lose any weight. If you gained no weight, or lost weight, the first thing to analyze is how well you stuck to your diet plan. If you were on it, add 25 grams of carbohydrates to the day’s total, spread out over the first four meals. If you slacked off, don’t change anything and try to nail the diet the following week.

As you gain weight, you will need to up your protein and fat as well. There’s no hard rule on any of this, so use your best judgment. You don’t need to add 1.25 grams of protein to your day’s total every time you gain a lb.

The pictures you take each week allow you to gauge progress. You can see if you’re filling out in the right places, or just getting fat. Accumulating some additional bodyfat is unavoidable if you’re eating enough to grow. But if you’re gaining more bodyfat than you want, you may want to take the carbohydrates out of Meal 4 on your non-weight training days.  

I’ll touch on cardio very briefly. If you’re truly very lean, you should lift weights and then sit on your ass all day and eat. If you’re semi-lean, limit your cardio to 20-30 minutes first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, 3 times a week at the lower end of the aerobic zone. This will be enough to keep your healthy and burn off some bodyfat you may be accumulating. Do not do other calorie intensive activities like basketball, cycling, running or other physical activity. Your body grows when you’re resting. Get 7-8 hours of sleep every night and lay off the booze.

What you will need:

•  A food scale. Yes, you’ll be weighing your food.
• A measuring cup.
• A list of the protein, carb and fat content of typical foods in your daily diet.

 There are lots of websites that will give you the protein content of your typical foods. I like this one, but it’s got a lot of data and it’s in 100 gram increments so you have to do some conversion. You can use one like this to get roughly the same information. Once you’re armed with some numbers, you can get to measuring.

Grilled chicken breast has approx 6.5 grams of protein per ounce. So for my 40 gram protein meals above, I need 6 ounces of chicken. Brown rice has 44 grams of carbohydrates per cup, so I need 1 ½ cups of brown rice to complete my meal.

Here’s a typical day for me:

• 8: 00 AM         Meal 1:  5.5 oz Oscar Meyer Turkey Breast on 2 slices of Rye bread with spinach. 1 package plain instant oatmeal (19 grams of carbs).
•  11:00 AM        Meal 2:  1 cup brown rice, 5.8 oz grilled chicken breast.
• 2:00 PM          Meal 3:     6 oz steamed sweet potatoes, 5.8 oz grilled chicken breast.
• 4:30 PM          Meal 4:      1 package of plain oatmeal, 8 oz skim milk, 1 ½ scoops whey protein.
• 7:00 PM          Meal 5:      6 oz ground beef, lots of steamed broccoli, 3 teaspoons olive oil.
• 9:30 PM          Meal 6:       5 oz. Oscar Meyer Turkey Breast, 3 tablespoons natural peanut butter.

As I mentioned in my original post, most thin men I know aren’t willing to do what it takes to put on muscular weight. It requires effort, dedication and consistency. You’ve got to ask yourself, how badly do I want this? Am I willing to spend a few hours on Sunday cooking lots of grilled chicken, ground beef, and eye of round steak, brown rice and sweet potatoes for the week? Am I willing to measure my food and bring Tupperware full of food with me to work? If the answer is yes, you will succeed.

I will work on a post for the supplements you should be using, but in the meantime go forth and lift heavy weights, eat lots of food, get big and strong. Be thin no more.

More from howjoeseesit

• Diet Q & A
• The Hard Gainers Supplement List
• Where's the beef?