Eating Big to Gain Strength

[atypical1]

Ok, you are adding things in there that I wasn't referring to. When I said if you eat over maintenance that you will gain fat, I was being generic...I did not add in the factor of lifting weights. Whether you will put on a lot of fat (even with heavy lifting) will depend on how large the calorie surplus is. However, if you do overeat too much, whether its chicken breast or salad with dressing or a big mac, you WILL put on fat. 500kcals overeating of protein WILL turn into fat, just as 500kcals fo carbs will. There's no questioning this, no matter how much people try to argue that "you can eat as much clean food as you want and you won't get fat"

Considering that this is a strength training site, this post is in the "strength training" sub-forum, and that the OP was writing about how to gain strength through diet, I figured that it was a given that we were discussing this in the context of someone in a training with weights.

Let me ask another way. How do you build muscle and strength? Caloric excess, maintenance calories, or caloric deficit? It's through caloric excess and caloric excess alone. Quit trying to scare people away from eating caloric excess please.

Again, the amount of fat you gain (if any) is truly up to you and there's many ways of keeping that fat gain at an absolute minimum.

james

[tarun]

Ok, you are adding things in there that I wasn't referring to. When I said if you eat over maintenance that you will gain fat, I was being generic...I did not add in the factor of lifting weights. Whether you will put on a lot of fat (even with heavy lifting) will depend on how large the calorie surplus is. However, if you do overeat too much, whether its chicken breast or salad with dressing or a big mac, you WILL put on fat. 500kcals overeating of protein WILL turn into fat, just as 500kcals fo carbs will. There's no questioning this, no matter how much people try to argue that "you can eat as much clean food as you want and you won't get fat"

Considering that this is a strength training site, this post is in the "strength training" sub-forum, and that the OP was writing about how to gain strength through diet, I figured that it was a given that we were discussing this in the context of someone in a training with weights.

Let me ask another way. How do you build muscle and strength? Caloric excess, maintenance calories, or caloric deficit? It's through caloric excess and caloric excess alone. Quit trying to scare people away from eating caloric excess please.

Again, the amount of fat you gain (if any) is truly up to you and there's many ways of keeping that fat gain at an absolute minimum.

james

I'm not trying to scare people away from eating a caloric excess lol.In fact, most people have been eating caloric excesses their whole lives (hence why more than half of Americans are obese)...they just don't know about it. And eating a caloric excess enough to build muscle but not enough to build fat requires A LOT of precision, which most people don't have time for nor the skills to do (because honestly, everything to do with calories is a close estimation, not exact). I jsut think people should have realistic expectations that with almost all caloric excess, you will have a little fat again. Is it worthit? Sure, depending on how much muscle you also built/strength gained at the same time.

Also, what ways do you suggest of keeping the fat gain at a minimum? Also, I never said excess calories were bad lol. Yes, you need it to build muscle but it is definitely NOT required to increase strength. Your CNS can become more efficient at lifting weights (which is how you have 140 pound olympic weightlifters clean and jerking 400lbs) , although I'd assume this way is harder than just putting on muscle and increasing strength.

[atypical1]

In fact, most people have been eating caloric excesses their whole lives (hence why more than half of Americans are obese)...they just don't know about it. And eating a caloric excess enough to build muscle but not enough to build fat requires A LOT of precision, which most people don't have time for nor the skills to do (because honestly, everything to do with calories is a close estimation, not exact). I jsut think people should have realistic expectations that with almost all caloric excess, you will have a little fat again. Is it worthit? Sure, depending on how much muscle you also built/strength gained at the same time.

Also, what ways do you suggest of keeping the fat gain at a minimum? Also, I never said excess calories were bad lol. Yes, you need it to build muscle but it is definitely NOT required to increase strength. Your CNS can become more efficient at lifting weights (which is how you have 140 pound olympic weightlifters clean and jerking 400lbs) , although I'd assume this way is harder than just putting on muscle and increasing strength.

Most American's eat an excess of calories that is mostly junk and they don't do anything to exercise and that's the reason they're obese.

Keeping the fat gain at a minimum is pretty simple if you eat clean and exercise. Eat that salad (spinach and not iceberg please), chicken breast, etc and leave that big mac alone and you'll be just fine.

james

[wrenchhands]

What's up with soda?

I've quit drinking it, but, aren't those just empty calories?

[jfh26]

^^ Yep. Good thing you stopped

[sgtrock]

James, I just have to say: 3x190lb for OHP is sick, man. Sick!

Cleave, as for your original point of the thread, I've been thinking this way for quite a while now. I've been stalling out big time on all my lifts, but I chalked that up primarily to not being consistent on getting to the gym. I've only been going 1-2 times per week on average for the past 1-2 months (I started SL in June) and all of my lifts have either stalled or started to go down slightly. Now I just had minor surgery so I'm out of the gym for a good couple of weeks.

When I first started I was wanting to lose BF in addition to gaining strength, so I was trying to train at a caloric deficit. But after reading through some of this site I realized I might be wrong. I started eating more and more correctly, and taking in a good protein shake at least once / day, and I suddenly had these amazing gains. My lifts shot up like crazy. Granted I was still making newbie gains, but my body now looks much more built out, even though I am "built chubby" so to speak. I stopped worrying so much about the BF gain and went for the strength, and it paid off. And the result is, I lost a good 2"+ off my waist in the process.

Keep in mind I started at 208lb with a 40-42" waist in June (I didn't measure it, but my 40" pants felt quite snug and I spilled out over the top quite a bit). Just over a week ago I measured out at 38.5" after a whole day of eating, so I may have taped in at 38" early in the morning. That would be a possible 4" loss in less than six months, with almost no cardio involved. I don't know what my BF was or is, but my weight now is around 223lb, a total 15lb gain with I figure at least 10lb of muscle. I now have an upper body that is actually visible in the mirror and I'm damn proud of it, even though it is nowhere near what most everybody else here has I'm sure. I'm still very very pleased with what SL has given me. And I'm only halfway to the 1.5BW squat so tons left to gain!

Also keep in mind that I have not been consistent with my workouts, nor have I been consistent with my diet. Once I started backing off the gym, I started slacking on eating so much, so I figure my body adjusted to my lower activity level and I just stopped wanting to eat so much.

Bottom line: When I stopped worrying about trying to "cut calories" and instead started focusing on feeding my hungry body, my lean muscle mass shot up and my BF / waist measurement starting melting away. Its the most damn fun I've ever had getting in shape.

EAT EAT EAT!

[robertmartin89]

the approach that to gain strength you must eat more i totally agree with but there must be more to it than this as how can you get a 1.5, 2 or 3 x bodyweight squat as you would just keep putting in the weight, people who maintain their weight by not being in caloric excess can still gain strenth, we all marvel at the things that olympic lifters can do. It has to be more complex than just eating more of the right things. Workout, genetics and i'm sure many other things must play a part or how would we increase strength compared to bodyweight.
Just my take.

[Kingace]

I agree with robertmartin89.

Do Olympic weight lifters and Powerlifters who lift in weight classes eat a calorific excess to get stronger? Surely they don't, otherwise their muscle mass will increase, which is not what they want.

Cleave, are you saying that eating a calorific excess leads to muscle gains, therefore strength, or that eating a calorific excess will increase your strength in other ways (such as CNS), providing you are training hard.

Also, as there is a conversation regarding calorific excess and the distribution of fat/muscle on the body, I want to convey this scenario to you:

A strength trainee has been training for a year, within this time he ate a moderate excess in calories everyday and gained 25-35lbs of muscle. Most people would agree this increase in bone density/skeletal muscle mass is possible within the first year of training, and most would agree after this year 10/15lbs a year is more likely. This strength trainee continues to eat a 500kcal excess everyday for the following year, the problem is it's only possible to gain 10/15lbs muscle this year. Meaning if he ate 500kcals excess everyday for a month, he would have a 14,000kcal surplus. If it is possible to only gain 1/2 lbs of muscle maximum within this month,(this is assuming that one pound of muscle is 3500kcals, although it's most likely not) it would mean there is a lot of spare energy this month.
Would this spare energy get stored as fat?

[atypical1]

This is great discussion in here. This is a really, really deep topic believe it or not so I'm going to try to keep it really simple and keep everyone on track. I would also like to keep this discussion as practical as possible. None of us live in a lab, right?

- First, let's not include olympic athletes and top powerlifters in this discussion. Between genetics, drugs, and professional dieticians they have access to things that we don't and this will only muddy the waters (so to speak).

- Second, some knowlege about how your body processes the different types of calories is important. There's what's known as the "thermic effect of food" which is simply the cost for processing your food. Protein is hard for the body to process and has a high thermal effect. This has been greatly simplfied of course but that's the general idea. That is one reason why the type of calories that you are eating matter.

-Third, if you don't eat enough food while training you'll go into a catabolic state and your muscles will be used for energy. Therefore you have to go into a caloric excess in order to prevent that from happening.

-Fourth, your muscles can only be so strong. You can make your CNS more efficient but on a maint diet you're only going to get so strong and then you will plateau. There's no two ways about it.

-Fifth, tracking your calories is actually pretty important if you're worried about carrying too much body fat. You have to have an idea of what your caloric needs are and then eat in excess of that (within reason). That means knowing your activity level, the breakdown of your caloric needs (see #2), and watching your body fat and adjusting your diet accordingly. You also need to make sure you're adding calories as you're gaining weight as it won't be a constant.

You need to take all five of those things into consideration when thinking about your diet and you're really, really worried about gaining body fat (as some of you seem to be).

But, from a practical standpoint you can simply follow the 8 nutrition rules and you'll essentially take care of the above 5 things good enough.

Hopefully I've contributed to the discussion and not derailed it.

james

[RobCosimo]

I got too fat eating not much and lifting quite a lot. There's no way I'm going to eat 5000cal or whatever. Most of the weight was going to my belly, and it just looked plain ugly. I wasn't doing huge volume, but still, you have to be careful with this eat til you burst thing. If you eat lots and most of it turns to muscle, good luck. It doesn't happen with everyone. I gained a lot of visceral fat, which isn't good (for me).

[atypical1]

I got too fat eating not much and lifting quite a lot. There's no way I'm going to eat 5000cal or whatever. Most of the weight was going to my belly, and it just looked plain ugly. I wasn't doing huge volume, but still, you have to be careful with this eat til you burst thing. If you eat lots and most of it turns to muscle, good luck. It doesn't happen with everyone. I gained a lot of visceral fat, which isn't good (for me).

That's covered by my 5th point.

james

[MikeD]

I think it can be done with a scale and intuition. What's odd is that the days after I'll gorge, I'll have zero appetite, which is likely my body trying to keep me at my current, natural weight. I dunno about "eating till you burst", but a few of us are going to occasionally be uncomfortable in the process.

Take a quick look at this:

http://startingstrength.com/resources/f ... 374&page=2

Scroll down to the before/after pics. Pretty amazing, but this kid was obviously seriously ectomorphic.

I know I kid personally who's 6"2 and 135, and he's a fireman. I dunno how he does it.

[atypical1]

I think it can be done with a scale and intuition. What's odd is that the days after I'll gorge, I'll have zero appetite, which is likely my body trying to keep me at my current, natural weight. I dunno about "eating till you burst", but a few of us are going to occasionally be uncomfortable in the process.

Take a quick look at this:

http://startingstrength.com/resources/f ... 374&page=2

Scroll down to the before/after pics. Pretty amazing, but this kid was obviously seriously ectomorphic.

I know I kid personally who's 6"2 and 135, and he's a fireman. I dunno how he does it.

Absolutely you can. Simply eat a lot of good stuff. My intuition is terrible with regard to calories though and I severly underestimated how much I was eating. I mean to the tune of 1000kcals.

Love those before and after shots and totally agree about linear progression and calories. 6'2" and 135 is scary. How can he even carry the hose?

james

[RobCosimo]

I think you have A LOT of capacity to get stronger no matter what your weight is. CNS efficiency and ligament/tendon strength is more important than muscle size. A decent small powerlifter will lift more than a big guy who doesn't lift.

There are huge guys in my gym who don't lift anything impressive, and there and skinny guys who do. The big guys who lift huge weight also have great CNS efficiency from lots of training.

[MikeD]

He had to carry like a 200+ lbs dummy over his shoulder for his physical test...well, he did it. He hits the gym at least, so he's not a complete detrainee, but he'd need to gain about 50 lbs to look like a capable human being...

And just to note, the kid in the pics did that in 10 weeks. Rip says he'd seen the kid at one point drink 2 GALLONS of milk in one day. Ho-lee shit.