Finetuning my nutrition... need some help pls!

[roman2]

Hey guys,

First of all I've only recently found this site, and I'd like to say it's absolutely awesome, and thank you Mehdi for taking the time to create such a comprehensive, and most importantly FREE resource that has helped so many people!

Anyway, my question goes out to all of you experienced and *big* lifters out there (or in other words, lifters who have made good progress with strength AND hypertrophy using good training and nutrition)...

Basically, I've always been a pretty skinny guy, even though I've trained nearly all my life (I'm 25 right now). Recently (last 6 months or so) I came to the inevitable conclusion that my main problem was pretty much zero to no planning when it came to my nutrition. I just always though that if I ate "enough" then I wouldn't have to worry... obviously a very lazy and bad approach! So, in the past 6 months or so I've spent a lot of time learning about nutrition and adjusting my own diet accordingly, to the point where I'm now tracking my caloric intake closely every day using FitDay & my handy electronic kitchen scale (some might call this obsessive, but I know it's not... I just like to be accurate).

Only recently after stumbling on this site by accident I discovered the Cunningham equation, which made me realize that the equation I was using before greatly underestimated my caloric intake needs! Whereas before I thought that 3,800Kcal was really high for me (I'm 194kbs, 6"1), now I'm eating about 4500Kcal's on training days, and 4000Kcal's on rest days without any particular problems in terms of gaining excessive body fat.

My real challenge now is with fine-tuning my nutrition (since of course any equation is pretty much just a base-line to start from), and I need some pointers from guys with experience who have managed to add some (or a lot) of muscle to their frames successfully!

The point where I'm at right now is that the Cunningham equation estimated that I need to eat about 3600KCals on non training days, and about 4500KCals on training days. Now after following that for a couple of weeks, and thinking that nearly 900KCal difference between non-training days and training days is too much, I upped the caloric intake to 4000KCals on non training days, and kept it at 4500KCals on training days, and basically I've been going like this for the past 3 weeks or so without any major changes in my weight or my physique (i.e. no BF gains or any significant muscle gains either).

I plan now to increase my caloric intake even further (by about 200KCals on both training and non training days) and see if that makes any difference in the next 2-3 weeks.

FINALLY MY MAIN QUESTION WHICH I'VE BEEN LEADING UP TO ALL THIS TIME:

How do you know that you're finally eating enough to get your muscles to grow? Or in other words, assuming I have reached my ideal caloric intake for hypertrophy, how long do I have to wait before I start noticing visual and measurable changes to the size of my muscles (mainly arms/shoulders)? I've heard some stories about some guys getting really "ripped" in a relatively short period of time of just 2-3 months just by altering their nutrition and upping their caloric intake...

The reason I'm asking this is because I have no experience with significant muscle hypertrophy because like I said I've been a pretty skinny guy most of my life, so I have no idea what is the realistic rate of muscle growth that I can expect once I'm finally eating enough for hypertrophy. So now that I'm trying to fine-tune my nutrition, I want to know how long should I stay on a certain caloric regiment before I decide to raise it even further, and how best should I measure my progress, is it purely by weight gained on the scale, even though I see very little visual changes in the size of my muscles, or do visual changes actually do count for a lot, and if I don't see any significant difference in the size of my muscles after 3-4 weeks it means I'm not eating enough?

Sorry I tend to write a lot... I hope my questions make sense to people here!

If you could please share your experiences with me/give me some pointers, I would greatly appreciate it!!

Thanks!

Roman

[atypical1]

I took the liberty of deleting your original post as this is a verbatim repost of it.

I'll do my best to answer even though I'm pretty far from "big". Since you're natually thin you probably burn a lot of calories naturally. This is obviously a problem for you. I think that you're going about this correctly in using the Cunningham equation and upping your calories incrementally. Use the tape measure and not the scale to see how well your diet is working for hypertrophy.

What does your workout look like? Are you doing any cardio alongside of your weights?

james