Common questions

I’m looking to build muscle. What’s the secret?

In short: lift weights, eat a lot. Be careful: when you first start to exercise, you might notice that you’re hungrier than usual. You must increase the amount of food you eat (your IN) more than just a little, because your newfound habit of exercising will also raise your DCE. Thus, if you increase your DCI only a little, it will just compensate for the increased DCE: your still in a neutral caloric balance! Conclusion: don’t just eat more than you normally would eat a lot more.

I’ve been training to build muscle for almost a year. As you said, I grew hungrier and I ate more, and I gained muscle. However, after some time into my training, my muscle building has come to a stop. What’s going on?

Your experience is most likely a result of your training program. If you have been repeating the same types of exercises for some time, I recommend changing the exercise type, since your body is adapting to the repetitions of the same exercise. Try to mix up the exercises and it might help. In addition, if your body weight remained stable for the past few months, you are in a neutral caloric balance. To build more muscles, I suggest increasing your food intake a little and you might just start to build muscle again. If you don’t, and even gain some fat, the problem probably lie in the program by which you train.

I don’t seem to gain any muscle mass even though I’m training very hard. The trainers, at the gym, say that I’m a “hardgainer”. Could that be?

Yes, that could be. The individual response to weight lifting stimulus varies: some people grow easily, some don’t. Still, before you surrender, try to up your food intake. Many “hardgainers” just have very active metabolism, and thus high daily caloric expense. If you’re very lean and can’t seem to put on weight, that may be you. So don’t just up your IN a little: live by these two winning quotes: “If I’m not chewing, I’m not growing” (John Berardi) and “Every day is a long meal”.

I want to burn fat. What should I do?

The best way is to exercise and reduce your caloric intake somewhat. Exercise will add to your daily calorie expenditure, thus causing more calorie usage. When you decrease your caloric consumption in addition, you will have a negative caloric balance, your body will look for stored calories. Fat is the primary source, so your body will be using up fat for energy, allowing you to lose fat. However, decrease your food consumption by a little at a time and don’t over-exercise. When you’re losing about 1 to 2 pounds (or 1% of your body weight) per week, that’s a good rate of fat loss. If you’re losing more, then you may be losing muscle mass in addition to fat loss. You don’t want to end up there, so remember fat loss is a gradual process. Keeping your muscle mass is very important, because it eventually raises your resting metabolic rate and thus increases your daily calorie expenditure.

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