Are you eating enough? – N&P
How do I know if I’m eating enough to put on muscle?
Your ability to gain strength and muscle mass depends on a lot of factors. Diet, activity level, lifestyle and stress, it all makes a huge difference.
Start by getting an estimate of your baseline needs. The easiest thing to do is to download an app like My Fitness Pal or My Macros. Your calorie count won’t be incredibly accurate, but that doesn’t matter. What makes the difference is the act of measuring your food, along with aiming for a calorie and macro target.
Your objective is to gain 0.5 to 1.0 pound of body weight every week.
Pick a time of day, preferably during your morning or evening ritual at home. Weigh yourself. Write down the number. If you want to get clever, track your progress in a spreadsheet chart, whatever you like. Just measure daily.
Some days you will lose, that’s certain. Just return focus to your daily habits and calorie targets. There will be some fluctuation, but in time you’ll notice that the week-to-week trend is right on target.
Track your body weight, but also pay close attention to how you feel in the gym. Estimates are one thing, but the bottom line is that if you feel tired and undercover in the gym, you are! If you add more calories and quality hours of sleep, you’ll almost certainly experience a performance boost.
Start your journey by tracking a normal day of eating, before you try to add any muscle. From there, make sure that you are in fact eating more high-quality food by making a food log every few days.
Even if you start, perfectly bad habits will slowly return. You will start to under-eat again. So, remember. Measure, quantify and record what you eat, eat least periodically. That’s the only way you’re going to know for sure whether or not you’re on the right track.
Want to know exactly what it takes to get stronger? We’ve got a 100% free and awesome guide for you right HERE. Also, feel free to leave us questions in the comments below.
We’d love to help out.
Happy gaining,
The Barbell Shrugged team
6 Responses to “Are you eating enough? – N&P”
Hi guys,
Love this post, but I do have a question pertaining to the guys that already carry a little extra weight already.
I am 5’8″ and 203-207 constantly, which is a little bit high.
Would it be beneficial to stay around this weight and ” work into” the weight, or maybe cut down a bit and rebuild?
Appreciate any input you have on the topic and as always, love the content you guys put out
Fred
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