Are you trying to gain muscle but still struggling despite being (or thinking you're in) in a calorie surplus?

Today we are tackling the hardgainer's dilemma: How do you eat enough to build enough muscle without putting on too much fat when you have an overactive metabolism, whacked-out hunger cues, and potentially years of trying to build without success?

Hardgainers can indeed create the conditions for muscle growth and overcome their genetic limitations. They can make impressive gains that they never thought possible.

Episode summary:

We delve deep into the challenges hardgainers face when trying to pack on muscles. Often, hardgainers feel like they're fighting a losing battle with weight gain, but with the right strategies, they can overcome these hurdles and achieve their desired physique.

One of the key factors that impact a hardgainer's journey is the misconceptions and myths surrounding weight gain. A scientific understanding of weight gain can go a long way in helping hard gainers overcome their unique muscle-building dilemmas. It's important to understand that the body's response to calorie intake and expenditure can vary widely from person to person. This is why some people may gain different amounts of fat for the same increase in calories, which can make muscle-building a challenge for hard gainers.

Another critical aspect we discussed is the power of a positive mindset. Building muscles is not just about physical effort but also about mental resilience. Having a growth mindset, setting realistic goals, and staying motivated are key factors in turning small wins into massive gains. We emphasized the importance of celebrating every little stride made towards fitness goals and reframing the thought process to focus on progress.

A large part of the discussion was also dedicated to nutrition. Achieving a calorie surplus through strategic meal planning is vital for muscle growth. We addressed the fear many hard gainers have about gaining fat and emphasized the role of macronutrients in stimulating muscle growth. Eating more calories than you burn, getting those calories from nutrient-dense foods, and fueling your workouts with enough carbs and protein are all essential strategies for muscle gain.

We also touched on the role of training in muscle building. Hardgainers need to follow a challenging training program that includes heavy compound lifts, progressive overload, and adequate recovery. We discussed the importance of supplementing with protein and carbs and encouraged listeners not to be afraid of incorporating their favorite foods into their diet.

Hardgainers can indeed overcome their genetic limitations and build muscles successfully. It might require a little extra effort and planning, but with a positive mindset, strategic nutrition, and a challenging training program, muscle-building is entirely achievable.

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Today you’ll learn all about:

(2:04) What is a hardgainer?
(5:21) Strategic nutrition and training plan for muscle gain
(6:54) Metabolic adaptation
(9:25) Mental obstacles
(12:19) Four practical positive mindset shifts
(18:48) Consuming more calories than you burn
(20:16) Strategies to stay in the surplus
(30:08) Training for hardgainers
(36:47) Outro

Episode resources:

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

hard gainers may struggle to put on muscle, but they can still achieve their goals with the right approach. Whether you have a fast over responsive metabolism feel like you can never eat enough or are worried all that gain is going to fat. You'll learn how to finally maximize your muscle gain in this episode. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast in our last episode 129 Why passively consuming my podcast is getting you nowhere. With Carl Berryman, we discussed how to implement the content you're consuming to integrate it into your life rather than being a bystander and constantly binging podcast without taking action. Carl walked us through his simple but effective mental muscle up mmm you today for episode 130. The hard gainers guide to outsmarting your metabolism and maximizing muscle gain. We are tackling the hard gainers dilemma. How do you eat enough to build enough muscle without putting on too much fat when you have an overactive metabolism, whacked out hunger cues, and potentially years of trying to build without success. hard gainers can indeed create the conditions for muscle growth and overcome their genetic limitations. I work with hard gainers all the time, and we are doing this every day. And you can as well, they can make impressive gains that they never thought possible. And that is what we're diving into. On today's topic, the hard gainers guide to outsmarting your metabolism and maximizing muscle gain. What is a hard gainer? A hard gainer is simply someone who has difficulty or believes that they have difficulty building muscle and struggling to gain weight, despite their efforts to eat more or again, believing that they're eating more. So there's a lot of mindset and psychology here. And so we have a mix of science and reality, a mix of genetics, along with some science and mindset. And we're going to cover both today. And you can kind of identify which one you fall into, it might be a mix of both, as a self described, quote unquote HARDGAINER, you are likely to relate to a certain set of beliefs. So one of those beliefs is that no matter how much you eat, you don't put on weight. And you'll notice some of these are the opposite of people who struggle the other direction and say no matter how much I diet, I don't lose weight. So hardgainers have the opposite approach, which can be just as annoying for folks. So that's one belief. The second belief is that you've quote unquote, tried everything. But you can't gain lean mass, oh, I've tried all the programs I've lifted heavy, I've lifted high reps, I've done different volume, I've done all the diets that it added up, and you can't gain lean mass. The third belief is that you have a fast metabolism. And it's so fast that you just it's impossible to gain muscle. And then the fourth belief is that bulking just makes you bloated, whether it's just bulking in general or eating a certain amount of carbs or whatever. But it doesn't actually make you bigger just makes you bloated, right? Just just big fat bloated, whatever. Now, the only study that I wanted to mention today because the science is kind of sparse in this area. Eric Trexler actually wrote a great article about hardgainers A while back, and he references the article I'm going to mention here as well by who at all in 2022. So it was just a year or two ago. And in that study, which was titled higher than predicted resting energy expenditure and lower physical activity and healthy underweight Chinese adults. They found that different people can gain different amounts of fat for the same increase in calories. And that this was directly linked to how their energy expenditure increased in response to overfeeding, I think to simplify it, this study and several other others, what they basically show is that yes, some people will when they eat more when they overfeed, right? So they eat beyond their maintenance calories, and their metabolism will start to catch up. Not all the way not a one for one relationship. But their metabolism will increase at a much greater rate than someone else. Right. If you think of the population. If you think of a normal curve, a bell curve, we're all going to find we're all going to fall in different areas. Everybody's metabolism is a little bit different due to genetics and other factors. And some people when they add 500 calories a day to their diet, their metabolism ramps up by 250 calories, and now they're really only in a two 150 calorie surplus. And then they wonder why they can't gain, you know, the half pound or pound or the pound a week that they're going for. And they're only gaining half a pound or not or less. That could be why. So there is a genetic component. But as with all of this stuff, whether it's fat loss, building muscle, whatever, you can't change your genetics, all you can change is how do you express those genetics and what you do about it, given your genetics. So the truth here that we just have to acknowledge right off the bat before we go to the rest of the episode is, if you have a strategic plan, strategic meaning you've thought about it, a nutrition and training plan that is tailored to you, building muscle is 100% achievable. Even if you are a genetic, hard gainer. And many of you listening to this episode are not even genetic hardgainers you just haven't taken the right steps and put it all together, or some sort of fear or limiting belief is holding you back from making those steps. So it may require a little extra effort, a little extra planning a little extra know how, definitely something that we help you with on this podcast. And today I'm going to address specifically. Now once you understand why you struggle to gain weight, and then how to fuel and do those other things appropriately for that, why then packing on lean muscle again, is 100% within your reach, just like when someone says I can't lose weight, or I can't lose fat. absolutely not true. Everyone can it is within your reach. You just have to know how might be harder for you than for others, but it's definitely possible. And even if it is harder, it's not going to be monumentally so. Okay, so I'm gonna iterate reiterate that the the reality here is with a strategic plan that's tailored to you HARDGAINER or not, you can build muscle successfully. And you just have to know what to do. All right. Well, some of the things that we have seen confirmed for what would be a typical hard gainer is, first what I just mentioned that you may have a rapid ramp up of your metabolism in response to calorie intake. So either when your activity goes up, your metabolism adapts quickly. And so either that or when you eat more, your metabolism adapts quickly, right. And your neat might go up quickly, whatever. Regardless, what it means is you're burning, you're eating a bunch of food, you're eating a bunch more food feel like you're stuffing yourself every day. And your body's like whoa, I've got this great food environment, I'm just gonna go burn all these extra calories, because you're giving me a feast every day. And like, really, I wanted to gain weight on purpose. And now my body is fighting me. Okay, so that's one thing. The second thing is that a hard gainer may just be and this might be you may just be someone who is moving a ton outside the gym. And this might be because you just love all sorts of sports and cardio and obstacle course races and all that kind of stuff, CrossFit, whatever, or you have a physically demanding job. I mean, if you're a construction worker, if you do something with your hands where you are burning, like you know 2000 extra calories a day just from moving around. That's very possible, right that you just have a high NEET right non exercise Activity Thermogenesis and are going to have to offset that with with your food, or with some conscious reduction in activity elsewhere, it is kind of the opposite of when we're in fat loss when we're trying to ramp it up, you may have to try to find ways to ramp it down. And then the only other thing that I've identified in the research is the potential for fast gastric emptying, that food moves rapidly from your stomach to your intestines, and so you have less time to absorb all the nutrients. And so you're actually more food more you know, foods coming out than for someone else. But I don't know if that I don't know how big of an impact that can be. Because we know that the vast majority of our energy is lost through our breath through our co2, you know, very little is lost through things like urine and feces and whatnot, you know, hopefully you're not eating when you listen to this. But anyway, those are those are three factors that could make it challenging for someone who is trying to gain muscle by by just eating more and gaining gaining weight, right because these things are out. You can't out eat these things. I mean, you can but you feel like you can't. So let's start with the mindset right? Let's just start with the mindset because a lot of you this is really where it's at. Okay, tell me if one of these or not, you know in your head, tell me through the ether, or do tell me by sending me an email or something a note on IG whether any of these hit home with you the first one are you a perfectionist, and someone who gets frustrated by slow progress you have these perfectionist tendencies you try to plan everything out. I mean, I've got this some in mind as well.

Philip Pape  09:53

I did a quick wits recently about procrastination and one of the types of unmet needs is your perfect Accidents and you wait for everything to be perfect. And if it's not just changing now now now you get frustrated. And this, this may come in the form of, hey, I want to build muscle, so I'm bigger. And then when I lean out, I'm like more jacked. But I also don't want to lose my six pack as I'm building muscle because now I'm building fat. And, and just after a few weeks, my six pack starts to get soft, and then it goes away. And now I'm frustrated because my end goal is to be this lean, jacked person, right. So it could come from that you may just be demotivated because you've tried to gain weight many times in the past and failed. And you're like, okay, it just doesn't work, right? Same thing as the opposite where people, they've tried to lose weight many times and they fail. The the third mental obstacle is just a lack of knowledge, you may not know how to customize your nutrition or your muscle building strategies like your training for you specifically, you might be a high volume type responder, maybe you're younger, a younger male, or maybe you just need that extra volume, or you're female. Sometimes females need more volume than men. And I know this episode is going to sound like I'm talking almost exclusively to men, because they're usually the ones that have this problem. But there could be some women that want to build muscle and are struggling as well. Especially very athletic, maybe very active. So you just may not know what to do. Right, you may be training a certain lift not frequently enough, and not getting the stimulus you need. So even if you're eating, you're not really building much muscle, and so then you gain fat and you're like, Okay, this doesn't really work. So maybe your problem is not that you can't gain weight, but you feel like you're gaining mostly fat. And then the last thing is, I just alluded to it, the fear of gaining too much fat and losing the lean physique, or the visible six pack or whatever it is this muscle definition you've had, knowing deep down inside, that it is in your best interest to spend that time building muscle along with a little fat, knowing that that's the only way to add that tissue to your frame. And so it's a temporary state you're going to be in where you're not going to look like you do it your leanness, but eventually you'll look even leaner and more jacked and ripped, which is probably your goal, right? Or most people's goals to improve their physique, in addition to the other things like strength and function. So as far as cultivating a more positive mindset, because at the end of the day, if we can think positively, and reframe the situation, it's going to go a long way toward then taking the practical steps. So I'm going to give you four things to try. Number one, is having a growth mentality, growth mindset growth mentality focused on the long term gains. If we focus too much on the end result, we're just gonna get frustrated. But if we focus on the things day to day that get us closer and closer to that result, such as getting in your workout, hitting your PRs, or your your maxes or lifts, or whatever it is, you know, your sets and reps pushing the weight up, pushing the reps, whatever the volume is to progressively overload because again, we're talking about being in a gaining phase where you should be able to make continual progress, that focus on the process, that growth mentality will give you lots and lots of wins along the way to know that this is worthwhile. And at the end of the day, you might find that that is really where the fun is, I've discovered now, even even if I sit sit around for three or six months, with a little bit of a soft belly, that I don't mind, in the least I am proud to wear that little bit of fat on my belly, because I am my lifts are going up, I'm going to the gym feeling energized and strong and being able to lift and you know, I still have some muscle popping out through the arms and the shoulders and everything. But I know there's some fat covering whatever else is in there, but I'm really loving that process. So if you can do that, it's gonna go a long way. And then it serves the other choices you make, like the fuel, right, what you eat, and having carbs and things like that. So that's one, adopting a growth mentality. Number two, is celebrating the small wins. So I alluded to that already, but every day you're gonna have wins like PRs, you're gonna have strength increases, you're gonna have increases on your circumference measurements. Even when you gain body mass that can be a win. Now, we talked about in fat loss, not focusing on the scale, but scale scale is one of many metrics. And if you see it slowly trending upward over time, that itself can also be celebrated. Of course, the third thing for a more positive mindset is to go ahead and set mini goals. So this is again, we're tying or integrating these ideas, but instead of just having that six or nine month or 12 month goal to gain a certain amount of weight, because that's how long it's going to take much longer than fat loss. Okay, set many goals to stay motivated through that time. And for me, the mini goals are going to be every strength training session I have, I have numbers that I want to hit. And so I do everything in my power to make sure I'm free Pair to hit those numbers, I don't think, Okay, I hope those hit those numbers. No, I say, all right, did I get enough sleep? Am I eating enough? Am I fueling enough carbs and my heart hydrated, I'm getting enough sleep, am I you know, is my workout plan appropriately for the volume, and on and on. Like all those things, I'm setting myself up to achieve that mini goal that's going to happen tomorrow. And then the next day, and then the next day. And the days that you don't go to the gym, you may have other goals related to your food, or related to recovery or self care. So many goals are a huge tool in the toolbox for anyone, but especially in this case, what we're talking about with hard gainers, because it's a long process to build muscle. The fourth mindset strategy is to understand that results require what I'm calling aggressive consistency, over time, aggressive consistency over time. And it sounds kind of like a catch 20 tour Contra, what am I trying to say contradiction a little bit. By consistency. I mean, you know, you show up every day, and you get about 80 or 90% of the things done you intend to do every single day, you're gonna achieve massive results that way, because most people either don't show up, or they show up very sporadically, or they show up and they try to be perfect for a day. And then they don't show up at all for three days, you're going to be aggressively consistent. So that means if you go to the gym four days a week, you go to the gym four days a week, maybe they're not perfect sessions, but you went to the gym and you try it and you you didn't just give up and not do the lift, you try the lift, maybe you didn't get all the reps because you didn't sleep well the night before having a food the night before. So aggressive consistency over time is where it's at. And if whatever you're doing is not allowing you to be consistent. This is where we rewind, and we say why not? What is preventing the consistency? Are we trying to do too much? Do we need support countability coaching? Do we need to focus on just one thing at a time, whatever. Okay? So just like training a muscle requires some sort of stress to kind of break it down to tear it down. Not not not muscle, tear him so much. But just to kind of over stress it so that it can come back stronger the next time. Right. Training your mind in that way of progressive overload is important overcome these beliefs. So hopefully that was helpful. I do want to get into the nuts and bolts now because you know, that's often where a lot of what I talk about lies. But if you are struggling with the mindset stuff, definitely please reach out to me and say, Hey, here's this thing struck a chord with me. Let's talk more about it. Let's dig into details. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  18:46

All right, so hardgainers. Gaining Muscle Gaining weight requires a very simple thing, consuming more calories than you burn. But just like energy balance in the other direction, consuming fewer calories than you burn to lose weight is simply the outcome. We know that there are million things standing in the way of us doing that that we might need to figure out hardgainers must eat substantially more than expected. And if you're a true hard gainer, it's more than the the person next to you to gain the same weight. Because your metabolism is probably ramping up more quickly. Now, here's the reality. Do hardgainers exist? Yes. But it's very individual. And it also shifts. And what I mean by that is I've seen one single person be a hard gainer at one point in their life and not in another. I've been in that situation where my metabolism has just been skyrocketing. And I'm like, Whoa, I have to just eat way more calories and other muscle burning phases where that didn't happen. And so then the question is, does this just change with our lives and our situations? Is this more epigenetic than simply genetic? And at the end of the day, then maybe we shouldn't worry about all that stuff and just fall Guess on understanding our metabolism right now. And what surplus we want to be in and identify that number. And if that number is climbing quickly, we're going to have to ramp up the strategies that allow us to stay in that surplus. And we're going to talk about those. Okay, so the first strategy, you've got to be tracking, you've got to be tracking your food, and your expenditure. So here's where I'm a stickler for an app like macro factor. And I've had, I've had some arguments with people recently about other apps like chronometer, and my fitness pal. Look, My Fitness Pal is junk, in my opinion, because the database is unreliable. The features are terrible, it doesn't do anything for you. It's just a it's just a database to put numbers in. And you have to figure out what numbers to put in there. And what targets you want to go for. It's Chuck, so don't use my fitness pal. chronometer. Okay, I like chronometer I used to like chronometer, I mean, it's got some nice nutrition features and a decent database. It's a verified database, like macro factor, but it doesn't calculate your expenditure automatically. It calculates your expenditure, but it's not accurate. Do you know why, if you go look up the Help Page of how it works, all it does is it takes the one of the standard formulas that you can just plug in, and then it adds in your activity. That's one of the most inaccurate ways to do it. Because first of all, the formula is, can be off by several 100 calories, it doesn't know you and how your body responds. Secondly, using your activity from a device, we know is terribly unreliable, up to 80% inaccurate, and it's just all over the place. totally worthless. So it's junk. And so definitely go and use macro factor. Yes, I'm an affiliate proudly. So because I use it all my clients use it. And it's the only app that does what it does. And that is it auto adjusts your weekly, calorie and macro targets to your true expenditure. And it calculates that expenditure in a very elegant way, by looking at how your body adds or gains or loses weight over time, and looking how much you're eating every day. It needs two things, your weight and your food. That's it. And then it has a nice, elegant, probably slightly complicated algorithm in the background that says, Okay, this week, you're burning about this many calories a day. And it's pretty darn accurate. Pretty darn accurate, I would stake my coaching business on it, because I do I have my clients use it for that very reason. So track using macro factor use my code, Wits & Weights, all one word Wits, & Weights, when you download it for the first time to get an extra week in your free trial. And then yes, it is a paid app, it's something like 72 bucks a year. If if that is too much for you, then I'm sorry, your health is not worth it for you. That's just I'm sorry, that's just my take on that. Alright, so track your food and track your expenditure over time. And by doing so this, this honestly is probably the most important step of all the ones I'm going to tell you. By doing so you will know that your metabolism is ramping up like a rocket like you think it is as a hard gainer. It may not be you may you may discover it's not, you may discover that you're just simply massively under eating. And you're not even eating that much you maybe your metabolism maybe around I don't know, say 2800 calories, and you've just been eating 2400 thinking that you're eating a lot because maybe you eat a lot of protein, maybe eat a lot of Whole Foods and they're just filling for you. Right maybe you drink a lot, maybe move a lot you just are and you don't have good much hunger signals. That's the awareness that you get from it. So track your food and expenditure over time using macro factor that is number one. Number two, this is the food part. How do you just eat more food? Okay, very simple strategies. First, you need enough frequency throughout the day, I would aim for five to seven feedings instead of what I'm sure a lot of you hardgainers are doing right now you're probably only eating three or four times you eat four times thinking yeah, meaning four times three meals and a snack that's that's a whole bunch of times, split it up into like five to seven, you know, first thing you get up post workout mid morning, lunchtime, mid afternoon dinner, and then dessert or a pre bed snack, there you go, that's 678 times right there, you'll be able to eat more, okay, your stomach will never get fully empty and never get fully full. And you'll be in this kind of consistent state of just being able to continually feed yourself and you won't feel stuffed and you won't feel hungry either. So it's kind of in between. You also get a constant influx of nutrients, you're gonna feed your muscles with the protein, all that good stuff, muscle protein synthesis, making sure the protein is spread out throughout the day. You're not going to have these long fasting periods, which could be affecting some of what's happening to you, right, other than when you're asleep, you're fasting. I wouldn't train fasted either like I wouldn't make any drastic changes in your, your workout or nutrition relative to each other. I would just kind of have a nice continuous feeding throughout the day every day. I think this frequent higher calorie meal approach is one of the main reasons one of the main things that unlocks success for hardgainers Yeah, okay, so that's what that are. That's number two. Number three, having your carbs around your workout, I think this is great no matter who you are, right carbs, carbs replenish your muscle muscle glycogen after post exercise, I would, I would have your higher carb meals before and after your training, you'll probably find that you have more hunger for them, then your body needs them, your body wants them, and you'll just be able to fit in more food that way. Okay, if you have to use something like highly branched cyclic dextran, it's a simple digestible powder form of carbs, use it, use it, put in a scoop and get 100 grams of carbs that way, you know, that's easy. If you need four grams of carbs, that's a quarter your carbs right there, and you hardly will feel it in the stomach. Number four, I want you to optimize your protein distribution. And this should be super easy. If you're eating five, six or seven times a day. I'm just gonna leave it at that do both and you'll be fine. Number five is the calorie density now is the opposite of what you do in fat loss. Now you want higher calorie dense foods. But, but still nutritious Whole Foods for the most part, for the most part, okay? You can still or not can I still want you to have 10 20% of your diet reserved for things that you just want to eat. I don't care if it's ice cream, pizza, doughnuts, the things that you love. This is great when you're trying to gain and you need more calories. Actually, those become even easier, like a donut is just a fairly fat dense piece of carbs, right that has the fats and the carbs in there, hardly fills you up and give you a lot of calories, which is a good thing in this case. But but let's let's take a step back to what I was starting with here and that is eating foods that are higher in calorie density, which usually are things with more fat, so eating salmon instead of whitefish eating ribeye instead of sirloin eating whole eggs don't even think about a whites you don't need them. eating cheese. I mean, have you been avoiding cheese, now's the time to enjoy cheese, nuts. Oh my goodness, handfuls of nuts will go a long way toward giving you calories nuts and nut butters. For example. Have your starchy carbs. Now I know some carbs like potatoes actually are kind of filling. But you still need the carbs. So it's good to have Whole Foods sources of carbs like rice potatoes. This is where you bring in the beans and lentils you know Beans are high are fairly calorie dense actually do get the carbs and some protein. You can add oils, nut oils, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, like dump them in stuff, have your salad and just go crazy with the oil this time make sure to track it of course, right make some homemade blue cheese dressing. If you got oil and cheese together, you can see I'm just like working up an appetite myself because I'm in a gaining phase right now. So great time to do this podcast. Number six, if you still need more calories, supplements, okay, not not just protein shakes. I don't even think I mentioned it. But obviously, liquid forms of stuff is going to be easier than solid to fit it in your stomach like liquid protein shakes the liquid carbs that I already mentioned, or even making smoothies and taking fibers things and mashing them down into the where they're effectively pre digested. But I'm talking about like, I don't know, meal replacement shakes like first form has a meal replacement protein shake that has the carbs in there as well already, so they're more convenient. They're things like weight gainers, I'm not a big fan of all these, like, you know, kind of overly marketed stuff used to get a GNC type type thing. But like the higher quality meal replacement shakes or meal replacement bars, there's actually a bar made it here in Connecticut called the muscle up bar that is made from sweet potato and it's it's like 260 calories in a really densely packed bar with very simple ingredients. It's got whey protein isolate, it's got sweet potato,

Philip Pape  28:44

maybe dates, maybe some nuts, maybe some monk fruit or stevia or something and sweetened and stuff like that, right, maybe some chocolate, maybe peanut butter, and so on. And if you're getting hungry, listening to this and your hard gainer, take advantage of it, walk to the kitchen and make some of this stuff right now, right now and eat it, enjoy it, track it. Number seven. Okay, so when you have days of the week, this is another big challenge I see you will have days a week when you're not training, maybe you don't walk as much. Maybe you're sitting around the couch all day because it's a weekend you're watching football, or it's the holidays. This is where you have to watch out because you can do kind of the opposite of what some people in a fat loss phase worry about. They worry about overeating on some of these days, you might actually be under eating. Because you don't have that routine, you don't have the training sessions kind of pushing you the days that I don't train, I have to intentionally get that extra feeding in because I'm not training where I would have the before and after. So now it's just one feeding when I had to fit in another one not have to but I choose to fit in another one to get the same calories for the day. I'm not a big fan of cycling calories, especially when you're in a surplus because you've just got all these calories coming in anyway. There's no need to go like really high on Sundays and lower on others. So the goal here or the moral the story here is meal planning like to plan ahead and make sure you know how you're tackling the training days versus the non training days to make sure that calorie surplus is nice and high. So I'm going to mention one last thing. I know some of you are worried about gaining too much fat. But muscle gain requires being in a surplus. And the main variable that's gonna cause you to build muscle with that surplus is your training is your training. So there's the mindset side of it, of course, we have, we have to celebrate the wins, do all the short term, focus on the process and so on that we talked about focus on non scale metrics, like your circumference measurements, and maybe getting some new shirts that like where you fill them out, because you have these nice big traps and big arms. Now nice, big broad back, even though you have a little bit of a belly, you're going to look big and strong out in public, you know, if you're not walking around with your shirt off all the time. Okay, so great time of yours is winter to do this. But training is the most effective part of this whole thing to actually build the muscle and not just gain fat, and offset the fear of gaining too much fat even though I'm sorry to say you're gonna gain some fat. And it depends on the rate again, you go at and I did an episode not long ago, called like, oh man was it called it was like the best way to gain for building muscle or something. Just to summarize, point, two 2.3% of your body weight per week is a decent rate of gain. Okay, so that's a super good rule of thumb. For most people, even a hard gainer, it's just a hard gainer might find it harder to get to that surplus because of these other factors we talked about and are going to have to just eat more food. And if you track it with macro factor, it's going to tell you to eat more food. Okay, so how should you be training, just like anybody else should be training, heavy compound lifts, progressive overload principles, like adding weight, or reps or set or some other form of volume, having enough recovery, right, having enough frequency using intensity techniques as needed, right. Supplementing with with, you know, protein and taking creatine, you know, whatever other supplements you need, getting enough carbs, getting enough protein around your workouts, all of that. That's it. Like that was the entire section on lifting for today that I wanted to cover, because I've done plenty of other episodes, specifically about training. And today was more about the distinct challenges that hard gainers face, which is trying to eat enough food and having and struggling to do so. And by the way, I have clients who go through this all the time. And I can I see them struggle for a few weeks, but because they're getting feedback from me where I say, look, we've got the data you're tracking with macro factor, you're just not eating enough. Here's why. And then it gives them ideas. Okay, what do you like, oh, you love peanut butter? Well, we'll go crazy on the peanut butter. Oh, really? I can do that. Yeah, absolutely. You like this particular process food because it's just delicious. And you've been avoiding it, or cutting it out because of some low carb diet, Iran, put it back in, it's fine, put it back in if it represents 10 or 20% of your calories. Go for it. All right, you have my permission, and you have your own permission to do that. Alright, so and then there's the lifestyle component, which again, really applies to everyone to make sure that you're optimizing your recovery and your growth, and that is the seven to nine hours of sleep, right? You've got to get those muscles to, you know, to have the right environment to get built and repaired. And to have optimal hormones. You want to keep that stress low, keep the cortisol low, the anxiety low because all of those, believe it or not, could come into play with you, not having regulated hunger signals and thus feeling like you're to fall. More often than not, it's the other things we've already talked about. But sometimes it is, you know, you're just too stressed. And we talk about stress going the other direction and like making you overeat but but when you're trying to eat a lot of food, having too much stress could maybe suppress your appetite as well. So, adequate sleep, you know, adequate stress management, sufficient hydration and electrolytes. Yes, even though we don't want to, you know, be so full on water that we're hungry. We do want to have enough hydration. So it's it's quite a balanced. Alright, I think I covered what I wanted to cover. What we've learned today, basically, is that true hard gainers definitely have challenges because of things like an overall response and metabolism. misfiring hunger cues, potentially years of being discouraged by slow gains. But if you have the right fuel, you train smart. You have a constructive growth oriented day by day celebrating the daily win mindset and you support things like recovery. Even if you are a true hard gainer, you can just as easily just as easily make progress as anyone else. You may want to do some things more precisely, and think ahead and have a plan and maybe have some accountability or a coach. You want to monitor your energy intake and expenditure. You're going to obviously eat more calories than you burn and the only way to know that is know how many calories you're burning. You want to get those calories from dense foods but still mostly whole nutritious foods. But now it opens up the palate to things like nuts, beans, all the other stuff. We talked about oil. You want to fuel your workouts with enough carbs and protein don't Train fasted, you know, don't do long fasting periods, eat healthy fats, follow a challenging training program that has progressive overload, and rest and recover and keep the stress low. This is the way to gains all of my HARDGAINER friends out there. And here's the thing, if you want to explore what this entire process might look like specifically for you, because as I've alluded to this entire podcast, it's got to be tailored to your needs. If you want to do that, I will go over the strategy that I use with all my HARDGAINER clients, but personalized for your situation. So I have a call called a free results breakthrough session call. It's just a 30 minute zoom call. I don't sell I don't pitch. It's just a conversation between two people who are looking to solve what seems like a pesky problem, but absolutely has a solution. We'll make it happen. Just use the link in my show notes. Schedule a free call. Again, it's called the results breakthrough session. You should see it in my show notes. I always leave a few spots open on my calendar each week. So let's do it. Alright, so our next episode 131 Andy Baker, on bodybuilding for hypertrophy, and an aesthetic muscular physique, Andy the man, he's my coach, he's one of the best programmers out there, and strength conditioning coaches, he is back to talk about bodybuilding style programming. Last time we talked more on the strength side today. In this episode, we're gonna get into bodybuilding. We'll get into techniques like the top set back offset approach, training up to six days a week, the contribution of hypertrophy to strength, the methods like the DC rest pause method, and lessons that Andy has learned from coaching people through these programs, including yours truly, who is one of his, you know, barbell club coaching clients. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.