adding 10lbs of muscle. advice.

[munze]

I am new to the forum and hopefully someone could jump in and give me few pointers.
I am 6'0 and 160lbs. I am having hard time putting any mass on, as I am pretty lean. Workout pretty heavu 5 times a week.
my meals include:
6 -7 am: 2 pieces of toast with two eggs, cup of greek yogurt and tea.
9:10am: before the gym i have snack bar 30 to 40gr of carbs. (clif bar)
after gym my PWO are two bananas with vega shake and cup of milk
12:00pm: lunch 2 cups of quinoa chicken and some tomatoes
2:30pm: 2 to 3hrs later, 1/2 cup of oats with some bluberries, and protein shake(15gr)
4:30 - 50gr of almonds
6:00pm: an apple and 1/2 cup of cottage cheese
and dinner around 8:00: either chicken or some fish, around 30gr of sweet potatoes and some vegies.

Where should I add more to my meals or what better should I do? Thanks for the advice.
Munze

 

[DetMuscle]

Your not eating enough. Hello and welcome

 

[NVRBDR]

that looks like some fad diet. 6' 160lbs? you need carbs at every meal. no carbs no weight gain.

 

[sassy69]

I agree - not enough food, not enough real food. I'm going to guess you're either 16 years old and just hit your growth spurt, or you're very simply a hard gainer. Some questions:

How old are you?
How long have you been training?

Some general rules of thumb to put together a diet:

1) To gain, you should be eating 1.5 - 2x your bodyweight in grames of protein. If you're a hard gainer / fast metabolism, I'd suggest lean towards 2x - so at 160, that's 320 g protein.
2) Estimate 35-50 g of protein per meal - so if you need 320 g of protein, to get a reasonable number of meals / day, say 6-8 meals w/ 40-45 g of protein per meal
--- So like 6 oz of chicken per meal, 8-10 oz of fish or 6 oz of lean red meat.
3) Total cals to gain, 15-20x your bodyweight for total cals = at least 3200 calories / day. I'm going to say go higher more like 3500 and see how that works, and increase or decrease as needed, but I think its probably reasonable to start.
4) Of the total cals you'd consume, a decent starting split of macros (macronutrients are your proteins, fats and carbs) is 40% protein, 30% fats, 30% carbs. I'd start there and probably up the carbs a bit if you tend to burn them up quickly.
--- You've got some good quality carbs in your posted diet. Robust carbs like quinoa are great.
--- Keep the shakes to 1-2 max / day and use real food where you can.

Also just so you have an idea of portions and actual calories, I suggest you take the diet you posted and enter it in a food counts program like FitDay - Free Weight Loss and Diet Journal & post what you get as total calories & macronutrient breakdown (% and total grams of protein, fats & carbs).

 

[munze]

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I know that increasing food would probably do, but was wondering based on my meals where I should increase it. Brekfast, PWO, late night meals??? Yes I have just recently started weight training. I am a soccer player and I am looking to gain a bit more weight, since I do want to keep my speed and endurance. Sassy thanks for the numbers, I will put the into use. Thanks again.

 

[sassy69]

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I know that increasing food would probably do, but was wondering based on my meals where I should increase it. Brekfast, PWO, late night meals??? Yes I have just recently started weight training. I am a soccer player and I am looking to gain a bit more weight, since I do want to keep my speed and endurance. Sassy thanks for the numbers, I will put the into use. Thanks again.

The fact that you play soccer is also an important detail we need to consider. Soccer is a very energy-demanding sport - so you NEED to ingest sufficient carbs. In that case, I'd probably move your carbs up higher to support that.

Some changes I'd make are:
- put more protein in your first meal and probably a better carb source than bread - go w/ at least a cup of oatmeal.
- make your last meal a fat + protein meal - fat takes longer to digest so what you're doing is reducing the amount of time between the last meal of the day & the first meal of the next day by having the last meal digest slower. I'd also NOT put carbs in your last meal as carbs generally give you a spike of energy when in fact you are planning to go to sleep.
- Your meals at 2:30, 4:30 and then 6 pm and 8pm - your 4:30 meal is almonds, which is a fat, which will digest slower, so I'd put that meal where you have a longer interval between meals.

When do you play soccer? Are you fueling for that as well - recovery, etc. just like your PWO thing for training.

 

[munze]

Thanks again for the great feedback. I usually play soccer at night. Afterwards usually have same POW plus I add another 1/2 cup of oatmeal with berries. An hour later I would have another meal maybe 45gr of carbs in total, with protein and veggies.
* My POW shake does have lots of fiber in it (15gr)> I do know about simple sugars idea however it makes me feel not so good when I consume it. Would my POW (with fiber) be sufficient and good?
Also the bread I consume has 18gr of carbs per slice (5gr of fibre) and 5gr of protein -- Would I count these protein as my total gr of protein for the meal?