Gained 4 pounds.

[FMJ]

Morning folks.

Well the good news is that this morning my scale shows I've gained 4 lbs!
The bad news is... Thats 4lbs this week.

Some of you may recall my first post here a week and a half ago, I explained I was consuming 4500 calories for a month. I checked back in my online calorie tracker and it's actually been since Dec 6th that I jacked up my caloric intake to 4500 so this is now almost 6 weeks at that calorie range. You may also recall I was complaining that for that period I hadn't gained anything on the scale or the tape measure.
The only thing I did different this week was re-vamped the training routine. Thats it. As much as I would love to credit your guys' suggestions to change training up, I honestly can't believe the 4 lbs came from that and now I'm a little worried that I'm gaining too quickly and just packing on some blubber. I haven't grown noticable in the mid section but Not noticably in the muscles either.
So what should I do at this point.. Should I a) Leave the diet at 4500 and see if I start getting a bigger gut or b) cut back 500 calories and see if I stop gaining?

 

[lennoxchi]

how many cals were you eating before you went to 4500?

 

[FMJ]

Well, back in October is when I started cleaning up my diet. Prior to that I wasnt even eating 2000 calories a day. I started regularly eating 2500 while doing a light workout routine. Did that for a few weeks with cardio. Then mid Nov I started on a bulking phase at 3500 calories along with the 20 rep squats routine. After a couple weeks with no weight gain I increased to 4000. A week later with still no weight gain, I went up to 4500. I've been on a consistant 4300-4500 since Dec 6th.
This past week was the first time I moved the scale.

 

[T_man]

I don't think its all fat/muscle. Must be alot of water weight as well.
Have you taken creatine?

Unless you're a huge BB'er who's tall, or a professional athlete(training 5+ times a week) then 4500 cals seems like alot for anybody. I would suggest bringing it down a bit but first it would be nice to know your bf%, height and weight and activity level/

 

[FMJ]

Hey T man,
No brother, far from a huge bodybuilder..lol.
Not tall either. I'm only 5'8 and until today, I've been 164lbs. Water could be the culprit. Didnt think of that actually, although, most of my water weight comes by the end of the day. At night I'm usually 4-5 pounds more than I am in the mornings. I always weight myself first thing saturday mornings after.. you know.. shakin' the dew off the lilly. lol
I know 4500 calories is allot. It seems like even more when I'm choking it down.. but hey, I've been eating that amount for something like 6 weeks now and I've only gained these 4 pounds in this past week.
As for my bf%, I've tried a few different estimators.. every one is different but the average says I'm around 18-20%. For reference, I don't have any excess "skin" anywhere other than my waist. My top 4 abs are easily visable... but thats all you can see. I train 3x a week for an hour each and I'm keeping it in the 80% intensity range. No cardio at all.
I think I will knock off 500 calories just to be safe and see if I still makes gains. At 4000 calories I should still see a pound or so a week right?

 

[FMJ]

Sorry, forgot to also include that no, I don't use creatine or any sups for that matter with the exception of whey after each training day.

 

[T_man]

Do you eat alot of red meat? You could, technically, eat enough creatine from that to see a marked difference in water weight.

According to your stats, your BMR is 1672. This means that to gain muscle you would need about 2200 calories. I would suggest dropping it down to 2500. I did what you did and ate as much as I wanted, without any fat gain for the first few weeks then after that it just came hard and fast. Furthermore at your BF I would suggest cutting down first, which you will want to do in future anyways, which would lead to better partitioning of calories and so you gain a higher ratio of LBM to fat than at your current BF%. It would be also be much healthier and many things would be much easier at the lower BF%s.

What are you macros? are you getting atleast around 135g of protein everyday? Getting in essential fats and using a multivitamin?

 

[FMJ]

Morning T Man,
I don't get too much red meat. I'd say I eat half a pound every 2 or 3 days. I typically eat about 1.25 pounds of chicken each day. thats my primary meat source. My current macros are high as you can imagine.
Carbs are 475g, Protein is 318g and fat is120g. A 40%,35%, 25% ratio.
As for the BMR, I have to disagree. Well, not exactly, I agree it's 1650ish if I didnt do anything but lay in bed all day but most calulators I use give a BMR of 2600-2800 when I add in a moderate activity level. (3days of weight training). As I posted earlier, I started with 3500 calories which I thought would be a good start. But weeks went by without any gains so I upped it.
What you described about it coming on hard and fast, thats whats got me worried. I'm concerned that I didnt give myself enough time to adjust to the extra calories. I'm not gonna cut it down to 2500. I'll go down to 4000 or perhaps 3500 again and monitor. But the question is how long should I wait before I can be sure I need to adjust? I think if I actually start to lose weight that is pretty clear that I need more food, right? If I cut back to 3500 and still gain I'm getting it dialed in but If I cut back to 3500 and see no change for 2 or 3 weeks, should I increase again?
Thanks T man, Appreciate your help buddy.

 

[T_man]

Carbs can also cause water retention as well.

I don't think 3 days of weight training alone would add nearly 1000 calories to your daily BMR. You do not burn that much energy weight training. It's best to increase your calories slowly to let your body adapt to the higher calories slowly and partition them well. I would suggest still starting at 2500-2700 and increasing slowly until you can see stable gains. Especially at your age, I think your metabolism would be significantly slower than someone in their teens/early twenties.

I think the best way of determining if your diet works is by visual changes, or weighing yourself over the course of a long period, like monthly or even bi-monthly because over the course of a week so many things can influence your weight. Also weigh yourself at the same time eg if you weigh yourself in the morning, do it again in the morning in future.

 

[FMJ]

What do you mean especially at my age?!? You dang whipper snapper!
Why if I didn't need my diaper changed I would come over there right now and I'd ... i'd... ummm..... what was I saying? oh right.. my diaper.. do you believe that when I was your age a nickle was only worth 5 cents??


Seriously though. Thanks again for the reply T man. I'll look at my diet again and see where I can make some adjustments.

 

[T_man]

I'm just saying your metabolism would have slowed down, that's all. You could perform just as well, you're just more efficient lets say

 

[Merkaba]

I agree 4500 is a lot. I would keep an eye on your gains and maybe be ready to turn that back to 4000 for a while. Congrats though.

 

[T_man]

I think the site I used to calculate your BMR is a bit defective. Shoot for about 3k cals and see how it goes. If you're gaining too much fat, cut down a bit.

 

[FMJ]

Defective?!? Remind me to never borrow a condom from you!!

Actually, I did take some of this advice and I recently took it down 1000 calories. So I'm at 3500 now. I would rather it be a little excessive than deficient. I can burn off the excess fat but I don't want to train for two weeks and not have anything to grow on.
speaking of growing, change that weight gain title of this thread to 5 pounds now. This morning I was 168.
On the measuring tape, I gained 2 inches around my chest/lats, gained 1/2 inch on my bi/tri and 3/4 inch on my thighs. Belly stayed the same!
We'll have to see how the decrease in calories affects that in the coming weeks.

 

[FMJ]

I agree 4500 is a lot. I would keep an eye on your gains and maybe be ready to turn that back to 4000 for a while. Congrats though.

Thanks Merkaba. Superb pics by the way. Outstanding!

 

[Merkaba]

Thanks Merkaba. Superb pics by the way. Outstanding!

no problemo and thanks to you as well!