Eating For Mass Gain

TUESDAY, AUGUST 24TH, 2010

6:30pm

This subject is a very lengthy subject that I could write pages upon pages about but I don't want to bore you with that so I'm going to touch on one of the finer points of gaining weight.

For those of you that work with me, you all know that as a general rule of thumb, when someone wants to gain weight I place them on an unrestricted Paleo Diet with the addition of a gallon of whole milk a day.

If you don't know what the Paleo Diet is check it out. Good, now we're all on the same page.

The point I want to touch on is a phenomena called "non insulin mediated glucose transport".

Non insulin mediated glucose transport is a period of time after exercise in which we can fly glucose and amino acids into the muscle without much insulin AND we improve recovery.

Timing is critical if you want the most from this! The optimum time for this is less than 15 minutes post-workout. It's still good at 30 minutes, and almost back to baseline by an hour.

So what does all of this mean? If you're one of the people wanting to gain weight I should see you eating a post-workout meal by the time you leave the gym. After a workout we want to slam down a good source of protein and some higher glycemic carbs such as yams, or fruit. Or a quarter gallon of that whole milk you're supposed to get in that day.

Then, within the next hour (after you have your post-workout meal), you should be eating another full meal packed with another good source of protein, carbs (fruits AND veggies), and fats.

Gaining weight the right way takes a lot of work and dedication. More often than not, I have people come to me with a gradios plan of mass gain and once they realize how they actually have to go about doing it their goals change. You should know going into it that you're going to feel full all the time and oftentimes going to have to workout on a somewhat full stomach. You need to literally stuff your face all day long and make healthy fats your best friend. You should also know that, as far as I'm concerned, you can't maximize weight gain and maximize leaning out at the same time. If you want to maximize one or the other you have to do one or the other...not both. In other words, if you want to gain mass, you can expect to lose your six-pack for a while. Not to worry though. Leaning out is the easy part. It doesn't take too long to vaccum-seal your skin back around those now bulging muscles.

Once I see you that you have the dedication and you're going to stick to it then we can take it to the next level and dive into how to partition your carbs throughout the day.


References: The Paleolithic Solution Seminar, Robb Wolf, 2009

Coach Justin
PerformanceQuestFitness@gmail.com