think I need to eat more/start counting calories

J

jmm

New Member
Right, weighed myself for the first time in just under two weeks - hardly gained any weight (well, maybe 150g - but well within margin of error caused by drinking water etc...) That means in 6 weeks of HST I've gained about 1.5kg, but this tapered right off towards the end. I guess I need to get more food down.

Anyway, I've pasted my normal diet below. Any suggestions would be good - add a 6th meal maybe? Aside from tinned fish, I normally buy/cook fresh food (no label with nutritional info) so calorie counting's awkward and/or I'm lazy - but I guess I could/should start counting calories properly...

Anyway, diet's pasted below - feel free to tell me what's horribly wrong with it ;) Meals are 3-4 hours apart; I'm now about 74.5kg, and 6ft. Actually, the diet looks like less now I've written it down...

Meal 1 - oats with milk (skimmed or semi-skimmed) and raisons

Meal 2 - one or two slices of bread (wholemeal or rye) with meat/fish/eggs. About 3 eggs/100-130g of meat or fish.

Meal 3 - tinned fish (sardines, normally - about 100g) with slice of bread.

Meal 4 - Meat or fish (about 1/2 pound) with veg (cabbage/greens/carrot/potato). Normally steamed greens with steamed/poached/grilled meat or fish.

Meal 5 - cup of cottage cheese with walnuts/tin of tuna or sardines.

On days I trained, also had one or two bananas and 30g of whey about 15mins before and straight after.

Snacks - about 8 pieces of fruit, 60g nuts, often one or two pieces (blocks, not bars ;) ) of dark chocolate. I get through about 2 desert spoons of olive oil in the course of cooking/dressing food each day. Oh yeah, and a couple of cups of tea with skimmed milk, and one or two black coffees. I take fish oil supplements.
 
There are plenty of guys here who will be happy to tell you that you need to count calories (and macronutrients) if you are serious about your diet.  McDonald suggests starting at 16-18 kcals/lb (35-40 kcals/kg) for bulking.  I haven't added up your numbers from that list, but it should be relatively easy to do.

It strikes me from your post that you might be shy on carbs, but you will have to do the math.

If you haven't read them, you might find McDonald's basic discussion on diet useful:

Baseline Diet 1  Baseline Diet 2

I haven't fully explored it yet, but colby2152 also recently posted a thread that may be helpful:
 
Optimizing your Caloric Intake
 
ditto, ditto ditto, to what ruthenian has posted.

the trouble with getting specific food advice for a diet is in a month or so when your bigger or bored with those foods etc. you havent developed any tools to eval your own diet. read the links posted and get a cal count going on fitday or something. since what youve posted is a typical day and like you said youve barely gained then youve already established your maint. intake. apply that to what you read and youll be off and running.

btw, you can find nutritional info on the web for most foods (even/especially fresh). once you find a good site or 2 it really does not take that long especially if you eat similar meals most days.

good luck
 
Your onto something, just eat more.
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Eat more protein/carbs from quality sources, you probably wont go wrong.

Try whole milk.

Later
 
I'll second bluejacket's suggestion of using fitday.com. It really is very useful and once you get used to it, it only takes a few minutes to log each day's calories.

Remember that as you get bigger, you must increase your intake to continue gaining.
 
Thanks. Right, probably do need to get on with calorie counting, then... I've used fitday before, last time I'd stopped gaining - a neat site, but had problems finding nutritional info for less usual (or non-American?) foods. Gurnard, anyone?

But yeah, excuses aside, will buy some decent kitchen scales and start calorie counting properly (probably next week). At any rate, looks like I've found maintenance intake - should be handy, as just starting a week or so's deconditioning...
 
http://www.nutritiondata.com/

someone posted this site a while back and ive found some good info on it. many times i simply enter    ***specific food*** nutritional information    in the search function and get some good info. just read closely how some stuff is prepared (if not fresh) as it can change a lot of values. nice part is once your found something ....gurnard?.... its in your custom foods for repeated use.

a decent kitchen scale is good thing to have but dont be fooled into thinking youll always have to use it. common foods like chicken, vegis, rice etc i havent measured in yrs. i doesnt take long before you can accurately guess amounts at a glance.

good luck
 
Right, two week's calorie counting and it *looks* like if I eat 3,000 calories/day I gain about 500-600g/week. Is this a good kind of gain to aim for with HST, or too high/low?

In terms of macronutrients, I'm getting about 35% of calories from fat, 40-45% from carbs, and 20-25% from protein. The fats are mostly 'good' fats (fish, olive oil, walnuts...)
 
that looks like a cutting diet to me.

If you're going for sheer mass, eat everything in sight bro
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don't pass up on desert, have an extra cheeseburger, drink a gallon of milk ... oh how I miss bulking, lol

2-3lbs a week should be easy for you to gain at that weight. You've got alot of frame filling out to do, plenty of room to grow brutha.

If your metabolism is cranked up as it seems... keep eating until you see the scale increasing week by week, and with the weight gain you must increase cals for you new maintence levels as well.
 
sorry, to get upto 3000 calories the diet's changed a good bit... Yesterday, for example, was:

- oats w/ full-fat milk and raisins
- roast pork on rye bread
- 3 egg stilton omelet
- 2 (good, high meat) pork sausages, 1 egg, bread and cabbage
- 3 cups homemade chicken soup (w/ lots of chicken).
- 5 pieces of fruit.
- 1 ounce walnuts and dessert spoon peanut butter.

Would normally eat more fish, but aside from that that's probably a fairly avery day (added upto 3k calories). That feels like eating loads of food already
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jmm,

it looks like your off to a good start. 3k a day at 165 sounds about right (@bwx18) but you never can tell, the only thing that matters is if the scale is moving or not. just keep up with the food log/wgt check and over time you cannot go wrong.

most recommend shooting for @ 1lb gain a week , seems to be the best rate to add max muscle while not adding max fat.

good luck
 
If you`re facing trouble getting those calories in, peanuts will help...the little weasels have considerable caloric density, and overeating them is fairly easy. 3000 is a good starting point, keep your eyes on the scale and on the mirror and you should do fine.
 
Ain't THAT the truth! I thought I was cutting but eating peanuts on the road (betcha can't eat just one handful!) has me at maintenance.
 
looks like I'm eating about the right amount, then
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re. nuts, I'm learning to like walnuts
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Apparently they've got 'better' fats than peanuts (and I've just bought piles of cheap walnuts in bulk ;) )
 
The discouraging thing about peanuts is the extremely high proportion of Omega 6 fatty acids. There are some Omega 3 enhanced peanut butters out there though.
 
Peanuts rule! Cost is 46 cents for 100(deshelled and salted). 1 peanut = 1 gram

Per 100 grams
Calories=585g
Protein=24g
Unsaturated Fat=43g
Saturated Fat=7g

Can easily add a thousand calories from these suckers!

I have trouble growing unless I take is a huge amount of food. And I get full before I can do so. Pasta is easy to shovel down even when Im full and peanuts are best for snacking on!
 
Don't you find the salted ones a bit, well, salty to eat lots of?

Anyway, any ideas re. ballpark figures for alcohol and calories. Been looking for figures re. (hard/alcoholic) cider, and the estimates vary a *lot*. It's a bit under 4% alcohol - does about 10 Calories/fluid ounce sound reasonable (seems like the most sensible estimate I've seen)?
 
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