Gaining Weight vs Gaining Muscle
Gaining weight can be the result of adding muscle mass, fat mass, or water weight (in various forms).
Many guys who are interesting in ‘gaining weight’ are actually interested in ‘gaining muscle’ and they assume additional muscle will translate into a heavier bodyweight. But how do you know for sure how much muscle you can add to your body and how much weight you could possibly gain?
Factors to consider include:
Age
Somatotype
Height
Years of training experience
The genetic material of your body is the most basic starting point and will tell most of the story as to how much ‘weight’ and ‘muscle’ you can gain.
In this podcast we’ll discuss:
1. Weight gain vs muscle gain
2. Why anyone wants to gain weight in the first place
3. The difference between how you look with a shirt on vs with a shirt off
4. The relationship between how much you weigh and how you look at that weight
5. The normal fluctuations you can experience in bodyweight on a day to day basis.
John
Weight Gain vs Muscle Gain - How Big Do you Want to Be [70:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Great listen, thanks guys. Just a question for you guys, that being said, what do you have to say for a person like me who’s been an ectomorph bodytype 5’10/130lbs all of high school and now third year university, recently working out 5hrs/week and 21 years old just reaching the 140-148lb mark still unhappy with their weight aiming to ideally be a lean 160-170? Haha I was trying to be patient throughout the podcast everytime you stated that people who are ONly 200 should be more realistic with their expectations, but what about those of us who are on the extremely low end of the scale?
Owen,
You gotta keep pushing, there is still lots of growth left in you if you’re only 21. Keep pushing and you’ll keep gaining for a while yet.
JB
great podcast, guess it boils down to people knowing the difference between the LOOK they want, and the weight it actually is.
Also, similarly to the above Question, a really light guy say 6ft 130lbs, increasing muscle mass by training using a program like yours for example. WIHOUT eating more than his BMR what can you typically expect to achieve interms of lean weight and “look”.
Is there a definite relationship between the 2? or is it possible to see a noticeable change without a big change in recoreded body weight,
Thanks!
Kiran,
I think smaller increments in bodyweight will LOOK bigger than they sound. So if you gained 2-3 pounds of real muscle mass but stayed just as lean, you might seem 10 pounds heavier (whatever that even means)…I guess what I am saying is people might guess that you’re heavier than you are. Make sense?
JB
John and Dave this podcast has to be one to the best ever.You guys are right people have to decide do you want to look amazing without t-shirt or do you want to look big with a t-shirt on?this has been my experience several years ago i was over 165 pounds and all y friendes were saying to me man you are looking big but this time around i never got any comments from my friends but my dad after i told him that i won my category told one my friends that is into working out and he told my other friends and when they saw my pictures they were blow away they could not believed,many now want to get bach in shape because of these guys guidance i no longer cared about having a goal of weighting x amount of weight the goal in my mind is to add 7 inches to my shoulders and maintain my lean weight like i am doing now it my take me a number of years to do this but the important thing is never to give up and accept your genetic limits and just do your best and live your life and that is way i am Adonis guy because is a system about living your life and doing the right training and eating to get your goals you want.
For the “Adonis Chain Cross” — is the weight of the chain any consideration? Hardware stores have all sorts of weights, not very expensive.
the chain I’m using in that video probably only weighs about 10lbs…we have chains that are heavier but that exercise is pretty tough. I say a 10 or 20 pound chain is enough to start with for sure.
John, the Adonis chain exercise looks cool and i already have chains but i used my for pull-ups is this exercises worth doing for packing on shoulder mass?also how you incorporated this exercise in the Adonis Index Workout and how about sets,reps and rest?thanks bro.
I just add it to one of my workouts for 3 sets x 10 reps, I hold the bottom position for about a second and do the whole movement pretty slowly. The chain is only about 12 pounds and I do them at the end of a shoulder or chest workout.
I wrote an article on the subject of {NOT} eating your way to bigger muscles some time ago. This podcast is a great elaboration on this subject so i added a link to you guys here:
http://relativestrengthadvantage.com/gaining-muscle-by-stuffing-yourself-like-a-pig-is-a-stupid-idea/
I’ve been listening to your podcasts for a while, and you’ve changed my opinion on a few things.
But still, there are a lot of people that get a lot of respect that advocate eating shitloads to gain as much muscle as possible.
What do you think of this link for example? http://startingstrength.com/articles/novice_effect_rippetoe.pdf
Clearly, when eating a ton you will gain fat too, but you will gain muscle faster, for longer. For me personally it’s quite easy to lose fat (I prefer eating a low calory diet, and am naturally lean), so wouldn’t eating a high number of calories be better for me? My goal is to look shirtless in the summer.
Philip,
I don’t know of any research that indicates eating a caloric excess can affect the rate at which muscle can be built. Until this research is done and the speed that muscle can be built is proven to change with excess calories then all of this is simply conjecture and opinion based on little more than observations made in a gym.
What is also at issue with all of this is what is being measured and how it’s being measured. For example: Lean Body Mass measurements do not mean 100% “Muscle Mass”
The age of the person and training status also matter, as well as their somatotype.
The point is that the current body of evidence doesn’t suggest there is any way to eat your way to bigger muscles.
JB
Hey Phillip,
I looked at that .pdf and here are my comments.
1. Almost half the bodyweight gained was fat.
2. At that caloric load, you’re looking at a big increase in water
uptake (remember, I gained 10 lbs in a weekend over Christmas just from overeating, and it wasn’t fat or muscle gains)
3. It’s easy to show the way UP… but it’s all irrelevant to us because there is no DOWN (ie, how much does he weigh when his bodyfat levels drop to where they were in the beginning)
4. If consuming massive quantities of food is anabolic… then NOT consuming massive quantities of food must be CATABOLIC… and since the net effect of going up and down(ie the same calories consumed must be cut out to reduce bodyfat levels), then it’s a moot point either way for the look we want.
I hope this makes sense.
B
Oh… and he’s a 20 year old kid (which is important… juvenile muscle growth factors in)
Hi,
I dont know if this is the right place to ask this,but do u believe that teens(16-20) are able to consume more calories than adults(22 and above)? I am 18 years old and 6ft 180 pounds and trying to get the 1.61 ratio and i am able to eat up to 2500 cal and still lose weight. Are younger people in general able to lose more weight than older ones? Thanks
Ken,
In general yes younger people seem to be able to eat more than older people. This seems to be a trend throughout our entire life cycle.
At your age and assuming you are weight training and are fairly active you can probably eat significantly more than us older guys.
Test it out and let us know how you’re doing at some higher calorie levels. Make sure to take your waist measurement. As long as your not getting smooth and flabby around the wait you can be sure that you’re most likely not putting on fat.
JB
LOL.. I said that I meant to look shirtless in the summer… I meant to look GOOD shirtless in the summer, obviously.
But you guys give some good arguments. However much muscle I gain, eventually I want to lose (most of) the fat I gained. In the process of cutting I might actually lose some of the muscle I gained as well.
The argument that I think Rippetoe is making is that when you’re eating >>4000 calories a day, it helps the body to restore faster and build more muscle. I don’t think he backs this up with research, but he backs it up with decades of experience.
According to him, you can keep up a nice linear progression at all your lifts for longer when eating a ton, than when you’re eating less calories a day.
ken, I’m no expert at all, but I’m sure you should be eating more than 2500 calories a day at your age, especially when you’re also doing serious strength training. I’ll let the experts answer your questions in more depth though.
edit: Thanks for the responses btw guys!
Ya thanks, cause im eating like 2500-2600 calories daily and not gaining any weight so im planning to eat even more to see what happens.
Im a guy at age 21, 62kg, 176cm tall and 8.1% bf.
As far as I understand the BMR is very different from one person two another. I have been weight training (4 days pr week) and eating 2900 calories daily for the last 4 weeks. Doing that i lost a bit of weight each week. And from the day i started (4 weeks ago) i have now lost 1kg.
In my case should i eat excess calories.
And have you ever really seen guys gain muscle eating only at thier BMR – Or below it for that sake?
I mean..is there any prof of not eating more than your BMR can build muscle?
PS.
I cant say if i lost fat and gained musclemass. I dont know.