A typical day of eating (i.e. Doing The Proram)

[Tiburon]

I posted this in APT's log but I wanted to share it here. He is 5'8" and weighs 125.

If you are doing Starting Strength and have stalled in the novice progression, or if you think you are a "hard gainer" and cannot possibly gain weight, then you need to read this.

Here is an example of how a man eats when he is trying to get strong:

Breakfast:
6 Eggs with cheese and peppers
Side of bacon
2 glasses of milk with whey

Midmorning snack:
Glass of milk with whey
KitKat smothered in peanut butter

Lunch:
2 footlong double meat Subway sandwiches with everything
Glass of milk

Preworkout Snack:
Bag of nuts
Glass of milk with whey

During workout:
2 Glasses of milk

Postworkout:
3 McDoubles
2 McChickens
2 Side Salads
Large Vanilla Milkshake

Dinner:
3 gigantic plates of rice and beans and chicken
Pound of broccoli steamed
Glass of milk

After dinner:
6 Sam Adams (not Light)

Night snack:
Half pound of cheese, dipped in a jar of hummus
Glass of milk with whey

Before bed:
Glass of milk with whey

Middle of Night when you get up to piss:
Glass of milk

Repeat tomorrow (important).

[LimieJosh]

That's epic.

[MikeC1]

Not realistic. Sure for someone 250 lbs, it's not bad, but at 125 there's literally not enough room in the stomach and not enough hours in the day to process that much. The idea does count though.

[Carnivroar]

http://www.70sbig.com/avatars/fat-kid.jpg

[Marotta]

Oh hey Msingh!



I didn't need that much to gain 5lb a week, but anyways that would cost a fucking fortune.

[Carlos Daniel]

I know it's hyperbolic but it's a good way to illustrate what "eating a lot" really means.

[Tiburon]

I know it's hyperbolic but it's a good way to illustrate what "eating a lot" really means.

Thank you Carlos

[Scrofula]

You forgot the mid-breakfast snack:
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/03/m-wells-diner-dinner-24-ounce-burger-review-long-island-city-queens-nyc.html

(For an extra hundred bucks, you can get it topped with 1.5lb of foie gras.)

[Alyion]

I think a disclamier is probably in order here, that diet is seriously overkill - its like 17000 calories.

In other words - lol

[BigShot]

I'm waiting until payday to really up my food intake, but I read that with a sense our rising horror... I could never afford that much food... let alone being able to fit it all in.
The hilarity dawned later though.
What a truly insane amount of food.

Did make me realise how much more I need to try to cram in though... so thanks for that. Haha.

[Tiburon]

I think a disclamier is probably in order here, that diet is seriously overkill - its like 17000 calories.

In other words - lol

I would eat like this all the time on the novice progression.

[f4thpathway]

Hyperbole, schmerbole...that guy is named shark, that's what he eats. :-)

Not what I eat though. I'd be going to Weightwatchers to waste more money.

[NKT]

That seem slike a perfectly reasonable amount of food for someone who's not too fat and right in the middle of novice linear progression. The food choices may be a little expensive, but it's really the right idea for gaining strength fast. Really skinny guys would have to work up to that but it's a very worthwhile goal.

To address the cost concerns... here's what I ate for about six months of linear progression without breaking the bank:


You can save a LOT of money if you learn to cook and prepare all of your meals from basic ingredients. I've come up with a basic "utility food" recipe that I use for a lot of my meals. I affectionately refer to it as "funk":

1 cup rice (dry pre-cooked measurement)
1lb browned ground beef
1/2 cup olive oil
4 cups cooked kale
2 cups cooked pinto beans

Mix it all together and season with something to make it interesting. I alternate between balsamic vinegar, shiitake-sesame dressing, and yogurt or sour cream. That plus a gallon of milk allows me to get around 6000kCal of very inexpensive high-quality food per day without having to think about it too much. I'll occasionally cook a "real food" meal for the entertainment value. I make up about three day's worth of "funk" at a time and keep it in daily-serving-size containers in the fridge. That works out to about $50 per week, and that's a LOT of food.

[Carlos Daniel]

That seem slike a perfectly reasonable amount of food for someone who's not too fat and right in the middle of novice linear progression. The food choices may be a little expensive, but it's really the right idea for gaining strength fast. Really skinny guys would have to work up to that but it's a very worthwhile goal.

To address the cost concerns... here's what I ate for about six months of linear progression without breaking the bank:

I do something similar, only without the kale and beans, and with a little sausage, bacon and onions. Shouldn't be very expensive either.

[Carnivroar]

I do something similar, only without the kale and beans, and with a little sausage, bacon and onions. Shouldn't be very expensive either.

Yo Carlos how much is food in Brazil? I was looking at the prices of supplements there and the shit that I take for like 20$ a bottle goes for 200+R$ there WTF! I don't even wanna know the price of roids.

[Carlos Daniel]

Yo Carlos how much is food in Brazil? I was looking at the prices of supplements there and the shit that I take for like 20$ a bottle goes for 200+R$ there WTF! I don't even wanna know the price of roids.

Food is not really expensive, specially beef. A kilo of good sirloin goes for about 22 reais, which is like 13 dollars. Supplements are ridiculously expensive but roids are fairly cheap. In a pharmacy you can get 250mg of test for 8 reais (5 dollars) and 10 tabs of 50 mg of oxymetholone (Anadrol) for a little under 25 reais.You can even buy the nolva which is dumb cheap too, and this last one you don't even need a prescription. You do need a prescription for the hormones and I don't really know how hard it is to buy them without one.

[Tiburon]

What's nolva?

[Carlos Daniel]

What's nolva?

Nolvadex, the commercial name for Tamoxifen. People seem to call it that on the US.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

It's a SERM (selective estrogen recpetor mask).

[Carlos Daniel]

It's a SERM (selective estrogen recpetor mask).

The M actually stands for modulator.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

SOrry, I always get that confused.

[DV]

I always like to use the Dave Tate story for these occasions. The point being that no 160lb skinny kid is ever going to be able to do what the article says - but trying will probably make them eat enough. I find that even on "intermediate" progression, gaining weight is still a fucking chore.



There was a time at the Old Westside gym where I couldn't gain weight to save my f-g life.

There was this dude who trained there who could just put on weight like f-g magic. He'd go from 198 to 308 and then to 275 and back down to 198. And he was never fat. It was amazing.

I finally asked him one day how he did it.

"You mean I never told you the secret to gaining weight? Come outside and I'll fill you in."

Now remember, we're at Westside Barbell. And this guy wants to go outside to talk so no one else can hear. Think about that for a minute. What the hell is he going to tell me? This must be some serious s-t if we have to go outside, I thought.

So we get outside and he starts talking.

"For breakfast you need to eat four of those breakfast sandwiches from McDonalds. I don't care which ones you get, but make sure to get four. Order four hash browns, too. Now grab two packs of mayonnaise and put them on the hash browns and then slip them into the sandwiches. Squish that s-t down and eat. That's your breakfast."

At this point I'm thinking this guy is nuts. But he's completely serious.

"For lunch you're gonna eat Chinese food. Now I don't want you eating that crappy stuff. You wanna get the stuff with MSG. None of that non-MSG BS. I don't care what you eat but you have to sit down and eat for at least 45 minutes straight. You can't let go of the fork. Eat until your eyes swell up and become slits and you start to look like the woman behind the counter."

"For dinner you're gonna order an extra-large pizza with everything on it. Literally everything. If you don't like sardines, don't put 'em on, but anything else that you like you have to load it on there. After you pay the delivery guy, I want you to take the pie to your coffee table, open that f-kr up, and grab a bottle of oil. It can be olive oil, canola oil, whatever. Anything but motor oil. And I want you to pour that s-t over the pie until half of the bottle is gone. Just soak the s-t out of it."

"Now before you lay into it, I want you to sit on your couch and just stare at that f-kr. I want you to understand that that pizza right there is keeping you from your goals."

This guy is in a zen-like state when he's talking about this.

"Now you're on the clock," he continues. "After 20 minutes your brain is going to tell you you're full. Don't listen to that s-t. You have to try and eat as much of the pizza as you can before that 20-minute mark. Double up pieces if you have to. I'm telling you now, you're going to get three or four pieces in and you're gonna want to quit. You f-g can't quit. You have to sit on that couch until every piece is done.

And if you can't finish it, don't you ever come back to me and tell me you can't gain weight. 'Cause I'm gonna tell you that you don't give a f-k about getting bigger and you don't care how much you lift!"

Did I do it? Hell yeah. Started the next day and did it for two months. Went from 260 pounds to 297 pounds. And I didn't get much fatter. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, though.

[MikeC1]

Very nice story. Eating 'enough' is harder than actually lifting the weights.

[DV]

Eating 'enough' is harder than actually lifting the weights.

You fucking said it. Especially if you aren't to keen on junk.

[BigShot]

Very nice story. Eating 'enough' is harder than actually lifting the weights.
Gotta agree with that too.
This and a few other threads have kicked me up the arse to get eating and as of yesterday I'm cramming in a LOT more.
At the start of SS I was 6'2" and about 135lbs - not exactly huge - and it wasn't unusual for me to literally forget to eat my midday meal.
Now I'm on ½ GOMAD, 2 eggs a day, half a chicken, a berry smoothie, plus my diet from 3 days ago which included a big midday meal and whatever milk was on the 2 to 3 bowls of cereal I had each day.
Nothing even close to what I see some people packing in but I still feel completely full when I sit down for my evening meal.

Really - it is MUCH harder to do the diet than the lifting.

I feel kinda ill at the moment and if I was exercising I feel like I'd sweat milk!

[Tiburon]

6'2" and about 135lbs

Now how much do you weigh?

[Carlos Daniel]

I was 6'2" and about 135lbs -

Holy fuckaroo, I weighted 135 when I started but I'm 5'7"!

[BigShot]

Now how much do you weigh?
Weight at 2 weeks was about 142. Started eating MUCH more now though so I'll be moving quicker.


Holy fuckaroo, I weighted 135 when I started but I'm 5'7"!
Yea.
I know.
Hence Starting Strength. :P

[msingh]

I did the tate thing, it wasn't that hard. Just remember the guys in the story are on a cocktail of drugs and can get away with it.

[APT]

Yeah, im the guy tiburon was talking about. I am 5'8 and now i weigh 129, so i gained a lil. but the fact that a wrestler and i have to keep a good weight for next year is keeping me from eating as much. If i didnt wrestle, i wouldnt care at all. Right now, strength is important to me and not getting "big". some of u guys will argue but i care bout wrestling more than lifting. From ss, you can still get a decent amount of strength without gaining weight. Last year i looked the same before and after ss, and my squats went up from 3x5 135- 225 in 3 months. and plus, im in highschool, where am i going to get the money to buy this much food

[JStrong]

Yeah, im the guy tiburon was talking about. I am 5'8 and now i weigh 129, so i gained a lil. but the fact that a wrestler and i have to keep a good weight for next year is keeping me from eating as much. If i didnt wrestle, i wouldnt care at all. Right now, strength is important to me and not getting "big". some of u guys will argue but i care bout wrestling more than lifting. From ss, you can still get a decent amount of strength without gaining weight. Last year i looked the same before and after ss, and my squats went up from 3x5 135- 225 in 3 months. and plus, im in highschool, where am i going to get the money to buy this much food

While I realize that arguing with a high schooler is pointless, and it's been awhile since I wrestled competitively, I'm pretty sure there are still weight classes every 8 pounds or so all the way up to 191, and the most competitive, difficult classes are under 150 lbs.

You're in high school, your fucking parents buy all your food, and you have more discretionary money than 90% of this forum.

Get up to the 160 weight class with some actual strength, not noodle armed 135lbs.

Skinny wrestlers get pinned, anyone with a background knows the ideal wrestling body type is a fuckload bigger than 129 at 5'8".

[Bootsy]

Came here excited like a child after watching some Epic Meal Time videos, only to find that Fnet had beaten me to the punch.

[DV]

I did the tate thing, it wasn't that hard. Just remember the guys in the story are on a cocktail of drugs and can get away with it.

This is true, which is why I wrote a semi-disclaimer. My main point being that MOST guys (with or without drugs) can get away with eating quite a lot, and a lot of junk, as long as they train heavy and consistently. Unfortunately some guys dont train very heavy or very consistently, but do eat big, which gives big eating a bad rep.

I'm impressed you could do what Tate describes - I would never be able to cram down an extra large pizza with oil after stuffing myself with chinese food for 45 mins for lunch. And I am not skinny as such (though not very big either) with my 94,5 kg (208 lbs) @ 184 cm (~6'1).

[DutchPancakes]

I know it's hyperbolic but it's a good way to illustrate what "eating a lot" really means.

Sure, but it may scare some people off who have trouble eating enough. They might just think, "Fuck it, I can't ever hope to eat that much, I'm going to just make sure I take plenty of trib and CLA and Creatine and Surge and I'll get swole anyway".