GOMAD and your program

[Leet]

Hey Mr. Rippetoe,
I just began your starting strength program for the second time. I sort of slacked off the first time on the nutrition and stalled. This time I will be doing it with GOMAD. I'm 14 years old, 5'9 140 pounds 13% BF: Squats are 120 5RM, deadlifts 160 5RM, Bench 100 5RM, Standing OH press 75 5RM, and power clean 95. I heard about some of your guys gaining up to 50 lbs in 2 months and raising their squats from 145 lbs to 310. I'm pretty sure my progress won't be that impressive but I hope it will be somewhat close. I'm thinking of doing GOMAD for 2 months, what do you think some good estimates for strength gain would be? Another thing is that today is my second day of GOMAD, yesterday it was terrible and I had the shits all day. Will this go away with time? Last thing is that I hear people saying that all GOMAD will do is make me fat. What are the usually fat to mass gain ratio?

Thanks a lot Rippe!

[thersites]

There will be an adjustment to eating a whole lot of just about any food, & this is true w/ GOMAD. Yes, you will gain a bit of fat with the muscle. If you are doing the lifting side properly, it shouldn't be too much, and you should be able to cut the gained fat fairly easily when you are finished your linear progression. No way to say what the ratio is, as there are a lot of variables (e.g., the rest of your diet, other activity, genetics,...). Just do the program, eat good food, do your GOMAD, and see how things go. You will be able to tweak things as you go and get the feedback of your progress & body changes. Progress slowing and you feel tired, you may need to up the calories & protein. Gaining a bit too much flab and making good progress on your lifts, then you can cut back a bit on the food. Give it a couple months before you start tweaking to get a feel for how things are going.

On the strength gain side, presuming you pay attention to your form and don't have any major form issues that cause a premature stall (e.g., when I was a novice, I discovered that I didn't have good lower back control, so I stalled early, had to figure out the problem, fix it, reset, and then progress continued), eat well and sleep well, you should see some impressive gains. 160 pound gains on the squat is good in the first 2 months. Don't be discouraged if you don't quite hit that. You don't know how you individually will respond to the program until you do it, and no one can give you guarantee ahead of time. You are in it, hopefully, for the long haul. If you only get 140 or 125 your first two months, so be it. You will be a lot stronger than you were, and if you keep at it, you will keep getting stronger for years to come. That is what it is all about.

Good luck!