Nutritional Status Quo

[Robert Santana]

Hard gainers may have more brown adipose tissues, which contains more uncoupling proteins, meaning that most of the calories are liberated as heat. This means as they eat more they burn more. Takes a LOT of food for guys like this to gain weight and their metabolic rate may up-regulate with an increase in food intake. They typically are long limbed and tend to feel hot all of the time. It's quite an interesting phenomena.

[Devyn Stewart]

Interesting! Well, I'm definitely not long limbed for a 6'3" guy. If it tells you anything, it took me eating 4800 calories to get to 235. I would say I'm a pretty warm guy as well. Hopefully if that's the case, my metabolic rate won't down-regulate with a decrease in intake!

[Robert Santana]

You may have some brown fat still hanging out in there. Should make cutting easy whenever you have to do that! As long as you train you shouldn't have any excess adaptive thermogenesis. In general, as you gain weight you burn more calories (most of the time). Then as you lose you burn fewer. Multiple reasons but a combination fo moving less weight around, smaller thermic effect of food, and adaptive thermogenesis. Maintenance ultimately depends on how much you weigh, how much you move, and how much you eat. As long as you don't down regulate to 1500 calories you should be golden :-)

[Mike Longnecker]

This is a very good read.
I have always thought I was an easy gainer until I started working where I do. I walk 10-12 miles at work 3-4 days a week. At 6'4" with a bf around 20-22 percent, what is your guess that this kind of activity does to my calorie expenditure?

[Mike Longnecker]

To risk not sounding like an idiot. 220 and 6'4" is underweight and skinny fat. I have always just been on the chubby side.

[Robert Santana]

This is a very good read.
I have always thought I was an easy gainer until I started working where I do. I walk 10-12 miles at work 3-4 days a week. At 6'4" with a bf around 20-22 percent, what is your guess that this kind of activity does to my calorie expenditure?

This is one of those situations where the amount of walking will meaningfully impact energy expenditure. How much do you weigh?

[Mike Longnecker]

223 currently. Been fighting tooth and nail for every pound. Started at 203 in July with LP. I have recently added a scoop of mass gainer (650 calories 120 carbs) to my daily intake to try to help. I feel immensely better throughout the week because of it and my lifts are improving again. I'm not going to be able to afford a bag of that every month and 2 scoops of whey a day for long though.

[Robert Santana]

I'm gonna nerd out here for you guys to bear with me.

So if you are a 223 lb (~101.5 kg) and a typical brisk walk has an energy cost of ~2-3 metabolic equivalent (MET), then you are using up ~7.0-10.5 mL of oxygen/kg/min. This converts into 710-1065 mL/min or 0.710-1.065 L of oxygen/min. There are typically ~4.6-5.0 kcal/liter of O2 depending on your respiratory exchange ratio (RER; CO2/O2). You can get the specifics of all of this from my Calories article here . At lower intensities, this number will be closer to 4.6 kcal/L and at higher it will be closer to 5.0 kcal/L. For our purposes we'll just use 5 kcal/L for simplicity sake.

So if you take your range of oxygen uptake values of 0.710-1.065 L/min and multiply them by 5 kcal/L you get 3.55-5.325 kcal/min. Since you walk for 180-240 minutes per day (assuming a continuous 3 mph pace), you are expending as low as 639 calories or as high as 1,278 calories. Now we know you have breaks, and oxygen uptake varies, and you may be at a lower intensity at certain points of the day than others so we'll assume you are probably expending somewhere between 500 and 1000 calories from walking most days of the week.

Doesn't sound like much but then you have to account for the energy cost of being alive, which accounts for ~60% of your TDEE, the thermic effect of food, which is another ~15%, and your training. This can add up pretty quick so it makes a lot of sense why a 650 calorie mass gainer is helping you feel better and keep the weight on or even add more :-). Funny how that works right?

[Mike Longnecker]

Wow. Now that's a response.
With 12.5 hour shifts and depending on the day some days are easy and some I literally never stop that makes perfect sense.
Thanks Robert!

[Robert Santana]

You are welcome!