Anyone have their Ph.D in muscle building?

This guy looks like how I felt trying to figure this stuff out...

Finding literature. Critiquing it. Gathering evidence. Asking the experts. Building an argument.

I feel like I'm writing a thesis all over again. Incredibly, this is the same process I have to subject myself to just to figure out what the hell the right way is to gain muscle mass.

I've made it my primary healthy living goal over the next little while to continue to gain muscle, which would be a lifelong dream fulfilled. So I set out to learn the best way to go about it to really see results. I thought this would be an easy, google-and-learn exercise. I would click the first link that came up and it would tell me what the most effective way is gain weight that's muscle, not fat. Well, it did, and I would have been satisfied to accept the logic and move on...if I hadn't clicked on the second link, where it told me almost the exact opposite thing. And then the third link. Different again. Soon I found myself drowning in a sea of strength training advice that left me with far more questions than I had answers. I even found myself suckered into watching a 30 minute  video that promised to clear up all of my confusion about weight training (it was so promising), only to have it turn out to be a promotional ad for some hard-gainer's book. A ridiculously long promotional ad, might I add. There's 30 minutes of my life I will never get back...

Anyway, I'm now of the opinion that common sense must prevail here. There are certain principles that seem to pop up repeatedly throughout all of this information. There must be a reason for that. And some things just plain sound right. (Yep, this is science at it's best, all right.)

So far, my favourite thing that I've learned is that it's not ideal to try to gain muscle mass and lose fat at the same time. I read this online last night, and it made me recall Eric (the Premier Fitness kinesiologist) telling me something similar. My fitness goal was to try to gain 6 pounds of muscle mass and lose 3 pounds of fat. But he had recommended I work on gaining the muscle mass as the first stage of my training, and then focus on losing the fat. This two-stage approach didn't really sink in at the time, but now that I've done more research, I think I kinda sorta get it. You need to eat MORE calories than usual while your body is trying to build muscle. You need to eat LESS calories than usual while your body is trying to burn fat. This quite obviously is contradictory. And while I guess it's hypothetically possible to gain muscle AND lose fat weight at the same time by increasing your calories while at the same time decreasing the amount of fat you're eating, in terms of diet, it would be like a complicated science equation trying to figure out how to get the right amount of nutrients to do both at once. Much easier to stick to one thing at a time.

Okay. So I'm supposed to eat more calories than usual then, since I'm in the muscle building phase. I get this. But how many calories? First of all, if we're comparing to my baseline here, eating the same diet as a regular 6-year-old boy would be getting more calories than usual for me, previously known as the one-meal-a-day wonder. My diet has been better since I've been eating healthy, but I still have no idea how many calories to actually aim for if I'm trying to gain muscle. I try some of these online calorie calculators. One tells me 2300 calories a day. I'm highly suspicious of this for myself, since I'm pretty sure I can eat about half of that on a typical day and maintain my weight. However, I'm fearful of not eating enough calories, because that would mean my weight lifting would amount to absolutely nothing. Plus, this recommendation matches up decently with the Canada Food Guide recommendation for my age/gender of 2100 calories a day. So I think I've decided to aim for that. It's not going to be easy. (I tried it today, and have literally been force-feeding myself from morning until night trying to get there.) But we'll see how it goes. I can always cut back if I start to notice the scale creeping up....

Now, the problem is this: how do I make sure all of these calories are turning into muscle and NOT fat? Well, working out enough is the first answer, I suppose. But if you think there's an easy answer here as to what constitutes "enough", you're kidding yourself, my friend. Some websites say 2 times a week is good, and overtraining will hinder your progress. Some say aim for 3-4, or you won't see results. Which is right? I have no idea. Best to aim for moderation in these guesstimate circumstances I say, so 3 will be my goal, plus maybe a day of cardio a week. (I've been doing about half and half to date, but something tells me it's making things more complicated in terms of that muscle-building-fat-losing balance, so I guess I'll put more emphasis on the weight training for now). Then we have the issue of what kinds of exercises to do, and how many. I keep reading that I should vary the exercises and amount of reps each time. Sigh. It's not good enough for my muscles that I'm working out...they need different kinds of challenges every day too? Demaaaanding. Either way, I should be lifting until "failure", which sounds depressing but actually just means you lift until your muscle literally gives out on you. (I would tend to want to call that "success"...just call me an eternal optimist.)

I also gather that eating the right kinds of calories is important too. This brings us back to my favourite topic: protein (which I lamented in a previous post). Protein is necessary for building muscle. This I get. Have to make sure I eat enough protein every day. However, the jury is still out on how much protein is enough protein. I easily ignore the advice from huge guy bodybuilding websites that tell me 250g should be my daily goal. That is just ridiculous, and obviously not bite-sized-person appropriate. But even the calculators differ greatly in what they're telling me. Some say it's a waste to aim for any more than 0.5-0.7g per pound of body weight every day, which is around 60-80g. Some say you need at least 1.1g/pound, which is over 120g. Good lord. Time to guesstimate again. I think I'll aim for around 80g for now, since I can't see myself successfully eating more than that anyway.

Then there's the issue of timing. When to eat? Most of these websites agree that 5-6 smaller meals a day is better than 3 big ones. Given my daily caloric intake, this must mean I should eat about 400-450 calories, 5 times a day. Another website told me I should be sure to fuel up with a meal about an hour before working out, and to eat after to give the body energy to start building it's muscle. *Shrugs* sounds good to me.

Apart from that, I guess basic nutrition prevails. Avoid processed foods. Eat vegetables. Get recommended daily amounts of carbohydrates, fats. Avoid saturated and trans. The common sense stuff.

This is all beautiful in theory. However, there is no way in god's good graces I'm going to be able to keep track of all of this every day, while still having time to pursue other things. So there's only one viable solution I can think of to this conundrum: I need a meal plan. Something that takes the thinking and planning out of doing this every day. A bunch of pre-thought-out, 400-calorie healthy food combinations that I can draw from to choose 5 every day. Something that will free up my life from this nutrition overload, while hopefully at the same time slowly taking me out of the realm of scrawniness, once and for all (in an ideal world).

Excellent. A new plan. I'm working on it. Will post them when I figure out what they are...

xo Janine