If you are not gaining weight, perhaps it is your diet that needs more attention. If you are using HST and you are not gaining weight, it is definitely your diet. By "diet" I mean everything that you eat (or don't eat) in a day. This includes protein, fat, carbs, as well as protein supplements, fat supplements, and carbohydrate supplements. Let's break it down into bite size chunks and put together a Hypertrophy-Specific Nutrition plan.

When planning your meal(s), start with the nutrients most important to the body. There are 3 categories of essential nutrients namely, protein (essential amino acids), essential fats, and vitamins and minerals. If your goal is to build muscle tissue always start with calories, then protein, then essential fats, and then finish with vitamins, minerals and carbs.

CALORIES
At the simplest level, an excess of calories is required for the body to increase its fat-free/water-free mass. By excess we mean calories in excess of the body's daily caloric needs. Now, there are some of you who might have heard of people experiencing a simultaneous increase in muscle mass and loss of body fat. This DOES frequently happen while using HST, but it should not be your only measure of success. You will experience much more success by focusing your efforts either on gaining muscle, or losing body fat, rather than both at the same time. Trust me on this.

To determine your caloric needs you will need to use a calculation or formula. These formulas are a way of estimating your caloric needs, and although not perfectly exact, they will give you a very good idea of where to start.

Don't be turned off by the numbers either. You don't have to be a math wiz to do these simple calculations.

One abbreviation you will often see when taking about caloric needs is "BMR". This stands for Basal Metabolic Rate and is defined as the numbers of calories your body burns at rest during a 24-hour period. Ok then, with that out of the way, lets look at the formulas.

OPTIONAL FORMULA #1
The first formula is the simplest and least detailed. To find you Basal Metabolic Rate simply multiply your weight in pounds by 11-12. This will give you a range that your BMR should fall within. So, if you weight 220 pounds, it would look like this:

220 x 11 or 12 = 2420-2640 calories (BMR)

To gain weight, you have to eat more than your BMR though. In this case you should use 16 as the multiplying factor. So in order to gain weight use the following formula:

220 x 16 = 3520 calories (calories needed to gain weight)

OPTIONAL FORMULA #2
This formula requires more steps, but might be more accurate. You'll start by finding your BMR, then you will use an "activity factor" to figure out how many calories you need to gain weight.

So first, if needed, convert your weight in pounds into kilograms. This is done by dividing your weight in pounds by 2.2. So, using our same example of a 220 person:

220/2.2 = 100 kilograms

Now in order to find your BMR you need to multiply your weight in kilos by 24. So:

100 kilos x 24 hours = 2400 calories (BMR)

NOTE: Women will need to then multiply their BMR by 0.9. This accounts for the increased level of body fat for the average women. Any women with body fat percentages at or below 10% need not do this.

Because our BMR does not take into account our daily activity level, we must multiply our BMR by the activity factor. Here are the activity factors:

• Very active = 1.4 - 1.5 (Daily Intense exercise + construction work most of day)
• Active = 1.3 ­ 1.4 (Daily exercise + work on feet most of day)

• Light active = 1.1 - 1.2 (Regular Exercise 3 times/week + desk job or at home most of day)

• Sedentary = 1 (No exercise + desk job or at home most of day)

So, here is a summary of the steps in formula #2

Men:
1. Convert weight in pounds to kilograms
2. Multiply Weight in kilograms x 24 hours = BMR
3. BMR x Activity Factor = Daily Caloric Needs

Women:
1. Convert weight in pounds to kilograms
2. Weight in kilograms x 24 hours = BMR
3. BMR x 0.9 = adjusted BMR for women
4. Adjusted BMR x Activity Factor = Daily Caloric Needs

For our example 220-pound person formula #2 would work like this:

• 220lbs/2.2 = 100 kilograms
€ 100kg x 24 hours = 2400 calories (BMR)
€ 2400 calories x 1.2 = 2880 calories to maintain current weight
€ Now to gain weight, I will need to add between 500-600 calories per day. This gives a grand total of 3380-3480 calories per day to gain weight, according to formula #2.

As you can see, the two formulas give you pretty much the same number of calories needed to gain weight. In my personal opinion it doesn't matter which formula you use, just as long as you are willing to adjust it as necessary. If after 4 weeks you begin to gain too much fat, you better reduce the calories. On the other hand, if no weight is gained, you'll need to increase the calories. The formulas simply give us a good starting point.

Before moving on to breaking calories down into protein carbs and fat, let me remind you of the impact of previous caloric restriction on your body's metabolism. If you have been "semi-dieting" for some time prior to deciding to gain weight, your body will be accustomed to fewer calories than your "normal" BMR. This will throw off your calculations a bit. The numbers the formulas give you will over estimate your caloric needs if you have been dieting prior to your diet change.

If you have been dieting, first plan to eat the calculated BMR for at least 2 weeks prior to increasing your calories to "weight gain" levels. You may find you begin to gain weight even on your calculated BMR, or at least experience an increase in resting body temp. Let your body readjust your BMR to your calculated BMR before upping the calories. After 4 weeks, then go ahead and work your way up to 500-600 calories above your calculated maintenance calories. Once again, trust me on this.

MACRONUTRIENTS
Because calories are made up of protein, fat, and carbohydrates, we will now take a look at where your calories should come from to gain muscle.

PROTEIN (Protein provides 4 calories per gram)
Plan on eating 0.8-1 gram protein per pound bodyweight. Most people usually shoot for 1 gram/pound body weight because it's an easy rule to remember.

First choose a lean protein source such as fish or boneless skinless chicken breast. These are only examples however, any lean meat or protein supplement will do. Beef is just fine as well, just make sure you trim all visible fat, and only use the leanest ground beef.

Allocate a portion suitable for your particular nutrition plan and caloric needs. A good place to start per meal would be 4 ounces, or a portion about the size of the palm of your hand. Meat will have about 4-5 grams protein per ounce before cooking. If you weigh it after cooking it will have about 6-7 grams protein per ounce.

For our ongoing 220-pound example person, this would mean 175-220 grams protein per day. This comes to 880 calories if we give him 1-gram protein per pound of bodyweight. So subtracting this from our goal of 3500 calories we have 2620 more calories we'll need to get from fat and carbs.

FAT (Fat provides 9 calories per gram)
Next decide where your essential fats will come from and how much you'll need. Keep in mind that not all fats contribute to body fatness to the same extent. In other words, good fats can actually prevent fat gain, whereas saturated and hydrogenated fats encourage fat storage even on fewer calories.

Essential fats lacking in most diets are omega-3 fatty acids. These can be found in fish, or various plant sources such as walnuts or flax oil. If you are looking just to get pure omega-3s (EPA & DHA), plan to get 3-4 grams per day. If you don't eat much fish, this will require a fish oil supplement. If you use flax oil, take about 1 tablespoon per 100 pounds bodyweight. If you chose to use flax oil . . .

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