Weight gain

While most of my clients are interested in fat loss, some are interested in weight gain. Beginners can easily gain muscle while on a caloric deficit or maintenance, but this becomes increasingly harder as you get more experienced. In order to gain muscle, you need to gain weight. This is often called a massing or bulking phase.

In order to gain weight, the framework and principles described here for fat loss all apply - just in reverse.

Just like you want the lowest calories possible for the greatest amount of volume, in a muscle gain phase, if you are having difficulty reaching your caloric intake, you want the highest calories possible for the lowest amount of volume.

Below is an example of how a meal can be adapted depending on one's goals. Here are two different recipes that I like to do for overnight oats, one for dieting and another one for maintenance or bulking.

Diet overnight oats:

• Oats: 25g (95 cals)

• Puffed rice: 25g (90 cals)

• Almond milk: 50ml (10 cals)

• Water: 200ml (0 cals)

• Casein: 30g (105 cals)

• Skyr 0% fat: 200g (123 cals)

• Powdered peanut butter: 10g (41 cals)

Total: 463 calories, 51p/51c/5f

These oats are delicious! Because of the casein, they are very creamy and thick. And because of the puffed rice and the amount of liquid, they are also quite high in volume and fill my entire jar.

Bulk overnight oats:

• Oats: 75g (283 cals)

• Granola: 75g (319 cals)

• Whole Milk: 300ml (183 cals)

• Whey: 20g (80 calories)

• Peanut butter: 40g (239cals)

Total: 1106 calories, 50p/117c/51f

These are also very tasty but of course, vastly different in calories and macros. They're not a world apart in terms of their core: they're both a cold oat/cereal-based breakfast with a hint of peanut butter with some protein powder added for extra protein.

But because of what we used, the results are massively different. And surprisingly, you don't get that much volume from this despite being more than twice the caloric content. For example, the granola used has a similar volume to the puffed rice in the diet recipe, but they are 3 times as caloric!

It's also a good example of how "healthy recipes" can be misleading for fat loss. None of the ingredients here is "junk food", and it's a pretty healthy meal compared to people's typical breakfast. A person that doesn't track calories could easily do this recipe, think it's a good healthy meal for fat loss, but unknowingly 1000 calories as their first meal, roughly a medium-sized pizza!

I love overnight oats and hence this example, but you can do many variations. And this can be applied to any dish. When dieting, try to minimize calories and increase the volume. While bulking, do the opposite!

Here is another example:

• Chicken breast: 100g (173 cals)

• Rice: 150g (195 cals)

• Spinach: 150g (46 cals)

• Olive oil: 6g (50 cals)

Total: 467 cals, 40p, 50c, 11f

Now let's adapt it to something more caloric with a similar set-up:

• Steak: 150g (375 cals)

• Rice: 250g (390 cals)

• Spinach: 100g (23 cals)

• Olive oil: 20g (176 cals)

Total: 964 cals, 51p, 88c, 43f

Again a similar structure, with some meat, rice and vegetables. But with some modifications, vastly different macros.

And this is trying to make very similar meals for illustration purposes. In many cases, you can do vastly different meals where the contrast is much bigger.