Health  Eating 3000 calories a day and still not gaining weight...

So I've been eating 3000 calories for a couple months now, and still haven't gained any weight. The BMR says I need at least 2500 calories to gain weight yet I've gained nothing. Bit worried that I've got a metabolic disorder and that all that money spent on food and all those hours spent in the gym trying to put on muscle is actually the biggest waste of time and money that I've ever had to go through. I sleep 8-9 hours every night, I drink enough water, during my workouts I do sets of 8-12 reps with decent form (my trainer looked at my form and said there was nothing wrong with it) and I eat 3000 calories consistently every day yet have seen no increase of my weight and not putting on any muscle. I eat totally clean with good quality carbs, protein every day. I really don't know what to do. Any ideas as to what I can do?

K.M.,

Eat more.

For anyone, based on a certain amount of daily calories consumed, 1 of 3 things happens:
-You lose weight
-Your weight stays constant
-You gain weight

Since your weight is staying constant, you found your "maintenance" weight. Increase by another 500 calories, wait about 3 weeks. If you're still not gaining weight, increase by another 500 calories, wait 3 weeks, etc.

Make sure you're actually tracking what you're eating (a lot of new guys vastly over/under estimate what they eat). And 3000 calories really isn't necessarily that much depending on your lifestyle. You can write up what you eat in a typical day here and I, or one of the other guys, can critique it.

-John

I feel you man I am in such a similar situation that it's actually weird. I have been eating very clean 3,000 kcal per day for about 6 months with consistent training and have been maintaining the same weight. Granted, my abs have started showing and my biceps are more toned but nothing substantial. Have you noticed fat loss?
I think we are both in the middle condition where you can actually replace fat with muscle but it takes so much time and the changes are so subtle that you think you are stagnant. For me I have already increased my calories to 3,200 kcal and see where it will get me if I don't gain muscle with that then I will be desperate because I am already full practically all day because to get so many clean calories it's a lot of food , I am sure you know. Also, how tall are you and how much do you weigh? I am asking because I am 6.2'' 78 kgs and I find it very strange that I need to eat that much for maintainance. If I ever get to 90 kgs how much will I have to eat? 5,000 kcal/day?

6 foot 2, 73 kg. My weight has totally stalled for the last year. Yes it's getting to the point now where I'm thinking is it worth all that time and effort and all that money for such little returns? Am going to up my calories to 3500 calories but if that's not going to work I'm seriously going to be thinking is it worth even carrying on? I mean at least in music and seduction if you put in huge amounts of effort you will see noticeable improvement but with bodybuilding it's ridiculous how little gains you get from so much effort and time/money invested. Had a conversation with my dad the other day. He used to eat shitloads when he was younger and but just couldn't gain weight. I asked him what he thought about that concept of gaining weight just being a case of taking in more calories than you burn off and what he said kind of scared me a little. He said that those excess calories, instead of storing them, they just go straight through you and the body just shits them out. So you could take in 10, 000 calories a day but instead of putting on weight the body would just shit out those extra 7,5000 calories. Now that doesn't happen with mesomorphs and endomorphs but with ectomorphs like myself maybe we're just a different body type so instead of storing those calories the body just shits them out. What do you think?

I used to be scrawny. I graduated highschool at 140 pounds at 6 foot and that was after lifting weights consistently! I put on 30 pounds of muscle in one year (people didn't even recognize me) after finally manning up and eating like it was my job. The old bodybuilding saying is very true, "There's no such thing as a 'hard gainer', only 'under eaters' ".

If you eat more, of course you'll crap more, but you'll also absorb a ton more calories and nutrients that you need to grow. If the scale isn't going up, you're not eating enough. It's simple.

So, what you guys are saying is that putting on muscle takes hard work and discipline?

Wow! Who knew?

Problemsolving -

Cool, how many calories of food were you eating a day which made you put on those 30 pounds of muscle?

It was over 3000cals. If I want to gain weight at my current weight now, it has to be closer to 4000cals. It's not very hard to reach your goals if you're eating a lot of calorie dense foods. 1 tablespoon of olive oil is 120 calories. If you're eating 4 meals a day, throw in a tablespoon of olive oil to each meal, and you're getting an extra 480 calories a day with minimal effort.

Fat is your friend if you're trying to gain weight. Fat contains 9 cals/g, while protein and carbs contain 4 cals/g.

One other item I'll toss in:

You should really be focused on gaining strength and going up in weights, killerman.

If you are lifting increasingly heavier weights, your muscles will grow to accommodate this. And your weight, due to larger and denser muscle tissue, will increase.

A note of caution on weight-gaining is that it's important to differentiate between gaining fat weight and putting on muscle. I was stick-thin until university (I'd even had to go to doctors when younger because I was losing weight at times I was supposed to be gaining), and then I hit the gym and started eating tons and pounding protein shakes like nobody's business. I gained a bunch of muscle but also put on a lot of fat weight too. By the time I graduated from university, I was proud of my muscles but unaware I'd gained so much fat weight. Americans never pointed it out to me. It wasn't until I started hanging out with internationals who were not politically correct and weren't afraid to point it out to me ("Look at that belly you have going on! Oh my God!") that I realized I was a solid 20 or 25 lbs. overweight and had to start slimming down for the first time in my life.

Once I started slimming down, I discovered I was still able to continue gaining muscle size and strength even after I'd slashed my calories in half and began losing about a pound a week. It's hard to say exactly how many calories any given guy needs since metabolisms are different and activity levels are different, but you probably don't need to put yourself on the Michael Phelps diet to gain weight... so long as you're eating enough calories that you make strength gains from lifting hard and well.

Chase