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2002/11/25, 11:57 AM
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, make sure to read my personal note after the end of the article. It is VERY important!
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The truth about how to gain weight...
With the mass of conflicting opinions, weight gain supplements, and "secret" Bulgarian training programs, it's no wonder many people are confused about how to gain weight.
Gain weight
Unfortunately, when you're trying to figure out how to gain weight, it's easy to ignore the most important limiting factor — your genetics. Specifically, scientists have isolated one particular gene that, through a protein called myostatin, actually slows your rate of muscle growth.
Not only does myostatin affect how fast you gain weight, studies on mice show that it can also slow the gain in fat that normally occurs as you get older.
Myostatin is expressed in developing and mature muscle tissue. A specific gene encodes for the transcription of the myostatin protein, which is a "negative regulator" of muscle growth. In simple terms, if you want to gain weight in the form of muscle, the less myostatin the better.
Much of the early research on myostatin has been conducted in animals. In mice where myostatin has been "knocked out", individual muscles weigh twice as much as those of normal mice. This increase in muscle size seems to be a combination of muscle fiber hyperplasia (an increase in the number of muscle fibers) and hypertrophy (an increase in the size of those fibers).
Muscle growth
More interesting still, researchers from the University of Maryland have shown that myostatin affects muscle growth in women too. The study tracked a group of men and women taking part in a weight training program for nine weeks. Muscle growth in the quadriceps (the set of muscles in the front of your thigh) was measured at the end of the study.
Analyzing the results, the research team found that myostatin genotype didn't appear to be responsible for the different rates of muscle growth between men and women (the increase in muscle volume in the thigh was twice as great in the men). However, when only the women were analyzed, muscle growth in those with the less common myostatin genotype was almost 70% greater.
Variations in myostatin genotype could explain why some people gain weight in the form of muscle far more quickly than others. Muscle fibers in elite bodybuilders, for example, are often no bigger than someone who has never picked up a barbell in their life. Their muscles are larger because they contain a greater number of small to average sized fibers.
Hyperplasia (remember, hyperplasia describes an increase in the number, rather than the size of muscle fibers) may be more likely to occur in bodybuilders with a less common myostatin genotype. This could be one of the reasons — apart from drugs — they gain weight so quickly. Of course, we'll need more studies with larger numbers in each genotype group to figure out whether this is true. However, these results do show that genetic variations between individuals do have a big influence on muscle growth.
The bottom line is that many of the "extreme" physiques you see in the magazines are far more likely to be the result of favorable genetics than the particular training program or food supplement they claim to be using.
Reference
Ivey, F.M., Roth, S.M., Ferrell, R.E., Tracy, B.L., Lemmer, J.T., Hurlbut, D.E., Martel, G.F., Siegel, E.L., Fozard, J.L., Jeffrey Metter, E., Fleg, J.L., & Hurley, B.F. (2000). Effects of age, gender, and myostatin genotype on the hypertrophic response to heavy resistance strength training. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 55, M641-M648
www.thefactsaboutfitness.com
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READ!
Now having read that article, DO NOT rush out and buy those anti-Myostatin products. You'll notice that myostatin production is a genetic thing - no supplement can alter your genetics. The products that claim to be myostatin inhibitors claim to 'block' this myostatin protein. I can assure you that the likelyhood of that happening due to something you ingest is next to zero. The active ingredient in those supplements will never make it past your stomache. Again, DO NOT buy those products, they are expensive and they DO NOT work!
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"Don't follow leaders and watch your parking meters!"
-- Bob Dylan
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2002/11/25, 12:08 PM
While on the topic of gaining mass, here's a good read (over at johnberardi.com)
When to bulk up and when to cut down
Q: One big debate in bodybuilding is whether one should bulk up first and then cut down, or whether one should cut down first and then bulk up? Which do you think is better?
A: Most popular opinions on this topic suggest that the best way to get the ideal physique (big AND ripped) is to bulk up first and then try to diet down. The proponents of this strategy suggest that in bulking up, you will be adding muscle mass. They further state that this muscle mass will be helpful, metabolically speaking, when you go to diet down. Since muscle is the engine that burns fat, doesn't it make sense that with a bigger engine you will burn more fuel and will get leaner much easier?
Well, although it makes sense intuitively, I'd like to present some data and an argument that may lead you to rethink this strategy. I pretty much want to propose that the simplistic idea of bulking up before cutting down is a relatively useless one. It doesn't take into account how much muscle and fat you have already. I mean, what if you're 15-20% body fat but only weigh 160 at a height of 6 ft.? This is a relatively low ratio of lean body mass to fat mass. So should you still "bulk up" to gain some muscle and metabolic power before you try to get lean? The answer to this question and a few more will be addressed below.
Before I talk about this issue though, I want to clearly state that I doubt there ever will be a legitimate research study examining this question in healthy male and female weightlifters. I just can't picture the National Institutes of Health (NIH) throwing big research dollars at a project designed to figure out how to make already muscular men and women bigger and more ripped. They tend to fund studies that aim at curing cancer and heart disease and stuff like that. So this question will probably never be answered scientifically. But using some other literature, we can come to some pretty cool conclusions.
The data I'm about to present isn't really new. However, for some reason this information hasn't trickled down into the bodybuilding community as of yet. And I'm not sure as to why. I guess it's probably due to the dogmatic approach of most weight lifters who are guided by tradition rather than objective science. Geez, I'm starting to sound like the late Mike Mentzer, aren't I?
Anyway, while ignored in weight lifting, researchers have known for years that one of the biggest determinants of your muscle loss to fat loss ratio (when dieting) and your muscle gain to fat gain ratio (when bulking up) is your initial level of body fatness. Basically the amount of body fat that you have (percentage and total pounds of fat) will be a major determinant of how your body responds to over eating or under eating.
Several studies have been done to explore this phenomenon and G.B. Forbes has compiled the results of these investigations into one review article (Ann N Y Acad Sci 2000 May;904:359-65). For organizational purposes, I've split the results up into a weight loss experiment section and a weight gain experiment section.
Weight Loss Experiments
In several experiments, subjects were underfed to varying degrees in order to produce weight loss. Here are the results of these experiments
Subjects were given the following three hypocaloric diets to produce weight loss:
Diet #1 - 0-450 kcal/day
Diet #2 - 500-1000 kcal/day
Diet #3 - 1000+ kcal/day
The interesting results of this study show that at the same calorie levels, the fatter subjects kept more muscle and lost more fat.
Let's look at the numbers:
Initial Body Fat Caloric Intake Lean Mass Lost
(% of Weight Lost) Fat Lost
(% of Weight Lost)
20 kg (44 lbs) Lowest 60% 40%
20 kg (44 lbs) Higher 20% 80%
60 kg (132 lbs) Lowest 35% 75%
60 kg (132 lbs) Higher 10% 90%
I hope it's clear from this table that eating a diet too few in calories causes a substantial LBM (lean body mass) loss, while eating a higher calorie (but still hypocaloric diet) preserves more lean mass. In addition, it's especially interesting to note that the fatter subjects on both the higher calorie and the lower calorie diets have a remarkable shift in the muscle loss to fat loss ratio toward more fat loss and less muscle loss. This shift is especially striking in comparison to what happens when their leaner counterparts diet.
Several other studies show that this phenomenon is not exclusive to humans. It is also present in fasting and hibernating mammals:
Initial Body Fat Caloric Intake Lean Mass (% of Weight Lost) Lost Fat Lost (% of Weight Lost)
10% fat None 80% 20%
30% fat None 40% 60%
50% fat None 18% 82%
Since all of the above studies were done in non-exercise trained humans and mammals, further studies were done to determine the effects exercise on weight loss. If exercise is used in place of, or in addition to calorie restriction or fasting, more lean body mass is preserved than if there was no exercise. However the same trends are evident in that the fatter individuals preserve more lean mass while the leaner individuals lose more lean mass.
Now that you've seen these data, I think that the take-home message for dieting should be as follows.
1. Always use exercise in conjunction with diet to promote loss of fat and preservation of lean mass.
2. Always consider your initial body fat before deciding how severe your diet should be.
3. When starting a diet with a high level of body fat, your diet can be more restrictive and/or severe since you will lose the fat preferentially.
4. As you diet and get leaner, you should adjust your calorie deficit so that it is actually smaller. So if you start a diet eating 1000 calories below maintenance, as you get leaner, your daily deficit should decrease to 500 calories per day.
5. If you don't decrease your calorie deficit as you lose fat, you will begin to lose an unacceptable amount of lean mass.
Weight Gain Experiments
In several experiments, subjects were overfed to varying degrees in order to produce weight gain. Here are the results of these experiments, which have shown that when overfed, initial body fat level is also important:
Initial Body Fat Caloric Intake Lean Mass Gained (% of Weight Gained) Fat Gained (% of Weight Gained)
10 kg (22 lbs) Overfeeding 70% 30%
20 kg (44 lbs) Overfeeding 30% 70%
40 kg (88 lbs) Overfeeding 20% 80%
These striking differences in the ratio of LBM gained to fat gained illustrate the need to start an overeating phase while lean. In the leanest subjects, there was a 2 1/3 pound muscle gain for every 1 pound of fat gained. However, for the fatter subjects, 4 pounds of fat were gained for every 1 pound of muscle gained.
From these overfeeding studies, it's clear that lean individuals gain less fat and more muscle when overfeeding when compared to their fatter counterparts. Since these subjects were not exercise trained, adding exercise would have probably lead to a shift toward more muscle gain with less fat gain. Exercise has a nutrient partitioning effect, shuttling nutrients preferentially toward the lean tissues. As such, you'd expect more lean gain during exercise training and overfeeding. However, either way, the trends would probably remain and fatter subjects would gain more fat during overfeeding than lean individuals.
One of the coolest things about this article is that a predicative equation was generated that allows us to calculate the amount of muscle and the amount of fat that we can expect to gain, based on our initial fat weight. Check it out.
Lean Mass Gain / Weight Gain = 10.4 / (10.4 + initial fat weight (kg) )
In addition, this very same equation is valid when dieting for the prediction of muscle loss and fat loss.
Lean Mass Loss / Weight Loss = 10.4 / (10.4 + initial fat weight (kg) )
While not flawless, these equations are handy tools for estimating how much LBM and fat you may gain or lose when underfeeding or overfeeding. In addition, they allow us to decide whether it's a good time to try to bulk up or not.
Therefore, for someone who is 92 kg (200 lbs) and 5% body fat (4.6kg fat), about 70% of the weight gained during an overfeeding phase can be expected to be lean body mass (10.4 divided by 10.4 plus 4.6 is equal to 0.70), while the remaining 30% is expected to be fat weight. However in someone who is 92kg and 10% body fat (9.2kg of fat), 53% of weight gained will be lean body mass.
Keep in mind that the opposite is also true. If you're 92 kg (200 lbs) and 5% body fat (4.6% fat), about 70% of the weight lost during a dieting phase can be expected to be lean body mass.
So perhaps a good idea is to only overfeed when relatively lean and to diet hard only when over fat. If you're 200 lbs and around 10-15% body fat, these equations predict that about half the weight you gain will be fat and half will be muscle. If you try to gain when fatter than 15%, much of the weight you gain will be fat mass.
I must offer a word of caution, though. Remember that these equations were mostly generated using diet alone. The addition of weight training and cardio would have changed things up a bit. In addition, these numbers may be different if supplements are used. Some supplements change nutrient partitioning parameters (alpha-lipoic acid, fish oils, presumably Methoxy-7, etc); others preserve lean body mass when dieting (ephedrine, caffeine, etc); and others increase protein synthesis (anabolic steroids and androgens). Any of these factors can change the exact ratios.
However, as I said before, the basic principles remain. When dieting, the leaner you get, the less your calorie deficit should be or else you'll lose more LBM than necessary. And, when bulking up, your best bet is to start lean, as most of the weight you gain will be LBM. If you start fat, much of your weight gain will be fat gain.
Although this was a roundabout way of answering your question, the bottom line is that it looks like it is better to diet down first then bulk up rather than the other way around.
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If the formatting is off, you can read it here: http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/qa/afc_jul272001.htm - its the last Q/A.
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2002/11/25, 12:22 PM
Great post Neptune...just so happens to be something I am in total agreement with!!
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2002/11/25, 12:28 PM
Thanks bb1fit!
I find almost all of Berardi's articles quite interesting reads (to say the least); he seems to know what he's talking about.
I'm glad I came across it last year. I was going to start as most do - with the bulking up phase, even though my BF% wasn't ideal. After reading that article, I decided to cut that down first during the summer and now I've started on the bulking phase.
Still a relative newbie though, but I'm reading and learning a lot!
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2002/11/26, 11:46 AM
Berardi's a smart guy. The guy's got a deathwish for milk, though. It must have wronged him as a child.
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"Don't follow leaders and watch your parking meters!"
-- Bob Dylan
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2002/11/26, 11:53 AM
LOL yes I've noticed that also. Although I doubt he has anything against milk personally. He's very scientific in his work, so he's being cautious with the milk recommendations due to lactose-intolerances.
Milk's never bothered me; I take it in the morning with my cereal and with my nightly protein supplement. In fact, Berardi himself says if you can handle milk - then by all means...
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