Hi comrades
I want to start handling my nutrition and fitness better. I usually work out at home and can do pushups etc., I would say I’m quite underweight.
While I’m reading the guide by CriticalResist on Prolewiki, I decided to count my calories. I barely reach 1500 calories a day which at this point I’ll go malnourished. I just feel full very quickly. I do not eat processed sugars and avoid sweets, and I’m basically vegan at this point.
I exercise too and can do push ups, squats etc with no problems whatsoever, though as expected I cannot build muscular mass, most likely because of my nutrition. I don’t have the money to go to a gym so I want as much as possible to work out at home, I saw that calisthenics might be a good option? Though they seem unreliable for building muscle mass and strength. I want to put more weight but not fatty weight, which had happened to me in the past. I do eat healthy, but I eat way too less because I feel I just get full quickly. This might be due that in the past I was overweight and conditioned myself to not eat much, but now I’m basically starving myself.
How would I go about increasing my caloric intake while putting muscle mass (preferably at home)?
- Do meal prep and eat more frequent meals
- When i was younger, I did Gallon of Milk a day (GoMad) with a weight lifting routine. I don’t recommend it, but I did gain 10 pounds! You could also do half a gallon a day. This is in addition to eating meals, not a replacement.
- It’s kinda hard to gain muscle without gaining at least SOME fat. You’re going to want to eat a decent amount of protein and add some healthy fats to your cooking (olive oil, etc). I really like curry or butter
chickentofu over whole grain pasta or with naan as a meal prep. Make a whole bunch of a dish and freeze all but three servings and bring them out of the freezer as needed. Lentils are very nutritious and cheap for adding to a flavorful soup/stew, I prefer them on the mushy side but some people prefer texture. - https://forum.bodybuilding.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8 has all kinds of routines and many are free. There should be some calisthenics-based plans. Or just search “calisthenic workout program no equipment”
- Straight-up just eat faster. The slower you eat, the more time your body has to send satiety signals.
While I see comments about cranking up protein intake, could I suggest a more moderate approach?
If you want to grow at a realistic rate, you don’t need that much excess food and only increasing protein won’t gain you much unless you have a big protein deficiency. Your metabolism can’t change so quickly to use extra without chemical enhancement.
You still need to moderately increase carbs and fats in a balance. You use carbs and fats to fuel your workouts which should be higher load to stimulate muscle growth. A lot of calisthenics is endurance-based which is not that suitable.
As you stated, you were overweight from overeating in the past. You only want to bump up your daily calorie intake slightly now rather than going crazy.
I.e. A 10% increase is 150 extra calories per day which is one small snack with a balance of macros. E.g. since you’re vegan maybe some humus on a slice of bread or similar.
Once you have that calorie excess, then you want to tune your workouts and your recovery time to stimulate growth.
Check out this article for a less protein heavy approach: https://physicalculturestudy.com/2020/03/13/mike-mentzer-the-essential-nutrients-heavy-duty-nutrition-1993-11-14-2/
You want to gain weight slowly but surely if you’re underweight. Since your muscle mass is low you may be insulin resistant and overeating may cause health problems. Avoid saturated fats, eat a moderate amount of carbs at every meal, and do 10-25 minutes easy to moderate physical activity like walking, light strength training exercises that are used in physical therapy, or housework after you eat, especially a big meal, to help move the nutrients into your tissue. Do do normal resistance training with heavy weights as well but increase the difficulty slowly and don’t do too much as you are probably deconditioned. Make sure to get enough rest and sleep as this is the time when your muscles grow.
Fat and carbohydrates are also necessary to help move the protein into place. I don’t recommend getting more than about 10 grams per day from protein powder as it can throw off your microbiome.
As for specific foods I recommend tempeh, olives, lentil soup, hemp seeds, and vollkornbrot. Eat fruits and vegetables too. And make sure to take your damn B12 supplements!
