Thank You

If I could boil it down to ONE dietary tip, it would be to make sure you hit appropriate macronutrient targets. In other words, get enough protein, carbohydrate, and fat (by default, you’ll be getting enough calories). Once again, it’s very difficult to present one thing, since there are a multitude of nutritional factors involved with muscle growth

Seek an approach that results in consistency before optimality

Hypertrophy is maximized by training with high volumes, but consistently training with high volumes brings about overtraining. The best solution is to periodize so that volume is progressively increased over the course of a training cycle, with deload periods selectively interspersed to facilitate optimal recovery.

However, if your real motivation has more to do with getting that new coworker in the cubicle down the aisle to finally notice you, if/when that fails to win her attention, it may cause you to lose focus and interest in a failing strategy to a goal that you yourself hadn’t recognized. Spending another Friday night watching a Power Puff Girls binge marathon on Netflix might suck, but wasting away all of the time and effort that you had put in for months in the gym is a far greater loss. So why would you lie to yourself in the first place? Your brain’s strategy in life is very much like your facebook page: in social settings, we are more successful if we project positive traits to others that will gain social standing and adoration from those around us, even if it may in fact be a facade – everyone’s life looks better on facebook, right? Evolutionarily, lying to others to appear more impressive might have backfired – people are fine-tuned to catch liars in the act, causing the liar shame and social exclusion.

The most important thing that anyone can do to put on lean mass is to find a process they love. Not to find the quickest way, not to find the easiest way, but to find a practical way that appeals to their preferences. When someone purely enjoys the daily training and collects applicable data, they can ensure continued progress by simply showing up and putting in the work. This is why adherence to a decent program is far more effective than inconsistency with the “perfect” program. When you lose the joy, you gain frustration, which leads to impatience and unnecessary changes in training. So stick with what you like, consume enough food, and just keep having fun.

Save the neurotic micro-managing for pre-contest, and don’t stress the little things in the offseason. Daily energy expenditure is variable (5-10%), which means stressing over a few grams of fat or protein won’t truly impact your physique, but it may drive you crazy. Long-term success is a function of longevity, consistency, and adherence, and doing all you can to make these things easier will allow you to summate small gains over time.

To me, the key point is to expand your metabolic flexibility – your ability to burn fat at low intensity and use carbs at higher intensities (such as weight training). This allows you the best of both worlds – to use more fat at rest and carbs during your intense training for better performance (and thus more stimulation for muscle).