1.)Are you eating enough? You need atleast 20 calories per pound of body weight to gain mass. So if you are 150 lbs., you need atleast 3000 calories per day.
2.)Seperate your meals throughout the day. Don't just load up 3000 calories in the morning because it'll just become fat. Seperate your meals and eat 6-8 times a day.
3.)Eat most of your carbs in the morning and in between workouts. Eat quality carbs like whole-wheat bread and oatmeal. Only time you want to eat starchy carbs like white bread is the 2 hours frame right after a workout. Starchy carbs help you recover fast from working out, and will not convert into fat.
4.)I usually don't keep count of my fat/protein/carbs ratio. I am a very busy person and a lot of things to do. I can't sit down and write out what I ate and carefully jot down the nutrition facts. There are good fat and bad fat to eat. Good fat is something like peanut butter and olive oil. Always look for the Total Fat and Saturated Fat. If the total fat is like 10g Fat and saturated fat is like 1g saturated fat, then that is a good ratio of unsaturated fat. I eat about 70-90g of fat per day with roughly 10-12g of saturated fat. And ALWAYS stay away from trans fat!
5.)About half an hour before working out, have a protein shake with bananas and plain whole-wheat toast. They give great energy, and good for your muscles. Don't work out in a full stomach (ex. right after lunch) or on an empty stomach. They both will slow your metabolism down, and working out on an empty stomach will end up eating your muscles up for energy.
6.)Right after workout, drink a protein shake, have a couple slices of white bread, oatmeal, and fat-free chocolate milk. If you can, an hour later go for rice with chicken breast or fish.
7.)You see that on tip #6 there is nothing that has a lot of fat. Fat slows your protein and carb intake, so taking in more than 6+ grams of fat within 2 hours after working out is a bad idea. Even though some fats are good like olive oil, you still want to stay away for now.
8.)When working out, do compound exercises like Bench Press, Squats, Deadlifts, Pullups, Shoulder Presses. I see a lot of skinny people going for bicep curls and a little bit of tricep workouts, but that is why they don't get big! To gain mass, you must lift very heavy weights that let you do 5-8 reps in a set. 5 sets of 5-8 reps is ideal for gaining mass. Make sure you rest about 2-3 minutes each heavy sets to recover. To get big, you must let your body rest, and that means after you bench press one day don't work out your chest again for another 4+ days.
9.)Sleep! Most people don't even sleep more than 6 hours a night. To gain quality mass you must let your body rest, which means you need to sleep 8+ hours a day. This might sound unreasonable because everybody has a busy life. Atleast try for 7 hours of sleep.
10.)I almost forgot about your protein intake. Just because protein is good for your body doesn't mean you should take in thousands of grams of proteins a day. Take 1 to 1.5 grams per body weight per day. So like if you are 150 lbs., take roughly 150-225 grams of protein per day.
I hope I didn't leave anything out. Thanks for reading my article.
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