Not gaining weight....still eating like a pig!

(Serge De Gosson De Varennes) #1

Hi there!

I have a problem which I seem to be unable to resolve. First some background: I am 47, years old, I am 178 cm long, have 7% fat (I have no intention on putting on more) and 65 kg. I started exercising intensively about 6 month ago and have lost 20 kg in that time by dieting (as I undertand it, I am using some kind of ketogenic intermittent fasting).
I train 4-5 times a week for 2 hours as I want to build musclesand I am seeing some pretty good results. These results could be far better given how much I train IF I gained weight. But it doesn’t matter how much I eat, it never seems to be enough. Now, I never eat sweets, pizza, white bread, fatty food but loads of proteins and vegetables (occasionally some rice or potatoe). I count approximately 2700 kcal per day but I am going nowhere.

Basically, what am I doing wrong? Also, I refuse to eat anything that will immediately give me belly fat.

Thank you for your insight!

Serge

(Ken) #2

You should first determine what your current macros are. It sounds like you’re eating mainly protein, so much of your energy is coming from gluconeogenesis with protein as the substrate. Not ideal for adding muscle. If you want to do a keto bulk, limit protein to 2 g per kg of LBM, eat your other meals following the 60/35/5% fat based macro, and eat some simple carbs (dextrose/glucose) immediately before and after your training. Initially 20g before and 40g afterwards, making sure not to eat a fat based meal until at least two hours after your post training carbs to avoid a large insulin spike. You can adjust your training time carbs upwards after a few weeks, to see if it helps. Ideally, you should also do a 36 hr glycogen recompensation each week. Make sure you take good measurements to know exactly where any gains are being added. One pound or less of muscle gain per week is reasonable.

There’s much more specific info found over on the keto sub forum on Bodybuilding.com

(Annika) #3

Well, I don´t think 2700 is that much if you are training hard for 2 hours almost every day. And with ketogenic food you will definitly not gain weight. But I guess you want to gain muscle weight witch needs a bit of work when you are in ketosis but sure is Worth it. There is a lot of things you can do to boost up muscles using insulinlevels to your advantage.

(KCKO, KCFO) #4

Sounds like ketogains would be useful to you if you haven’t found them yet, here is a link to that website. The keto calculator is a very good one.