A (Former) Skinny Twerp's Guide to Bulking

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If you're naturally skinny, have a small appetite, and are struggling to gain weight while lifting, then this is the guide for you.

If you ask most gym-goers for advice they'll say "Bro, just eat more, it's that simple!"

Well, maybe it is that simple for them - but I've tried eating as much as I can till I was uncomfortable for weeks on end, and it gets exhausting. It just isn't a very sustainable way to bulk. Instead, you should look for ways you can get your necessary calories in without it feeling miserable. This guide will give you 8 tips to help with that.

When I started lifting I was only 145 lbs at 6 feet tall, but in the last ten years of training and eating, I've managed to gain 65 lbs and get up to 210 lbs bodyweight. Here's a lot of the strategies that I've found along the way that help tremendously.

1) Drink Your Calories

If you're struggling to eat enough, here's a way to get more calories with ZERO extra effort or force feeding - just drink some of your calories.

Rather than having water, try drinking milk, juice, sports drinks, soda, or shakes. The same quantity of fluid you would already be consuming now also comes with a few hundred extra calories per serving.

Some peoples initial reaction is "Won't I be dehydrated if I'm not drinking water?" The answer is no, because these drinks are still ~90% water. Also, I am not saying you should never have water, I am just saying you can replace a few glasses per day with these substitutes and easily add 500 calories/day that way, which singlehandedly is the margin difference between maintenance and gaining a pound per week.

Over the years I've also tried making shakes at home in a blender with things like protein powder, peanut butter, oats, frozen fruit, ice cream, yogurt, etc., but they always come out really thick and not that easy to get down. It is basically just a whole 'nother meal, but without having to chew. I still find it filling and uncomfortable to consume much that way. If that helps you, great, but it didn't really work for me.

Instead, I drink things like Fairlife milk (extra high protein compared to regular), Naked juice (if you can find them, the 64 oz bottles aren't as insanely overpriced as buying a bunch of the individual 15 oz bottles is), and apple juice. I also drink Powerade/Gatorade while training rather than water. The simple carbs can help keep your energy a little higher during long sessions. And again, if you're price conscious, you can buy the Gatorade powder much cheaper and mix it up with water yourself.

The last thing I should probably mention here is alcohol. Yes, alcohol has calories, but it is harmful for your training. It impairs muscle growth, impacts sleep, and worsens recovery. I am not advocating for drinking alcohol as a way to get calories - in fact, I would keep it to a minimum if you really care about your training.

Drinking some of your calories is a gamechanger, and probably the tip with the biggest possible impact, so if you're only going to take one thing away from this article then let it be this one.

2) Leave Snacks Lying Around

Often times the issue is that eating more food in one sitting is uncomfortable, so spacing it out throughout the day is really helpful. Many people already know this - snacking more is one of the most common bulking tips. However, actually remembering to do it is often the hang up. We get busy doing stuff and forget to eat except at big meal times, but this tip can help with that.

The best trick I've heard for this is to pick 1-2 simple, high calorie, shelf-stable snacks that you can leave lying around where you will walk past them multiple times throughout the day. For example, maybe you leave them on the edge of the counter, on your computer desk, or by the front door. Then, every time you walk past, stop and grab a handful to eat. This works well with things like chocolate covered nuts or pretzels, cinnamon swirl bread, and rice krispie treats.

Leaving food lying out where you will see it multiple times is a reminder to snack throughout the day. Or, if you're still in school, maybe the start of each class is your reminder to snack - this is the same principle. You need some sort of reminder through the day, whether it be visual, linking it to a certain activity, or setting alarms to go eat.

3) Add Oil, Butter, and Sauces

Similar to drinking your calories in the first tip, adding oil, butter, or sauce to foods adds no real volume or bulk. It is additional calories with no added difficulty to consume it. If anything, it actually makes things easier to eat, because now your food is moist and takes less effort to chew up and swallow.

I add olive oil to my ground beef and rice, butter to my scrambled eggs and toast, oil on my leftover pizza (for the calories but also because the crust dries out a little), butter or oil on pasta, etc.

Even if each of these is only 50-100 calories, over the course of a week you might do it 10 times, which adds up to 500-1000 total extra calories per week. That's roughly equivalent to one less meal per week that you have to choke down if you're already struggling to eat enough.

4) Add More Dessert to More Meals

The saying "There's always room for dessert" is kind of true. You may have had all the ground beef and rice you can handle in one sitting, but could you still handle some ice cream? Probably.

Obviously I am not saying to replace all of your meals with dessert. However, if you want to add dessert to the end of each meal to help reach your caloric needs, go for it.

A lot of people are used to only having dessert with certain meals. Maybe they think of it as a dinner thing but not lunch. Changing that and adding dessert at the end of every meal can help increase caloric intake. Similarly, some people have notions of how much dessert they should be eating, like thinking two scoops of ice cream is plenty. Well, if you're trying to gain weight and are looking for a way to eat more, how about you increase that and make it three scoops. Many times it is fairly arbitrary, self imposed beliefs like this that are making bulking harder than it needs to be. We don't even realize we're doing it till someone else points it out, because in our mind that is "normal" or an unwritten rule.

A few months of increasing your dessert intake while trying to gain weight isn't going to hurt if you're training hard, still eating the main part of your meals, and don't have preexisting health conditions.

5) Gradually Increase Portion Sizes

People often get in a routine and eat roughly the same amount as they're used to. Maybe you've eaten 3 eggs, 2 slices of toast, and 8 ounces of juice for breakfast every day for the last two years - see if you can't gradually increase the amounts slightly over time without feeling too forced. Maybe you can do 10 ounces of juice instead of 8, then a while later bump up from 2 slices of toast to 3, then a while later try 4 eggs instead of 3.

Much like you would progressively overload your training over time, see if you can gradually increase the quantities of your food too.

6) Eat Fast Food

Why is it that fast food is generally demonized and frowned upon in society? Because it is high calorie, high fat, and easily palatable.

Soooo, you mean it is calorically dense and easy to eat a lot of? That sounds perfect for what we're looking for.

The thing to realize is that the same characteristics that make it "bad" for your average, sedentary, overweight normie is what makes it so helpful for what we need as a lifter struggling to eat enough. It is a case of mismatched needs that makes it harmful for the general public. They do not need to be consuming 4000 calories a day, but you might need to! It is hard to eat that many calories worth of whole foods, so adding some processed and fast foods can really help.

If you're price conscious, my best tip is to download the app for your favorite handful of fast food places. Most of them have ridiculous discounts compared to just ordering off the menu at the store (like 15% off or more over the course of multiple trips, between the deals and reward points). Also, some places are obviously cheaper than others, so if you're getting burgers and fries multiple times per week it is less expensive to do that at McDonalds or Wendy's than at Whataburger or Five Guys.

A personal favorite of mine is buying an extra large pizza, and then eating it over the course of 2-3 days. If you aren't able to finish it in the kind of timeframe, you can always move it from the fridge to the freezer. It reheats decently well from frozen. This is pretty cheap, low effort, and provides a meal for multiple days in a row.

7) More or Fewer Distractions

Do you watch TV, scroll on your phone, or do other things while eating? If not, you could try doing that when you start feeling full to see if being distracted allows you to keep eating a little longer.

If you already do these things, like many of us do, then consider trying eating without these distractions so you can focus on trying to eat quicker. Perhaps your meals are just too drawn out because you are doing other things, so you get full after 20 minutes of eating before you've actually had that much of your food. If the thought of just sitting down and eating alone with no entertainment sounds dreadful, maybe try a podcast or audiobook so you have something to listen to, but it isn't so distracting as to slow down your eating.

There is no one universal right or wrong answer here, but it is a factor to consider and play around with.

8) Look for Weak Points in Your Day

This is the last tip not because it is the least impactful, but because it is the most difficult. Rather than a simple thing you can start incorporating, this is a call for reflection. You should take some time to sit down and think about when throughout the day you aren't eating as much.

Most people who struggle to eat enough feel that way because they stuff themselves at 1-2 meals but are hardly eating at other times. Often this looks like:

1) Skipping breakfast - because they don't wake up early enough to eat before leaving to get somewhere.

2) Having a small lunch - if someone doesn't want to put effort into preparing something the day before or is busy at work and never stops to eat.

3) Not snacking - they never think to eat except at the three big meal times.

If you take the time to find where your weak point is, then obviously there's more room to improve by fixing that then by continuing to add more and more food to the parts of the day when you are already eating a lot.

Conclusion

Weight gain is a marathon, not a race. If you gain a ton of weight really rapidly, chances are a disproportionate amount of it is body fat, because you won't be packing on loads of muscle rapidly. About a pound per week is the fastest weight gain that you should ever really be shooting for, and even that is already fairly aggressive.

You don't need to make a ton of drastic changes to your diet all at once - just pick one thing that seems most useful and start there. Choose the one that would make a big change in total calories and that you can be consistent with long term. Then look to add a few other things gradually over time.

Lastly, if this is something you struggle with, consider seeing a sports dietitian. Notice I recommend a sports dietitian and not just some random nutritionist. That increases your odds that it will be someone who actually knows how to help athletes fuel their training, even when that means consuming a lot of food. That's what you are looking for, not some random crunchy, granola person with a weekend, online nutrition course certification who is going to try pushing their weird, unsupported beliefs on you and won't actually be helpful. Look for someone good that fits your needs, and if the first person you try isn't helpful, then try someone else.

Best,

Michael Elrod-Erickson

Founder and Head Coach, Premier Power & Performance

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*This article is not intended to be medical advice. It is simply educational and is based on my personal experiences finding ways to eat more. Please talk to your doctor or a dietitian for diet advice specific to you.