How to Build a Male Body That Drives Women Crazy

Note from Chase: Ross is one of the members of the new Girls Chase forums. He's one of the posters who emerged early on as a guy with clearly a good handle on dating and seduction, meting out solid advice to posters in need. He expressed interest in writing a piece for the site on weight-lifting and building a better body, and since this is something guys have been asking about on here for some time, I told him I'd be thrilled to have him write something up. So here it is, Ross's first article on Girls Chase, on building a sexy male body that'll drive girls up the wall.

We’ve all seen those guys that are huge, muscular, and sexy. Women comment on their bodies and appear to be turned on from the get-go. Wouldn’t it be nice to have those same exact women looking at your body and being primed for sex from the beginning of your interactions with them?

Luckily enough, getting muscle isn’t as hard as you think it is. Even for guys like Wes, who commented a few weeks ago:

“I've been a skinny guy all my life because I have a fast metabolism...gaining weight and muscle is difficult for me.”

I too was in this mindset some time back. I blamed genetics, my life, everything, just about, on me being thin. People would jokingly ask me if I ever ate, and would tell me that I needed to eat a jar of lard to finally put some weight on my frame. I was 6’3” and 147 pounds for two years after my final growth spurt in high school, and no, that wasn’t due to an eating disorder. I would lift weights, chug down protein shakes, and gorge myself with food and water whenever I stepped on the scale and didn’t gain weight.

However, no matter how strong my will was, I just wasn’t being smart about it, and eventually went on to pursue other goals, as this one obviously wasn’t panning out.

It wasn’t until a change in lifestyle, that, to my amazement, I started to actually gain weight. I thought it was crazy, but all I really needed was being able to eat as much food as I wanted at a buffet.


There are two problems that people run into when they are trying to build muscle. Either they aren’t working out their muscles hard enough, or they aren’t getting the proper nutrition that will allow for muscle growth. I’m going to teach you guys how to overcome both of these problems, and it is my hope and aim that you won’t have to go through what I had to endure before achieving the kinds of results and the kind of male body you’ve always wanted.

#1: Exercise

Ah, wonderful exercise. Driving yourself to push the ground as hard as you can to try and achieve that final push-up, or running as fast as you can to some location in the world that is deemed as a “finish line.” Exercise is something that everyone has dabbled in, and it is the first factor needed to achieve that sexy, muscular body; it’s the catalyst.

Each muscle group works in different ways, and it is important to have a grasp of anatomy before you go off doing countless dumbbell curls and bench presses. I’ll give a short lesson on the methods to tear up muscle fibers.


FAST TWITCH VS. SLOW TWITCH

Each muscle group is comprised of fibers that form like bands in certain areas. Those bands extend and contract, and that is how we tear up the muscles to prime them for growth. Only through tearing and causing micro-damage to the muscles are we able to recover and build muscle.
I could go into the science of exactly how muscles are built, but that’s tricky business. Multiple scientific studies have come out about the best ways to build muscle, but they are very unreliable because the root cause of how muscles grow is widely disputed and is by and large still theoretical business.

To save the trouble of creating any more controversy on the subject, I’m going to state what happens based on countless cause and effect studies. Most of us know that the tried and true method to building muscle is weight lifting.

But have you ever wondered why it works?

If your body gets exhausted from running for 30 minutes, then you feel sore the next day, is that the same as doing squats and feeling sore the next day? Actually, not really - all soreness is not equal.

There are three types of muscle fibers:

Type I
Type IIa, and
Type IIb

The type I muscle fibers (also known as slow twitch muscle fibers) are included in long-term, aerobic exercise such as constant running for an hour, or perhaps with very brief break times. These slow twitch fibers don’t have much potential for growth. There’s a reason that long-distance runners aren’t huge and muscular; trust me, I was in long-distance track and cross country after I grew tired of not being able to gain weight and just embraced my skinniness.

However, type II muscle fibers have a lot of potential for growth. Type IIa is the type of muscle fiber that is associated with body-building; it responds best when you incorporate anaerobic exercise (weight lifting) for short amounts of time with long breaks in between, and work out a specific muscle group for about 30 minutes. For example, you might do around 8 pull-ups and then rest for 2 minutes, then perform 8 more pull-ups, then repeat for about 30 minutes.

Type IIb is the type of muscle fiber that is associated with powerlifting; it responds best when you are performing an extremely fast movement with a lot of power, such as trying to bench press your 1 rep max.

To avoid diving any deeper into the scientific aspects, lifting heavy weights allows for the best muscle growth of type II fibers. This is why we see guys go buy gym memberships and then get muscles, as opposed to guys that run marathons. Being huge just doesn’t work for running efficiency, and being tiny doesn’t help for moving huge boulders.

When training these type II muscle fibers, it takes anywhere from 48 to 72 hours for the muscles to fully recover from the damage that you dealt them in training. Keep this in mind when constructing a work-out routine.

Overview completed, we’re now going to move on to specific training for each muscle group in order to maximize the right kind of exercise to encourage muscle growth.


MUSCLE SPECIFIC EXERCISE: BACK & BICEPS

Every man knows about biceps, and has tried doing some type of curl to get guns that women go crazy over. The back is probably the most understated muscle group for the male body, but I believe it is the most powerful. We don’t see our back, but everyone else does, and nothing says you’re a powerful man like a huge back.

You might also like : How to Create a Back Workout That Really Works ?

The back is also useful in creating one of the things that women find most attractive about men; a V-shaped torso, which is only achieved when the lats are trained properly.

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The reason I grouped these two muscles together is because they are both activated through a pulling movement. Whenever you pull your hands closer to your body with any form of tension, you are working both these muscles. It is wise to work out both these muscles on the same day, as they work in conjunction with each other and it is very hard to work the back without working the biceps as well.

Below I list some of my favorite exercises for training the back and the biceps, with a description of each. These are not the only exercises and I greatly encourage that you do your own research on all the different types of exercises and choose one that works for you.

Pull-Ups. Pull-ups are one of the best exercises for the back and the biceps because of the huge range of motion involved, and they require maximum contraction of both muscles in order to successfully complete. For better results, use an under-hand grip with this exercise, as an over-hand puts the body at an angle where the shoulders come into play. Once you are able to do over 15 of these it is time to start adding weight by using a weight-lifting belt with a chain that you can wrap around a plate.

Bent-Over Rows. The bent-over row is a great exercise for the back and the biceps because it’s easier to increase weight with this exercise than it is with pull-ups, and it includes the same range of motion. The negative to this exercise is that your biceps never fully contract like they do in the pull-ups. A tip for these is to allow for your arms to go nearly all the way locked out, but not quite locked, at the bottom of the movement, and then pull the barbell or dumbbells up to your sternum.


MUSCLE SPECIFIC EXERCISE: CHEST AND TRICEPS

Nothing says manly like a full, muscular chest. The other half to your arms is the triceps, and these add a lot of mass to the arms and proper training is needed to have complete guns to hang out the car window. These are grouped together because they include the same motion; this time, instead of pulling, these muscle groups are worked when something is pushed.

You might also like : 7 Triceps Training Tips & Strategies for Building Bigger Triceps

Again, as with the back and the biceps, I encourage you to work these out on the same day to maximize efficiency, though it is easier to isolate the chest than it is the back. Some of the best exercises for the chest involve triceps work, and working them together just makes more sense than making a complicated program that is less efficient.

Here’s a list of some great exercises for the chest and the triceps.

Bench Press. The bench press is the ultimate exercise for chest and triceps. The ability to lift a lot of weight doesn’t hurt your reputation in the gym either. Ensure that you use proper form when bench pressing, and include a partner to make sure the weight doesn’t fall on you if you can’t re-rack it. Include an incline bench press to work the upper head of the chest to ensure full-chest development. Don’t be afraid to switch things up with dumbbells instead of the barbell.

Dips. Dips clean up where the bench press cannot. The triceps don’t get full work in the bench press, as they really only come into play in the top half of the range of motion. In order to get a full stretch and tear of the triceps, dips help to give the triceps nowhere to hide; the exercise works them out very nicely, additionally involving some chest work if you lean forward a little bit and incorporate the chest muscles.


MUSCLE SPECIFIC EXERCISE: SHOULDERS

Great shoulders (aka deltoids) are the finishing touch to any upper body work, and they help to create a uniform look as well as allowing for the broad shoulders that are a common definition of manliness.

The problem with shoulders is that they are indirectly worked whenever the arms are involved in exercise. So this means that whenever you are doing triceps or biceps work, the shoulders are going to be involved. This is where strict form is necessary to prevent the shoulders from being overworked, and it also means that shoulders should either be worked after adequate recovery from an arm workout or in addition to an arm workout.

There are three heads to the shoulders: the front deltoid, the side deltoid, and the rear deltoid. They each serve purpose in lifting the arm at certain angles, and it is important to work all the heads in order to get complete shoulder development.

Here are a few exercises that can be used for the shoulders:

Front Raises, Side Raises, and Rear Raises. Each head can be isolated by raising the arm either forward, to the side, or leaning over and lifting the arm to your side. These are fairly straight-forward, but keep in mind that you won’t be able to lift heavy with these isolation movements, so start out with a weight you can manage to complete the full range of motion with.

Shoulder Presses. Shoulder presses are great for the lateral (side) head of the shoulders, which don’t receive much extra work during most movements that the biceps and triceps are involved in. Again, start out light, as shoulder presses can be dangerous as the shoulders tend to be a tricky muscle and are very easy to tweak and hurt.

Upright Row. The upright row lowers the chance of getting an injury while still working out the lateral head of the deltoids, and it also involves some trapezoid action which is worked during other rowing motions such as the bent over row. It makes for a great combination with a back and biceps day because of this.

MUSCLE SPECIFIC EXERCISE: CORE

The core muscles include the abdominals, obliques, and pretty much everything else that is at the center of our body. These hold together the upper and lower bodies and make up the stabilizing muscle group of the body.

You might also like : Abs Exercises: 4 Best Moves for Crazy Obliques !

The abs are an endurance muscle, and react well to high amounts of volume as well as increasing tension. Work them out with slightly higher repetitions than you would any other muscle, generally around the 10-20 range rather than the 6-12 range.

Since the abs aren’t really heavily worked with other muscle groups you can do these every 3-4 days without having to worry about exhausting another muscle group before that muscles’ work out day.

Here are a few exercises that use the core and allow for weight to be added.

Hanging Leg Raises. Hanging leg raises are great at working the entire abdominal region, and weight can be added by putting a dumbbell in between your feet. Focus on lifting the legs up quickly and moving them back down slowly to get a full stretch of the legs. You can also do hanging knee raises if you can’t do hanging leg raises yet.

Medicine Ball Alternating Sit-Ups. Take a good weighted medicine ball and hold it on slightly above your chest, and do a full sit-up while trying to touch one elbow to the opposite knee, then repeat for the other side. This works the obliques as well as the abdominals.

Standing Oblique Crunch. Hold a plate in one arm, slowly lower it so that your obliques contract, then raise using your obliques. Do this for both sides.


MUSCLE SPECIFIC EXERCISE: LEGS

Strong legs complete the sexy male body package. The problem with legs, however, is that you don’t want to get them so big that your jeans stop fitting. Get them big enough for a nice, smug fit.

The legs include the hamstring, the quads, and the calves. The calves are a lot like the abs in their respect to training, but the hamstrings and the quads are much more like the chest and back muscles of the upper body in their training aspects.

For a bonus, I’m going to involve glutes in this section, because what woman doesn’t like a nice butt?

Here are a few leg exercises to build that strong foundation on which you stand.

Squats. Squats work the quads, hamstrings, and glutes, and are hands down one of the best exercises for overall leg and glute development.

Leg Press. The leg press is great exercise that is very similar to squats, while being a lot safer. The problem is that it doesn’t involve the same range of motion and is usually done at an odd angle that incorporates less tension. I prefer these to squats because my right knee is messed up from an MCL tear and I feel a nice popping sensation whenever I go back up from a deep squat.

Calf Raises. Pretty much the only way to isolate the calves. Involve two different types of flexion to get complete development. One is where you push on the toes upward, and the other is where you push with the heel upward. Be safe when handling heavier weights and use a 1” board to create a larger range of motion by placing your pushing half on top of the board and the rest of the foot off the board.


TIPS & TRICKS TO MAKE YOUR WORKOUTS MORE INTENSE

Now that I’ve gone through all the exercises and muscle groups, what should the weight and repetitions look like for working out? In order to maximize the quality of fast twitch fibers activated, it is recommended that you lift a weight that you can lift for 6-15 times before failure, “failure” here being the point when you are unable to complete another repetition.

There are some tips and tricks that allow for you to train your muscles closer to failure, as not being able to complete the full repetition does not necessarily mean that your muscles are completely worked.


Intensity Tips and Tricks:

Drop sets. Drop sets are incorporated when you reach failure with a weight, drop the weight and wait for 15 seconds, and then perform 1 to 2 additional reps.

Negatives. Negatives are used when you are near failure or reach failure. You use assistance from someone else to get the weight to a position where your muscles are contracted without using your efforts to get it there after reaching failure. Slowly lower the weight from contraction to extension for 1 to 2 times.

Cheating. While it is not encouraged to cheat with form during exercise as it allows you to be vulnerable to injury and uses momentum instead of muscles, cheating can be used for more intensity. Use momentum and swing the weight to the contraction, and then try to slowly lower down for a rep.

Explode up, slowly lower down. Exploding with a lot of power during the contraction of your exercise and then slowly focusing on the negative is a useful technique that can be used for any lift at any time. This incorporates time under tension for the muscles to overcome, and makes the lift harder.

Increase weights. After you can do 12 to 15 repetitions with any given weight, it is time to move up in weight. You should be progressively moving up in weight for exercises to avoid a plateau. Don’t get too comfortable with a given weight and always look to increase the weight to ensure progress.

While these methods can be useful for increasing the intensity of your workout, it is important to avoid overusing them. The first three should only be used occasionally throughout the workout, perhaps every 3 or so sets and only after full range of motion failure has been reached. You will either over-train or exhaust your muscles too fast to get a quality workout.


Overtraining

Overtraining is a very real phenomenon that can hinder progress. This occurs when you pushed your body too far when it wasn’t ready, lifted too much in volume, or damaged the muscle too much by working it out for too long.

You can usually avoid overtraining by limiting workouts to under 30 minutes per muscle group and adhering to the tips I have given to you in regards to training.

If you feel that your progress is going backwards even though you are getting sore after workouts, you need to either take more recovery time, or need to do fewer sets and make your workouts less intense.

Only you can know if you are overtraining; this is why paying close attention to your results is necessary to avoid it.


CONCLUSION TO PART 1: EXERCISE

So, we have all this data, but what exactly should a training regimen look like? While there is no specific regimen that is proven to be the best, there are definitely right and wrong ways to go about creating a workout routine. Here are a few rules to pay attention to:

Allow for 48 to 72 hours (72 hours preferred) for complete muscle recovery for each group.

Do not work out every day. Have at least 1 day completely dedicated to rest in a week.

Work out all muscle groups equally. If you focus too much on the chest and forget about your back, your proportions will be off. Ensure that each group receives equal attention.

For the best fast twitch fiber response, try and keep workouts less than 30 minutes in length for each muscle group. This means if you are working out triceps and chest, you don’t want to work out for more than an hour.

Work out in the 6-15 range for exercises, and take about 60 seconds to 2 minutes recovery in between sets.

Now that we have those guidelines, I have constructed two specific weekly exercise routines designed for anyone to follow.


Monday: Back & Biceps
5 sets pull-ups, 3 sets bent-over row, 2 sets biceps curls

Tuesday: Chest & Triceps
4 sets bench press, 4 sets dips

Wednesday: Legs
6 sets squats, 2 sets leg press, 3 sets calf raises

Thursday: Rest

Friday: Shoulders
2 sets front raises, 2 sets side raises, 2 sets rear raises, 3 sets upright row, 2 sets shoulder press

Saturday: Core
4 sets hanging leg raises, 4 sets medicine ball alternating crunches, 4 sets standing oblique crunch

Sunday: Rest

Monday: Chest & Triceps
4 sets bench press, 4 sets dips

Tuesday: Legs
6 sets squats, 2 sets leg press, 3 sets calf raises

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Back, Biceps, Shoulders
3 sets pull-ups, 3 sets bent-over row, 1 set biceps curls, 4 sets upright row, 2 sets shoulder presses

Friday: Rest

Saturday: Core
4 sets hanging leg raises, 4 sets medicine ball alternating crunches, 4 sets standing oblique crunch

Sunday: Rest
Keep in mind that these are just examples, and that many exercise routines can and will work for gaining muscle and building a strong male body. The information provided here is provided from tips & tricks that I have learned of and wished to share.

I encourage everyone who is serious about lifting to do their own research on lifting, but also to use this information provided to help you understand what will be the best way to train your body to become strong and sexy. There is a plethora of information out there, and I suggest you don’t just limit yourself to these techniques but also try out new techniques. Just remember to track your progress with techniques so you can tell which techniques do and don’t work best for you.


I also am going to throw out a disclaimer that weight lifting is not easy; you can and probably will get injured at some time during training. Be smart and safe when dealing with heavy weights, and don’t think of yourself as above everyone else; no one is better than safety.

#2: Nutrition

Nutrition is the section where a lot of “hard-gainers”, or people who have difficulty gaining weight, go wrong. They may explain that they eat a ton of food in defense of their hard-gainer status, and plea that the health industry just screwed them over. I know I was like this; I’d tell people that I ate a ton each day, and couldn’t gain weight because of my fast metabolism.

The fact is, I wasn’t eating a lot of food. It felt like a lot, but it still wasn’t enough.


CALORIES IN: YOU AREN’T EATING ENOUGH!

If you can’t see any gains, then you aren’t eating enough. The body is resistant to change, so it’s no surprise that you weren’t eating enough food as it has become accustomed to eating a certain amount day in and day out in order to stay the same.

I need to eat about 3000-3500 calories a day in order to gain weight. Before this I thought I was eating this much, but in reality I was eating around 2500 calories a day. The amount you need to eat is different from me, so you need to track your own progress and calories.

Tracking calories is important because you can look at your calories and realize that maybe eating 2500 is too little, as your weight has stayed the same for over a month. Maybe you need about 3000 to gain. But why don’t you just eat 5000 calories a day, then you’d gain even MORE muscle and get sexier and stronger faster? Because you’re going to get fat; there is a limit to how much muscle you can gain.


YOU’RE EATING TOO MUCH

How exactly do you know you’re eating too much? Well, as much as those marketers and advertisers would like to tell you that you can gain 10 pounds of muscle in just a month, you can’t. Not without steroids or supplements that have very negative health effects, but if those are worth the risk for you, by all means do what you want.

The reason that you are unable to gain so much muscle so fast is simply because of limits on hormones and the body’s potential for change. You may have seen guys say they gained 10 pounds of muscle in just 8 weeks, but in reality they may have gained 2 pounds of muscle and 8 pounds of fat. Maybe they gained 20 pounds in 15 weeks, but that was probably around 4 pounds of muscle and 16 pounds of fat and they started really skinny.

Most people see muscle gains around 8-12 pounds of muscle per year as a maximum; keep in mind that over 4 years, you could gain upwards of 40 pounds of muscle, which is a LOT. If you could do things as fast as marketers want you to believe, you’d be gaining 100 pounds of muscle a year. Yeah, right.

In order to have a sexy body and limit how much fat you are gaining, as body fat isn’t very attractive, we want to eat just enough to be able to gain the muscle that our body has limited us towards gaining. This means that you should eat around 100-500 calories over your maintenance level of calories eaten, which is how many calories you eat to sustain your current weight.

500 calories over maintenance each day for a week equals a pound of weight gained each week, which would be upwards of 50 pounds in a year. So you can’t sustain this for too long unless you want to gain 40 pounds of fat. Depending on your weight training schedule and other things, we can make it so you eat 500 calories over your maintenance on key days to gain mostly muscle, and minimize fat gains; I’ll explain later in the post.

Like all things in life, you need to strike the right balance. As long as you aren’t gaining over a couple pounds a month, there isn’t much to worry about, as you are eating the right amount.


CARBS, PROTEINS, AND FATS

Now that we’ve established a way to figure out how many calories you need, what exactly should you be eating to fulfill the calories needed to gain muscle and not put on a ton of weight? Ice cream and Pizza? Maybe.

Many of the micronutrients in foods are widely debated as being good and not good for you. One day bananas are good for you, the next they are horrible. One day dark chocolate is amazing, the next day they say it is harming. One day fish is super healthy; well, you get the idea. Micronutrients aren’t really that important.

What is important, then? Macro nutrients. What are macronutrients? Proteins, Carbs, and Fat; which make up all the calories in your food (alcohol makes up a little bit of the calories, but not enough to seriously influence us; we all know the negative effects of alcohol, so I’m not going to talk about it). Each gram of protein or carbohydrate is worth 4 calories, and each gram of fat is 9 calories.

Which should you eat more of, and which should you eat less of?

When it comes to gaining weight, we need a balance. There are strategies for losing weight where you don’t eat any carbs and focus on protein and fat. But when we are trying to gain weight, carbs are useful.

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CARBOHYDRATES

Carbs have been labeled as the new fat. Fats used to be regarded as bad to eat, possibly because of a misconception with their name meaning the same thing in the English language as a large man without much muscle, but now carbs are the macronutrient to stay away from.

However, carbohydrates are useful for gaining weight. Our preferred energy source is carbs, and they are definitely healthy, if used in the right way.

In a world without carbs, we lose fat at an almost alarming rate, but there’s a problem; you run out of fat. And once you run out of fat to burn, your body starts to rely on burning muscle. We don’t want our muscle to be eaten up after all our hard work.

That’s where carbs are useful. Cutting them out causes us to lose weight, and eating them prevents us from losing too much. They are the first energy source that our body goes for, and once you get to sustainable and healthy body fat levels I suggest that you eat a healthy amount of carbs, especially after workouts. But we’ll get into that later on.


PROTEIN

Protein: we want a lot of it, but not too much. The problem with too much protein is that you won’t get hungry throughout the day because protein has such a slow digestion rate. So eating a lot of protein prevents you from being able to eat a lot of food throughout the day.

However, the amino acids in protein are very useful for gaining muscle, and are necessary. Protein is needed for the muscles to actually get larger.

I could go deeper into the scientific aspects of it, but that is all that you really need to know. We need protein to get larger muscles.


FATS

Eric professed his love for fats in his article on weight loss for men, and I have to say that I love fats just as much as he does. He went over the functions of fats in his article, and they are definitely something that you want in your diet.

Now that the low fat craze is over, we should just go crazy over high fat diets. The problem with high fat diets is that fats come in at a whopping 9 calories per gram, over double that of carbs and protein.

We know that an excess of calories are needed to gain weight, and too many fats will not satisfy us. We will still be hungry, and therefore consume too many fats and gain more fat.


THE BEST DIET IS A BALANCED ONE

Let’s review:

Carbs are good for energy and not losing so much weight that our muscles become our fuel.

Proteins are needed for muscles to grow, but too much protein and we won’t be hungry enough to fulfill our calorie quota for gaining weight.

Fats are all the rage, but too many fats and we are going to be hungry all day and want more and more food.

Therefore, we need the right balance. We need enough carbs to keep weight on, enough protein to gain muscle, and the right amount of fat to stay hungry, but not too hungry.

Proteins and fats are fairly simple. Including meat, eggs, dairy, nuts and fish in your diet will fulfill your needs for these nutrients.

Carbs can be a little tricky, and you can mess around with these. I seriously love my carbs, so I actually eat a lot of them, which helps me because I had trouble gaining weight. Eating a lot of carbs prevented my body fat from dropping any lower, and didn’t negatively affect my muscle gains. If you have difficulty keeping fat off, eat fewer carbs and shed the fat off.


MICRONUTRIENT TIPS

Micronutrients don’t matter that much, but things can still go wrong. Micronutrients are vitamins, sodium, potassium, fiber etc. Also known as the parts of the food that don’t have calories but are still part of your food. Here are a few tips so that your micronutrients are in check:

Make sure that you aren’t consuming too much sodium. Keeping blood pressure levels in check is part of being healthy, and with all the elevated sodium levels of goods it is easy to eat way more than you need. Keep an eye on this and eat fresher goods to prevent too much sodium intake.

Drink plenty of water. About 1-2 gallons a day is great, but avoid drinking a lot during mealtimes if you are doing intermittent fasting as your stomach will fill up prematurely and you might not be able to meet your calorie quota due to being and feeling full.

Getting enough vitamins of all varieties have a lot of positive health effects and can cause a lot of diseases if you don’t get enough of them. A rich diet with plenty of variety ensures you get vitamins and most micronutrients.

Eat a variety of foods. If you eat plenty variety you will get all the micronutrients that you need. If you are getting a check-up on blood work and you need certain nutrients because they are lacking, make sure to stay away from tons of pills that the doctor may recommend and find foods with the nutrients that you need; the body processes micronutrients far better from food than from pills.

WHEN TO EAT

Many people will argue that it doesn’t matter when you eat! There are others that swear up and down that you need to eat every 2-3 hours to keep away the hunger. And then there’s intermittent fasting, which Eric describes excellently in his article (if you haven’t checked it out by now, this is your last chance!). I don’t want to describe all the benefits of intermittent fasting on here, so please read that.

Well, all of these strategies do work in certain ways. The people that say it doesn’t matter when you eat are correct because you can still easily gain muscle and not really follow any set plan. You can also eat every 2-3 hours and gain weight, but keep off the hunger, but it isn’t considered the best method. Intermittent fasting is probably the best choice we have here.

I intermittent fast, because it works into my schedule, allows me to eat more food, and has positive health effects. When you want to gain muscle, it helps to have a larger eating window, so I keep it at around 8 hours of eating later in the day with about 3 hours’ time before a core rest.

This places the best eating time at about 11am-7pm. It’s not too much of a deviation from a normal schedule; you just don’t eat in the mornings and late at night.

A good tip is that it is great to eat a lot after your workout. There are a lot of theories on why this is the best, and it seems to work pretty well. I liken it to going on a long hunt and then finally getting the kill; afterwards you become extremely hungry and feast.
There are theories out there that suggest that eating too soon after workouts is bad because levels of testosterone in the male body decrease after eating. But you have to eat sometime, so that testosterone is going to decrease at some point.

I personally give myself 30 minutes after workouts and then eat a very large meal and break my fast, but this is personal opinion and my backing for it isn’t exactly proved. However, through my findings I have found that breaking my fast after workouts seems to be the better option, and it works pretty well for me and my natural rhythms, but it is not a requirement.


SUPPLEMENTATION

Ah, the supplement industry. Eat this, and you’ll be able to gain a lot more muscle, or gain a lot more weight! We all want to have some supplement from our local store that helps us, but we don’t want to spend a lot of money.

You might also like : 6 Golden Supplements for Maximum Muscle Gains

Well, there’s a lot of BS out there that is marketed. Marketing works, and money is made off of misconceptions. I think the supplementation industry takes advantage of us, but there are some things that can help.

Here’s my list of no-BS supplements and their benefits:

Whey Protein Concentrated Powder: The reason that whey protein is so useful is because it digests so quickly as opposed to other proteins. This negates the property of protein that digests slowly and curbs hunger, therefore allowing you to get some cheaper protein as opposed to how much meat costs to buy. Avoid using it too much so that you still digest plenty of fats, but use it as a tool.

Creatine: I’ve given creatine a go, but the monohydrate variety didn’t have much of an effect on me. But based on the amount of research and many other opinions on creatine, it is the real deal, and can be very cheap (I bought a year’s supply for 30 dollars). It boosts strength and is naturally reoccurring in the body, but it may not work for 20% of the population. It doesn’t really work for me, but I chalk that up as meaning that I already have so much creatine naturally that I don’t need to buy a supplement as opposed to feeling ripped off. So don’t get angry if it doesn’t work for you ;).

Multi-Vitamins: You don’t need to get some special brand, but some cheap multi-vitamins with the essentials will do. I personally don’t take any, but if you think that you just can’t get the right vitamins in your diet alone, then use this. It’s useful if you are doing a carbs-free diet, as you will miss out on a lot of nutrients from vegetables and fruits.

Caffeine: Caffeine is a great pre-workout supplement because it provides you with a lot of energy and allows you to lift more because you are so energized. Too much caffeine can have negative health effects along with caffeine suppression, so I suggest using it mostly whenever you are tired and need a pick-me-up before your workout.

And that wraps it up. It’s not a long list, it doesn’t cost a lot, and it helps in certain areas that you may need help in.



CONCLUSION TO NUTRITION

Nutrition is fairly simple and all about balance. While you can follow exact plans and may need to, it’s not absolutely needed. As always, track your progress and figure out things that work for you, increase calories if needed, and decrease them if you are gaining too much weight. Tweak and tweak and tweak if things aren’t working for you; be scientific in your approach and don’t fall victim to marketing schemes without solid evidence.

As I did with the weight-lifting segment, I’m going to give a sample eating schedule. This isn’t necessary to follow, but may help you if you are still struggling to find the exact foods to eat and when to eat them.

6am: Wake-up

6am-10am: Drink Water constantly

10am: Work-out, drink an energy drink (sugar free, 10 calories) before-hand

11am: Break 16 hour fast and eat a large meal consisting of:

Half a dozen chicken wings
French Fries (85 grams)
2 Slices Provolone Cheese Melted over French Fries
Cup of Green Beans (Cooked)
1⁄2 Cup of Black Beans (Cooked)
1 Orange
1⁄2 Cup of Carrots (Cooked)
3 Hardboiled Eggs
Sip on Shake with Water and 24g Protein Powder
12pm-3pm: Drink Water constantly

4pm: Eat a slightly smaller meal consisting of:

Cheese Burger (Provolone cheese, beef, and whole-wheat bun)
Banana
Salad (Romaine lettuce, spinach, honey mustard dressing with fat)
Fillet of Tilapia
1⁄2 Cup Summer Squash
2 Sweet Potatoes
Mixed Nuts (Macadamia and Almonds 1oz each)
Sip on Water
6pm-9pm: Sip on Water

9pm: Sleep

That’s a good variety of things in a day for someone seeking to gain weight. Here are some stats from this diet:

231 Grams of Carbs, 176 Grams of Protein, 157 Grams Fat: A little high on the carbs for me, as I said I love carbs. This totals 3058 calories, which is slightly above my maintenance.

42 grams of Fiber, 65,000+ IU Vitamin A, 164mg Vitamin C, 1366mg Calcium, 19.7mg Iron, 4685mg Potassium, 3000mg Sodium: Everything here is good, but the sodium is a little high. Most of the sodium comes from the cheese, but I don’t have any heart problems and constantly drinking water is getting rid of the excess sodium in my body.


WRAP UP

Well, that should wrap things up. If you follow the advice in this article, you’ll clean up in building a sexy male body pretty fast, and women are going to have a LOT more initial interest in you and raw attraction for you than they had before you put a body like this together.
If you have any questions regarding fitness and gaining some serious muscle, go ahead and comment below and I’ll try to get to your question.

Part of me feels like I’m guiding all you guys to build better bodies and now I’m going to have to compete with you guys more... But I have a few tricks up my sleeve ;).


Now go out there and get some girls,

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