Dave Draper's Bodybuilding Advice for Gaining Muscle Weight

Do this: make a total of the food you eat in one average day and using a simple food conversion chart, calculate the calories, protein, carbohydrate and fat values. You want to know the ratio between protein, carbs and fat and the total calories ingested. With this basic information you can intelligently decide where you are lacking, or excessive, in your daily food balance. And you can balance the arrangement accordingly. Smart stuff. You can also determine how many calories you want to increase your food intake and of what food groups it should be comprised – protein, carbs or fats -- fish, vegetables and fruit or nuts and creamed corn. 

This is a bit heady for a kid with a skateboard and a pierced ear. I can dig it. I’ve always taken the shoot-from-the-hit approach, myself; that is, I... 

• Increase the protein intake from all sources.
  
• Reduce -- Big Time -- the sugar and junk food and don’t eat fried stuff (pimples, thick skin, agitating, useless and probably toxic).
  
• Eat lots of fruit and loads of salad.
  
• Eat some good bread and grain and nuts.
  
• Take a daily vitamin and mineral supplement -- Super Spectrim vitamin and mineral is A-1
  
• Eat some more protein for breakfast, before/after workout and before bed. This works wonders. Bomber Blend before and after a workout, for breakfast and an evening growth meal -- zoom.
  
• Weigh the growing body on the same scale at the same time daily -- an impartial gauge helps regulate progress. Don’t fret -- it goes up and down as it goes up.
  
• Drink water regularly till you float...and eat a little more protein.

I could go on and on, but I’d go alone. Your bodybuilding training needs close attention and we can talk about that next week. Knock out some squats and deadlifts before we meet again, and carry a pair of heavy dumbbells around the gym till you drop. Get in the mood. 

Are you ready for this conversation? Hey, dude, long time, no see. You’re looking -- I dunno -- bigger, fuller, healthier. I can see it in your shoulders... thicker, more power. You been hittin’ the juice? Just kiddin’! Make a bicep. Golly. You’re also calmer, cooler and more sensational. 

Listen to me, guys. By summer you’ll have your wings and you can fly with us. We’re authentic bombers. We do lots of loopty loops. You ever do loopty loops? 

Go with God’s strength... Dave 

About Dave Draper
Dave Draper is a bodybuilding author and fitness expert with over four decades of practical experience. He holds the prestigious bodybuilding titles of Mr. America, Mr. World and Mr. Universe, in addition to being part of the Bodybuilding Hall of Fame. Dave writes a weekly e-mail newsletter which can be found at www.davedraper.com and is also a frequent contributor to Muscle and Fitness, as well as many other publications in the fitness industry. Dave has also authored a book on bodybuilding called Brother Iron, Sister Steel, and a book on weight loss called Your Body Revival: Weight Loss Straight Talk. He has also designed his own protein powder supplement called The Bomber Blend (which is a blend of fast released whey protein with slower released casein protein), as well as his own exercise home equipment line.

Draper's Bodybuilding Advice for Gaining Muscle Weight

Here’s what I would do if I were you, you two: 

Don’t approach the endeavor to gain weight as a whim. Only whimsical things will happen (or minor disasters). Make it a mission to which you are committed. It’s serious business and serious things will happen. You have hard and joyful work ahead of you; you will apply and develop discipline and muscle; you’ll enjoy steps forward and endure steps back; you’ll be consistent and thorough, eating and training whether you want to or not; you’ll nurture a positive spirit as youfocus on your sound and exciting goals. Be who you are becoming, a stronger, bigger, more muscular lifter with more courage and character, savvy and spirit. Why wait? And, most of all, be humble, or humility will bind your ankles while you dance like a clown. 

You’re gonna eat more of the right food. Listen closely, guys, especially you, lucky young high school teenager with your whole life before you who’s crossing the bridge too few adults have the brains to notice or approach. You are attending your muscle- and might-building nutrition by increasing your protein intake and limiting your fat and carbohydrate intake to those that are valuable and needed, and not excessive or noxious. I prefer a 50, 25, 25 balance of protein, fat and carbs. Some smart lifters advise a 40, 30, 30 ratio. Either is good, and you determine your favorite ratio as you become familiar with your metabolic and mental idiosyncrasies. We’re all a little crazy, ya know, and no two metabolisms are alike. 

Eat regularly throughout the day, six smaller meals rather than one or two snack-supplemented larger meals. This affords much better nutrient absorption, a consistent feeding of the tissues for repair and building and a regular supply of fuel for energy, and it prevents catabolism. You can do this, men of steel, though to follow a healthy bodybuilding lifestyle will require some daring sacrifice: preparing meals ahead of time and storing them in Tupperware for travel, eating tuna (did he say, tuna?) from the can and stirring Bomber Blend in water (yummo!) while on the road or at school. And there’s no going about the busy day without breakfast, unless you want to perform like a slug and leach your existing muscle tissue as a source of energy. 

Protein builds muscle and just about everything else in the body, from huge biceps to healthy hormones. You want all you can get and the best musclebuilding sources are red meat, chicken, fish, eggs and milk products. You can take out a pencil and underline red meat. It does it best! Of course, there are some folks who would rather eat a moss-covered rock. I understand. Vegetarian bodybuilders head for the nuts, legumes, grains and soy and anything else that’s healthy and edible and grows from the earth’s soil. It works. Lacto-ovo bodybuilding vegetarians do a better job, including milk products and eggs in their vegetarian menu. 

Balance your meals sensibly throughout the day. Some meals, by their timing will be larger – lunch and dinner time, for example. A protein drink can have as much protein as 60 to 75 grams of the golden ingredient with plenty of EFAs and complex carbs, yet it’s a simple, convenient and easy to digest meal. Shakes ideally serve bodybuilders for breakfast, before and after a workout, when on the run or before retiring -- key times for musclebuilding, weight-gaining meals. Yes! 

Remember: The robust eating supported by basic and sound training does put on healthy, hard and strong weight. The undertaking must not be occasional, hit or miss, part-time or in any way short of devoted. If so, the undertaking is no undertaking at all, but another half-hearted passing fancy. I think of the color pink. I also think of persistence and patience producing power and promise, and powerful, promising people.