Dealing with Difficulties

hey folks dr mike here for renaissance periodization muscle gain dieting made simple video number seven dealing with difficulties i thought muscle gain was supposed to be super easy well it can get tough but we know a lot of the ways in which it gets tough and we can actually preempt them so last time in video number six we figured out how to generate a caloric surplus of our choice and we figure out how long to diet for a muscle gain diet in order to make productive gains in muscle granted that we're training hard and consistently

however diets don't always go to plan and a few things can actually bubble up and three of them predictably will in many cases the first is trouble fitting into your macros or choosing foods another one is getting too full and not being able to eat as much as you actually have to and number three is body fat gain gets a little bit out of hand and there's probably something we can do about all three of those so first up is macro fitting dieting for muscle gain can be pretty tough and another layer of tough can

be in trying to figure out what foods you have to eat every day to meet the macros that you told yourself per meal or per day that you're gonna hit this is especially difficult to do on the fly because sometimes you might be at home you might have your home cooked food you might sort of know what you're going to eat but when you're out in the real world busy at a work conference or traveling or something like that then all of a sudden you're like oh my god i have no idea what to eat

i normally have my meal plan i don't know what to do and this especially is a problem folks they're not big eaters and not consistent eaters okay if you just a person likes food you're not gonna have any problems massing all you need to do is eat more of the good stuff less of the bad stuff train hard and voila mass is yours however the vast majority of people are either sort of neutral to food or some combination of when they're massing not inclined to eat as much and a lot of them don't have big

appetites they start to skip meals they start to just choose the wrong choices because they're super full and then all of a sudden they don't gain the weight that they want right now you can use an app to make this easier oh shameless plug the rp diet app lets you plug in all the foods and it does all the math for you so it it says here are your macros you have to hit and you scan in a bunch of foods and it auto aligns them to get you what you want that's totally fine takes

a little bit of bandwidth to do you can do it it's super helpful but there are ways to do it without the rp diet app and even if you use the rp diet app you can do all of these things better with a couple of really good tips and here they are how to make sure you hit your macros consistently first is in most cases make a list of two to four veggies two to four grains and fruits two to four basic fats two to four basic proteins like chicken and steak and egg whites and

whey protein powder or for veggies like broccoli and cauliflower and lettuce and so on and so forth and you combine these into really tasty meals that you want to eat that are also super healthy and support your goals because you have these super basic food items you go to the store you buy them you cook them and here's the next recommendation you cook them in bulk you spread them out into meals so you have chicken and rice and chicken and rice and chicken and rice and broccoli you have ground beef and pasta gravy from pasta

gravy pasta you make a bunch of meals all of these meals are fitted into your day the thing is when they're already cooked and they're already refrigerated or frozen then all you do is pull them out pop them in the microwave reheat them put them back out eat them and you're good to go you don't have to do calculations on the spot because you did all your calculations up front there's no oh man i'm really hungry or oh damn it i have to eat but i don't have a meal around all that is solved right

if really time is super expensive to you and you have a pretty decent amount of money a company like trifecta or ripping that dish right here can help trifecta sends me a ton of food every week and it sends me rice and chicken and all that stuff and i just throw the microwave i sort of mix it together throw the microwave you guys have seen my chef video hopefully and it saves me a ton of time so i can be busy doing all of my rp work making more videos for you guys etc etc and

it's totally cool because all the cooking has been done for me now you don't need to do that you can just go to the store and get all the food yourself bulk meal prep is king i'll tell you this almost every successful bodybuilder that's really really jacked does bulk meal prep or has a company meal prep for him or her because it's such a huge deal to have your entire plan out in front of you okay now sometimes you're on the run you can't bring your meals i would highly recommend having on-the-run go-to sources for

calories and protein for example protein bars or shakes or wraps or burritos say oh i have to go to the mailbox and drop off this package and i have to talk to this one guy who's at another office uh i know there's a chipotle in that area i'm going to stop by it right around 3pm which is my next meal pick up a burrito i know exactly what order i'm going to go if you go to an area like that for work you just have absolutely no idea what the hell's over there absolutely no idea

what you're going to eat you are planning to fail because you're planning to go somewhere which doesn't have anything it's like going you're like oh we're gonna go on a hike we're not gonna bring water and hopefully there's gonna be water on the hike and you go on a hike like outside of las vegas somewhere where it's a fucking desert i know somebody could call you pretty stupid for doing that because there's almost certainly not gonna be water or you just have no idea and bringing it yourself is a good idea so if mass gaining

is really serious to you planning is a really really good thing fortune favors the prepared in everything and muscle gain is absolutely no exception now as you gain more and more weight predictably in almost every case you will get somewhat less hungry for some people the somewhat less hungry never butts up against anything they're doing they're always able to meet their calories and macros they get big no problem but for many people you will get they will get so much less hunger that actually start to have trouble meeting their macros and they can't eat enough

food to hit their calorie goals to actually successfully gain weight right the body prefers homeostasis like right now i'm like 245 pounds i'm trying to get to like 250 at the end of my muscle gain phase that's tough okay my body doesn't want to be 250. it actually wants me to be at like 235 like if i just started eating like whatever i wanted it would go down to 235 between 230 and 235 250 my body doesn't want to do wherever you are if you've been gaining mass for a long time you're starting to not

be hungry your body's like go get lower it doesn't want you to gain weight but remember you want to gain weight logically up here right so you'll have to do something about that hunger because if you just follow your hunger you in many cases just will not get jacked almost every jack person on this earth not everyone some people have really big appetites but almost everyone has modulated their hunger somehow pushed beyond their hunger somehow to eat more food than their body really wanted right so a lot of people will not take these precautions they'll

start to under eat and for weeks of amazing training they'll eat at maintenance or even a slight deficit because they went like this and then they go like that and then that entire time maybe six weeks of maintenance slight deficit you're gaining profoundly less muscle than you were in a muscle gain phase so you tell people like someone's like hey how long have you mass gaining for me like fuck 12 weeks bruh but six of those weeks you were not gaining mass you might have been gaining a little bit of muscle losing a little bit

of fat but as we know recomposition just not a very efficient process you have to stay on top and make sure to hit your meals how do you do that three good tips for you guys tip number one is eat more calorically dense foods okay so for example instead of eating all chicken breast you can switch to some or all chicken thigh okay you can put more oils into your carbs a little bit olive oil goes a long way as long as you're rooming your fats you're totally good to go eating white rice versus brown

you can pound a crap load of white rice brown rice gee you pound enough of it and it comes out the same way it went in well i guess unadultered right still the whole you know just digestion can only do so much fiber right you can do less filling veggies smaller veggie amounts so on and so forth so more calorically dense foods are really great idea very closely tied into that is eating more tasty foods as you get less and less hungry because tasty foods are easier to eat more of at any given level of

hunger right if someone's like hey like how hungry are you and you're like i don't know not really someone gives you as much chicken breast and plain brown rice as you can eat how much you can eat remember said you're not really hungry you might like pick at it for a bit and be like i don't know am i getting paid for this like no no just eat whatever you want you're like nothing or two bites and it's not that good i'm done now if you're not really that hungry and someone puts a bunch of

pizza in front of you super hot fresh brooklyn style whatever style you like chicago and they're like eat as much as you like you're like oh for real free like that free no no strings attached you may need a slice or two even if you're not that hungry that slice or two is like fucking 700 calories right there you might have had 20 if you like tried a bit of chicken you're like fuck that i'm not even hungry so more tasty foods is a really good idea and does that mean you have to eat pizza

doesn't mean you have to eat junk food absolutely not you can but in order to keep your macros and your health up a little bit what you can do is do flavors and spices and salts and make your rice and turkey taste really good when you take classic you know white rice and ground turkey maybe with a bit of broccoli slaw you mix them together and it's like it's fine it's fine you put some salt in that because remember salt is perfectly healthy in in most amounts especially if you're an athlete and you put some

kind of seasoning in there and all of a sudden it's actually really really good and normally you would struggle to eat a certain amount of it now you're finishing it and be like oh this is great okay that helps bodybuilding doesn't mean suffering it means suffering for the shit you have to suffer for but it doesn't mean suffering for the shit you don't okay so there's tons of like you know universal nutrition animal ads where the guys like eating oatmeal and milk or some shit and protein powder and he's like i fucking eat oatmeal and

i poured jug of water down my face and fucking gulp and chew and repeat is fucking what it takes like a word up uh and sometimes that's just has to be what it is but instead of eating fucking unflavored oatmeal maybe you could eat flavored white rice just the same macros same calories and all of a sudden you can pound it down no problem right really really good idea last point huge point one of the death knells of weight gain for people that are sort of hard gainers in some respect people with not big appetites

is skipping meals do not fucking skip meals eating something at least something maybe you don't hit your macros that week exactly maybe you hit your calories but you still hit something you still gain weight or at the very least you're at maintenance you're not losing weight okay so some people will do this thing where they eat a lot one week a couple days they don't eat much eat a lot couple days and then over the course of a 16-week diet it's it's it's maintenance actually started 150 they ended at like 151. whoo huge gonna be

enormous like never but if you plan to go from 150 to oh i don't know 160 and you have some off times but you managed to get something in maybe you'll uh end up at 157 hey shit 157 versus 151 that's amazing results what is it you can stuff down your throat if you're odd i could go all sorts of places with that joke what do you eat if you really don't feel like eating or if you're on the go so on and so forth liquid meals are a real good thing even mass gaining shakes

are a real good idea here i actually just started taking my favorite mass gainer which is serious mass about optimum nutrition i don't get paid by them they don't know i exist amazing if you want to try it i have like two scoops before training and then i come home and sort of two scoops before training i drive to the gym and then i do two scoops during slash after my workout come home shower and then have my first actual whole food meal and that entire four scoops or sorry it's one heaping scoop now two

scoops i don't wanna say two scoops it's really four because the scooper is like fucking enormous so it's really just two protein shake containers full of stuff that's actually pretty delicious is 50 grams of protein 250 grams of carbs fuck and like four grams of fat unbelievable okay and it's so fucking easy and otherwise i would just be looking at a protein shake and be like uh or i'd be looking at my real food but i get it in any way and it all adds up right so peanut butter sandwiches with a whey protein shake

protein bars even if you can't eat your whole meal eat some of it even if you don't have a meal around eat something with protein in it and carbs and fats for the love of god if you have trouble gaining weight you haven't tried this the blame is all on you right especially good idea to use liquid meals and other really quick food strategies when you know your hunger is low like i'm not a morning eater i wake up in the morning the food is the last thing i'm thinking about probably more sleep is the

first thing i'm thinking about or just jewish anxiety about the upcoming day oh no will it be scary so what do i do i usually have a shake i almost never eat solid food in the morning not that there's anything magical to that i'm just a little bitch and i can't have solid food in the morning because i'll just eat a bite fuck i'm done right so if you know you're not going to be hungry liquid meals are a really really really good idea all right last problem body fat gain big problem right in almost

every case during muscle gain some fat will come around and that's totally fine good news the really good news is that fat is actually quite easy to lose unless you have a ton of it so you gain some fat in the mass gain phase the muscle gain phase you actually can lose all that fat relatively easily it's temporary cost of the game so don't worry about it too much but if it really kind of bothers you or if you're gaining way too much fat here are some tips for you to stay on the leaner side

of things first is aim for the lower pace of weekly weight gain so gain point two five percent of your body weight per week not point five and for sure nothing higher a lot of people are like i can get bad on my mass phase i'm like how much weight are you getting like booked two pounds a week and back in the day was actually still videos on youtube of this with me saying like you should gain one to two pounds per week you know it's probably not wrong wrong but not the rightest thing i've

ever said right and so 0.25 stay in that range and jeez you know if you gain a lot of fat doing that you know it's just it's tough you're really either very advanced or doing something wrong or have really shitty genetics and maybe all three right second point aim for the lower end of the duration look look if you get super fat on your masking phases that last 16 weeks don't fucking mask for 16 weeks 0.25 a week for 8 to 12 weeks and you may not just get that fat you may gain 5 pounds

total not really much fatter but hey you got stronger you got bigger things are good do a mini cut get rid of all the fat and start again right next is eat mostly healthy foods that actually suppress your appetite considerably so this would basically do the opposite of what we did in the last slide because some people say dude bro like when i'm dieting i'm fucking locked in when i'm massing i fucking want to eat everything because i know i can and sort of like talk myself into it i can't keep a cap on it

keep a fucking gap on it right it's not that difficult to get in the mindset of like i'm a fucking bodybuilder or i want to get jacked i gotta eat x y and z foods to get me jacked i don't just eat fucking cookies because mass gaining is easy you just eat a shitload of junk food people on my 600 pound life tv show do it all the fucking time bodybuilding is tougher because you have to eat at least some modicum of healthy food so if your problem is you tend to overeat in a mass

phase shit i've been there uh mostly healthy food and then you're gonna eat overeat brown rice chicken and broccoli holy fuck need some kind of congressional medal of honor for that shit so if you eat mostly healthy foods and don't cheat your brains off maybe just have one or two cheat meals a week not three or four or five then you probably will be leaner at the end of the process next point train hard and train with higher volumes right relative to your abilities of course so don't arbitrarily do 10 by 10 stupid german volume

training and fucking blow your legs off your body but do plenty of work like if you seem to be recovering and growth seems to be really good and it seems like you're recovering so much that you could add more work and still recover fucking add more work it's muscle gain time all that is for a good end and a lot of people say like oh man like i'm fucking getting kind of fat on this mass phase i'm like what's your training frequency what's your volume and so on and so forth they're like yeah i trade

for like an hour a day three days a week what the fuck start training for work your way up slowly take my own advice to training six days a week very slowly several months from three to six and go to one and a half hours per day of hard good muscle building work and all of a sudden you'll find that more of the weight you gain is muscle and less is fat right and if you're already training with very hard with high volumes this is clearly not like a cork you can uncap like you already

already released that genie and that's fine we definitely don't want you to go more than you're capable of doing but if you're much less than you're capable of doing and you're really worried about fat game right then it's kind of like what the hell are you doing it's like if you uh you know if you have like a really dilapidated porch in the front of your house and you're like fucking goddamn porch i'm gonna fall through these fucking you know this wood floor here and kill myself and someone's like how much work have you spent

time have you spent working on the portrait like i never fucking touch it you're like what the fuck are you complaining do you have time in the day yes well if i can work at it or hire someone like that's a good point right so same kind of idea if you're training not so much and you can train much harder but you're bitching about fat gain that's right bitch bitch away nobody's listening do more training and it'll get much better another big one is stay physically active outside the gym some people when they're on a

muscle gain phase they just stop almost all activity it's like fuck getting big bro fuck cardio and like they sit on the tv or sit you know super hard training get home do all their work or they go to work do all the work come home sit like with the remote control and they fuck i need more food hey honey can you get me more food they realize their kids to get them stuff look you're not auditioning for my 600 pound life if you just do normal daily physical tasks walk your dog walk around the

block wave hi to your neighbors get up and down watch you know from watching tv if someone calls you you plug in your headphones walk around the apartment walk around the house what that ends up happening is if you're more active is all of a sudden you actually get to eat more food which is ta if you know if you have trouble with fat gain sometimes it's your appetite but so you get to eat more food or the same amount of food and you just don't get as fat and a good deal of physical activity

up until it makes you really tired probably potentiates muscle gain by keeping you more insulin sensitive more healthy if you're leaner and healthier you don't get crazy back pumps when you squat anymore when you do bent rows you're actually better at training huge huge benefits huge benefits so if you have trouble gaining weight you probably don't have a ton of trouble with fat gain and if you so it's kind of a self-solving problem if you really have trouble gaining weight but you don't have problem fat gain do less physical activity if you have no trouble

gaining weight but you're getting a little fat do more physical activity lastly this is kind of the first point it's temporary the fat is temporary it's easy to get rid of later it doesn't take that much time it's just the cost of doing business if you cannot stomach an ounce of gained fat it's probably not the sport for you and it's probably not the hobby for you because if you really want great results you got to get a little bit fatter on occasion for a temporary amount of time all right so hopefully these tips here

have uh are really going to help you succeed with your muscle gain phase and that's sweet a lot of people have gained muscle but far fewer people have kept it off or have settled to gain even more muscle later like a lot of guys will start training they weigh 140 after a few years they'll be 160 and that's as far as they go how do you make sure you continue to gain muscle over the years and months to actually reach close to what would someone would term genetic potential next time we'll talk about that and

i'll see you then you