Q: I’m an aspiring bodybuilder doing everything I can to make muscle gains. However, I just can’t budge the scale even a single pound, no matter how much I try to eat. I am 6 foot 1, 185 pounds at around 12% body fat. Please help me get my ducks in a row so I can start growing!

A: If you are only 6 foot 1 inches, you have some serious growing to do to fill out your frame. The bad news is that such a process can take several years. The good news is that once you do fill out, you’re going to dwarf most of the other guys on the bodybuilding stage. Look at pictures of IFBB Professional Bodybuilder Toney Freeman from early in his career. He is over six feet tall but looked like a string bean. However, once he filled out his long frame with muscle – which took until he was 40 years old – he was able to start winning pro shows and even broke the Top 6 at the Mr. Olympia show! It can be done – but consistency is required. The key here is to find out exactly what training and diet protocol is needed to help you increase your appetite, which will then spurn some growth on the scale.

Let’s look at your training protocol first. You didn’t talk about what kind of training you currently use. If you want to increase your appetite, you need to employ training protocols which utilize heavy compound movements. These exercises help to boost the appetite due to the fact that the most possible muscle groups are used, resulting in the most possible muscle fibers being recruited. Train four days per week using heavy compound exercises.

Now that we’ve looked at your training, let’s look at your diet. If the numbers on your scale aren’t increasing, it means you’re not eating enough food. If you are able to consume 500 calories each day greater than you are burning, your scale is going to go up one pound per week. Begin adding food to your diet, and don’t stop until your start gaining one pound per week. If you gain a great deal more than 1 pound per week, it may be time to cut back calories. Finally, let’s address the quality of the food itself. If you’re eating fast food, hoping that the high caloric content will lead to gains on the scale, you’re heading in the wrong direction. The food is composed in a manner which severely halts digestion. While a meal of chicken breast and rice will be digested in 90 minutes, a meal consisting of a Big Mac and large French Fries will take hours to move through your body – and you’ll miss a meal or two as a result!

You didn’t specify if you were a natural bodybuilder or not. If you are natural, and not finding an appetite, you have to just keep pushing harder and harder. If you eventually choose to enter the dark side of steroid use, you will see your appetite jump tremendously overnight. Get plenty of rest to go with your heavy compound training and powerful, clean eating, and growth will come in no time!

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