Ever since I have been a trainer I have had people asking me all of the time; “how do I get big and muscular?”. These are usually do-or-die lifters in the gym who have some pretty good lifting stats and they are extremely consistent with the gym,

but they are still VERY small.

These people have low stress levels, sleep well over 8 hours per night, lift extremely heavy year in and out, but they are still small so what gives?

The answer is extremely simple, they aren’t eating enough. 

It makes me laugh all of the time because a lot of skinny individuals will go to the gym 6x per week with their high volume routines and they think that they have paid all of their dues to get big, but they are dead wrong.

If you are training 6x per week (which is probably about 6 serious hours of training per week) and sleeping 8 hours per day (which adds up to about 56 hours per week) then that means that the time you spend training and sleeping per week is about 62 hours, but there are 168 hours in a week.

What are you doing with the other 106 hours?

You see, its really what you do outside of the gym that is going to make or break you. The time you spend in the gym is all fine and dandy, but you still need to eat properly if you want to build some muscle. Since this article is more towards skinny people who are trying to gain weight then it is important that these people understand that you won’t be considered a “Big man” if all you do is eat peanut butter sandwiches.

I have been into the lifting and bodybuilding world for a few years now and when I first started training I remember that I weighed 145lbs and I wasn’t gaining weight, but I was mostly only eating peanut butter sandwiches at the time so go figure.

This is a picture of me when I was 18 years old (I am 21 now) and the picture was taken after 1 year of lifting which means that I was even skinnier before this, but that’s besides the point.

It wasn’t until I really started learning about the information that I am going to share with you below that I started eating more and gaining more weight. You see, the biggest people all have one thing in common and that’s the fact that most big people have HUGE APPETITES. If you have a big appetite and you pay your dues in the gym then that is a perfect recipe for putting on size, you can’t have one without the other.

Lately I have been eating with a lot of older and bigger men (some of them don’t even lift) and I have found many patterns that they all have. On the other hand, when I would eat with my skinnier friends I would notice that they had certain eating habits as well that caused them to look the same year after year or even worse some of them would actually be losing weight!

Today I am going to give you 6 tips on how you can start eating more food in one sitting.

Here they are:

1) EAT FASTER + CHEW HARDER

First things first, the most important factor when it comes to consuming more calories in one sitting is that you have to eat faster and chew harder. All of the biggest people eat faster (maybe not on purpose, but they do eat fast nonetheless) and this allows them to get more calories in during one sitting because it gives their body less time to know that it is full. In other words, if you eat very slow then you will get fuller a lot faster because your body will start to catch on and think that it doesn’t need that much.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you have to eat so fast that you choke on your own food, but just eat at a faster pace and stay focused on the task at hand.

For example, I ate a HUGE plate of shepherds pie tonight and my goal was to eat it all in 10 minutes. I managed to eat it all in that time, but I guarantee you that if I were to eat a lot slower then I would have been fuller a lot faster.

2) STOP TALKING SO MUCH AT THE TABLE, LISTEN INSTEAD

Another thing that I’ve noticed most skinny people do at the table (and I am still somewhat guilty of this til this day) is that they talk so f#cking much! If you are really serious about gaining weight then you have to use your energy to chew and swallow instead of talking so much because if you talk too much then time will go by and your body will start to process the idea that you might be getting full and then you won’t be as hungry. A better approach would be to try to eat everything in 10-15 minutes and then talk all you want after, simple.

If people keep talking to you and are bothering you at the table then just tell them that their food is getting cold and that will shut them up for a bit too.

Try to think of eating at the table kind of like being at the barbershop. Yes it is true that there will be a lot of people talking, but at the end of the day you just came to get your haircut. The same thing applies to eating at the table, yes the conversations are interesting but if you primary goal is to gain weight then the food should be your main focus and then you could talk all you want after.

On top of all of this, listening more makes you wiser because when you talk you are just repeating what you already know but when you listen then you might actually learn something.

“You have two ears and one mouth that means you need to listen twice as much as you talk.”

3) DON’T MULTITASK WHILE EATING

Another weight gaining sin that most skinny people make is that they will multitask when they are eating and this just spreads too much of the focus everywhere and you just become a jack of all trades because you aren’t doing one thing properly. If you want to put on some size then focus mainly on your meal for the amount of time that it takes to eat it and nothing else for the most part. If you start talking on the phone and text while you are eating it will just slow down your eating and you will be at the table for a longer period of time which will mean that your body will start to get fuller faster.

This may sound like bro-science, but your body will usually start to get full after 15-20 minutes so make sure that you milk the first 10-15 minutes for all that they are worth.

This rule is similar to the one above, but the moral of the story is that you want to focus more on your meal and nothing else.

4) FINISH YOUR WHOLE PLATE(S) NO MATTER WHAT

I’ve noticed that most of the biggest people that I eat with ALWAYS finish their plates no matter what and this could make a huge difference because your crust for two meals out of the day could add up to 400 calories and in a week that could potentially be an extra 2800 calories so don’t take it lightly.

The important thing is that you finish what you start because if you aren’t even finishing your plates then don’t complain about the fact that you aren’t gaining weight.

5) DRINKING TOO MUCH FILLS YOU UP A LOT FASTER

Another common thing that I see in a lot of skinny people is that they may not eat a lot, but they drink a shit ton. The problem with this is that most liquids don’t have that many calories so you won’t be getting bigger, but also if you drink too much then it could potentially fill you up faster. This is the reason why most buffet workers will fill up your glass of water even if it is full, they want you to be full faster so you could get out of there.

The solution to this is that you don’t want to have more than one glass of water for the whole meal. This way your attention will mostly be on the meal and not so much on the liquid beverage. You could drink as much as you want after the meal, but just make sure that it doesn’t compromise your hunger.

6) EAT FOOD THAT YOU COULD HANDLE AND THAT YOU ACTUALLY LIKE

If you want to eat a lot then you want to make sure that its food that you actually like because there is nothing worse than trying to stuff your face with something that you hate. Another important thing is that you want to make sure that you can handle the food that you are eating. I personally can’t handle food that is ultra spicy so I opt for food that is just normal or a bit spicy but nothing more. If you can’t handle spices like me then all that’s going to happen is that you will be drinking more water, eating slower and you will be getting fuller faster. This is not the best strategy for people who are trying to gain weight. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with trying new foods either so it is bound to happen from time to time but just try not to make it a habit.

CONCLUSION

I hope that you learned something from this article and I hope that you understand by now that gaining weight doesn’t have to be so damn complicated. All you have to do is attack the plate with the same intensity as you would attack a heavy Squat or Deadlift. There is no such thing as hard gainers, those are just words made by the media for people to cover up for their laziness and lack of ambition to eat large amounts of food.

I GUARANTEE that if you follow the tips above then you will be on your way to gaining weight at a much faster pace than right now! Give these tips a try and let me know how well they worked out for you!