Ok long post warning, here we go:
In both cases this will almost certainly be due to a lack of protein. You say it isn’t but from the sounds of it I think it might be. You need to be doing a little more work in the gym as well. If you’re looking to gain muscle then ideally you break your workouts into individual body parts, for instance back/arms/chest/legs. You need to be doing four times a week at the gym really but you can get away with three by combining chest and arms in to one workout.
These workouts don’t need to be long, 45 minutes to an hour is fine, but you have to be pushing hard in them. You’re looking to totally destroy that group of muscles that you’re working on, cause as much damage to them as possible. You shouldn’t have any strength left in that group when you leave the gym and you should be in pain the next day or two (the good pain of heavily worked muscles rather than some sort of sprain or joint damage).
You can structure your workouts however you like but here is what worked for me (and many others). I would do individual body parts as I said earlier and choose a handful of exercises that work that body part in different ways. For example on my back I might do lateral pull downs, seated rows, shoulder shrugs, bent over rows, reverse fly and dumbbell pullovers. Five or six exercises that work the different bits of that muscle group is what you want. You need to work out what the maximum weight you can do ten reps of is for each exercise, and by maximum I do mean maximum. You should be barely able to complete the tenth rep, struggling very hard to make it or just unable to (obviously you need to be safe though, a training partner who can spot you and encourage you is very useful).
When you are in the gym do three sets of ten on each of these exercises and alter the weight as follows. First set is a warm up set on about 50% of whatever your max weight is for that exercise, it should pose no problem whatsoever. Second set is about 75% of max weight and should be easy to complete but feeling it a bit. Third set is on 100% max weight, this is the one that actually does the damage (and damage leads to repair and growth) and really counts. Again, you should BARELY be able to complete the tenth rep or perhaps even failing on it (but again safety is imperative don’t be crushing yourself with free weights). If you get to 10 on this set and feel like you can keep going then do, continue until you either fail or know for sure you can’t manage another rep. Make sure you take a minute break between sets, it’s important that the fatigue you are feeling is due to your muscle tissue being broken down rather than a lack of oxygen, you shouldn’t be getting out of breath really.
So for the workouts that’s it. One muscle group, five or six exercises, three sets of ten on each one, three or four times a week. You can get that done in an hour each time easy, you don’t need to be spending more than four hours a week in the gym to build muscle. Of course there are other methods that are also very good but this does work very well and it’s a great method for someone who doesn’t want to spend their entire life in the gym. Check out some videos on YouTube of a guy called Dorian Yates, he won Mr Olympia five times using this method and spending only four hours a week in the gym (of course he was doing loads of steroids though).
Now here is the catch, and it’s the same one pretty much whatever training method you use. THE TRAINING IS THE EASY PART, THE EATING AND THE RECOVERY PART IS THE DIFFICULT BIT. We build muscle by damaging the tissue through exercise, and it repairing itself and growing back bigger and stronger than it was before. If we don’t give the body the necessary fuel for it to repair itself then it won’t grow back bigger and stronger.
The general rule of thumb that people use for their protein intake when trying to bulk is to try and consume two grams of protein for every kilo of bodyweight (just under one per pound in American money). This is A LOT of food and almost nobody finds it nice trying to eat that much food (obviously you need to be consuming carbs and veggies too). If you have had a gastric bypass then you are almost certainly not going to be able to eat like this. For your 170lb bodyweight that means about 150g of protein every day…this would be equivalent to about 700g (or 25 oz) of lean meat/fish. Don’t think that you can’t get bigger if you can’t eat this much because you still can (I rarely made this number and grew loads), but it gives you an idea of just how much you really need to be eating. Calories are important also but if you aim for this much protein and you are eating your carbs and veggies too then the calories will come naturally.
I’ll stress again that eating in this way is not pleasant, it is a chore. I would also suggest that if you have had an eating disorder already as you have then you should be very careful around focusing on bulking too much as the reality is that the majority of it is in the eating. It becomes an unhealthy obsession for a lot of people and really your focus should be on learning to become happy with your new healthy bodyweight, but this is how you get bigger.
As far as supplements and all that go then basically fuck them. Protein shakes to make it easier to easier to consume the amount of protein necessary are good, creatine works and you will build muscle better if you take it, and if you really want to then a pre-workout supplement with caffeine before training to allow you to push in the gym. Other than that fuck supplements, they’re basically bullshit unless you want to start taking anabolic steroids/pro hormones/SARMs and that’s a whole other kettle of fish that of course come with a whole list of potentially dangerous and damaging side effects.
So there it is, if you work out like that and eat like that then it is basically guaranteed that you will get bigger. On top of that you want to make sure you are getting minimum eight hours of sleep a night as this boosts recovery and testosterone levels. Working out like that is easy, eating like that not so much…
So there it is, THECATINTHEHAT’s quick guide to bulking. I guarantee that this works if you can do it. I’m no expert it’s just the basics that I have taken from other people and which worked for me. Hope this gives you a starting point to work from and some inspiration!!!!
will be watching this for good suggestions
I hope you get some added motivation from seeing some results and are happy to get some return for your work. For me once I started seeing some results it made the process of committing and making gains much easier.