• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Eat Stop Eat | Intermittent fasting | Weight Loss | The pursuit of happiness

  • Home
  • Meet Brad
  • Topics
    • Muscle Building
    • Weight Loss
    • Healthy Ramblings
    • Exclusive Content
  • Intro to Intermittent Fasting

Gain Ten Pounds of Pure Muscle

January 7, 2010 By Brad Pilon

I thought you might enjoy the conversation I had over the holidays. Great questions from Andrew who really helped me spell out my theories on muscle building.

BP

………

Hey Brad, I’m a big lover of Eat Stop Eat, and a massive proponent of many of your thoughts and theories, so don’t take any of this as confrontational or second guessing in nature, I just wondered which variables you would manipulate in order to gain LBM most effectively whilst following the ESE lifestyle?

Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m sure I’ve seen you comment that you don’t believe eating much above your BMR is necessary, neither is excessive protein intake or mega dosing your peri-workout nutrition. So I guess my real question is, if you HAD TO gain say 5-10lbs of skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, naturally, and assuming you’re already training using a program with built in progressive overload, which nutritional variables would you tweak? Would love to know exactly how you would go about it. Thanks for reading, and have a great New Year!

Great Question! If I had to gain 5-10 pounds of Skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, I’d be screwed. I’m 32 and have been training for over 15 years. Without drugs, I’m not putting on another ten pounds of skeletal muscle. Another ten pounds would put me well above the normal range for my height. Now, I can put on 10 pounds of lean mass…I could do that in an hour or two…add ten pounds to my bench/squat/deadlift/clean…I could do that too..maybe over the course of a year, but ten pounds of actual muscle, not happening.

B

OK, apologies. Allow me to rephrase the question if you will. What if you were 21, 180 lbs @ 5’9” and had all the time in the world to eat, sleep and train? How would you then optimally add actual muscle, whilst adhering (possibly the wrong word, I don’t even see ESE as something you need to adhere to, it’s so easy!) to Eat Stop Eat?

Ah…Ok that’s way more fun.

I’d do stuff you can do for high volume, that is taxing on the big muscles and that doesn’t break you down. I would workout in the gym 2-3 times a week working the muscles but not blowing myself apart. But that wouldn’t be the big stuff, the big stuff would be 2 times a week outside with a couple of buddies doing a combination of sled dragging and farmers walks. Each session would be two to three hours long. The goal wouldn’t be to burn out, or to be a sweaty mess, but just to do lots of work.

At 21 I wouldn’t rule out ‘eating big’ since their is probably still some juvenile muscle growth going on…but I would still ‘temper’ it with Eat Stop Eat.

I’m still not convinced that a 5?9? frame can add 10 more pounds of straight muscle (depending on how long you’ve been training for), but based on my experience this would be how I’d try to get there.

Thanks for the response. Great advice, much appreciated!

Filed Under: Body Building, Muscle Building

PROMOTED STORIES:
  • What would you say if I told you your workout is insane? Here is a better way.
  • Are The Foods You Eat Triggering Health-Harming “Obesity Toxins” In Your Gut?
  • Trick Your Body Into Burning Fat Like You're On A Low Carb Diet — While You Eat Yummy Carbs Every Day
  • In Just One Day This Simple Strategy Frees You From Complicated Diet Rules — And Eliminates Rebound Weight Gain
  • New Discovery "Flips The OFF Switch" on Stubborn Fat
  • Discover The Surprising Connection Between Exhaustion, Lethargy, Weight Gain and The Air You Breathe
  • Add ¼ teaspoon to your coffee [eliminates fat cells]
  • Revealed: Your Answer To The Most Frustrating Nutrition Myth Of The Past Decade “How Much And What Kind Of Protein Do You REALLY Need To Eat Every Day?”

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Recommended Posts

Why we hate the BMI

  A new study adds to the growing evidence that an elevated BMI increases the risk of a heart attack in otherwise healthy people. In what has been called the largest study of its kind (data on over 500,000 people) researchers classified participants based on their body mass index (BMI), calculated as weight (kg) divided […]

How Many Calories can you Burn in a day?

Have you ever stopped to think that there might be an upper-limit to human metabolism? Basically a ‘ceiling rate’ at which we can burn through calories? Probably not, but don’t worry… I did for you! I’ve heard rumors of people eating well over 10,000 calories during a single cheat day, or even every day during […]

Reverse Taper Intermittent Fasting

The concept of the Reverse Taper Diet is still one of my favorite ideas. Without getting too technical, the concept is that you should be in your largest calorie deficit (eating the least amount of food) at the beginning of your diet, when you have the most fat to lose and thus the most fat […]

Fasting for Weight Loss – Setting the Record Straight

Paleo eating and vegan eating are the EXACT SAME THING. This is why any and all research on Paleo diets can be used for Vegan diets, and vice versa. It’s also why any personal experiences people have had with a Vegan diet can be directly applied to what you will probably experience with the Paleo […]

Never Skip Leg Day

Friends don’t let friends skip leg day, or so the saying goes… Small legs, chicken legs, the triumphant retort of any one to any body with a good bench or built upper body… But is it justified? Legs are important to sports performance and good physique, not to mention your long term health (A smaller […]






Get a copy of my book “Zen of Nutrition” for FREE here!

We respect your email privacy

Footer

About Brad Pilon

Brad is an expert on intermittent fasting as it relates to losing weight and gaining muscle. He's also the author of Eat Stop Eat.
[ Read more... ]
Terms & Privacy

Floating link to newsletter

Read my
newsletter!
Copyright © bradpilon.com