Weight Gain Rate

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
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Jordan - I’m trying to understand where I should be setting my daily calorie intake goals. Stats: 40 year old male, 5’10". Cut from 204lbs to 159lbs from January to May then immediately switched to Starting Strength and bulking. This is my first time bulking and focusing on muscle gain.

Macros and nutrition: 240g protein per day, 25% of daily calories in fat, rest in carbs. I end every day within 50 to 100 calories of my daily goal.

I’m on the Starting Strength program, wrapping up week 7.

During weeks 1 through 3, my weight immediately jumped then stayed even at 167 lbs while consuming 2500 calories daily. I experienced an immediate increase from 159 to 167 after stopping most of my cardio, beginning creatine, and taking in more sodium from just eating more.

Week 4: Upped to 2700 calories. Lost half a pound that week. Weird.

Week 5 and 6: Upped to 3200 calories. Gained 2.5 pounds both weeks.

Week 7: Dropped to 2800 calories. Gained 2 pounds. Now at 174 lbs body weight. Started at 159 lbs.

I’m starting to grow concerned because while I absolutely want to give my body everything it needs to generate muscle, I’m putting on visible fat and my pants are getting much tighter in the waist.

Quick starting strength note: Still putting 10lbs on the bar for the big lifts almost each work out, and 5lbs on the bar for the press and bench.

Question: Is it broscience or real science that your body can only generate muscle so fast? I’ve seen plenty of people mention trying to limit your weight gain to somewhere around 0.5 pounds to 1 pound per week as anything beyond that is going to end up being stored as fat. I’m trying to hit that 0.5 lbs to 1 lbs per week number, but my body is screwing with me. Should I even bother?

Question: Would you suggest dropping my calories below 2800 per day if I’m still gaining 2 pounds per week?

Just looking for some general guidance because I’m really struggling to figure out where I should be at.

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Hey Mr Beanz,

Thanks for the post. Hope you’re well. Lots going on here so I’ll see if I can be brief.

Sounds like you might have started far too light on the lifts if you’re still adding that much weight at week 7, but I wouldn’t do anything about it now. Carry on.

Yes, there is a limit to amount of muscle mass you can generate at a given point. It changes over time and varies wildly within a population so the 0.5-1lb thing isn’t really useful IMO. Furthermore, under no circumstances will you only gain muscle when gaining weight.

How much has your waist changed in the last 7 weeks and what was it when you were 204lbs?

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Hi Jordan!

Once again, appreciate the response and your advice.

To answer your question about waist measurements, I didn’t take specific measurements, but I did just go back and measure where I was at on my belts before and now to get a fairly decent estimation.

At 204lbs - roughly 38" waist.
At 159lbs - roughly 34" waist.
At 174lbs - roughly 35" waist.

Yeah, I think the one lift I started a bit too light on was Deadlift, although I helped solve that by adding 20lbs on my second workout. All my lifts over the last 7 weeks have had those days where it felt like death trying to complete the 5 reps, and I’ve had several workouts where I couldn’t complete all the reps on one lift or another, but I would then have success on the next workout. Tough, but rewarding progress. I definitely be moving to 5lb jumps now though.

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Yea the belt measurement isn’t accurate enough to go off of here. I don’t think 2lbs per week is necessarily bad in general, but it seems quite aggressive for a 40 year old novice tbh. That said, you’ve got a few weeks left of novice LP so there’s a lot worse you could do and I think don’t change a damn thing until you’re ready for new programming.