As a trainer and coach, a large number of the athletes I’ve worked with over the years have been looking to gain muscle mass and get bigger. I’ve heard every excuse and complaint in the book. “I swear I’m eating SO much!” “I’m trying but I am just too busy to eat that much.” “I’m not hungry.” “I can’t get enough meals in.” Blah blah blah. Boring. Lame excuses aside, I will concede that if you’ve never done it before, the task of gaining mass can be daunting. Where to start? How does one overhaul their lifestyle and habits enough to make a measurable difference? Here’s 6 tips to make gaining muscle mass a breeze:

Eat more often

If you are looking to eat in a caloric surplus, it’s not always easy to just eat gigantic meals 3 times per day; especially if you are highly active and can’t afford to be running around with a full belly. The best way to overcome this challenge is simply to eat more meals per day. You can change nothing about the composition of your average meal and just start eating 6 times per day, rather than 3, and see a marked improvement in your weight gain goals. I’ve seen athletes eat as many as 8 times per day. The key is just to find a routine that works for you and stick to it. 

Here’s two examples of a daily eating schedule that gets 4000 calories, with one being much easier than the other:

Example 1: 

8am: Breakfast 1000 calories

12pm: Lunch 1000 calories

3pm: Snack 500 calories

6pm: Dinner: 1500 calories

Example 2: 

8am: Breakfast 500 calories

10am: Second Breakfast: 500 calories

12pm: Lunch 1000 calories

3pm: Snack: 500 calories

6pm: Dinner 1000 calories 

9pm: Snack 500 calories

Eat highly palatable foods

One of the main variables in eating a lot of a certain food is palatability. Palatability is the characteristic a food has that makes it easy to eat. This doesn’t mean just taste, but also it’s literal mechanical ease of consumption. Try to eat 2000 calories of beef jerky in a sitting. Good luck. Try to eat 2000 calories of mac and cheese in a sitting. Easy money. Salty, softer, fattier, and more savory are your keys here. Each individual will be slightly different here, but the important point is to not force yourself to eat dry boiled chicken breast and rice if it’s difficult to eat. Eat foods that are a breeze to put away copious amounts of for you. 

Eat calorie dense foods

If you are trying to gain mass, it doesn’t make any sense to eat the same foods your mother eats in order to shed those last 5 pounds for summer. Remember: many of the foods that normies consider “unhealthy” are only so because they contain a large amount of calories, and excess calories are in fact unhealthy for the average sedentary milk bag bodied American. But you aren’t that. You are a competitive athlete, looking to become a dieseled-out wrecking ball of a human being. Ground beef, cheeseburgers, barbecue, french fries, even ice cream, are all back on the menu. Good luck consuming 4000 calories of chicken breast and salad every day. Foods that are high in fat combined with some other nutrient are a real hack here, as fat is 9 calories per gram, while carbohydrates and proteins are only 4 calories per gram. You want to reach for peanut Butter, ground beef, cheese, olive oils, butter, whole milk, fatty cuts of steak, cream sauces, etc. 

Eat what you like

Nobody gets extra points for choking down foods they hate in their quest to get jacked. If you know that pork is a great, cost effective food to build muscle, but you don’t like pork, you don’t have to eat pork. Beef, chicken, fish, and eggs are all still there for you. 

Don’t get hungry

One of the most underrated little hacks someone can do if they don’t want to meticulously count calories all day is to listen to their body’s natural feeding signals. Hunger is an imperfect indicator, but it can be useful to try to make sure you always eat before you begin to feel hunger pangs. You don’t eat when you’re hungry. You eat when it’s time to eat. If you feel hungry, then you’ve gone too long without eating. One disclaimer on this strategy: if you fall into a routine of eating more often for long enough, you may start to feel hungry when it’s “time to eat” even though you didn’t used to feel hungry that often. This is okay. Ride that wave. 

Always plan ahead

The hardest thing about gaining mass if you have a busy schedule is just staying organized enough to never miss. The truth is, the diet that is required isn’t out of this world advance, it just requires planning and organizational skills. If you are a student, don’t rely on school lunch to get your nutrition. Pack meals the night before to bring with you. If you have games, competitions, etc; bring snacks to stay fueled. Never go anywhere without a plan of how you are going to continue building your body. Of all of the tips I’ve shared in this article so far, the truth is this is the hardest, but most important. Losers complain that it’s too hard to always have food with them. Winners buy a lunch box and execute.