Hi comrades

I want to start handling my nutrition and fitness better. I usually work out at home and can do pushups etc., I would say I’m quite underweight.

While I’m reading the guide by CriticalResist on Prolewiki, I decided to count my calories. I barely reach 1500 calories a day which at this point I’ll go malnourished. I just feel full very quickly. I do not eat processed sugars and avoid sweets, and I’m basically vegan at this point.

I exercise too and can do push ups, squats etc with no problems whatsoever, though as expected I cannot build muscular mass, most likely because of my nutrition. I don’t have the money to go to a gym so I want as much as possible to work out at home, I saw that calisthenics might be a good option? Though they seem unreliable for building muscle mass and strength. I want to put more weight but not fatty weight, which had happened to me in the past. I do eat healthy, but I eat way too less because I feel I just get full quickly. This might be due that in the past I was overweight and conditioned myself to not eat much, but now I’m basically starving myself.

How would I go about increasing my caloric intake while putting muscle mass (preferably at home)?

  • GreatSquareEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    While I see comments about cranking up protein intake, could I suggest a more moderate approach?

    If you want to grow at a realistic rate, you don’t need that much excess food and only increasing protein won’t gain you much unless you have a big protein deficiency. Your metabolism can’t change so quickly to use extra without chemical enhancement.

    You still need to moderately increase carbs and fats in a balance. You use carbs and fats to fuel your workouts which should be higher load to stimulate muscle growth. A lot of calisthenics is endurance-based which is not that suitable.

    As you stated, you were overweight from overeating in the past. You only want to bump up your daily calorie intake slightly now rather than going crazy.

    I.e. A 10% increase is 150 extra calories per day which is one small snack with a balance of macros. E.g. since you’re vegan maybe some humus on a slice of bread or similar.

    Once you have that calorie excess, then you want to tune your workouts and your recovery time to stimulate growth.

    Check out this article for a less protein heavy approach: https://physicalculturestudy.com/2020/03/13/mike-mentzer-the-essential-nutrients-heavy-duty-nutrition-1993-11-14-2/