Getting in Shape & Eating Healthier

[Dude]

I've lost 20ish lbs since August by doing absolutely nothing.

[braix]

I've lost 20ish lbs since August by doing absolutely nothing.

A clap off to the pro

[Dude]

Except I did start a new medicine that has weight loss as a side effect.

[DrP]

Except I did start a new medicine that has weight loss as a side effect.

I did too!! (Well, kind of. I increased the dosage from before).

And now I lose like .2lbs to .4lbs a day!

[Xaoz]

Point of departure:

Spoiler

Hey, hey, hey, I can help yar there.

It's as easy (actually really hard :[) as 123:
1. Eat Lots of calories. Use this to help figure out exact numbers.
2. Make sure you're getting your daily dose of protein. ~50g is a good rule of thumb.
3. WORK OUT. Not necessarily weight lifting, but something to give yourself muscle. If you just sit around all day, you will gain it all as fat. It'll also make all that extra protein go to your kidneys, which isn't fun.

Helpful tips: Peanut butter is god. Dairy products/meat are pretty good as well. Don't try to rely too much on fast food and sweets, you don't want to clog up your arteries/get diabetes in the process. Those nutrition shakes (boost, ensure, etc.) are great crutches. You can make your own weight gain milk shakes if you want:
Ice Cream + Whole Milk + Instant Carnation Breakfast/Muscle Milk + Whatever flavoring you want (peanut butter goes well here!)

A good baseline is 3 500 calorie meals and 2 300 calorie snacks, then add extra calories as needed (based upon the number you got from step 1.)

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Prelude:

Spoiler

Okay, I will start out with this.
Noc wants to get some weight. We assume he wants to get some muscle and fat and just give some general advice, to not be too specific, since we do not know Noc's height, nor his weight, nor his overall fitness/bodyfat level, nor his experience regarding workouts/nutrition/sports. So basically we have to take a shot into the dark.

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Making people angry chapter 1:

Spoiler

Let's get to the stuff FireArrow said:

1. Eat Lots of calories.

This advice is just as helpful as saying "gain some weight". Basically there is no information in it. You don't know Noc's eating habits, nor do you know his weight. You just say "eat lots of calories". While it is completely impossible to EAT calories, since they are just a value calculated by the ingredients of a product (meals don't CONTAIN calories, they HAVE a certain calorie-value).
So since we do not know Noc's eating-habits, we cannot know how much he actually has to eat to reach his (not really precisely defined) goal. Overall we can ASSUME, that he would probably need to eat more, since we need a calorie surpluss for getting weight, especially building muscle.

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Making people angry chapter 2:

Spoiler

2. Make sure you're getting your daily dose of protein. ~50g is a good rule of thumb.

I already mentioned in my previous wall-of-text post, how much protein you need to build muscle. If you want to gain fat, you do not need protein at all. Since at this point, we do not know, what kind of weight Noc wants to gain, this advice just makes no sense at all and the number is just completely random.
50g of Protein would be sufficient for (I did not calculate this, it is just my guess) a person of 40kg, if his goal is to build up muscle. For details... See wall of text...

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Making people angry chapter 3:

Spoiler

3. WORK OUT. Not necessarily weight lifting, but something to give yourself muscle. If you just sit around all day, you will gain it all as fat. It'll also make all that extra protein go to your kidneys, which isn't fun.

Well... At this point, we assume, Noc took notes and now knows what nutrition it takes to get to his goal. Now he is wondering how to actually make his body transform all the stuff he eats into some nice new muscles (technically not new muscles, but bigger muscles).

"Not necessarily weight lifting, but something to give yourself muscle."
This sentence is so full of truth, yet contains zero information. Yes, if Noc wants to build up muscle, he needs to do something to get himself some muscles!

"If you just sit around all day, you will gain it all as fat."
This is probably the only real true and good statement that I read in this post.

"It'll also make all that extra protein go to your kidneys, which isn't fun."
At this point I assume that Noc is some (kinda) healthy guy, who has no kidney-disfunction or other really weird illnesses, that dramatically change or influence the usual behavior of his body.
I don't know why people are always so dramatic... There is actually no reason to be afraid of kidney-damage, if you do not eat like WAY too much (I would guess... 3x or more the value that we calculated from your bodyweight) protein and just drink like 1 liter a day.

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The bonus:

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This actually brings me to a point, that I did completely overlook (since it SHOULD be common sense). Especially when you have increased protein-consumption because you want to build muscle, it is really important to drink enough. Make sure to get atleast 3 liters of liquid a day. Of course, you want to prefer water over everything else. A good alternative is tea (obviously you better not drink 3l of black tea a day...). Try to avoid juices and other sugar containing drinks like coke or whatever. If you are not sure, have a look at the nutrition label on the product or ask!

Since I am already talking about the drinking...
Alcohol is lethal for weight-gaining. I do not drink it, so I can only pass advice from other people and the experiences they made. Rule of thumb is: One day drinking till you pass out will negate one week of working out. I did not confirm this, but it is the general point of view.

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Peanut-butter-jelly-time:

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"Helpful tips: Peanut butter is god. Dairy products/meat are pretty good as well. Don't try to rely too much on fast food and sweets, you don't want to clog up your arteries/get diabetes in the process. Those nutrition shakes (boost, ensure, etc.) are great crutches. You can make your own weight gain milk shakes if you want:
Ice Cream + Whole Milk + Instant Carnation Breakfast/Muscle Milk + Whatever flavoring you want (peanut butter goes well here!)"

Well, we already talked about the peanut butter long enough (not sure if we called it a god, though...)
Dairy is pretty awesome, regarding the stuff it contains. Bodybuilding without dairy is hard, but not impossible, since there are also successful vegan bodybuilders. If you have problems with dairy products, you should limit the amount, or cut them out. If you haven't then they will make your life much easier (Also much tastier!)!
Of course you want to avoid fast food and sweets... (@Noc and others)If you don't know why, then you can ask, but I will just assume you know it, or if you read my posts so far, you can figure it out by yourself.

"Those nutrition shakes (boost, ensure, etc.) are great crutches. You can make your own weight gain milk shakes if you want:"

I don't know what a crutch is. Especially in this context. If someone explains, I can probably say something about that...
Yes, you can make your own weight gaining shakes.

"Ice Cream + Whole Milk + Instant Carnation Breakfast/Muscle Milk + Whatever flavoring you want (peanut butter goes well here!)"
Wow... Wait a second! This is one hell of a weight-gainer! Yes, you will get weight, when eating this. You will also get weight if you drink dextrose mixed with olive oil. Does that make it a good idea? Probably not!
People seem to think, that if you want to increase your weight, you need to eat stuff that usually leads up to increased weight like fast food or ice cream. While it is true that this WILL lead to an increase of weight, it does not help you with your goal of building muscle at all. You can get some fat really fast like this, if this is your goal! But it is also really unhealthy and can lead to diabetes. There are better ways to build up fat!
A majority of people buy weight-gainers, since they do not really know how to eat properly and have not the time/effort to really read into it. Weight-gainers are nothing that you really need, if you know what you are doing, in my eyes it is just a bad idea to use them anyways, since it is basically a workaround for good and healthy nutrition.
At this point... If you do not know, what weight-gainers are, do not mix them up with protein shakes. Completely different story, completely different ingredients and completely different effect.

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The-wtf-this-is-so-off-I-cannot-think-of-a-caption Climax:

Spoiler

"A good baseline is 3 500 calorie meals and 2 300 calorie snacks, then add extra calories as needed (based upon the number you got from step 1.)"

If you say calorie, I assume you are talking about kilo calories (kCal)? Since this is a help thread for new guys to this topic, we should try to be precise and not confuse them more by mixing things up.
Again... As I said before... We do not know Noc's weight, so 3500kCal meals are completely random. This advice does not make any sense and does not help him at all. Also if you say... Add calories as needed... You do not make clear what these calories should consist of. Is it fat? Protein? Simple carbs? Complex carbs? A combination?!
Oh and btw... 3500kCals is more than a 100kg bodybuilder (if he does not do any kind of sports) would need while building up muscle PER DAY! NOT MEAL! PER DAY! This number is so off, that I almost fell off my chair! Jesus!
This number is SO off, that I went to the kitchen and got some stuff for a simple demonstration what we are actually talking about:

A glass of peanut-butter (no sugar added)... You hear me? A GLASS of 250g peanut butter (45g fat per 100g, that is as fat as it gets!) contains:
roughly 1500kCals. So regarding your advice... This would not be even a snack! Not even A SNACK! For a MEAL (let's assume 3 meals a day) we would need to eat 2,3 whole glasses of these per meal and ~7 per day! Have fun!
But wait! There is more! I also grabbed a glass of sausages! A 250g glass (550g if we count the water). It says... 590 kCal, if we eat all the 5 sausages.
Alright... I know you love numbers, so here comes the math(really complex):
So 4 glasses of sausages (20 sausages) are roughly 2390kCal, so basically a snack. One hell of a snack.
Now... Try to make a full meal of that.... Yeah... Let's do it! Just for the lols: 29,66 sausages. Dat meal.
So over a whole day... Let's assume we take 3 meals and have 2 snacks inbetween. That would be... 15100kCal oh and "then add extra calories as needed".
Let's put this down to sausages and peanut-butter. I feel like everyone here loves peanut butter!
10 (250g) glasses of peanut-butter (100kCal missing, but we can look over that... Since we do not want to get fat!) per day.
Or ~25,6 (250g) glasses of sausages, which would be 102 sausages. Of course that is digusting. So let us just mix it up and say 5 glasses of peanut-butter and 52(let's just round it up here, since we lacked some calories from the peanut-butter anyways!) sausages a day. Make sure to add extra calories if needed!

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Words by the author:

Spoiler

If you still do not understand why it makes me rage when you guys give these kind of advice to people that ask for help and that actually believe every word you say, then there is nothing I can do for you anymore. And maybe now you can even understand why I feel completely INSULTED when you throw around stuff like that.

I am always open for counter-arguments and discussion. You can also flame me hard if you did not like what I wrote.
I would also go through DrP's post, but you see how long it already takes to talk about this one...

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Obligatory:

Spoiler

FierceDeity Xaoz out

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[Sebastian]

I could use some tips on building muscle.
I've been doing pushups and lifting dumbells. Should I do more? What should I eat?
I've been eating a lot of eggs.

[mikey]

Lol xaoz it sounds like everyone's just being general to avoid hurting my head, not necessarily that they're wrong

[Xaoz]

I could use some tips on building muscle.
I've been doing pushups and lifting dumbells. Should I do more? What should I eat?
I've been eating a lot of eggs.

Why would you eat a lot of eggs?!
Pushups are insufficient if you really want to get some muscle.
 I do not use dumbells at all. As a beginner you should usually only stick to doing barbell exercisese (and of course some without a bar). Dumbells are for either isolation exercises or for advanced people with already good coordination and much experience.
Again the information provided is almost equal to 0. Make sure to read my posts. Will answer most of your question regarding nutrition.

Lol xaoz it sounds like everyone's just being general to avoid hurting my head, not necessarily that they're wrong

You cannot explain nutrition "in general" (Ff that is what you actually wanted to say. I do not really understand that sentence...). I just abused you for the examples.

[DrP]

Ron does have a point.

[Sebastian]

Eggs = Protein.

[Xaoz]

Eggs = Protein.

Hamburgers also contain protein.

[mikey]

Most meats contain protein.  Although I heard broccoli was a much better source of protein than meat haha

[braix]

inb4 xaoz mentions a million things that have protein

[Xaoz]

Most meats contain protein.  Although I heard broccoli was a much better source of protein than meat haha

Although, the quality of herbal protein is considered to be inferior to animal protein the sheer amount of protein in broccoli is just breathtaking. I think ~50kg of it could probably cover my daily dosis.

[mikey]

Although, the quality of herbal protein is considered to be inferior to animal protein the sheer amount of protein in broccoli is just breathtaking. I think ~50kg of it could probably cover my daily dosis.

D: