Transcription
How many times have you heard trainers say, "Go on a bulk if you're struggling to gain weight and want to build your dream physique"? How many of them have told you that adding olive oil to your food is a weight gain hack because one tablespoon contains 120 calories? And how many times have you heard them say, "Eat more protein because more protein builds more muscle"?
You've heard about intaking liquid calories, mass gainer shakes, spacing out your meals, eating more by expanding your gut through drinking more water, and the list goes on and on. But how many times are you going to be lied to before you finally wake up to the fact that none of these tips will ever help you get to where you actually want to be? The only results that these fitness influencers have to show for these weight-gaining hacks are their own transformations, without ever showcasing the behind-the-scenes of what they actually did to make that transformation. You actually think that adding one tablespoon of olive oil will help you build your dream physique? First of all, you're nuts if you think this is going to get you anywhere. And second, the only thing that this will give you is a higher body fat percentage because excess calories from fat just get converted to body fat and are useless for actually putting on lean weight and muscle.
So what if I told you, if you truly, truly wanted to go from struggling to gain weight, having a fast metabolism and a small appetite, to building your dream physique, that you don't actually need to bulk, you don't need to force-feed. You don't need mass gainer shakes. And most importantly, you don't need to waste your time on these stupid tricks. Listen, if these tricks and hacks were so great, then why aren't these bulking experts showcasing their client results? They don't have anything to show because these tips are a whole lot of BS. And what truly worked for them to build their dream physiques is everything that they aren't showing you.
My name is Jaden, and I used to be skinny before finding the system that not just helped me put on 45 lbs of muscle in 12 months and helped me build my dream physique, but helped countless of my other clients achieve amazing results. And I am on a mission to peel back all the secrets and BS that the fitness industry has been feeding you, allowing you to finally go from struggling to gain weight and loss to building your dream physique. Now, I've already broken down why olive oil doesn't work. Essentially, if you look at the proper macro distributions of how you should be eating to gain weight, only 20% of those calorie distributions needed come from fat. All of that excess calories from a tablespoon of olive oil just makes you look like this. And yes, that's a picture of me being burned by these stupid online advice on bulking and building up your physique. When I was trying out all of these techniques and hacks, my skin broke out. I looked horrible. I was always bloated and felt sick. And I spent most of my days either in the bathroom or the gym. And trust me, if you're stuck in the bathroom all day, who's actually going to see your physique, right? In any case, I was the prime example of why this online fitness advice will do more harm than good.
Now, to prove to you why these are all BS, I'm going to quickly take a moment to debunk exactly why most of these tips don't work. First, going on a bulk to gain weight and build our physique. Us, as skinny people or skinny-fat people, we already struggle to eat enough to barely keep our current physiques. Furthermore, it's been debunked over and over again by science that a main gaining approach where you eat at a slight surplus to build lean mass leads to better long-term health and muscle development compared to a traditional bulk-cut approach where, for a couple of months, you eat at a high surplus, gain weight, get fat, and then having to dial back your calories to cut off all that excess weight that you put on. If you ask me, 10 out of 10 times I will choose the main gaining approach. But, Jaden, I can afford to go on a bulk because I literally don't get fat. Yes, I get it. And that's what I originally thought as well. And even though I never got fat in its literal terms, I could tell that the muscle definition that I once had disappeared. Not to mention how ill I felt and having brain fog every day by bulking and having mass gainers. Force-feeding is terrible for your health, and that's why now I don't ever go on a bulk ever.
Second, eating more protein won't help you build more muscle. Your body can only use so much of the protein you intake to perform muscle repair. Eating more protein over that limit is essentially a waste of calories because, firstly, protein is highly satiating, meaning you get fuller for longer eating less calories. Also, after your muscle is fully repaired, what gives your muscle the actual size and strength is the glycogen storage within your muscle, which is derived from the carbs that you eat. To visualize it, think of your muscle as a hot air balloon. If there's a tear in it, you need extra fabric to repair it, which is where protein comes in. What actually allows it to expand and rise is the hot air that fills it up, which is your glycogen storage. So, if you're already struggling to gain more weight to put on more muscle, eating more protein may actually be doing you more harm than good.
Lastly, some rapid fires. Liquid calories do work, and I would recommend them only if it's natural. But if you're using store-bought mass gainer powders that are super artificial and super calorically dense, it can actually overwork your digestive systems, leading to worse digestion and absorption over time. Meal timing is also stupid because I'm already having to balance gym, life, work, and school all together. Who actually has the time to space their meals and take four to five meals a day? On some days, I can barely manage, too. I don't want you to build your dream physique but have to become a full-time eater in order to do so. That's going to take all of the fun that comes from going to the gym and building your physique. And expanding your gut by drinking more water. Like, what? It's essentially like breathing more air to build more muscle. First of all, water has no extra calories. And they also say that it expands your gut so that you can eat more. But the gut doesn't actually just stay one shape forever. It can expand and contract. And lastly, if you're fine with running to the bathroom every 5 minutes, then be my guest and drink all the water you want to eat more.
Now that we got what doesn't work out of the way, let's talk about the exact system that I built to solve the problems of struggling to gain weight that actually work. My system is broken down into three main parts. And once you're able to get all three parts locked down, gaining weight and achieving your dream physique is not an if, but a when. And right away, I'll show you my client results that I got through giving them this system so that you know this isn't just BS. And the best part is these systems don't require you to force-feed or figure it out through trial and error. Everything's here, and you'll have everything you need by the end of this video.
Number one, the main gaining nutrition system. Essentially, this main gaining nutrition framework allows you to consistently put on weight over a period of 3 to 6 months without you needing to force-feed, without losing the muscle definition that you currently have, and without destroying your health to reach your dream physique. For this to work, you'll need three pieces: one, your TDEE or maintenance calories; two, eating at 100 to 200 calories above that; three, focusing on the right macro distribution. Now, how you'll be able to find your maintenance calories is through a TDEE calculator that you can find online. First, you just want to input your basic information and have the calculator find your TDEE. Next, what you want to do is add and eat 100 to 200 calories above that with the right macros. The correct macro distributions that you should be eating is 40% carbs, 40% protein, and 20% fat. Like I said before, we shouldn't prioritize protein if our goal is to gain weight and build lean muscle. Having this distribution will make it easier for you to gain weight consistently without you always feeling like you're force-feeding and about to explode. Now, you're not out of the woods just yet. The last thing you need to do is track your weight for a week or two and see whether your weight actually changes. If it doesn't, most likely your TDEE calculations were incorrect from the online calculator. If so, add 100 or more calories until you find yourself gaining weight consistently. Now, you'll need to recalculate steps one to three every 2 to 3 weeks, depending on how fast you're progressing. This is because the more muscle you put on over time, the more calories your body naturally burns, meaning your maintenance calories is now higher. The biggest mistake that beginners make that causes them to plateau after a month or two is establishing one caloric goal and eating there for 3 to 6 months without ever switching it out. Without proper tracking and recalculations, it's no wonder beginners feel stuck after a period of time. Look, I know, I know, one to two weeks is a lot of time to be tracking and seeing whether what you're doing actually works. This is why, in my program, Zenith Academy, we have my in-house nutritionist do all of this for you. Every two weeks, my clients hop on a call with their nutritionist for macro and calorie adjustments done for them, making it super easy to continuously progress without worrying about needing to recalculate or readjust anything.
Number two, we're going to talk about training as someone who's either skinny or skinny fat. The way you train going from skinny is vastly different compared to the way you train as an overweight person trying to get in shape. The biggest issue that beginners fall victim to is not having a structured routine and a training plan to follow. Listen, I don't care what other people say, but if you're going into the gym and eyeing which machine to do each time, you're setting yourself up for failure. If you don't have a workout log on your phone or a structured 12- to 16-week training plan that you follow, it's going to be extremely hard to make progress consistently, especially after the newbie gains phase. What you need to be doing is, one, if you're still in that newbie gains phase, to not waste that potential and get yourself an actually really good structured routine to follow, and two, download a workout log on your phone to start tracking your weight. Ideally, you should learn how to progressively overload every week for a certain exercise. You should be adding a bit more weight to each exercise to continuously introduce new stressors for your muscles to grow and adapt. Last but not least, the reason my clients and I get the best results is because we always, always train till failure. If you're not training till failure every time you go to the gym, you're wasting your time. Muscles only adapt and grow if you challenge them. If you're always doing the same weights, same reps, your muscles will only adapt to that level of stress. You won't make any more progress than you already are. And training till failure isn't just simply moving weights until you feel like you can't do it anymore. The even bigger part of training to failure is how to manage that fatigue caused by pushing your body in the gym. If you're consistently pushing yourself harder in the gym, what happens is, first, your body tries to adapt to this new stressor, leading to a big boom of growth. Then what happens is the growth slowly starts to decrease because of systematic fatigue of your muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons, as well as your central nervous system. Your body recovers slower. Your testosterone levels tank, and you gradually feel weaker rather than stronger. This is called overtraining, and this is caused by a lack of systems of recovery in your routine. Systems of recovery is something that I programmed directly into both me and my clients' training programs to avoid systematic fatigue and overtraining. If you lack the proper training plan going forward and systems of recovery, it's very easy to plateau and injure yourself rather than continue pushing to new heights.
When I first started out training, I was brainwashed by guys like David Goggins and Hamza, who seemed to train every day without rest and use mental toughness to push through every workout. In my very impressionable young mind, I thought if I wanted to be big like them, then I should start listening to their advice and start training like them. That eventually just led me to overtraining severely. My testosterone crashed. I developed erectile dysfunction, and my mental health went to—it wasn't until one day I had to literally search up the symptoms of overtraining did I finally realize that I was overtraining. After that experience, it took me 3 weeks off of the gym completely did I finally recover from overtraining. So, if you're lacking the right training systems, you can either do your research online and create a solid 12-week training program with progressive overload, with training to failure, and with systems of recovery. Or if you don't want to do all that research, you could have me do all of this for you by joining Zenith Academy. If you're interested, add me on Instagram and DM me the word "Zenith," and I'll reach out to you personally where we can then book a call and see whether we are a right fit for me to help you. But enough of that shameless self-plug. I'm actually here to help you. So, let's dive into the final part of the system.
Last but not least is lifestyle. What I mean by lifestyle is everything that comes outside of training and nutrition. Simply think, if you're an alcoholic, you party every chance you get, you go to bars and nightclubs every weekend, you might as well just quit the gym; there's no reason for you to be in the gym. But if you watch till now, most likely you are conscious about your health and how others perceive you. So having a lifestyle, or at least the habits that promote your transformation, will be crucial if you actually want to make a huge difference. Things like getting at least 7 hours of sleep per day, optimizing your sleep, eating clean, and refraining from regular drinking. These small things seem unimportant to you now, but their negative side effects do add up over time, keeping you away from your dream physique. And I'm not saying quit drinking, quit partying, or anything, because truth be told, I still do that a lot. But I put my health first before all of that. I only drink once every two weeks or so. I refrain from going out two days in a row. And I prioritize my sleep more than work, more than fun, because I know the importance of sleep. And because I'm here for the long run with health progress, and I don't want short-term enjoyment to derail my hard work and efforts. If you don't have a health-conscious life, you're making it so much harder for you to get good results in the gym. And at the same time, you're wasting your efforts that you put into nutrition and training. Outside of cutting vices, you also want to be adding things to your lifestyle that improve recovery, improving performance. Things like having scheduled sauna sessions every weekend with the boys or doing yoga to stretch out your tense muscles can seem meaningless, but over time these things really do add up and compound. And once you've turned these healthy choices into habits, that's when everything just starts growing exponentially. What I can actually talk about in regards to lifestyle is less compared to training and nutrition, but it's probably the most fundamental out of the three. If you don't have a health-conscious lifestyle, then nothing else really matters. And yeah, that's lifestyle.
Okay, guys, so that's the end of the three most important pillars of my system. So I hope that helped. Again, it was a lot of information for me to cover, but if you would like to join or learn more about my program, Zenith Academy, then go over to my Instagram and DM me the word "Zenith," and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I know, I know. Doing all of these things just to join a program is a hassle, but this process just makes it easier for me to filter out the people that are just booking calls with me for fun versus the people that are actually willing to take an extra step towards their dream physique. Once again, thank you so much for watching. If you like this one, be sure to subscribe, follow me on Instagram, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.