Can't Gain Weight? Guess What- You're Doing It Wrong #2

Today we continue our foray into the "mysteries" of weight gain.  Mysteries more mysterious than the most mysterious Scooby Doo episode, and possibly more mysterious than the mysterious love child that would be produced if Sherlock Holmes, the cast of Scooby Doo, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy drew had a massive, week-long orgy.  That child would likely be called "Eat More, You Fucking Jitbag", and he'd look suspiciously like a plate of hamburgers, but he'd wear a cape so as to play up the mysterious angle.

To wit, more evidence:

JM Blakely
Vital Statistics
Height: No idea
Weight: Competed at 275 and 308, in addition to two other weight classes (220 and 242, presumably)
Benched 710 @ 308

Frankly, I could find little about JM Blakely online other than his prescription for weight gain, which has been posted ad nauseam.  One of his most famous quotes is "Remember - If you want to beat the man, you've gotta out-eat the man!"  Though it should come as no surprise, all of the criticism surrounding Blakely's diet prescriptions centers around how fat it would make a person... ignoring completely the fact that Blakely himself wasn't fat.  As such, groupthink predominates and Blakely's dieting suggestions are little more than fodder for online shit-talking by assholes who don't actually lift and justification for disgusting fatbodies to eat like they do, look like shit, and remain weak as kittens (likely because they spend all of the live-long day talking shit over the internet rather than lifting).  In any event, Blakely's bulking suggestions are as wild as they are obviously effective, and here they are as related by Dave Tate:

"For breakfast you need to eat four of those breakfast sandwiches from McDonalds. I don't care which ones you get, but make sure to get four. Order four hash browns, too. Now grab two packs of mayonnaise and put them on the hash browns and then slip them into the sandwiches. Squish that shit down and eat. That's your breakfast."

"For lunch you're gonna eat Chinese food. Now I don't want you eating that crappy stuff. You wanna get the stuff with MSG. None of that non-MSG bullshit. I don't care what you eat but you have to sit down and eat for at least 45 minutes straight. You can't let go of the fork. Eat until your eyes swell up and become slits and you start to look like the woman behind the counter."

"For dinner you're gonna order an extra-large pizza with everything on it. Literally everything. If you don't like sardines, don't put 'em on, but anything else that you like you have to load it on there. After you pay the delivery guy, I want you to take the pie to your coffee table, open that fucker up, and grab a bottle of oil. It can be olive oil, canola oil, whatever. Anything but motor oil. And I want you to pour that shit over the pie until half of the bottle is gone. Just soak the shit out of it." 

"Now before you lay into it, I want you to sit on your couch and just stare at that fucker. I want you to understand that that pizza right there is keeping you from your goals."

"Now you're on the clock," he continues. "After 20 minutes your brain is going to tell you you're full. Don't listen to that shit. You have to try and eat as much of the pizza as you can before that 20-minute mark. Double up pieces if you have to. I'm telling you now, you're going to get three or four pieces in and you're gonna want to quit. You fucking can't quit. You have to sit on that couch until every piece is done.

And if you can't finish it, don't you ever come back to me and tell me you can't gain weight. 'Cause I'm gonna tell you that you don't give a fuck about getting bigger and you don't care how much you lift!"

Did I do it? Hell yeah. Started the next day and did it for two months. Went from 260 pounds to 297 pounds. And I didn't get much fatter. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, though."(Green, N)

The caloric intake on Blakely's diet is colossal.  An EliteFTS contributor calculated that the total caloric intake on this diet is conservatively placed at over 11k calories per day.

Calories (kcal)
4 breakfast sandwiches: 1800
4 hash browns: 600
2 packs mayo: 160
Chinese buffet binge: 4000
Large pizza w/ the works: 3040
Olive oil: 2000
Total: 11,600 kcals (Patterson)

Somehow, Blakely's deep thoughts and introspection never led him to the conclusion that only Tom Selleck and Hitler could pull off a mustache.

In spite of his seemingly ridiculous assertions about bulking, Blakely appears to be a remarkably intelligent and level-headed guy about it.  He states, for instance:

"Remember that the weight gain is to be temporary. You should plan a reducing diet to follow at a specified time in your training. This is where you attempt to maintain most of the new strength you amassed during the bulking phase while lowering your body fat to the same level you started at. You are not training to get stronger, only to hold the strength you have while dropping the excess. Commit yourself to the goal of returning to your starting level of bodyfat and see how much of the new strength you're kept. If you diet right, it should be above 80%. So that is your true gain. The gain you keep after gaining and losing the excess bodyfat is what counts. If you gain 20 lbs on your bench and lose 15 when you diet, you missed the point. If you gain 20 lbs on the bench and keep 15 (16) you've achieved something and done it correctly. Now repeat this process as necessary!! I suggest that you only hold your weight heavy for no longer than 5-6 months before you diet back down. Each time you repeat this process, you will hold more strength and have more muscle mass than before. Avoid staying heavy too long. It is only temporary!"(Blakely)

Dave Tate.  Clearly, he's not a ringing endorsement for EliteFTS's neck harness.

In that light, the suggestions Dave Tate blithely applied to his own diet make far more sense.  The idea is not that one should become a giant fatass- the idea is that true dramatic changes to one's physique occur as the result of dramatic efforts both in the gym and at the dinner table.  Fears of fat-assedness can thus hardly be maintained with any degree of validity due to the fact that Blakely's diet is not intended to be conducted like a runaway train, but rather as a cyclical method for increasing lean body mass while maintaining one's level of bodyfat.  It is, if you will, the ABCDE diet (read more here) taken to an enormous temporal extreme.  Will that allay the fears of the internet's legions of skinny-fat know-nothings?  Certainly not, but those idiots are beyond helping anyway, so let's dig a shallow ditch, shove them in, plant a gym atop it and laugh as we shit on their burial ground.

Anthony Ditillo
Vital Statistics
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 258 lbs
Strict Standing OH Press:350 lbs.
Seated press to forehead: 435x3 (that's not a typo- that comes from Poliquin himself)

Ditillo's name isn't really a household name, outside of those people who read Dezso Ban and associate the name Ditillo with that site.  He was, however, an incredibly strong and insightful guy with some impressive lifts.  Charles Poliquin lists him as an influence, which is heady praise indeed.  Ditillo wrote for Iron Man magazine for a couple of decades and practiced what he preached- he bulked to 300 at one point and then cut down to 190 thereafter.  Given his pedigree, lifting accomplishments, and the fact that he was a master of weight manipulation, you'd think that he'd be the go to guy on the subject, but information on  this motherfucker is as scanty as the few biographical tidbits I could locate are obsequious.  Nevertheless, he had the following to say on the subject of weight gain, which I pared down from a rather lengthy article:

"Today the physical culture world is enveloped with training systems most of which are not worth the paper they are printed on. You hear all kinds of reasons for not being able to gain weight: high metabolism, low metabolism, high energy level, low energy level. What is all the ballyhoo about? If you have low metabolism than your problem would not be one of being unable to gain weight, but of controlling this weight and keeping reasonably lean. If, on the other hand, you have a high metabolism you must perform mass muscle movements in low sets of repetitions twice a week. You also must continuously force yourself to eat more and more good wholesome food. Drink lots of milk. It can really make you grow. Eats lots of lean meat. It’s good for you. And don’t forget the fruits and vegetables. They’re ALL important. 

So you see, it’s not all that involved when it comes to gaining weight. All you have to know is what category you fit into, and train and eat accordingly. Instead of taking one multi-vitamin per day, increase to three. Three to four quarts of milk per day, fortified with some protein powder and powdered milk can go a long way in increasing your weight. Six to eight meals a day (solid as well as liquid included) may be necessary to jolt your system to adaptability for gaining weight. 

All Italian foods are high in calories and loaded with carbohydrates for energy along with quite a bit of protein in the form of grated cheese, pizza cheese, meatballs, veal, according to the ingredients.

Sample Weight Gaining Soup
Three cups prepared vegetable soup.
One cup peas.
One cup corn niblets.
One pound precooked lean beef.
One cup pork and beans.
One cup lima beans.
One cooked potato, cut up.
Do not add any water to the above recipe.

Sample Weight Gaining Drink
One quart whole milk.
One pint light cream.
One pint heavy cream.
One pint ice cream.
Two packets gelatin.
One cup skim milk powder.
Three tbsp. honey.
One cup fruit salad.
One cup protein powder.

Blend the ingredients together. I would recommend drinking half this mixture an hour before a workout, and finishing the other half one hour before retiring for the night. Coupled with all the information and suggestions in this article I can’t see why anyone can’t gain all the weight he wants."

Clearly, he and Blakely were precisely on the same page about eating to gain weight- it's simply a matter of forcing yourself, no matter how unpleasant stuffing yourself might be, to eat as much food as you possibly can at every opportunity.  He was far more of a fan of getting his calories in liquid form than was Blakely, but the message remains the same- if you eat it, you will grow.

Additionally, Ditillo didn't believe that you should continuously stuff yourself until you resembled one of the disgusting tubby motherfuckers you see oozing around Wal-Mart on a Rascal.  Instead, Ditillo recommended periodic cutting phases to consolidate one's gains and ensure that you maximized your strength to weight ratio... an idea that seems to have died out in the 21st century as various fatasses justify their impending coronary with assertions that absolute strength, no relative strength, is the only true marker of overall strength.

Norbert Schemansky
Vital Statistics

Height: 5'11" (181 cm)
Weight: 90-121 kg
Set 13 World Records in Olympic Weightlifting
3 time World Champion in Oly Weightlifting
Pan American Champ
434.5 lb Jerk at 194 lbs.
441 lb continental and jerk at 194 lbs.
One of only a few people to lift the Apollon wheels (366 lbs of train wheels on a fat bar)

Presumably due to the utter ridiculousness of his name, "Ski", as he came to be called, is one pissed off motherfucker.  Though you've likely never heard his name, he's one of the best-built heavyweight Olympic lifters of all time, and pulled off a bevy of coups in the Olympics against the Russians, earning a medals in the Olympics over 16 years- silver in London in 1948, gold in 1952 (where he was the first Olympic lifter to put double his bodyweight overhead), and bronze in Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964.  His story is actually fairly interesting, as he essentially lived in utter poverty throughout his lifting career to pursue his Olympic dream.  This was not because he was a Hepburn clone who couldn't communicate with other human beings and lived in the gym- instead, it's because he recognized that most people suck and was not afraid to tell them about it.  In Ski's words:

"I was working at Briggs Manufacturing and I asked for time off, and one of the guys from downstairs said, 'Give him all the time off he wants -- fire him,'"
"I said, 'Bleep you, I'm leaving.'"(Green, J)

In case you were curious about the above pic, that pic is of Ski at the end of his career, when he was a super heavyweight.  He started, however, as a middle-heavyweight, and continually gained weight and continued to dominate throughout his career, all while staying fairly lean.

Ski as a middle-heavyweight.

The diet he used to dominate the fuck out of the commies?  I like to call it "The American Dream."  This consisted of "Hamburgers. Pizza. Beer," according to Ski, in such quantities that he claimed Budwiser would have made him a millionaire with sponsorships, as would have Mike Illitch (founder of Little Caesar's).  (Green)

At least somebody knows how to bulk properly.

Random Tidbits
Frankly, I don't thing there's any amount of evidence I could proffer that would convince most of the dickbags whining about weight gain, but that's never stopped me trying before.  Some people won't listen to reason, no matter how much evidence is provided to disabuse them of their idiotic positions- I've even seen criticisms online taht I provided "no evidence" to support my claims that persistence hunting and the "evolution of distance running" were a pile of shit, despite the fact that cited 41 separate sources in the four evidence entries ranging from anthropological resources to Pubmed and everything in between.  Laughable as that is, it definitely points to the fact that emotions will blind the living shit out of people and they'll ignore evidence right in front of them so as to not feel like the pile of shit they know themselves to be.  In any event, here are a few more tidbits from a variety of lifters before I move on:

Ed Coan:  Coan wrestled at 98 pounds in high school, and holds records in powerlifting at 181, 198, 220, and 242.  The man clearly knows how to gain weight and make it fucking count.  His advice on diet is fucking simple: "I eat five times per day, try to get a lot of protein in, and when I cheat, I cheat." (Koenig)

Pat Casey:  I've blogged about this guy before, and he was another master weight manipulator.  Like everyone else about whom I've blogged, Casey believed protein to be the critical component of any diet, and when bulking "he would drink 6 quarts of milk daily plus ½ dozen eggs with protein. He would also take numerous vitamins."  His diet was based around meat, milk, and eggs, and everything else was a secondary consideration.

Paul Anderson:  Anderson was a fat motherfucker, but he was a strong, fat motherfucker.(Blog's here)  Anderson went after weight gain just like he did everything else- big and bold.  Exactly like Ditillo, Anderson believed that it was a massive pain in the ass to eat all the time, so he drank the majority of his calories.  According to Anderson, he "sometimes consumed three to four quarts of milk per day", and would occasionally blend a dozen raw eggs into sweet (condensed?) milk.  Later, he experimented with mixing protein powder into the sweet milk with eggs and ice cream, in addition to drinking cow blood and a bunch of other craziness.(Anderson)  He also ate massive amounts of peanuts, put gelatin into all of his juices to add protein, and ate a tremendous amount of "strength-building soups" invented by his mom, which consisted various combinations of meat and fish with beef drippings added. Just in case that wasn't enough, Anderson experimented with the additions of massive amounts of sugar to his diet:

"Occasionally I would drink soft drinks during my training and noticed when I did this I could perform much better, and my digestive cycle would work much faster. This proved to me that I needed a great deal more sugar. It seemed that the more protein I took, the more sugar I needed to help digest the protein, and also give me quick energy. I turned to the greatest sugar supply I could find, which was honey. I soon found that much of the honey that could be bought in grocery stores did not do me as much good as honey direct from the beehive, bought from a farmer. It was my personal belief that much of the honey that was on the market had been heated in a pasteurizing process and had lost some of its quick digesting qualities."

On that note, I can stop giving examples in good conscience.  If you're complaining you cannot gain weight, no matter what you do, but haven't tried adding liquid beef fat to your soup and consuming a metric ton of fucking sugar every day, you've not yet scratched the surface of trying to gain weight.  For those of you slavering for evidence supporting my contentions about the link between fat and testosterone, they'll be in the next installment of the series, in addition to some interesting common themes in the training methods of the lifters I've outlined here.

I'm still not half the cock tease this broad is.

Sources:

Anderson, Paul. Diet and Nutrition.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2008/06/nutrition-paul-anderson.html

Blakely, JM.  The Big Boy's Menu Plan.  http://www.wannabebig.com/forums/showthread.php?78823-The-Big-Boy-s-Menu-Plan-by-J.M.-Blakely

Ditillo, Anthony.  My Experience With Weight Gain.  http://muscleandbrawn.com/my-experience-with-weight-gain/
Everson, Jeff.  The Strongest Men In History. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/planet28.htm
Green, Jerry.  Norbert Schemansky.  http://chidlovski.net/liftup/a_interview_schemansky_011102.asp
Green, Nate.  37 Tips and Tales from Dave Tate.  http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/37_tips_and_tales_from_dave_tate
Koenig, John.  An Interview with Ed Coan.  Atlas Speaks.  T-Nation.  http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/atlas_speaks

Patterson, Brandon.  Bulk, Cut, Bloat: The Basic Science of Weight Manipulation and Powerlifting.  http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/nutrition/bulk-cut-bloat-the-basic-science-of-weight-manipulation-and-powerlifting/

Wilhelm, Bruce.  Pat Casey - Part Two. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2008/04/may-1968-september-2o-1969-police.html