How To Gain Weight with Orange Juice

orange juice and cream

orange juice and cream

So you are sick of drinking milk, you need a break from it, but you still need a high calorie drink to gain weight. Well lately I’ve been craving orange juice, for some reason, but its hard to make the calorie sacrifice when I can be getting double the calories from milk… So what can I do?

Well here’s the recipe for a solution: Just add some 1/2 and 1/2 or cream to your milk. Remember those Popsicles Tropicana used to make that were vanilla with a coating of frozen orange juice on top? They are friggin’ delicious, well anyways that’s what your orange juice will taste like when you add 1/2 and 1/2 or cream to it. Not too much, but just a few tablespoons can bump up the weight gain ability by 100 calories or so, so use it at your own discretion until you think it tastes right.

And you still get the satisfying fruity refreshing taste of orange juice. Let me know what you think once you try this orange juice recipe.

Steak Vs Shake

ready to drink protein shake

ready to drink protein shake

Protein Shakes are

  • Nasty
  • Kinda Expensive
  • Thick and Nasty
  • Leave you feeling bloated
  • Convenience is the only pro I can think of

Steak is

  • Delicious
  • Low in Fat
  • Extremely dense in protein
  • Did I mention delicious?

So a Guy at my gym was drinking these things (over on the right). It’s a $4.00 (outrageous!) ready-to-drink can of flavored protein drink, readily available at GNC… A 12 pack will run you about $50.00, which in my opinion is INSANE! I guess this works out to roughly 8 cents per gram of protein. I can see convenience working in as a reason to have this

Rare Grilled Steak

Rare Grilled Steak

stuff, but a diet high in meat should render it obsolete. I mean, just tonight, I went down to the grocery store and picked up a nice steak for $3.00 that has 75 Grams of Protein in it… The math on this one is 4 cents per gram of protein. The protein in a steak costs 1/2 as much as the stuff in that nasty can (this is actually one of the cheapest one’s I’ve found lately, usually its not more than $1.50 more though). Could he not wait to get home, fire up the grill and throw on a steak? I usually have time I guess if you are in a huge hurry all of the time you might need the nasty shakes.

But I have another point. People today seem to think getting enough protein is all about supplements and shakes, but it doesn’t have to be! Eat a few eggs at breakfast with some ham, toast and peanut butter, make milk your primary beverage throughout the day, have a meaty sandwich at lunch, and have a steak at dinner, and you are easily at 150 grams of protein in one day without even trying, without consuming one shake! Just eat more meat! Its really low in carbs, low in fats when its not fried; making hamburger patties at home on the grill with lean hamburger is another good source! I think people have forgotten how healthy meat is these days. Meat get a bad rap.

To further push against shakes, the amount of carbs and sugars shakes are usually loaded up with, at the end of the day, will usually transfer to a net amount of fat gain much higher than steak or any relatively lean meat in general. That shake may only say 8 grams of fat, but when you look down and it says 250 grams of total carbohydrates and another 50 grams of sugar (extreme case, read on), you know that’s just going to metabolize into fat anyways! And at that point, the everything comes back down to that single equation, are your calories in greater than your calories out (or vice versa)… Even some of the leanest ” PURE Whey Protein” powders will still struggle to hit the protein : net fat ratio of even some non-lean cuts of meat.

Just something to consider before you start downing shakes like crazy!

This post is dedicated to meat.

Lingering Effects Of That Hangover

hangover dogThis post wont make sense really unless you read my previous post… Anyways the effects of my awful hangover were very evident at the gym today. My schedule has been extremely hectic  lately and last Wednesday and today are the only times I have been able to get in since the hangover… Anyways, today during squats, I had my goal of at LEAST doing as many reps as I had previous to the hangover… 6 squat reps with 115lbs loaded onto the bar (first set); well i made it to 3 full ones and on my way back up on the 4th my legs literally just gave out and I went all the way down to the safety bars… What a complete failure. Hopefully next squat day I’ll be able to hit that 6th reps with 115lbs loaded on, and that will officially have me set back almost 2 whole workout rotations… Drinking not worth it at all, my fitness goals are too important to me.

Oh well, progress can officially resume now.

Officially Giving Up Alcohol

giving up alcoholI’ve said it before, but never on my blog, so this time I’m serious. I am giving up alcohol, indefinitely. I am starting to think I may be allergic to alcohol somehow…. And here’s why. I get super bad hangovers from even small amounts of alcohol. Whether it be one margarita, a couple beers with dinner…

Here’s how the night that made me quite went: I went out to the bars with my buddies on a Saturday night last weekend. I knew I didn’t want to drink much because I know I get hungover easily, so I paced myself reasonably well. Over the course of 4 hours I had 4 beers, that’s all. The resulting hangover was torture and its effects lasted for 3 days. Sunday morning I was completely crippled and confined to locations where I could lay down and pull my knees to my chest. I was dry heaving for hours. My appetite had completely gone for the entire day, and I _maybe_ got down 500 calories total. My appetite still had not returned for Monday or even Tuesday, It was impossible to force myself to eat enough to gain weight.

Finally today, Wednesday, I am feeling relatively normal. I finally got back into the gym, but I was barely able to repeat the sets:weight amount I had done my previous workout. After I checked my weight on the scale and found I had lost 2lbs!….  And for hard gainers, getting those two pounds back doesn’t come easily. It has set me back, probably 2 whole weeks.This isn’t the first time something like this has happened either.

I do stay hydrated, I’ve tried the oldest tricks in the books to avoid getting a hangover, my only explanation now is that maybe I’m somehow allergic to it? Maybe my great great grandparents hooked up with some Inuits a long time ago and I inherited the alcohol intolerance gene.

And that’s how I decided that enough was enough. If I want to continue making bodybuilding progress as fast as I want, I’d need to completely give up alcohol… Not that I particularly enjoyed drinking that much in the first place.

And so I move on. Have you ever given up anything in order to pursue fitness goals?

Calorie Data to Be Posted at Most Chains By LAW

nutrition menuAs part of the health care bill, large restaurant chains will be required to display calorie information right on their menus and drive-through displays. I know when I go to a restaurant I ask for the “nutrition menu” just so I can select the item that has a lot of calories… I mean if I’m paying ~$15-20 to go out to eat, I want more than 600 calories, you know?

I work at Romano’s Macaroni Grill part time and our dishes vary hugely in their amount of calories. Some are as little as 500 calories, some are over 1500 calories, usually with little price difference.

It will be much more convenient to have the calories listed right in the normal menu rather than having to hunt down a nutrition menu or just guess how many calories I’m eating. Some restaurants don’t even have nutrition menu’s which makes calorie counting very aggravating!

Everyone who counts calories should be in favor of this right?

One of the dishes at the Macaroni Grill, the “Parmigiana Crusted Sole” has 1700 calories in it, and its not very filling… Its a mid-priced dish too. I wonder how it will effect consumer behavior /  the amount of people that order it once they see they are consuming 85% of their daily calories in one sitting!

Hey There

I'm Boon. I'm using this blog to document my transformation. I've always been REALLY skinny and have had a VERY hard time gaining weight. I'm creating this blog to share things I've learned and to help push myself harder.