Hardgainers
I hate hardgainers.
I hate them as much as I hate the customers at Panera Bread that ask the minimum-wage dead-eyed employees to toast their bagels to a temperature so precise a meat thermometer is required.
You probably know a hardgainer. That one friend who eats whatever he wants and can’t gain weight. He's thirty-two years old and as lean as he was in high school, six-pack shredded. Never been on a diet. Eats lunch-meat sandwiches. (THERE'S BREAD ON SANDWICHES. DOES HE KNOW THIS?) Eats Eggo waffles for breakfast. Drinks Mountain Dew instead of coffee. He doesn't exercise, either.
You can't help but think, If I ate and drank the stuff he did, I'd look like one of the Gamorreans on Jabba's sail barge.
I hate hardgainers because I want to be a hardgainer.
I used to think I was a hardgainer. This is a common misconception. Skinny-fat guys are not hardgainers. You might have a hard time gaining muscle, but you are NOT a hardgainer.
To be a hardgainer, you need to (a) constantly whine about being a hardgainer and (b) have a difficult time gaining weight of any kind, of which body fat is included. Skinny-fat guys have a difficult time gaining muscle, but they gain fat with lubricated ease.
I thought I was a hardgainer because, long ago, I shared some of their physical attributes. After I lost my skinny-fat baby weight, I was lean. They were, too. I was also weak and scrawny. They were, too. I had thin wrists and a rather linear under-muscled body frame. They did, too. There were enough similarities for my brain to create a bond. Not to mention, deep down, I wanted to be a hardgainer, because when hardgainers bulked they seemed to gain a bunch of muscle without getting fat. This was unusual. According to every bodybuilding forum my overthinking nerd brain forced me to browse, fat gain was a common (expected) byproduct of bulking; softening your waistline was a sacrifice you had to make in the name of muscle growth.
How were hardgainers able to sail against the wind? I dug for answers (thanks again, nerd brain) and noticed most hardgainers seemed to say the same thing:
Eating is the hardest part of building muscle. You need to eat, eat, eat. Eat again. Wake up in the middle of the night and eat. Eat until you want to puke. And if you happen to eat so much you accidentally expel the contents of your stomach forcefully onto the floor, sprinkle some parmesan cheese atop the bile-infused biohazard and spoon it back into your body.
And so, I ate.
I never woke up in the middle of the night to eat, but I went out of my way to ensure I was eating enough. I used to add whole-wheat flour to my oatmeal every morning. It was like eating cement. I wasn't mad. I love dry food. Some people like getting choked in the bedroom. I like getting choked in the dining room.
Six months after I began my hardgainer campaign, my stomach had more rolls than a craps table.
I gained a lot of weight, but I didn’t gain much muscle relative to how much weight I gained. In other words, I got fat. Uncomfortably so.
Sad to say, I didn’t learn my lesson. I ran more hardgainer campaigns in the years that followed, plumping up like Porky Pig every time. Took me a while to realize I wasn’t a hardgainer, and I couldn’t eat without regard for quantity unless I wanted my stomach to have the consistency of a Ziploc bag filled with Elmer’s glue.
In recent years, I’ve been somewhat successful gaining muscle without getting fat thanks to Two Meal Muscle. Let’s just say, for me, eating enough food is NOT the hardest part of building muscle. (I imagine the same goes for you.) Still, I’ve always wondered how hardgainers were (and are) able to get away with eating everything they see without morphing into a manatee. How do they defy the laws of physics? Do they have hyperactive thyroids? What about tapeworms? Tapeworms make sense. Tapeworms freak me out. Can we stop talking about tapeworms?
Turns out, the reason hardgainers don't get fat is more white bread (boring) than laced lingerie (exciting).
Hardgainers don’t get fat because they don’t eat enough to get fat. They may not eat “healthy” foods, but, at the same time, they don't feed more energy than they need. Chalk up another win for energy balance. (If this conclusion leaves you rather unsatisfied, like the time you snacked on rice cakes, hang in there. This party is just getting started; I’ll light your lamp before the clock reads zero.)
The question from here becomes:
How do hardgainers wash Skittles down with Squirt (hardgainers drink Squirt, I’m serious) without feeding more energy than they need?
Three theories.
1. SATIATION
First, a white-bread (boring) theory is they’re more sensitive to satiation and they act upon their sense of satiation. In other words, they feel full sooner than we do, and then they actually stop eating when they feel full. End result, they eat pigeon-sized portions and don’t accumulate as much energetic material as we would.
I don’t know about you, but if I make nachos and I feel full before I toss back every last tortilla on the tray, I’m not waving the white flag. You can’t reheat nachos. I used the entire block of red cheddar to make them. I'm not letting red cheddar go to waste.
2. ABSORPTION
Second, a laced-lingerie (sexy) theory is they don’t absorb as much energetic as we do. Some nutrients and energetic material pass through your digestive tract; there's a lot of variability in how much energy we excrete.
In our poop.
This article says a “healthy” range for fecal energy loss is between 80 calories and 500 calories per day. This is a HUGE difference.
Let’s say you clone yourself. The only difference between you and your clone is fecal energy loss. You have a fecal energy loss of 80 calories. Your clone has a fecal energy loss of 500 calories. You both eat 2000 calories. Controlling for every other factor, this means you absorb 1920 calories, whereas your clone absorbs 1500 calories.
Bonkers.
If your clone eats the same stuff you do, he’d lose almost one pound per week, whereas you’d maintain your weight. Put another way, your clone would be able to eat 400 more calories than you without getting fat.
That’s four slices of bread. Or two baked potatoes. Or three chicken breasts. Or two cups of pasta. Or one cup of vanilla ice cream. Or the bucket of tears you’re crying right now, realizing how much more food some people with inefficient digestive tracts might be able to eat without getting fat.
3. METABOLISM
Third, a middle-of-the-road theory is they have higher resting metabolic rates than we do. They don't necessarily exercise more than us, they're just “wired” with less efficient metabolisms.
These are just my theories.
There isn’t a straight line between hardgainers and sensing satiation, high resting metabolic rates, and fecal energy loss, but I wouldn't doubt if there was. I wouldn’t be surprised if that same line was also strangling those who have a strategically sound diet, yet struggle to lose weight.
Regardless, the phenomenon beats the phenomenology. For whatever reason, hardgainers have a difficult time gaining weight. Maybe they're able to stay lean when they bulk because they have a difficult time tipping the energy balance equation towards a super-high surplus.
Implications for non-hardgainers like us trying to build muscle without getting fat?
You bet.