gaining mass

"I seem to be gaining muscle but no mass"

I don't understand. Doesn't gaining muscle mean you are gaining mass, or are you referring to strength?

You can up the calories even more, and/or increase your protein intake.

 

it is not about the carbs. carbs provide the energy to allow you to do things.

mass is built from protein, since muscle is, for the most part, nearly all protein, and so you have to have protein to rebuild it properly, and allow it to grow.

it should be noted that building muscle does not add muscle, it simply trains the body to make the muscle fibers bigger, allowing the muscles to properly handle bigger weights and efforts.

carbs cannot effectively be converted to muscle.

I am not vegan/vegetarian, so there are alot of ways to get good quality protein, from whey protein shakes to chicken (which is a clean protein compaired to red meat, and you should try to get most of your protein from actual foods, not suppliments, which are to provide, right after you workout, a good boost of more easily asorbable proteins).

if you are vegan/vegetarian, you basically need protein shakes from sources your diet allows you to eat, because proteins from fruits, vegetables, and legumes and such are harder to digest and absorb.

the rule of thumb is at minimum you need one gram of protein a day for each pound of weight you weigh. the reality is that some of your weight is of course water, skeletal and fat weight, so the excess protein helps maintain and build your muscles in responce to working them out.

if you really are serious about packing on alot of lean muscle mass, you will want to augment your protein intake to have more avalible, especially after you workout, and before you go to bed, as you deplete our protein stores for absobtion as you sleep.

also, potatoes, while one of my favorate foods, is a bad carb; it absobed and is most easily converted to fat. you want carbs that are better, like rices (brown rice prefered, as the more processed a grain, the more fattining it is), whole grains. limit potatos, and to a lesser degree, pasta.

eventually, as you build more muscle mass, you will more naturally burn more fat as your body will change its metabolism to help maintain the muscle, which naturally burns away fat.

but in the beginning, you should still try to limit things that are going to be converted to fat more easily, so that your bodies metabolism is more focused on converting protein to repairing and strengthening muscle tissues.

 

How long are have you been working out for? Gaining muscle takes a long time, so don't expect to get results very quickly.

1 gram per pound is roughly the maximum, not the minimum. Beyond that your body will simply be using the protein as an energy source, and storing it as fat if you're at an energy excess. Most people working out will actually have a max-out level at something like 0.7 - 0.8 grams per pound.

Potatoes aren't that bad. They are valuable source of trace minerals and an okay source of fibre when you leave the skins on. They aren't that energy dense, with 360kJ per 100g, compared to rice at 531kJ for 100g of rice (white rice is also has much lower nutritional value than potato).
Brown rice is better than white but still 'worse' than an equivalent weight of potato - although it does provide different nutrients, so alternate between them .

See these for what I use for comparison:
potato 100g - Wolfram|Alpha
brown rice 100g - Wolfram|Alpha
rice 100g - Wolfram|Alpha

Boiling isn't very good because you will lose vitamins as they dissolve into the water - steaming is usually recommended instead. Baking, pan frying and so on are about the same so it comes down to personal preference. Don't underestimate the usefulness of microwaving either!

 

What are you doing at the gym?

 

Yes, but what are you actually doing . For example running could be described as exercising your lower body, but you're not going to gain any muscle from doing it.

How much weight are you using? How many repetitions and sets do you do? Have you increased the amount of weight recently? Have you changed your exercises or have you been stuck with the same ones for the full 7 months?

If you think you are gaining muscle at a good rate but you're not getting as big as you'd like, it's probably just you're expecting things to happen much faster than they will. Putting on muscle mass takes a loong time.

 

If you are able to work out for 60-90 minutes, then I think you probably aren't lifting as much weight as you should be! I would say if you're able to do more than about 45 minutes then it is too easy for you and you need to increase the weight.

However, if you're doing this every day:

That's chest, arms, shoulders, and abs all in one day, which must be exhausting! That only leaves about 15 minutes per muscle group.

Try to only work each muscle group once a week, so you have a full week of rest for that muscle. Muscle mass increases during the time after the workout, so you need to make sure you aren't overworking your muscles or else they will never have to chance to properly repair themselves and grow.
For example, do your legs on Monday and then don't work them out for the rest of the week, giving them a full 6 days of rest and repair time before you do them the next Monday. In the meantime you can do your arms on Tuesday, shoulders on Wednesday, abs on Thursday, chest+back on Friday (or some other combination).

Right now you must be doing the same muscles multiple times a week, which is a bit like going and digging up a garden every day and planting new plants, and then wondering why nothing has a chance to grow.



A good workout for lats... I don't like working out lats because I can't find a good exercise either . I do occasionally do dumbell rows, which are okay, and dumbell pullovers, which aren't that great.
Pullups are supposed to be good (with your palms facing away from you) but I don't do them very often as I don't have a proper pullup bar.

 

Keep a food diary for a week and use it to do a calorie count and look at your protein intake.

Out of curiosity, what are you doing to evaluate whether you're putting on muscle/gaining mass?

 

For gaining mass, you need to exhaust your muscles. This means that you need to do sets - Try doing one warm up set of 10-12 reps with whatever lighter weight. Then you have to do 3 working sets with really high weight - 6-12 reps. The working sets with higher weight will exhaust your muscles and cause them to tear (microscopically) and repair themselves over time - thus you gain muscle mass. I recommend eating sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes, as they are a good source of vitamins and carbs\beta carotene. You won't gain muscle over a short period of time, so any person who says that you can get big over a short period is full of it :eek:. I have been working out for 3 years hard and am still not big...Keep in mind that testosterone also is a factor in muscles - If you have high testosterone, you are more apt to have bigger muscles\ gain mass easier. For lats I would try doing the extended back row and also try lateral raises. Keep in mind that you only need .333 grams of protein per pound at minimum, 1 gram per pound maximum. Anymore does get converted to excess fat. If you want to gain mass also, try limiting your cardio to 30 minutes a day.

 

Weight is not a very good means to track your progress. A tape measure is a much better indicator of whether you are making gains in muscle growth (and if you were looking to lose fat, it also helps track that).