MACRO Diet Planning to Help Hardgainers Gain Muscle (BONUS Grocery List)
Bulking can be expensive, at least if you try to try to gain weight in a healthy way. For hardgainers, this is often even because of the large quantities of food that must be consumed to gain the weight during a bulk.
While there are various plans out there to help guide hardgainers (and other lifters) looking to gain mass, I have yet to come across one that has worked so well for me personally (I have tried a few), not only to put on weight but also make the cut much easier (since bulking with a plan makes losing the fat you gained much easier).
I have found that a high carb (60-70%), moderate protein (15-20%), and moderate to low fat (15-20%) based diet works great for hardgainers who struggle to pack on weight. Weekly weigh-ins help guide our macro adjustments, with increases of carbohydrates in the diet being the main macronutrient that is manipulated if we need to gain weight.
In this article, I will walk you through how I calculate the macros of my clients, athletes, and myself, by hand and how to properly adjust them week to week based on your level of progression and weight gain.
Budget-Friendly Grocery List for Hardgainers (Free Download)
Estimating Your Total Daily Energy (Calorie) Expenditure
Calculating Your Macros Needs (Protein, Fat, and Carbs)
How to Track and Modify Your Macros Over Time
4 Hardgainer Workout Plan Solutions
Budget-Friendly Grocery List for Hardgainers (Free Download)
I have compiled a three page BUDGET FRIENDLY GROCERY LIST FOR HARDGAINERS (pdf) that you can use as your guide while navigating the grocery store. It's important to note that these foods are some of my favorites, and work well with most of my clients, however if you have dietary restrictions, health concerns, or food allergies, please consult your doctor registered dietitian prior to beginning a diet or exercise regimen.
Macro-Based Bulking Diet for Hardgainers
First and foremost, I want to give credit where it is due, and say that the below macro planning outline is based on the teachings of the brawn and brains at Renaissance Periodization. If you do not feel like doing the macro tracking, math calculations, and constant check-ins on your own, RP has come up with a handy mobile diet coaching app that I use (and have my remote clients and athletes also use) for my meal and macronutrient tracking during bulks, cuts, and maintenance phases.
You can try the app for free and save 30% off every month if you use our referral code “J2FIT”.
Determine Your Baseline Calorie Needs
While there are a ton of formulas and ways to do this, I find the easiest way is to use this TDEE calculator, which gives you your estimated total daily energy expenditure (calories) based on your gender, age, weight height, activity levels, and bodyfat (optional). This is a great STARTING POINT to then out your individual macros from there.
For example, when I plug in my info (33 year old, male, 5’11”, 200lbs, and heavy exercises 6-7 days a week, at roughly 11% body fat), I get a TDEE of 3,680 calories per day.
Set Your Macros
While consuming enough total calories is crucial, it is also critical to make sure your calories are coming from the right sources. To determine your special macro (fats, protein, and carbs) breakdowns, we need to do a little math…
Protein
I know I want to eat roughly 1g per pound of protein, which means I will be eating 200g of protein (800 calories) per day. It's important to note that over consuming protein more than your body's needs may actually be less beneficial than swapping out those calories for carbs (or fats).
Fat
Next, I want to determine how many grams of fat I want to eat, so that I can then calculate the last macro (carbs). Carbs will be the macro that will be adjusted the most throughout this process (and the cut). Generally speaking, I aim to keep my fat intake between 15-20 % of my total calories to ensure enough dietary fat to help promote hormonal production and maintaining healthy physiology processes. Therefore, 20% of 3,680 calories is 736 calories from fat (equates to roughly 81 grams of fat per day.
Carbs
Since I know my total calories from protein and fats, I can simply subtract those from my total daily calories to get the total calories from carbs in my week 1 macros.
3,680 total calories - 800 calories from protein - 736 calories from fat = 2,144 calories from carbs (536g of carbs)
Therefore, my week 1 macros would look like this:
3,680 calories
200g of protein
81 grams of fat
536 grams of carbohydrates
Track Your Progress and Adjust Your Macros Weekly
After every weekly weigh in (I suggest weigh-ins every Monday and Friday), determine if your rate of weight gain is either too slow, too fast, or just right. I suggest that most hardgainers aim to gain 0.5 - 0.75lbs per week to minimize excessive fat gain during this period. Its important to track weight gain over time, as you may not gain that much in one or two weeks, but your rolling 8-week average may suggest you are tracking well.
If you are on point, repeat those macro amounts for the following week and repeat this process after your second weekly weight in.
If you are gaining too fast, I typically will repeat with the same macros the following week and determine maybe if that was a fluke. If you show up the next week and are still gaining weight too fat, then maybe cut back your calories by 50-75g the following week to slow that rate of weight gain down some (again, you want to gain weight over time to minimize excessive body fat gain).
If you are gaining too slow, you need to bump up your macros, especially carbs. An easy way to do this is to simply increase your daily calories by roughly 300-500 calories for the following week.
I suggest most of those come from carbs to allow you to train harder and recovery better, but sometimes using fats can be beneficial.
For example, let's say after my first week I had gained weight slower than I wanted. Therefore, I was going to increase my daily calories by 400 per day, everyday during week 2 of my bulk. I want to get most of those from carbs, so I selected to increase my carbs by 300 calories per day (75 grams), and the remaining 100 calories from fat (11 g).
Therefore bringing my week two macros to the following figures:
4,080 calories per day
200 grams of protein
92 grams of fat
611 grams of carbs
I would repeat this process every week until my rate of weight gain was within those ranges.
If you are unsure if you are eating too much, just know that I am currency in my 9th week of bulking and my macros are now at around 5,300 calories per day, 200 grams of protein, 100 grams of fat, and 900 grams of carbs.
It’s important to note that your weight can fluctuate daily, if not weekly, especially the heavier you weigh. I find it best to compare week to week bumns, such as every Friday, using the Monday weigh-ins to collect more data to plot your overall weight gain averages. The RP Strength Diet Coach App does this for you automatically, which is why I use that app instead of doing it manually (it also does way better with automatically calculating macros per meal and per day based on my progress).
Hardgainer Workout Plans While Bulking
Workout plans are not created equally. Individual circumstances like training age, chronological age, previous injuries, training schedule, and gym set up are just a few factors that make one training program right for you, and the other not.
In the video below, I review what GENERALLY should be done during a bulking phase for hardgainers (and to be honest, the principle should be used by most people bulking or looking to add muscle mass).
If you are struggling to determine what workout plan is best for you, you can ask in the comments below. You can also browse the various plans below to see if any of those tickle your fancy.
Dumbbell Bodybuilding
This is a 4-week, four day dumbbell and bodyweight workout program that is geared to build muscle and improve fitness that I came up with during the COVID shutdowns, when all I had access to was a 30lb of dumbbells and bodyweight movement in my basement..
These workouts are scalable for all levels, and can be done with light and heavy dumbbells.
Most work sets are done for time, therefore allowing individuals some flexibility to increase weights or use light weights depending on their goals.
There are two upper body workouts and two lower body workouts, with all muscle groups being trained AT LEAST 2X PER WEEK which ensures muscle growth. Lastly, every workout ends with a 8-12 minute finisher EMOM, geared to attack arms and abs in a HIIT style workout.
I ended up releasing two plans, a Dumbbell Bodybuilding Level 1 and a Dumbbell Bodybuilding Level 2. They are meant to follow one another, but more experienced lifters who have done tempo training and time-based hypertrophy sets can jump into Level 2 if they would like (however, just note I had solid results from Level 1 and Level 2.
Look Like You Lift
“Look Like You Lift” 20-week Olympic weightlifting program is my go-to hypertrophy-based Olympic weightlifting training plan that incorporates a good amount of accessory work volume to maximize muscle growth and still address weightlifting technique, positional stability, and strength.
This program is a full 20-weeks, and is progressively ramping in intensity, where it transitions from a moderate intensity, higher volume training cycle into a more strength and maximal attempt lifting cycle (with decreased accessories as you near the end of the program).
This program is one of my most favorite off-season weightlifting training programs, and is great for intermediate and advanced lifters who are committed to training 5 times per week and can take responsibility for their nutrition and recovery needs.
Custom Training Cycles
I recently launched this training option in response to some of my clients and online athletes asking for a custom-build training program that takes into consideration their goals, abilities, timelines, and gym set up WITHOUT the additional training costs of remote coaching and check ins.
While my remote coaching is the cream of the crop when it comes to my offerings, I have had great feedback and results from individuals who are looking for me to develop a fully customized 12-week program that are pre-designed around their goals, training experience and available equipment.
Remote Coaching
Not only is this one of my most popular coaching options, it is really my favorite as I love meeting with new people, discussing goals, and developing a fully custom program for them. Unlike the custom training cycles, the remote coaching comes with weekly check-ins, video reviews of lifts, weekly and monthly progressions based on your direct feedback, and coach oversight throughout the entirety of the relationship.
I really try to stress to my remote clients that I have built systems to allow them to thrive, however they need to be sure to respond to my check ins, ask questions, and provide me with feedback on their training experience.
If you are someone who has tried all kinds of training programs with menial results, or someone who wants a more personalized coaching experience, feel free to schedule an online consultation with me (10-minute free call) to discuss things further.
Final Thoughts
I hope you find this article helpful, as I have struggled with gaining weight for years until I found the macro ratios and formula that worked for me.
If you are serious about gaining weight, I strongly suggest downloading the RP Diet Coach App, which uses the above principles and delivers it in a super helpful movil application (you can use our promo code “J2FIT” and save 30%).
In addition to understand on how to calculate, track, and modify your macros, I hope you can use my grocery list recommendations to help you fulfill your proper macronutrient amounts as best as possible.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on Instagram (@mikejdewar, I am most active there) or email me at thej2fit@gmail.com