Nick Nilsson - How I Gained 25 Pounds In One Week!

[webmaster]

This is a story of how I personally went from 192 pounds to 217 pounds in bodyweight in only 7 days. Learn every little secret technique I used to accomplish this mind-blowing weight gain.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/betteru27.htm

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[The Big Daddy]

25 pounds of muscle and 1" in your arms in 1 week...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Even on steroids you wont make that kind of gains.

The Big Daddy

[LordNeon]

25 pounds in one week?

I call bull$hit.

[ExtremeEnigma]

i declare shenanigans

[BigKazWSM747]

there is no need to post such crap. Its obviously BS and if he did gain 25 lbs. most of it was probably fat and water weight.

[lucubration]

Well I think it is an excellent article.

[beerman_420]

it was a great article but why on earth would you want to gain that so fast...half of it would have to be fat and make you look bad

[The Big Daddy]

Originally posted by lucubration
Well I think it is an excellent article.

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[lucubration]

Originally posted by beerman_420
it was a great article but why on earth would you want to gain that so fast...half of it would have to be fat and make you look bad

I have no clue but it was interesting nonetheless....

[Canarian Roy]

well, you see, this is tricky.
He had gone on a low carb diet, along with extreme exercise and lots of water for 2 weeks, which can easily put you down already about 15 pounds. Then for a week load on creatine, food and water and you can easily make up for 25 pounds, cos you get your lost 15 pounds back, and the 10 pounds from the creatine, fluid intake and possibly and extra 1 to 2 pounds this fella had in his stomach when he weighted himself.
Truth is, this is a good try for shocking the body, but he obviously put a mileading title to make us read it, and it would have been much better if he actually took body composition tests pre,post and even during the week.
Just another read, another artucle which was designed to attract readers with that title, but which then failed to the expectation.

[lucubration]

Originally posted by Canarian Roy
well, you see, this is tricky.
He had gone on a low carb diet, along with extreme exercise and lots of water for 2 weeks, which can easily put you down already about 15 pounds. Then for a week load on creatine, food and water and you can easily make up for 25 pounds, cos you get your lost 15 pounds back, and the 10 pounds from the creatine, fluid intake and possibly and extra 1 to 2 pounds this fella had in his stomach when he weighted himself.
Truth is, this is a good try for shocking the body, and it would have been much better if he actually took body composition tests pre,post and even during the week.
.

But with fluid levels being maintained throughout, both before and during this crazy bulk, you would think that water weight would not be a factor. You coould argue that creatine "forces" more water into the muscle but I don't think it forces in THAT much water. What do you think?

body composition tests would have been a great addition, I agree.

[Canarian Roy]

Originally posted by lucubration
But with fluid levels being maintained throughout, both before and during this crazy bulk, you would think that water weight would not be a factor. You coould argue that creatine "forces" more water into the muscle but I don't think it forces in THAT much water. What do you think?

body composition tests would have been a great addition, I agree.

well he says in the article that the creatine itself would be responsible for a 10 lbs increase. Now, a 10 lbs increase is a still reachable with optimal glyocgen stores, and if we bare in mind that this guy had completely exhausted glycogen stores, then those two combinations could easily have provided between 15 to 20 lbs of thsoe 25 lbs gained. Now, baring in mind fluid retention and food retrention when he weighted himself, he could have hit 25 lbs and hardly nothing being muscle. lets also takeinto acount that he probably rounded figures, and he put 25 lbs for the pur pose of the article, cos it sounds better than putting 22.7 lbs or so.
IMO, you would still gain muscle mass, but one week is too little time. This diet would be better served for shocking the body and for having a fun cheating week.

[lucubration]

Originally posted by Canarian Roy
well he says in the article that the creatine itself would be responsible for a 10 lbs increase. Now, a 10 lbs increase is a still reachable with optimal glyocgen stores, and if we bare in mind that this guy had completely exhausted glycogen stores, then those two combinations could easily have provided between 15 to 20 lbs of thsoe 25 lbs gained. Now, baring in mind fluid retention and food retrention when he weighted himself, he could have hit 25 lbs and hardly nothing being muscle. lets also takeinto acount that he probably rounded figures, and he put 25 lbs for the pur pose of the article, cos it sounds better than putting 22.7 lbs or so.
IMO, you would still gain muscle mass, but one week is too little time. This diet would be better served for shocking the body and for having a fun cheating week.

I guess I can deal with that. It is really possible to completely exhaust glycogen stores however? (yes or no is a good enough reply )

And why would someone wish to shock their body like this? What exactly is the purpose? I don't see how they would be "better served"?

[Canarian Roy]

Originally posted by lucubration
I guess I can deal with that. It is really possible to completely exhaust glycogen stores however? (yes or no is a good enough reply )

And why would someone wish to shock their body like this? What exactly is the purpose? I don't see how they would be "better served"?

when i said completely, i didnt say nmot one gramof glycogen is left, but i think it was in the numbers of 25 mmol/kg of muscle glycogen, and it can be achieved by not carbing up and exercsing frequently in a period of 2 weeks.
well, it shocks the body because is something the body is not used to, and is a good qay to kickstart metabolism, but i have stay skeptic about it.

I agree that the title is EXTREMELY misleading.

Who the hell cares that he put on 25 pounds when in reality he probably lost 15 or so of that right before he started. Hell, I could loose 15 lbs over the next two weeks by starving myself and fatiguing my body, then come back with crazy amounts of food/creatine/etc and probably gain those 15 back and 5 or 10 more.

So congrats to this dude for venturing on a worthless experiement with minimal helpful information.

[betteru]

I'd first like to thank everyone for writing in and expressing their opinion. It's nice to get such a strong response, both in the positive and negative! To me, it means what I've written is provoking a strong reaction and, hopefully, some thought by the reader into the possibilites brought to light by the information.

I'd like to give a little background as to why I wrote the article and what I think is important to learn from it (I'm going to try to keep this explanation shorter than the actual article itself

I can understand the perspective of the skeptic when looking at this article. We're bombarded with all kinds of crazy claims for muscle gain and fat loss every day. If I saw that title (not knowing what I know and seeing this out of the blue), I'd be skeptical too. BS is the first thing that would pop into my head, which would lead me into reading the article, looking for a way to disprove what the title claimed.

When I did this weight gain experiment, my goal was to see how far I could push my body. I wanted to see how adaptable the body could be to extreme stresses and what, if any, permanent results could be achieved by performing such a radical and rapid shift in training and nutrition.

I did this experiment a number of years ago, before I ever had any intention of writing articles. In retrospect, my curiosity would have been much better served by taking far more detailed notes and measurements, basically treating myself like a scientific experiment. If I was to try again, I would definitely keep much better track.

The results I wrote were real and I actually leveled out at about 212 pounds a week later. It definitely wasn't all muscle but neither was it all water and fat. I would estimate, after the end of that week, that I had gained at least 4 to 5 pounds of muscle in that week. Certainly (as I noted in the article), I gained some fat and water. I never claimed it was all muscle - I'd be an idiot to claim that!

But why is it valuable to gain weight so rapidly? Your body is an incredibly adaptive machine. Sometimes it needs to be shocked to push beyond barriers, be they psychological or physical.

Dieting down then rapidly filling your muscles up with large amounts of nutrients, creatine, glutamine, and water can lead to an enlargement of the muscles beyond where they were before. Even if this enlargement is only temporary due to an overload of water and nutrients, expanding the muscles (and the fascia that holds the muscles in, which can restrict growth) gives them more room to grow in a permanent fashion later.

This is why, if you've ever taken time off from training and your muscles have decreased in size, it doesn't take as long to get back to where you were before when you train heavy again. This has been theorized as a possible explanation for muscle memory - the muscles simply don't have to expand through any fascia or connective tissue as they normally would when starting from scratch.

This rapid weight gain helped my muscles to expand so rapidly that I gave my muscles more room to grow later.

This may sound like a crackpot theory but, in my experience, it worked like a charm.

Why did I choose to publish this article? I'm a dedicated trainer and I there's nothing I like better than sharing what has worked for me with others who are looking for fast results.

I was hoping to open up people's minds to the mind-blowing possibilities that extreme change in training and nutrition can result in.

Naturally, this type of approach can run up against walls with people who are used to more traditional training methods. It is my hope that people look at this article and think about what they can do different in their training to take advantage of their body's incredible adaptability.

My real goal, when I write controversial, mind-bending stuff like this, is to try to open up the mind of the reader. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't.

All I ask is that you read the article, consider the value of the content as I explained above, and judge based on that.

I thank you for your time!

Nick Nilsson
Vice-President
BetterU, Inc.
http://www.fitstep.com
http://www.fitness-ebooks.com

[Nick666]

Your theory is exaclty what I was thinking about a few weeks ago. I was thinking about the "one day arm attack", which consists of training the arm an entire day to force glycogen overcompensation to a point that it would stretch the muscle cells - well that's how I guess it works.

I didn't try it because it sounded too crazy..

Do you really think that the cells are "stretched" or is it just an idea like that?

When I was considering that idea, I told myself that when you trained, the pump fills the muscle even more that glycogen supercompensation could. But I don't know if the pump actually increases the internal volume of cells or the external volume - filling capilaries with blood. Do you have an idea on that?

What you did looks a lot like the ABCD diet if I remember well, where you diet for about 1 week and bulk for 1 week.

Is there a reason why you didn't do it again? If you really gained 4-5 lbs of muscle, that's very impressive for such a short period of time.

[Jimmy_magix]

sniff sniff, can anyone smell that, I think its sweet bull****.

[betteru]

What you've described with the "one day arm attack" sounds similar in concept to what I'm talking about. What the one day arm thing does for the arms, this type of training does for all the muscle in the body.

I don't think the cells themselves are what get stretched. I'm more of the opinion that it's fascia which encloses the muscles is what holds back growth in a lot of cases. That fascia is very tough and can be hard to expand to allow the muscles to grow.

When you expand the fascia, in this case through rapid influx of water and nutrients, you give the muscle more room to grow later. The fascia, once stretched, doesn't go back down to it's previous size, making muscle growth easier in the long run.

I don't think the temporary pump in a muscle group does much to expand the volume of the muscle cells on a permanent basis. It does get more blood into the capillaries, though - blood doesn't actually go into cells, it just exchanges gases and nutrients through the cell membranes.

You're quite right with the ABCDE reference. That's exactly where I got the idea for how I did this training. I had actually been doing that training for awhile before starting on this rapid-weight gain program. I wanted to take it to the limit as I had seen some very good results with the regular ABCDE program.

I have actually done variations of this weight gain phase subsequent to my first experiment with similar results. I do it every once in awhile to shake things up. It's a tough program to follow and you really need to be able to tune everything in in your program to be able to see the kind of results I got (I was on vacation at the time I did the first experiment, which is why I was able to really maximize my results).

After doing these weight gain cycles, I've found I've been able to reach higher levels of muscle mass with less effort than I had before. It's quite effective training. Tough, but definitely effective. It really teaches you how incredibly adaptive your body can be when you push it to the limit.

[Nick666]

If it is the glycogen supercompensation that stretches the facia, wouldn't it be possible to force an even more important glycogen overcompensation by training only a few muscles.

That's what the one day arm attack is trying to do I guess. It would be possible to concentrate on weak bodyparts for instance.



Anyways, I'm thinking of implementing your ideas. Here is what I plan to do. Please tell me what you think.

I train with HST so I take 12 days off -decondioning- before each cycle. I would be on a keto diet during my SD - Strategic Deconditioning -, keeping BMR calories.

2 days before begining the cycle, I would cut calories to be in slight caloric deficit, so that I can expect an even bigger effect.

I would do about 3 light cardio sessions during the SD to empty even more the glycogen stores.

According to the ABCDE system, there are 5 days to bulk, so I would be trying to train once a day for 3 days. These would be the 3 first workouts of my HST cycle. 3 workouts in a row should be a pretty strong hypertrophy stimulus. After that I would take 5 days off to let the CNS recover and continue my cycle as usual.


From your experience, do you think 3 w/os would be enough? I do full body w/os, 2 sets per bodypart. I said 3 days because the hypertrophy response should last about 3 days after the 3rd workout, which means 6 days. I don't want to overtrain to much also.

I would take 10g of creatine per day.

[Flying Knight]

25 lbs in 1 week? whats the big deal? yesterday i was no more than 7 lbs and i added 200+ in ONE DAY. funny? no kiddng, i just weighed under water.

[Tony B]

when i read this article i thought it was an ad for muscletech. It seems unless you had seriously deprived your body of food and water then just ate like a pig this would be impossible

[Nick666]

Originally posted by Tony B
when i read this article i thought it was an ad for muscletech. It seems unless you had seriously deprived your body of food and water then just ate like a pig this would be impossible

That's exactly the point man! Going from a low calory diet to an hyper-calory diet, the body goes crazy, all the hormones are boosted, insulin sensitivity is increased, etc.. If you add to that the fact that you were on a keto diet during the hypo-caoloric period, you'll get a huge glycogen supercompensation and a strong insulin sensitivity.

So the idea is that you're able to bulk like crazy for 5-7 days.

Insulin is a very anabolic hormone, so if you find a way to say increase its production without gaining fat, you can expect to be in the ideal situation to promote muscle growth.

This should be even more true I hope after an SD, since the hypertrophy stimulus is stronger and the body has completly rested.

[Canarian Roy]

better u, aka nick nilsson, i do agree with your article, but i just think it was misleading in the way that you try to "say" that you gained 25 pounds of muscle or mostly muscle, when you caouldhave maximumly added 2 pounds or slightly more (if at all).
the abcde diet seems a good diet, younglifter14 has had a good go at it, i would pm him for practical results. However, that diet is one which if you dont follow step by step or underestimate any of the phases, youll get fat in no time, trust me on that one.

[betteru]

To Nick666:

I think you'll definitely get an effect with 3 workouts to force glycogen depletion. It normally takes about 1 1/2 to 2 days to get rid of all the carbs in your body when you stop eating carbs. Doing total body workouts on top of that will further set your body up for it.

Normal carb-loading for athletes is done over a similar period of time (2 to 3 and sometimes 4 days).

What you're planning looks good to me. I don't think that one needs the full two weeks of low-carb and high activity like I did to get a good effect from this rapid-change type training. I think a good effect can result from 3 to 4 days of lower-calorie set-up. The reason I went so long was to set myself as much as humanly possible for the gain phase.

You're right on the money with what you mentioned about your body's anabolic hormones going crazy in response to higher food intake after reduced calories. The amplified insulin sensitivity after being on a low-carb, low-calorie phase results in an extremely favorable environment for rapid muscle gain.


To Canarian Roy:

It was never my intention to mislead any readers with my title, though looking back I suppose a better title would have been: "How I Gained 25 Pounds of Bodyweight in One Week", or something to that effect. Certainly my intent was to get people curious enough to read the article - that's what a good title does. I really wasn't trying to be sneaky about it. No point in that - all it does is tick people off and make them think you're writing a Muscletech informercial "Special Report".

The ABCDE diet is definitely effective - I actually used it for a about 6 months straight with good results. You're absolutely right about being careful with it - bulk too long and you can overfill and fatten up too much.

[Canarian Roy]

Originally posted by betteru
To Canarian Roy:

It was never my intention to mislead any readers with my title, though looking back I suppose a better title would have been: "How I Gained 25 Pounds of Bodyweight in One Week", or something to that effect. Certainly my intent was to get people curious enough to read the article - that's what a good title does. I really wasn't trying to be sneaky about it. No point in that - all it does is tick people off and make them think you're writing a Muscletech informercial "Special Report".

The ABCDE diet is definitely effective - I actually used it for a about 6 months straight with good results. You're absolutely right about being careful with it - bulk too long and you can overfill and fatten up too much.

thats good stuff bro, i would invite you to participte more in this forum, you seem to have some knowdlegle in you which would definitevly help

[Nick666]

Originally posted by betteru
To Nick666:

I think you'll definitely get an effect with 3 workouts to force glycogen depletion. It normally takes about 1 1/2 to 2 days to get rid of all the carbs in your body when you stop eating carbs. Doing total body workouts on top of that will further set your body up for it.

Normal carb-loading for athletes is done over a similar period of time (2 to 3 and sometimes 4 days).

What you're planning looks good to me. I don't think that one needs the full two weeks of low-carb and high activity like I did to get a good effect from this rapid-change type training. I think a good effect can result from 3 to 4 days of lower-calorie set-up. The reason I went so long was to set myself as much as humanly possible for the gain phase.

You're right on the money with what you mentioned about your body's anabolic hormones going crazy in response to higher food intake after reduced calories. The amplified insulin sensitivity after being on a low-carb, low-calorie phase results in an extremely favorable environment for rapid muscle gain.

Thanks for your opinion.. I'm looking forward to trying it..

Concerning the ABCDE diet, do you alternate every 2 weeks? In this article, they say that 5 days is better, they call it the delta 1250 diet:

http://t-mag.com/html/body_59abcde.html

[Nick666]

Another article that describe the "stretching" theory. It says that stretching the muscles during training, and overfeeding help stretch the fibers. It is close to what you said, betteru.

Well worth the read.

http://www.musclemedia.com/training/abcde/v58_abc1.asp
http://www.musclemedia.com/training/abcde/v59_abc2.asp

[betteru]

I'll definitely have a look at those links. When I did the ABCDE diet, I did the two weeks on, two weeks off. I've since changed my belief in that to shorter cycles as well. I think the body can function very effectively with rapid changes in both training and nutrition.

I would actually quite enjoy posting to the forum when I have time. My only problem would be that I might have too much to say and spend my whole day talking bodybuilding

Always good to find people who are knowledgable about training and nutrition and willing to try new approaches.

[Nick666]

Originally posted by betteru
I would actually quite enjoy posting to the forum when I have time. My only problem would be that I might have too much to say and spend my whole day talking bodybuilding

You, you have a girlfriend.. lol!

Always good to find people who are knowledgable about training and nutrition and willing to try new approaches.

Thanks man. Same for you!

I'll try it in 10 days. I will do like I said before. I'll be taking huge calories the first 5 days, then reduce to a more normal bulk.