Bulking fail?

[VO2Maxima]

I estimated my bulking calories to be around 2500kcal. Six weeks later, the scale didn't budge other than the regular day to day fluctuations. So a week and a half ago, I raised that to 3000kcal. Still no real change. Have I not given it long enough, or should I bring it up to 3500 and see what happens? I don't want to go overboard and blow up with 90% fat gains and 10% muscle gains either.

To preempt any questions, all the food that I make on my own is weighed. I have 1-2 small meals each day from the school caf, depending on how lazy I'm feeling as far as meal prep goes, and those get eyeballed, but I generally log them between 400-600 kcals, so even if they're off, it can't affect my total *that* much. Plus when I went from 2500 to 3000, I just added in an additional (weighed) meal to what I was already eating, so if I was maintaining off X, shouldn't I be gaining off (X + 500)? What is going on here? I haven't been really strict on macronutrient breakdown because I figure there'll be plenty of time for that when I cut, but I do know I'm getting well over the 1.2g/lb of bodyweight of protein and a crapload of carbs...fat is by far my lowest macro, but I'm still around 60-90g/day. I get a decent amount of fiber because oatmeal is a cheap source of carbs, but I don't feel like it should be enough that I'm not gaining off 3000kcal.

5'2, 121-124lbs depending on the day/what's sitting in my stomach/hydration level, lift 6 days per week, no cardio currently. No symptoms associated with hyperthyroidism or Grave's, so I'm not worried about that.

[kimm4]

I'm not sure how active you are, but I honestly think your tracking is off somewhere. I don't think you're eating as many calories as you think.

Hope you get it figured out good luck.

[Cara0915]

I'm not sure how active you are, but I honestly think your tracking is off somewhere. I don't think you're eating as many calories as you think.

Hope you get it figured out good luck.

This ^
It doesn't really matter how much you're eating though, if the scale isn't going up, it's not enough

[VO2Maxima]

Thanks ladies! Screwing up counting somehow seems plausible. My food scale is the really budget digital scale from Walmart, so maybe it's not as accurate as I thought? Or my calorie counts are wrong. I'll recheck the latter first since that doesn't involve buying anything new.

[oregonchick76]

Holy Smokes! The only way I wouldn't gain on 2500 calories per day is if I was consistently working out 2 hard hours per day. What is your exercise routine looking like?
Are you dealing with any orthorexia/food aversion issues? Like avoiding 'dirty' foods? Trying too hard to eat super 'clean'?
Just trying to rule out possible issues.

[VO2Maxima]

Holy Smokes! The only way I wouldn't gain on 2500 calories per day is if I was consistently working out 2 hard hours per day. What is your exercise routine looking like?
Are you dealing with any orthorexia/food aversion issues? Like avoiding 'dirty' foods? Trying too hard to eat super 'clean'?
Just trying to rule out possible issues.

Definitely not working out two hard hours per day. Exercise routine started as PHAT, but got modified a bit after a while based on what was lagging and what seemed to be responding better. I've seen progression in my lifts, so I can't complain too much there. There have been times in my life when I did work out two hours per day (thank you track for taking up way too much time), but the gym doesn't seem to be nearly as time consuming. Clean? I eat a lot of oatmeal, whey, eggs, chicken, and pasta just because they're cheap calories, so it's clean-ish by design, but I assumed that a carb calorie is a carb calorie whether it's from oats or cake (obviously this is spread throughout the day in a bunch of little meals, since 1000kcal of oatmeal all at once would probably make my stomach explode). That sounds really boring now that I'm typing it out, but the two guesstimated meals switch things up, and the oatmeal gets dressed up with everything from peanut butter to cheese to whey to fruit, so that keeps it interesting.

[Big_Dip]

I'm a 5'7" male and I can gain on 3000 cals

[oregonchick76]

Definitely not working out two hard hours per day. Exercise routine started as PHAT, but got modified a bit after a while based on what was lagging and what seemed to be responding better. I've seen progression in my lifts, so I can't complain too much there. There have been times in my life when I did work out two hours per day (thank you track for taking up way too much time), but the gym doesn't seem to be nearly as time consuming. Clean? I eat a lot of oatmeal, whey, eggs, chicken, and pasta just because they're cheap calories, so it's clean-ish by design, but I assumed that a carb calorie is a carb calorie whether it's from oats or cake (obviously this is spread throughout the day in a bunch of little meals, since 1000kcal of oatmeal all at once would probably make my stomach explode). That sounds really boring now that I'm typing it out, but the two guesstimated meals switch things up, and the oatmeal gets dressed up with everything from peanut butter to cheese to whey to fruit, so that keeps it interesting.

All I can say is - more cowbell.

I mean, more peanut butter.

And whole milk, ice cream, butter, full fat greek yogurt, nuts, pizza, etc.

[VO2Maxima]

All I can say is - more cowbell.

I mean, more peanut butter.

And whole milk, ice cream, butter, full fat greek yogurt, nuts, pizza, etc.

You'll have to twist my arm really hard to get me to eat more peanut butter haha. Sounds like such a big sacrifice. Thanks ladies! Sometimes the solution is obvious, but it helps to have other people point it out anyway!