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Comment by alexyim | Hacker News Reader

In this article,

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_trai...

It claims that your body can only synthesize about 2 pounds of dry muscle mass per month.

34 pounds in 28 days is roughly a pound of muscle per day. I've always found myself wanting more evidence to back that up, or even just seeing more examples of people saying they've done that. The closest I've heard to getting that kind of result are people who add drinking a gallon of milk in addition their regular diet, and even then they gain a fair amount of fat in addition to muscle and it's way less than that number.

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Just for clarification from someone who is familiar with GOMAD (Gallon Of Milk A Day):

The purpose of GOMAD is to pair a intense workout program (Three or so lifts per workout, workouts every other day, 3 rounds of 5 reps per lift, adding 5lbs to your max each workout), with more resources than the body can possibly utilize. GOMAD + a normal diet comes out to roughly 4000-5000 calories a day. This is typically enough to allow your body to fully recover from every workout in such a short period.

The system is designed so calories are "left over," which adds fat. Then after you're done with GOMAD, many people typically go on a paleo-style diet and then lose that fat they gained.

Just some info from someone who's done it!

You can synthesize more than 2lbs of muscle per month, if the muscle you're synthesizing has been in a trained state previously.

This is how athletes can return from injury in a few weeks. It's also how most before/after shots for health products and supplements are made.

I've done GOMAD (Gallon of Milk A Day). It's tough to drink that much milk. In the end, I gained ten pounds of muscle over a period of two months.

> You can synthesize more than 2lbs of muscle per month, if the muscle you're synthesizing has been in a trained state previously.

Do you have a link to that by any chance?

It does make sense though. Perhaps that's what happened with him, but without that key bit of info it's fairly misleading.

Start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment. Then read http://blog.legendarylife.com/the-colorado-experiment.

Anecdotally, here's one guy's attempt at repeating the Colorado experiment. http://www.placeintheground.com/2008/07/21/testing-out-the-c... http://www.placeintheground.com/2008/09/25/colorado-experime...

Re-reading this makes me think that Tim Ferriss is probably advocating the Colorado Experiment's methods in his book. One of the other comments mentioned five-seconds-up, five-seconds-down.

I see. The experiment seems ill-conceived in the first place, along with the guy's attempt to repeat it.

You can do more than that per month, even if you've never participated in sports in your life - see my comment above: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008164

The one thing that seems pretty blatantly overlooked in this whole discussion is that genetics have __alot__ to do with body building. I guarantee you that if everyone reading this thread mimicked Tim's 28 day plan exactly, that no where near 100% of us would produce the same results (assuming the plan actually did as he claims).

Some people are just predisposed to bulking up. It's interesting to peruse body-building forums and see tons of people very dedicated to their sport all following the same recommended training regimens yet getting vastly varying results. It's not that the effort isn't there.

I know, I should be providing links to back-up my claim, but I should also be working to meet my company's big milestone due tomorrow. :-)

Their is also a very large difference between those who have had weight training regimen the past (and had some success, no matter how little), and those who are doing their first foray into putting on a large amount of muscle with proper eating and program.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1955784

The discussions on Ferris always seem to turn to personal attacks, nor, citations on how Ferris is a "charlatan." Like any other information, I absorb what I feel will be helpful, and ignore the rest.

For the Four Hour Work Week, he gives highly simplistic and to-the-point advice on starting your little business (or as he says, muse). People love fluff it seems and rail against very blatant simplistic advice. His older blogs (from the HN discussion I linked above, which references his blog post) is all about That simplicity.

The most highly ranked comment in this discussion is only in regards to his self-promotion or personal dislike of the man himself. Not conducive to conversation.

I can refute that claim: I went to Marine Corps bootcamp (PI SC), weighing approximately 127 lbs. I left (3 months later) weighing 142lbs - 15 lbs in 3 months. I think if I had gone on double rations I could have gained more.

Refuting what claim?

It's also important to note that there's a difference between dry muscle mass and what you read on your scale after you've taken away body fat (that's presumably "wet muscle" - I don't know the exact word for it). So in your case, you might've gained a bit of fat (let's say 2 lbs for sake of argument), which means you gained 15-2/3 = 4.3 lbs of "wet muscle", which is entirely possible according to this article. You'll definitely gain more weight if you doubled your rations, but I suspect that will shift your muscle-to-fat gains ratio much more towards gaining fat.

I've also made similar gains at one point, going from 140-155 in 3 months. I did this through a diet of ~3600-4500 calories, and I gained a bit of fat too probably from overshooting my caloric intake near the end at 4500. Granted, my diet wasn't perfect, but it was pretty regulated so that's why the original claim's rate of muscle gain draws my attention.

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