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Here's how I answered the question on Yahoo! Answers:

Question:
Hey.. I'm a 5'11 approx 190lb guy.. I wanna pack on some weight really badly because I'm thin and approaching feminine looking. Problem is that I have a very fast metabolism and nothing I do seems to add weight. I even found a term for it. Hardgainer. So, how do I overcome this? I work a full time job and have school.. so I really don't have time to just pig out all day long. I'm single.. no gf to cook tons of meas for me.. I can cookfor myself, but I don't know what's best for gaining weight. I know to stay away from junk food.. I never touch fast food. Any suggestions for me? Oh, I've tried those weight gain shakes from the health stores.. spent a fortune on that stuff and never gained a pound. This is really frustrating because i wanna start working out hardcore, but without anything to build off of what's the point?

Answer:
Your last line tells me you don't understand how to build muscle. It's all about synergy – if you lift heavy but don't eat right, then you will gain nothing. Same if you eat a lot and don't work out (well, except with this "method" you will get fat and turn into "skinny fat guy" or "fat skinny guy").

You need to approach gaining weight (i.e., building muscle) from 3 angles:

• Eat right
  
• Train right
  
• Recover right
  

Attitude is the glue that sticks it all together.

Eat 6 to 8 times a day, concentrating on protein-rich sources like eggs, beef, milk, fish, pork, and chicken. Also eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Don't forget water!

Weight gain powders don't work well. Some people make gains, but these are the exceptions. They would have gained even without the supplementation.

Try a meal replacement powder mixed with whole milk like MetRx. Don't replace a meal, though, add it in.

Train 3 times a week. Do "limbs" one workout and "torso" the next workout. Stick to compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses and rows. 6 to 8 reps for 1-3 sets, starting at 1 set and building to 3. Try to add weight every workout.

Get plenty of sleep, at least 7 hours a night. Try for 8 or 9; you're better off. If you cannot get 8 or 9, take a nap in the middle of the day.

Keep a positive attitude. It makes all the difference. I know it's difficult to stay positive; I used to be 120 pounds and couldn't gain an ounce. Then I figured it all out and put on 60 pounds in less than a year. Success came from simply following the program above and by staying positive about it all.

Best of luck. I know you can do this!

What's your goal for the rest of the summer?

I know quite a few people who reached their low body fat goal – some even achieved their lifelong dream of seeing six pack abs…

Now they want to gain some muscle, but they're scared of gaining back the fat along with the muscle (which is very common… so it's not an unwarranted fear).

If you want to:

• Gain muscle WITHOUT getting fat (NO "bulking up" – just lean gains)
• Lose fat without losing muscle (FORGET the "lean but bean pole" look)
• Or even gain muscle and lose fat at the same time (The "holy grail" of all fitness goals!)

then check out: The Holy Grail

Welcome to the July 2, 2010 edition of hardgainer blog carnival.This one is a little light on content. C'mon guys, stop sending me articles about Android applications and high blood pressure! We want to learn about how to overcome being a hardgainer.

Joshua Townsend presents Hardgainer posted at Healthy Fit Vegan: Nutrition, Diet, Fitness, saying, "Tips for hardgainers to bulk up and improve their muscle building strategy."

billspaced presents How Many Meals a Day for a Hardgainer? | The Hardgainer Manifesto Blog posted at Hard Gainer's Blog, saying, "Hardgainer success is at least 80 percent nutrition. Here's a post about the number of meals you should eat in a day if you're a hardgainer."

billspaced presents Hardgainer Bodybuilding posted at The Muscle-Build.com Blog, saying, "A mini-seminar on how to defeat your hardgainer genes and train right, eat right, and recover right!"

billspaced presents GOMAD posted at Muscle-Build.com, saying, "Bulking up is easy enough in concept but very difficult for hardgainers. Here's how to do it."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of hardgainer blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

"Everybody who's ever picked up a weight thinks he's a hardgainer."

There is a nasty little term that a lot of weight trainers use – "hardgainer." What is a hardgainer and how should a hardgainer train to promote maximum muscle mass?

I say "nasty" because every kid who lifts and doesn't gain 50 pounds right away thinks he's a hardgainer.

A hardgainer is someone who truly cannot gain weight. I know, I 've "been there, done that." A hardgainer is typically of the somatotype (body type) ectomorph, a lean body type that has little body fat and is very scrawny (not much in the way of muscle). Usually on the tall side. Long limbs. Angular facial features.

But you can be an endomorph and still be a hardgainer. I'd characterize a hardgainer not by how he looks but by how he responds to a "typical" bodybuilding training system.

Here's what I mean by typical:

• 4-day split routine, either push/pull or upper/lower body
• 5 or 6 meals a day, supplemented by protein powder or weight gainer
• Relatively active lifestyle (plays sports and/or supplements weight workouts with cardio like running or cycling)

The above is a typical bodybuilding training system (generically described, of course) that many beginning bodybuilders and weight trainers advance to after several months of steady progress in a basic program (note that I don't even consider calling somebody a hardgainer if they're just starting out – it's too soon to tell).

A hardgainer will have very little to no response from the above training system. In fact, he might even lose weight. This is highly discouraging, of course. Typically, a trainer afflicted with such a response will respond with a "more is better, right?" approach: He'll move to 6 days a week of training and double up on the weight gainer.

The Right Approach to Hardgainer Bodybuilding

In fact, working out more frequently and adding in more weight gainer couldn't be a worse approach to jumpstarting muscle mass gains for the hardgainer. Hardgainer bodybuilding requires a different approach. In fact, you could consider it an entirely different mindset.

Hardgainers should:

• Train less frequently
• Use fewer sets
• Eat quality food
• Rest more often
• Cut out all extraneous activity
• Curtail all ab training and cardio until sufficient muscle mass gains have been made
• Relax at all times (except when training when you really want to push yourself)

A while back, I wrote a series called Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day. In it, I described a simple way of building quality lean muscle mass in only 30 minutes a day. The aim of the series was to show anybody how to build a quality physique on limited time.

What I really wrote in that series was a hardgainer bodybuilding routine!

It was an adaptation of a book I wrote a few years ago called Hardgainer Manifesto, which was the system I used to gain over 60 pounds in less than a year after spending over 20 years training with little success. It was something I "stumbled" across after studying weight training, bodybuilding, nutrition, and "hardgainer systems" for decades.

I was the typical "scrawny (but scrappy) kid" – the kid who got sand kicked in his face like the old Charles Atlas comic strip ads. I tried everything under the sun and found nothing worked. So I made my own system. That's the short story.

The long story is that it took a lot of time to figure out. Suffice it to say that you could save yourself a lot of time and frustration by picking up a copy. Or read the series Building Muscle in 30 Minutes a Day. Either way, you'll come to a "hardgainer bodybuilding" solution that works better than anything else out there for a fraction of the time and price.

Are You Skinny?

by Bill Davis
http://www.muscle-build.com

I grew up skinny. Everybody thought that I had it made! But on the inside, I was dying. I HATED being a stringbean.

I bought my first set of weights when I was 12. They were plastic-covered concrete weights. I lifted multiple times a day, every day of the week. I also ate like a horse.

More is better, right?

Wrong. It took me nearly 20 years to figure out that I was doing too much. Hey, I'm a slow learner.

But now that I know how to pile on massive amounts of muscle, I'm here to tell you that almost everything you think you know about gaining size is wrong.

I am going to tell you the Top Three things that you think are right but are actually wrong. Getting these right will give you about a 100 percent increase in effectiveness.
 

1. You have to train 5-6 times a week, hitting every body part 2-3 times a week, and hitting them from every angle for 15-20 sets per body part. THIS IS COMPLETE HOGWASH. If you train like this, you better do one of two things: Get some great medical insurance because you're going to be spending some time in the hospital or find a doctor of dubious ethical values and start taking anabolic steroids. Training like this is counterproductive for normal human beings.
2. You need to eat like a gluttonous pig and down buckets of expensive protein powders and other supplements. POPPYCOCK! This is what the supplement companies want you to do! But it's certainly not in your best interest to do so. Not only will your gut suffer, but your checking account may never recover! Supplements that the bodybuilding magazines push (every major bodybuilding magazine is either in bed or owns a major supplement company) are incredibly expensive. You don't need this.
3. 8 hours of sleep is plenty. You're an animal and animals don't sleep much. BS! You need ALL the sleep you can get! In fact, it would be difficult to get "too much sleep" while you're trying to pack on the pounds.

Not coincidentally, the 3 "Truths" mentioned above are the cornerstone of any successful bodybuilder or weight trainer. I call this the "3 Pillars" – You have to
 

• Train right
• Eat right
• Recover right

What does this mean? If you train with high intensity, you only need 2-4 sets per exercise. You do need to eat a lot, but it doesn't have to be in the form of expensive food supplements. Try drinking milk and eating LOTS of eggs. These 2 food items are the keys to your muscle-building nutrition.

Finally, you need all the sleep you can get. Sleep is when your body recovers from the smackdown you placed on it during your workout; sleep is when your body grows.

No sleep = No growth

You could even shrink. That's right – by not getting enough sleep, you may actually begin to lose size.

Who wants that?

If you want more mass-building ideas, head on over to The Best Exercises, where you will learn all about building muscle, losing body fat, and gaining tremendous strength.

Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Bill Davis Friday, May 14, 2010
Article Source: Are You Skinny?