How does this sound to you? Go ahead and eat whatever junk you desire. Do you want to drink beer every night and not worry about getting fat? No problem! You can hit the desert table every night and consume all of the cheesecake and pudding you want. Oh but by the way, you might not get fat, but if you try to build muscle you probably won’t be able to.

Welcome to the curse, and blessing, of the ectomorph. Sure we can get away with eating a lot of junk food, but we don’t value that very much. We just want to have a muscular strong athletic body! Yet it seems no matter how hard we train, our strength goes up a little, but our weight stays the same.

Well I’m here to tell you, as a fellow ectomorph, that making those muscle gains that you dream of is very possible. However, for this to happen you are going to need to go through some drastic changes both mentally and physically. You are going to have to actually re-program your brain and appetite. Don’t read any further if you haven’t accepted this fact yet because you’d only be wasting your time.

So now that you realize that radical changes are going to be taking place, let’s get to the meat of the situation. Basic math and science need to be used here, yes, it’s true, your high school education is finally going to pay off. You need to achieve an energy surplus every week if you are going to gain any mass to your body. Ideally, if you train smart this mass will be muscle and not fat.

Ectomorphs have very high metabolisms. The average young male burns 2000 calories every day. So with this information, it’s safe to say that if he consume 2100 calories every day, he’d be at a 700 calorie surplus at the end of the week resulting in mass addition. However, we’re not dealing with the average male here.

As an ectomorph, our resting metabolic rate is higher than average. Let’s say a 25 year old male ectomorph is 6 feet tall, 160 pounds, for him to gain weight he will need to eat 2990 calories per day! This is only a rough estimation however. Everybody is unique in their own way. Not only that, but other variables need to be taken into consideration.

These variables include the intensity of your workout routine to gain muscle, sleep, and lifestyle. If you are involved in a lot of sports that require a lot of energy, then you are going to have to eat even more! Ideally you should have 8.5 hours of sleep per night to properly recover. Also having a low stress lifestyle will help keep the cortisol levels down and allow your body to provide a more anabolic environment for muscle growth.

As a rule of thumb, an ectomorph involved in sports and training with a workout routine to gain muscle, should consume the amount of calories determined by the following formula:

25 X target weight = Daily Calories

Your target weight should never be more than 10 pounds higher than your current weight. Ideally, since we’re dealing with such a high calorie count, it’s best to keep your target weight 5 pounds above your current weight at a time. So let’s look at an example for a guy who is 165 pounds and his first goal is to hit 170.

25 X 170 = 4250 calories per day

This will be his bench mark to hit each and every day. I was always involved in a lot of boxing, tennis, and hockey when I was growing up. Even though I had amazing muscle tone and strength, I could not gain weight at all! This was because of my food intake, I wasn’t eating enough of high quality whole foods.

There is one more calculation that needs to be made. This calculation is used to determine the amount of protein that you need to consume every day. Here’s the formula:

1.4 X target weight = Daily Protein Intake in grams

Once again, we’re dealing with a lot of protein here. So it’s best to shoot for 5 pounds above your current weight to be used as your target weight. Let’s stick with the same guy for the example equation:

1.4 X 170 = 238 grams of protein per day.

So these are the basic numbers that you must hit every single day. This includes your days off, or your "cheat days." In fact, for the days that you are not training, it's extra important to make sure that you eat enough to encourage muscle growth. These are the days that you are recovering the most effectively. You worked extremely hard the entire week to get to this point. The least you can do is reward yourself by making sure that you nourish your body with the necessary building blocks.

When you train with a workout routine to gain muscle it is absolutely critical that you give your body the required nutrients to construct additional mass. Only then will you break the curse of the ectomorph.