Stavios make sure you scream very loud when I come by or else I might step on you and crush you by accident.
At 6'4" I'm sure that you occupy more space than most peoples. No doubt about that. However, very few bodybuilders are that height. Just to give you an idea, it is generally accepted that to maintain the same proportions one must add between 7 to 10lbs per inch of height. So if you are, let's say 230 on 6'4" that would be the visual equivalent (for bodybuilding purposes) of being around 175-180lbs on 5'9" - 5'10". From you pics (kinda hard to tell precisely) I'd say that you are around 15-20lbs of fat away from being in contest shape. Now, if you did gain 40lbs chances are that you gained some fat too. So let's say that you are 20-25lbs away from being in contest shape. At 240 that would make you 215-220 on stage at 6'4" (as a comparison the heavy weight winner of the Canadian champs was 222 on 5'8" and the superheavy winner was 230 on 5'10"). So if we put it down to the average bodybuilding height of 5'9" - 5'10" that would mean that you would be (in contest shape) the proportional/visual equivalent of a 165-170 bodybuilder.
Now, as I mentionned, at 6'4" you are obviously towering over most peoples and that can make you believe that you are much bigger than they are. However in bodybuilding it doesn't work that way. For example Stavios' training partner is a lean 250lbs on 5'7"; my own training partner and client is currently 230 on 5'8"... the 2nd place finisher at the Canadian champs in the heavy weights was 215 on 5'3". Just to give you an idea.
I've trained several basketball players who were in the 6'3" - 6'5" range and 2-3 of them were a lean 220-230 without having been training seriously in there life... and they didn't look like bodybuilding material. They were tall and had a physical presence because of their height/width, but from a bodybuilding perspective they were not there. Heck my best friend in high school (basketball player) was 6'5" and 240 with abs and never entered a gym in his life!
One more thing. There is a physiological limit to the amount of muscle one can gain in a given period of time. Simply put, your body's capacity to add muscle tissue is limited by the rate at which it can synthesize protein into muscle. In the natural trainee that limit (for most individuals) is in the realm of 0.5lbs per week. And that's under the best possible muscle building environment (perfect training, eating, recovery, etc.). So in a year we are talking about an absolute limit of 26lbs of muscle tissue... IF everything is done perfectly 365 days straight. And that's for individuals with a very good muscle-building potential and not too much training experience (the more one has been training, the harder it is to further progress). In most cases a 10lbs gain in muscle tissue would be considred a good training year.
Now, we should not forget about the energetic cost of building muscle tissue. How much energy is needed to build one pound of muscle? This is a very important question because it will help us design a plan that will allow us to provide our body with what it needs to build muscle without risking gaining fat. Some people have tried to answer that by simply taking into consideration the composition of a pound of muscle. Muscle tissue is around 22% protein, 5% fat, 3% carbs and the rest is water, minerals and trace elements.
Since one pound = 0.455kg, it’s sometimes believed that one pound of muscle is composed of:
100g of protein (455g x 22%)
23g of fat (455g x 5%)
14g of carbs (455g x 3%)
Since there are 4 calories in one gram of protein and carbs, and 9 calories per gram of fat they assume that one thus needs around 660kcals to build one pound of muscle. According to that (erroneous) logic if one wanted to gain 10lbs of muscle he would need to consume 6600kcals more than his maintenance level over a certain period of time. For example if he wanted to gain 10lbs over 3 months he’d have to consume 70 calories above maintenance per day.
This is a mistake. The actual process of building muscle tissue requires energy beyond its simple composition. The body must take the nutrients absorbed and synthesize muscle tissue. This is a very energy-costly process! Studies have found that for each gram of protein synthesized into new muscle tissue, 220 calories are needed. Since one pound of muscle contains approximately 100g of protein it is thus clear that to build one pound of muscle we actually need more than 20 000kcals. Quite a bit more than the earlier estimated 660!
So if we want to build 10lbs of muscle we need to ingest around 22 000 calories above our maintenance level over a certain period of time. If we wanted to gain that 10lbs over a 5 months period of time this would mean consuming around 1400 calories above maintenance per day. So if you need to consume 3000kcals per day to maintain your current weight, you’d need to ingest around 4400kcals per day to gain 10lbs of muscle tissue over a 5 months period.
So basically if you gained 40lbs of MUSCLE that would necessitate an excess caloric intake of around 800 000 calories. If you gained that 40lbs over one year that would necessitate a caloric intake of around 2200 calories above maintenance per day. Now, according to the Harris-Benedict formula for calculating metabolic rate and assuming that you are moderately active, your maintenance level would be around 3800 calories per day. So to gain 40lbs of muscle (IF that was possible, which it isn't naturally) you would have to eat 6000 calories every single day for a year.
NOW... I'm not saying that gaining 40lns in a year is impossible. For one thing with every pound of muscle you gain you'll increase the amount of glycogen and water you can store. An untrained muscle can store about 13 grams of glycogen per 100 grams of muscle, while a trained muscle can store up to 32 grams of glycogen. We also know that for every gram of glycogen stored in the muscle, 3 grams of water is stored too.
So for each pound of muscle (455g) you gain you can also increase glycogen stores by 146g and water stores by 438g. So, technically, if you gain 10lbs of muscle you could register a 22lbs gain on the scale without gaining any fat. In reality the amount isn't quite that high as we are not constantly in a state of surcompensated glycigen stores. But it's safeto assume that for every 10lbs of muscle gained, one would also gain 5-7lbs in glycogen and water.
Then there is the issue of fat. A 5-7lbs gain of fat isn't that visible or apparent, especially if you are 6'4". Even a 10-12lbs gain would not be seen as an excessive difference.
So it's quite possible that you gained 40lbs on the scale... but in reality that would probably be around 15lbs of muscle tissue.
