It’s no secret that to put on size you have to up your calorie intake. But Sydney-based personal trainer Lachie Brycki learned the hard way that the ‘eat everything I see’ attitude is not always the best approach. Standing at well over six foot, Brycki admits that he “had absolutely no idea what I was doing with my nutrition” when he first started working out.
In his high school years, the now-model was desperate to add mass, and his appetite for size left him resorting to unhealthy weight gain strategies.
“Every morning before school I would pick up a three-liter full cream milk from the shops and sip on it throughout the day. By the end of the day I forced myself to finish my packed lunches and the milk. I would then go home and eat dinner with my family as well as snacking as much as possible,” the 26-year-old told Men’s Health.
Brycki read online that you had to ‘eat big to get big’ and during his younger years, and that advice stuck with him. “I never limited anything I ate and just saw food as a source of fuel to grow. “It took me a long time to begin understanding what is actually in the food we consume and how much is needed to grow, maintain or lose weight,” he adds
“Essentially I just overate for a long time and kept telling myself I was ‘bulking’, thinking that I was growing muscles whereas I was probably just putting on fat far too quickly.”
By his late teens, he saw his body change after increasing the volume of his training and overeating. But he didn’t get the results he was after. “I grew significantly and quickly which has left my body riddled with stretch marks. I went from being a skinny 140-pound ectomorph into a whopping 240-pound ectomorph.”
Carrying too much weight, Brycki felt unhealthy and struggled to perform on the basketball court and soccer field. However, that lethargy was also the catalyst to take his nutrition more seriously.
“By no means was I 240 pounds of muscle but rather a tall, chubby kid with a large base. The more I educated myself about training and nutrition the easier I was able to manipulate my body composition over time. It has taken me almost a decade of trial and error to find what works for me, what foods react well with my body and help fuel it for training and what training methods stimulate the best growth for me.”
