 The question I get asked the most, by far, out of anything is, how do you gain weight on a low carbohydrate diet, whether it be ketogenic or carnivore? The simple answer to that is resistance training, weightlifting, muscular hypertrophy, the building up of muscle. What do you think is going to happen if you consume caloric excess? Your body doesn't magically turn it into muscle or healthy lean body mass, at least in the long term. Initially, when switching over to a diet high in animal based protein, your body will actually put on muscle. This is making up for past protein deficiencies, whether you're following a standard American diet, this is even more drastic on a vegan diet. I have interviewed several vegan women that have put on 15, 20, 25 pounds of lean body mass just by following a carnivore diet for a matter of months. This doesn't occur in a ketogenic diet sometimes because a keto diet is not necessarily high in animal protein and the quality of foods that people tend to consume on a ketogenic diet don't coincide with muscle gaining goals. After you gain that initial burst of muscle just by eating more meat, you will have to build up muscle by working out. Imagine our indigenous ancestors. Hunter gatherers were active all day, every day in their environment from a very young age. They were able to build up a very strong physical base of bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles that we don't have. Some people working very physical jobs like manual labor, maybe even waiting tables or bartending might have a decent base of lean body mass, but those aren't the people that are asking me how to gain weight. By weight training, you are essentially making up for the lack of being in a natural environment. If I sit at a computer all day, that is far from 10 hours of wandering through the forest, hunting animals, whatever physical activities our hunter gatherer ancestors were doing. But there isn't enough time in the day for me to do both. I can't work a day job and do normal things pertaining to our modern lifestyle and go hiking through the woods every day. Of course you can do those activities on your off days, but the only way to make up for that lack of physical activity is to train at a very high intensity. These hunter gatherers were at a low to moderate intensity for long periods throughout the day, so if you go in the gym and kill yourself for an hour or two every day, you're kind of making up for lost time. Even with female clients, regardless of their goals, my workout routine recommendations have always been fairly similar. You have to incorporate as much volume and work out all of the muscles as frequently as possible until you reach the desired lean body mass level. Then you just maintain. It doesn't matter if you want to be a bodybuilder or look good on the beach. The fitness routine is exactly the same because the goal is put on muscle mass and you want to do that as quickly as possible. The amount of effort required to build any ideal body for a female is beyond yoga or the stair master and for a male, it's beyond doing each muscle group once a week. If you're one of those bro splits or five by five starting strength people, you don't nearly have enough volume in your routine to achieve the goals that I envision most people have. Just to give you guys an understanding of my fitness background, I am a certified fitness trainer and I was training like a bodybuilder for about nine years from 13 to 21 years old. So I started in high school, got up to about 185 pounds at five foot eight without working out my legs. So I probably would have been low 200s, like 215, 220 if I had decided to not be an upper bodybuilder. I did not find muscular legs to be aesthetic. I really just wanted a beach body. I got a little bit upset towards the end of that period of time. I spent so much time in the gym. I didn't really want to bodybuild professionally. So I was like, what am I doing? Why am I wasting my time for two hours a day in the gym? Ended up taking a drug called Accutane, which kind of ruined my stomach and I ended up losing a lot of weight. I think at one point I was down to like 125, 130 pounds. And a few years later in 2015, I decided to train for a physique competition, mainly because fitness got really popular. I don't know if any of you guys were working out in the early 2010s, but it wasn't cool to be in the gym. It was just a bunch of dudes working out and fitness kind of exploded in popularity. And I kind of wanted to get in on this. So I started training for a physique competition in early 2015. At the time I was on the carnivore diet and was able to actually put on quite a bit of muscle through muscle memory and a very high volume weightlifting routine. Long story short, I realized I didn't have the bone structure or size for a physique competition, but I looked decent on my own. What I observed during this period of time is that under no circumstance do you need to overeat or consume excess calories to gain muscle mass. Any excess calories consumed outside of natural appetite will result in unnecessary body fat levels. So many people ask me if they should drink raw milk, have carbohydrates, whatever it may be, consuming these foods will simply result in you maintaining a higher body fat level, not actually maintaining muscle quicker. So whether you want to gain muscle while maintaining 10% body fat or gain muscle while maintaining 14% body fat, your appetite and overeating and satiation will dictate that. My meals when I was training for this physique competition were one and a half pounds of raw meat in the morning with one stick of clarified butter. Then I would have some salmon roe or some liver, usually both. And then I would repeat the same meal at night except I wouldn't have the organ meats at night. I would just have the one and a half pounds of raw meat with the stick of clarified raw butter. And some of you guys might be thinking, Frank, aren't you allergic to dairy? I was taking Benadryl, an antihistamine and allergy medication at the time to tolerate the dairy to some degree. But if you guys saw my histamine video the other day, you'll know that Benadryl causes memory loss. And I did that for a few months. So I very likely have damaged my brain long term by using those antihistamine medications. But I didn't know it at the time. I always ate according to my appetite and I never forced myself to eat more than my body wanted. My body craved more protein when I started working out compared to beforehand. So your natural hunger signals are what you should be going by, not some macronutrient calculator that a bodybuilder is telling you. If you're having a difficult time putting on weight or muscle, it is your training routine. Simple as that. You could be using too much weight, your form might be incorrect, your repetition tempo might be off, maybe it's not ideal for building muscle. So many things can be wrong, but it is usually a lack of exercise volume in general. So don't increase your calories, increase your weight training volume, get in the gym more and your body will crave more of the protein it needs to build muscle. I don't think there is any advantage to consuming carbohydrates as a natural bodybuilder or athlete. Once you start using performance enhancing drugs, however, like insulin, that changes the picture. Consumers literally inject insulin to digest food faster. So don't let these bodybuilders, these fitness people, these muscle guys with bubble guts convince you to consume large amounts of carbohydrates to gain weight. Buy quality animal foods, eat fat desatiation, eat protein desatiation, have some organ meats here and there and don't listen to that general generic fitness advice. Now a lot of you might be thinking, Frank, you're not muscular, you're a little fairy twinkie boy and yeah, I don't lift weights like I used to. I am about 140 pounds at the moment, but for ideal health, extra muscle mass is not desirable nor do I think it looks good. I used to have almost 18 inch arms, you know, I spent half the day eating the other half of the day in the gym, but for what? I'm stressing my digestive system and committing myself to something that requires many hours of my time on a daily basis. Don't feel the need to be as muscular as bodybuilders because it doesn't matter unless you're into attracting muscly dudes. The volume of food required to maintain a higher lean body mass stresses organs past a natural extent. Notice how quickly you lose muscle mass as well as strength when you stop working out. Your body is getting rid of muscle because it's calorically expensive. Your body burns 50 calories per pounds of muscle it has. Very effective for losing weight, not effective for survival in a natural environment. When you have to hunt bison instead of shopping at a grocery store, these things have to be kept in mind. The most effective physique for survival in nature and hunting has always been a tall lean physique. It's why it is what is seen as the most attractive from a fairly objective standpoint. Height and limb length play a huge role in hunting ability and natural strength through your tendons, your ligaments, your bones, leverage. You are essentially scaling up a human being without adding extra muscle mass and too much of an additional caloric requirement. I'm already pretty adept at throwing people into the East River. Imagine if I was like 6'5", 300 lbs. I could do like 3, 4, 5 guys at once. But thank you guys for joining me today. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, share the video if you can. If you guys would like to support me further, definitely check out Frankie's Free Range Meat, providing you guys with high quality, nutrient dense animal foods at an affordable price. I'm going to fail running until tomorrow, so if you want to get an additional 10% discount on some Wagyu beef, some fatty beef, some organs, check out frankiesfreerangemeat.com. Also Frankie's Naturals, minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. Go to frankiesnaturals.com to look like a Roman statue. Now last but not least, if you guys do want to reach out to me for one-on-one fitness consultations or diet and health consultations, you can send me an email frankatofanoatgmail.com. My clients range from bodybuilders to people looking to solve their eczema to pregnant women looking to have healthy children. So thanks again guys and enjoy the rest of your day.