Gym for 1.5 years, no results. What am I doing wrong?

@rj71 The issue might be the amount or relative quantity of proteins compared to carbs fats etc. Or the calories.

I'm some sort of half-vegan. I have some (mild) allergies. To dairy for sure, eggs suspected too. Don't like beef. Not a fan of seafood, except tuna.

So it's tofu, chicken, pork and soy milk (the kind with prots) for most of my proteins. I cook a lot, rarely eat out, some snacks, occasional unhealthy snacks. Big on brown rice and brown bread. Lots of home-made smoothies with soy milk and little added raw sugar or none. Could eat a bit more more veggies and fruits maybe.
 
@truth76 Are you taking progress pictures? Everyone is hard on themselves including me . Been hitting gym hard for 2 years and this morning was in a mood and disappointed in myself till I looked back at even the latest picture, 1 month ago and could see a pretty good
difference
 
@truth76 In my experience from running, it is hard to maintain a lot of muscle when you run that much. I would never cut back on my running though for anything but do what makes you happy! The fact that your doing it to begin with makes you attractive in general!
 
@truth76 Your intensity is too much. You can either be a runner or a lifter; not both. They're canceling the results out from each other. If you're wanting to gain muscle, then focus on the weights like 4 days a week (2 upper body, 2 lower body) and cut back on the cardio significantly. And get plenty of calories, including .7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound body weight; so at 158 pounds, you would need 111 to 158g protein daily). Your TDEE (how many calories you're burning counting your activity) seems to be around 2500 calories for maintenance. So maybe go up to 3000 with the changes I mentioned above and see if you notice a difference in strength and weight in a month.
 
@samyeru I did suspect that (cardio or lift) but always found conflicting information. I run because I love the mental benefit of it (much better mood in my case). Should be worth a try.

It's true that I wasn't doing cardio when successfully weight-lifting at 20, maybe just 15 min on a thread pre-workout.
 
@truth76 You can still incorporate cardio; I agree that there are great health benefits. But maybe do it as a 5-10 minute warmup or cooldown on the lifting days, and regular runs on the off days. And consider having one day that is truly a rest day.
 
@truth76 Based on your volume it's more geared towards a strength based workout. If you plan to put on mass, I'd go for 4 sets and 10 reps per movement. Throw in some isolation movements in there as well like preacher curls and cable tricep pushdowns, you could also superset cabled tricep pushdowns with bicep curls with supenation.

This is just for the workout itself, but most of your gains will be made in the kitchen. Caloric surplus, caloric surplus, and more caloric surplus. Some rough calculations shows me that you should be consuming about 2580 calories per day to maintain your weight, but for you I'd add another 300 calories onto that if you're planning to add weight, or even more. Drink whole milk instead of skim or water. During your gym visit drink water with a pre-workout powder, the really good ones have a mix of short and longform carbohydrates. Eat nuts like cashews and macadamia nuts, as they are very high in carbs. No, it is not bad to chug down a pizza. If you wanna add weight you gotta give your body the carbs, fats, and protein to build more muscle fibers and to give it enough energy storage so it doesn't need to start halting muscle growth to keep energy consumption down. Remember, muscles require a lot of energy to both build, use, and maintain. At LEAST twice your weight in kg of protein in grams, so for you that would be 144g per day. Red meat and chicken breast are fantastic sources of protein, and if you (like me) struggle to get all that solid food down, start using protein shakes to supplement.

Personally, I'm on a 1 year journey right now to put on 10kg. I started out at 65kg and I'm 185cm tall, so I'm very slim. I workout 5 times per week for about 1.5-2 hours per session of intense training, to failure on the last reps of the last set. I workout in the morning, before breakfast. I supplement using pre-workout energy shakes, creatine, ZMA, and protein shakes. I eat 4 meals per day with chicken breast, white rice, some sauce using whole milk and extra butter. The food alone gives me about 120g of protein, and the protein shake brings me up to 180g. I am horrible at eating lots of solid foods, so I'm slowly upping the amounts every 2 weeks, but training your metabolism, stomach, and appetite to consume more food takes a loooong time.
 
@heidiii Wow, thanks a lot! Lots to experiment, change and try out.

Yes I do have some trouble getting more solid food like beef, in part why I don't eat this meat anymore. Unfortunately I have a dairy allergy but I do drink the soy milk that has the most proteins.

I'll try the pre workout mix with some nuts as I often am already starving right when waking up so feel weak sometimes before workout. I tried creatine (as a freebie box) but this may not be so effective with me.

The thing is that I would have expected to lose fat if I didn't eat enough. Actually I did lose some, no so significantly though.

Returning to shakes seem like a good option. I just don't want to get fatter instead of bigger which is what may have happened last year when using shakes. I was 170 lbs / 77 kg then, not sure whether the extra was muscle or fat, I think both. And to think that 2 years ago I was 140 lbs / 63 kg.
 
@jefferson818 Since I used to workout before and once got bigger without tracking that, I thought I still wouldn't need to track. As for eating I think I have a very, very average/common appetite.
 
@harko Sorry, second language here, I may have misused words.

-2,5 km run to the gym

-some quick warming up once there (around 12 one-shot bodyweight exercises)...

-Block 1:
1 or 2 combined exercises. Start with, for instance, Dumbbell Bent Over Reverse Flies, 12 reps, then Lying Reverse Flies right after for 30 secs (or not), then 30 secs break. Repeat 4-6x.

-Block 2:
Another 1 or 2 combined upper-body exercises like above, let's say Dumbbell Bent Rows 10 reps plus an extra bodyweight for 30 secs. Also repeat 4-6x.

-Block 3 (not always):
Another 1 or 2 exercises exactly like above just different exercises, also weight and bodyweight, same few muscles.

-Block 4:
Final exercise that is often aimed at the lower chest/abdomen, regardless of which other muscles I trained in the previous blocks. Or extra lower body, weighted or not.

-Stretching up, 8-12 exercises

-Run back home 2,5 km

-Eat immediately if morning or 1-2 hours later if dinnertime.
 
@truth76 Based on this you might not be going heavy enough to stimulate muscle growth. You want to make sure you're getting quality reps with sufficiently heavy weight which should slowly increase over time. I'm still not exactly sure what you're saying but it sounds like you're doing a fast paced kind of boot camp style circuit workout. This is the problem. You need to be sufficiently rested between exercises so that you can lift sufficiently heavy. If you're gasping for air and aren't rested enough you're going to have to go very light which isn't going to stimulate hypertrophy. You need to hit the major muscle groups with heavy weight. If you want to train with an app I'd look into the RP Fitness app or wherever it's called from Dr Mike Israetel. That's the only app I've actually considered getting.
 
@harko This might be it yes, just learned that my app tracks speed and strength of exercises. Speed is very high, strength/force is quite low. It's true I may be rushing things yes, often feel like in a hurry.
 
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