How to gain weight healthy?

[Joseph C. Brown]

I am a 21 year old college student who started Crossfitting about 6 months ago. I right around 5'9 and on a heavy day weigh 150. I am toned and cut and am very good at my beloved muscle ups. I am considering putting on 10 pounds of healthy weight/muscle, because I believe my lifts would go up pretty substantially. I eat healthy, and paleo as much as I can. I'm not perfect and have a ton of room to improve from my lifts to my nutrition. I unfortunately believe I have a very fast metabolism and am very active. If anyone could help with a diet plan that could help me achieve this, that'd be great!
I've been told lots of Steak and Sweet potatoes, is this good? And how often do I eat? Do I snack, etc?

Thanks crossfitters,
Joseph

[Eric Montgomery]

More of everything--protein in the form of meat and eggs, dense carbs like sweet potatoes or plain oats, good fats like olive oil, avocados, and coconut milk/oil.

Lift heavy on an intelligent strength program and cut back on your metcon volume. Get lots of sleep. It's really no more complicated than that.

[David Alexander]

Drink a gallon of milk a day (not 2%, full fat). If that doesn't do it, I don't know what will.

[Joseph C. Brown]

Thanks David and Eric, I will do those! I sleep plenty, I'm an old man at my age. Haha

[Eric Montgomery]

What are some of your current lift numbers? Depending on what kind of programming you've been doing for the last 6 months, you could probably get a lot stronger (and bigger) in a pretty short period of time by doing one of the strength-biased programs.

[David Fletcher]

I've attempted gaining weight on paleo with a variety of methods over the course of two years. Only one has worked: add something non-paleo to your diet.

For me that has been milk or potatoes. Obviously other items would work as well, but these fit best with me. Sweet potatoes are hard to eat every day. Regular potatoes I can eat all day every day and they're dirt cheap.

[Joseph C. Brown]

Eric:
DL- 5RM is 325, never maxed it.
Bench-225 lbs
Front squat-205
Back squat-300
Strict Press-125
Clean and Jerk- Currently 165

[Joseph C. Brown]

Thanks David, I'll try regular potatoes too!

[Joseph C. Brown]

Originally Posted by Eric Montgomery

What are some of your current lift numbers? Depending on what kind of programming you've been doing for the last 6 months, you could probably get a lot stronger (and bigger) in a pretty short period of time by doing one of the strength-biased programs.

I've looked into the Wendler program, the 5-3-1, what would be some good ones to supplement my CF wods?

[Eric Montgomery]

Your numbers are pretty good for your size but yeah, gaining 10-20lbs would definitely help you get stronger from the point of view of adding more muscle and improving your leverage on lifts. You're probably not going to get much stronger off CF.com with its infrequent strength work so something else would probably fit your needs a little better.

I recently switched over from GSLP to 5/3/1 and love it so far--I'm doing the 4x per week schedule outlined in the second edition e-book (press Monday, deadlift Tuesday, bench Thursday, squat Friday or Saturday) and supplementing it with some quick assistance work and short conditioning, or just using rugby practice for my conditioning. Going great so far. It would probably do the trick for you if you kept the conditioning to a minimum...i.e. 2-3x per week and in the 8-12 minute time frame.