Q: This is a long question but please bare with me. I am 15 years old, weigh about 132 pounds and am 5 ft9. I weight train 4 days a week and do some other fitness activities. Mon + Wed I do arms, back, abs + shoulders and on Tue and Thur I do mainly Chest (bench press) along with shoulders, legs and abs .I used to be overweight and am not sure that if I go back to 2000+ calories a day wheather I will start adding fat again insted of muscle (I know that I probly won't because of the amount of exercise I am doing but something keeps telling me it may be a bad idea. I am extremely lean at the moment because I have being doing various different workout plans for about a year now and can see almost every muscle in my body (apart from my bottom abs which are just about visible). I tend to eat very healthy at the moment, Lots of fruit, veg. Have not eaten sweets, chocolate, crisps anything like that in the last year or so. My calorie intake is about 1500 this includes 100-150g of protien, 170 g of carbs and 30g of fat (the rest I pick up in fruit and veg mainly). I am aiming to gain a reasonable ammount of muscle but within the last few months my muscles are only growing very slowly. But mainly they are just becoming more visable. Is there any advice that you may be able to educate me with please because I am in quite a sticky situation at the moment?

A: It sounds like you are already doing just about everything right. The only thing is that you should NOT be afraid to eat more as long as you eat all the good foods (read my Diet article if you're not sure what's 'good'). I'm very sure that your body can support 2000 and more calories daily with your training regimen with no additional fat gain, but faster muscle gain. 1500 calories with that activity level is really next to starving yourself, especially since you are not yet done growing.

Start by increasing your daily calories to 1700-1800, stay there for a few weeks and then increase again to at least 2000. Get those new calories evenly from protein, carbs, and fats. If your schedule allows it, add a new meal to your daily diet -- if not, just increase the size of your current meals. One way or another you should work your way up to 2000 daily calories over a month's time. Once there you can decide whether you want to eat more (I'm pretty certain you can afford to eat a lot more than that). Make sure that your calories come from healthy nutritious foods (as described in my article) and spread it over at least 4 (preferably more) meals per day and you'll be in great shape and will gain muscle with next to no fat. Good luck!