The quest for greater size has long plagued both the ‘hard gainer’ and the muscle bound hunk. At times it can seem that the need to ingest greater calories is almost as taxing as our workouts. A predicament that John McCallum, the focus of today’s article, was keen to address. As you’ll read below, McCallum devised a simple but highly effective weight gain drink for those seeking to put on weight in the shortest possible amount of time.
But who was John McCallum and what did he know?
During the 1960s and 1970s, John McCallum was one of the most respected writings in the bodybuilding circuit. Holding a column in Strength and Health magazine for nearly a decade, McCallum had a writing style that combined humorous anecdotes with serious training advice. A no-nonsense approach to training and eating, McCallum regularly stressed that the most impressive bodybuilders had always been strong. Therefore strength was the cornerstone of muscularity.
Stemming from this, McCallum was a strong proponent of “softening up” for maximum size gains. For the modern-day lifter, this means bulking without stressing about keeping your six-pack. Although this approach is highly questionable, there is no doubting its effectiveness for size and strength gains. Importantly, McCallum didn’t believe bodybuilders should be given free reign to pig out on a bulk and reminded lifters that they needed to train hard and keep a respective amount of aerobic fitness during their bulking routines.
Who benefitted from McCallum’s Drink?
According to McCallum, the ‘Get Big Drink’ was aimed at those who struggled to gain weight, no matter how hard they tried, or for those who needed to gain as much weight as possible in a short space of time.
The drink would be taken alongside your regular meals (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner) and would be accompanied by a heavy strength training programme centred on compound lifts. Hardly a shy man, McCallum boasted that following his guidelines, men could expect to gain anywhere from 2-5 pounds a week on his drink.
What were the ingredients?
- First take a days worth of protein power and add it into a blender. Say roughly 6-8 scoops of protein (Whey/Casein/etc.).
- Next take two quarts of whole milk and dump them in the blender.
- Following this add in 2 cups of dry skim milk.
- Now mix in 2 Raw eggs.
Is that it?
Hardly…
- After mixing in the protein, milk and eggs, put 4 tablespoons peanut butter into the blender
- Next add a half a brick (.875 quarts or 462 grams) of chocolate ice cream followed by
- 1 small banana
- 4 tablespoons malted milk powder (17g protein)
- 6 tablespoons of corn syrup
Blend all the ingredients together and you come out with a 3,000 calorie shake with over 200g of protein and oodles of carbs and fat to boot. Take the shake outside your normal meals and watch the pounds rise.*
But what about my abs?
McCallum was keen to stress that the ‘Get Big Drink’ was a short term strategy, to be discontinued once the desired weight had been reached. After that, McCallum recommend dropping the shake but maintaining a high protein diet so as ‘to sharpen up‘.
If you’re interested in reading more of McCallum’s columns, which I cannot stress enough are highly informative and entertaining, you can purchase a collection of McCallum’s ideas in ‘The Complete Keys to Progress‘ by the man himself.
*The calculations are from McCallum’s original article in Strength and Health. Chaos and Pain did a review some years back and found that a shake like this could have over 5,000 calories depending on the foods chosen. Try not to gain weight on that!
I love old school stuff like this. These guys just went for it. I can’t even imagine choking this shake down and then eating any meals that day
As you say they really went for it back then. Part of me wants to try out this drink but my former fat boy genetics make me somewhat weary!
Wonder what happened to Chaos and Pain – Jamie seems to have disappeared into thin air from his site – and the podcast released under the same name is two new, seemingly unaffiliated, random dudes. Strange.
As for the drink….YEAH! I wouldn’t try it for more than 2 weeks at the most. Would be a cool experiment to run, but I could imagine some initial gastric distress…def wouldn’t chug it on a leg day. If you were a skinny teen though, would be great way to add cals, but these days you could mod it to make it much more healthy
It would be interesting but I couldn’t be the Guinea pig haha Kind of reminds me of Rippetoe’s Gallon of milk a day concept
I noticed that, which is such a shame as he had such an engaging writing style!
As you say for skinny teens, I’d imagine it was a much tastier form of GOMAD. I think some gastric distress would be a given especially if loaded on top of regular meals. Nevertheless it’s always nice to see some of the no nonsense approaches of yesteryear!
Hope alls well!
This drink is a very bad idea for gaining quality mostly-muscle weight. Anyone who knows about nutrition can see the huge amount of calories in this drink. And this is recommended to be taken apart from regular meals!!
Nutrient auto-regulation is highly important. Over-feeding is simply wastage of meals unless you are preparing for a role (acting role) that requires you to look like half-walrus.
I have to mention that my above comment is in light of goal of largely muscle gain..something that most lifterds nowadays are interested in. That may not be your goal, in that case, go ahead with the diet. Bu again… beware of the consequences from such a calorie-dense diet. It won’t leave much space for other highly important foods for good health, for example fruits and veggies.
Hi Zorba, thanks so much for stopping by! You are of course, entirely correct to assert that this is not a healthy or even sustainable strategy for people seeing muscle gain.
What was McCallum’s intention here was to force those struggling to gain weight to pile on the requisite calories. Given the current health climate of many Western states, it’s safe to say we have few problems gaining weight anymore.
As you rightly state, healthy weight gain (* muscle gain) is predicated on good natural foods complimented with fruits and veg.
For those who complain that all they do is eat but never gain weight however, McCallum’s approach is a nice shock to the system!
Finally, I have to ask, is your name inspired by that iconic Nikos Kazantzakis novel?
Agreed, regarding Mccallum’s purpose for this hyper-caloric drink. He wasn’t advising the average-gened guy who’s already at a normal bodyweight for his height and skeletal structure before he begins resistance training,. Rather, he was advising guys who lacked normal bodyweight and/or had extreme difficulty gaining any sort of bodyweight.
Guys, such as I was, when I began in 1971 at age fifteen.
I never read Mccallum until years afterward, but, at the start of my fourth consecutive year of training, I utilized something similar I learned from a booklet sold by Schwarzenegger to gain what was for me and my below-average physical genetics substantial bodyweight.
After three consecutive years of consistent progressive training, I’d gained a mere ten pounds and weighed 160 lbs at my 5’8″. That was despite OBSESSIVE dedication. I had learned proper training info, and I was not overtraining, but had, to my frustration, responded extremely slowly despite consistent grim determination. I hoped for more gains.
Schwarznegger’s booklet gave a formula: consume 1 gram of protein and THIRTY calories per each pound of TARGET bodyweight. I hoped to get to 180 lbs. That meant consuming 180 X 30 = 5,400 calories PER DAY.
I realized that trying to consume that many cals per day of solid food was practicably impossible for me, so I decided to use a liquid diet.
In the US, evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed, but what’s here called evaporated) was then sold in cans (slightly larger in the 1970s than they are here today) which each contained 600 calories and 30 grams of protein.
I’d pour one can into a blender, then add to that base whatever else I had – – ice cream, weight-gain powder, chocolate syrup, flavored yogurt, frozen fruit, peanut butter, malted milk powder, bananas, raw eggs, in any and every combination – – until the calorie count reached 1,000.
I drank FIVE of those every day for ten months. Five thousand calories and 160 to 180 grams of protein, daily, for over forty-three weeks.
I trained on a four-day split, doing each bodypart twice per week, lower volume, sets of 5-7 reps, using primarily squats, SDLs, OHPs, bent-over rows, and bench presses, along with dumbbell curls, lateral raises, donkey calf raises, crunches, and occasional leg presses, dips, and pull-ups. I made sure I got a minimum of eight hours sleep every night those same months.
Pushing that nightmarish quantity of calories into my system for ten months worked for me.
I gained nineteen pounds (drug-free), to 179 lbs, and built my proportions to what ended up being my genetic maximums for mass.
At 179 lbs, I discovered my further bodyweight gains were virtually all fat, so (again, long before i ever read Mccallum’s or similar advice), I terminated the hypercalories and switched to a sane daily calorie intake, but maintained that approximately 1-gram-per-pound-of-bodyweight daily protein intake.
My body then shed about five pounds of fat and settled to what was my prime-of-life-and-bodybuilding bodyweight of a 10-12% lean 174 lbs.
Probably for most guys, with relatively normative bodyweights, a drink like Mccallum’s or mine is not only unnecessary but highly inadvisable if not counterproductive, since it’ll make most guys primarily add excessive fat.
However, YES – – for at least some of us, cursed with genetic low-hypertrophy-response, as well as cursed with inefficient calorie metabolization in our late teens and early twenties, a mega-calorie drink can be an effective tool for limited periods to produce desireable weight gain.
I think that was the difference.- this was very much for hardgainers or those who struggled with weight. In McCallum’s defence, and one of the reasons I enjoy his writing, is he never pushed a particular supplement and was instead more of a purist seeking to help poeple. I was always more skeptical of other’s writings which would inevitably end with ‘of course all of your requirements can be met by simply taking X supplement.’
Haha I had a very sobering realization yesterday. I found my training book from 12 years ago and realized I weigh the exact same but leaner and about 2.5/3 times as strong. Once I push over my sitting weight I gain a huge amount of bodyfat and the idea of bulking/cutting has long lost its luster. Genetics matter!
“…and realized I weigh the exact same but leaner and about 2.5/3 times as strong. Once I push over my sitting weight I gain a huge amount of bodyfat….”
Understood, yep.
After reaching age 60, and even despite being on prescription TRT for almost ten years (the standard 100 mg/week, which does exactly as intended, restores total T to within the clinically normal range; I’d experienced mine fall nearly 200 ng/dL between age 55 and age 57; so was prescribed TRT by a doctor when I was age 58; it restored my level to approximately what it’d been before it declined), I carry about ten pounds less lean mass than I carried in my prime at age 22.
That loss is due to my inability to handle as heavy of poundages in, especially, upper body movements, because of permanent joint injuries incurred during my years of building/roofing contracting jobs, as well as due to the inevitable reduced anabolic capabilities of us humans as we age.
I discovered decades ago that I’m one with genetics which require me to constantly train “on the edge”, near my strength limits, in order to force hypertrophy; moderate pondages aren’t effective for hypertrophy me as they are for many (among top bodybuilders, Lee Haney describes his training as being productive using moderate poundages, for example).
Lacking that strength capacity now, so the muscle lacking the demand on it, my body has responded by losing mass.
I’ve experimented with higher reps/moderate poundage and even higher weekly volume and frequecy methods, but, even with muscle memory, mine refuse to maintain or regain the size I had at age 22.
Yep, genetics matter, and so does aging. Decades of willpower, positive thinking, goal visualization, and constant optimism can get a person to genetic limits but cannot add a muscle fiber beyond genetic limits nor prevent the inevitable deteriorations of aging.
I still maintain about a 10-12% bodyfat for at least six months every year, as I follow an annual calorie schedule on which I deliberately gain about ten pounds of bodyfat between Oct 1 and Dec 31 then shed it between Jan. 1 and March 31 (I just finished that annual 10-lb fat loss). I’ve successfully used that calorie cycle schedule for the past twenty years.