Delicious but deadly.
After weeks of drinking lots of milk every day, it stops tasting as glorious as your memory recalls. Even I, a milk addict, get tired of it during GOMAD.
Because of this, a lot of people want to drink chocolate milk for GOMAD instead of regular milk. Anyone can drink a whole lot of chocolate milk, after all. No one gets tired of that. It’s an endless gift of joy.
But does it make sense?
Can you drink a gallon of chocolate milk every day?
My creatine of choice.
There’s a lot of ways for a skinny guy to bulk up and get stronger, but two options are mentioned frequently:
If you’re reading this site, you’re probably aware that GOMAD is the process of drinking a gallon of milk a day. Creatine, on the other hand, is a supplement that can give you considerable strength gains in a short time.
(For this reason, some people yap on about creatine being a steroid but this is not the case. People are just silly.)
But if you’re interested in doing GOMAD and taking creatine, should you do both of those things at the same time? Or should you stick with just one?
Your new best friend?
Everyone’s always looking for a GOMAD alternative. I get it, too. People don’t want to drink milk in large quantities. It’s not fun and there are side-effects. At the same time though, the commonly suggested alternatives aren’t any good.
Soy milk doesn’t have enough saturated fat. Chocolate milk has too much sugar. Almond milk just won’t provide the calories or protein you need.
If you want to gain weight with milk, full fat cow’s milk is the only option. But there still might be an alternative. It’s just not milk.
Long ago, Mark Sisson — an advocate of the Paleo/Primal diet — shared the following thought when talking about gaining weight with GOMAD:
It undoubtedly works, but a gallon of milk isn’t exactly Primal and I can’t recommend it. Instead of milk, why not a dozen eggs a day? ADEAD? If you can manage it, eating them on top of your regularly scheduled meals is a great source of affordable protein, fat, and vitamins.
So are eggs the ultimate GOMAD alternative? Are they even a contender? I’ll break it down and you can decide for yourself.
Just have to take it day by day.
In the previous post, I mentioned that I never plan to do GOMAD again. But since I like exploring all possibilities, I thought I’d ask myself a question: if I did do GOMAD again, what would I do differently?
The answers I came up with, I think, will be a big help for first timers who are just getting started with GOMAD. They should allow you to:
Pretty sweet deal, right?
If you’re new to the world of GOMAD, this is the page for you. I’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions and answered them.
For even more information, check out the archives.
GOMAD stands for Gallon of Milk a Day and, as the name suggests, is the process of drinking a gallon of milk a day. This usually lasts for a month or two but the precise duration will vary from person to person.
There are two main reasons:
You’ll need to follow a strength training routine for that second point to be true but GOMAD can be an effective tool to use in conjunction with one of those programs. Mark Rippetoe — the creator of the Starting Strength program — has been a GOMAD advocate for a long while.
Drinking this much milk is not a long-term strategy since there are certainly side-effects but it’s one hell of a kick-start. If you drink a gallon of milk a day, it’s impossible to not gain weight and become stronger.
Firstly, it has the macronutrients that you need:
There are no other foods that have that sort of balance.
Milk is also easy to consume and cheap. It’s not a magic bullet that will solve every strength or body composition problem you have, but it can be wonderfully convenient.
Yes.
You must drink whole fat, cow’s milk. You can’t drink 2% milk or almond milk or chocolate milk or soy milk or anything else. People are always looking for an alternative, but those alternatives either fall into one of two categories:
I have discussed alternatives to GOMAD on this site, but if you’re going to go down that road, you have to accept that the results won’t be as dramatic.
It depends on how much weight you want to gain. The longer you drink a gallon of milk a day, the bigger you’ll be by the time you stop. Makes sense, right?
That said, a month is the most common duration for GOMAD. It’s enough time to see results without putting on too much fat or experiencing the worst of the side-effects. I have, however, heard of people sticking with GOMAD for months on end, so it definitely varies between people.
This will depend on what you’re eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but it’s reasonable to expect yourself to gain between 20-25lbs (or 9-12kg) over the course of the month. Most of this will not be muscle, but if you’re underweight, that shouldn’t be a big concern anyway.
It’s possible. The major benefit of GOMAD is that you can consume a lot of calories and, while those calories will mostly be burned during the day and used by your body to build muscle, there will surely be some that are “left behind” and are converted into fat.
I have good news though:
If you’ve lived your life as a hardgainer, it’s not going to be hard to lose fat either. The bigger risk is losing your gains once GOMAD ends rather than becoming (and remaining) overweight.
That depends on your definition of safe. There are side-effects. Some of those side-effects are quite unpleasant. But not everyone experiences them the same way, many are preventable, and some people don’t experience them at all. It really depends on the person.
At the very least, you won’t die doing GOMAD and any “damage” won’t be long-term. Just know when to stop if the side-effects become uncomfortable.
I don’t know. The point of this site isn’t to sell you the idea of GOMAD. In fact, I think I’ll turn a lot of people off giving it a go. All I can say is this:
As long as you’re aware of what it might be like and can set correct expectations, you won’t run into trouble.