It seems my body isn't responding well to my caloric intake while trying to bodybuild. I am getting stronger and my muscles appear to be getting bigger and more defined, but I'm not gaining weight. Unless I am somehow pulling from invisible fat reserves that I have no idea where they are in my body and am balancing burning and building, that means I need to eat more, I am rebalancing existing muscle, or I need a new scale.

I'm already struggling to eat 3,000 calories a day. I need a whole other meal to get up to about 3,500 and see if that helps.

I've heard absolute units of bodybuilders, of which it is not my goal to get to, having to eat over 7,000 calories a day for maintenance. (But they are also 350lbs of muscle.)

Eating healthy, you need to eat so much food. I wonder if I need to factor in the cost of digesting protien into my intake... Eating like 200g of protien throughout the day, you burn about 200 calories to actually digest it, so instead of eating 3,000 calories, my actual intake is about 2,800.

My total daily expenditure might be where I am messing up because I might not be in an actual surplus...