Early in my career as a high school strength coach, I worked with a teenage boy who wanted to put on muscle, but didn’t have the appetite or nutritional skills to do so. This kid taught me a lot about the reality of many teenage boys with small appetites and their eating habits, which was surprising to me. Although I’ve always been naturally thin, I always had a big appetite.

Here is some background on my guy: he played baseball growing up but stopped playing after his freshman year. For two years he didn’t do anything athletic. He would go to school and go home to do homework, maybe play some online games. He did not come from an athletic-focused family so fueling his body for muscle growth was a foreign idea for the whole family. He was thin.

His junior year he came to me and asked if I could help him put on muscle. We kept the workouts simple. A five-minute warm-up, four or five exercises, two or three sets each. Sessions ran about thirty to forty minutes. Nothing fancy at all. It looked like this for the first month:

A few weeks in, I asked him "Do you know what else goes into building muscle besides lifting weights?"

"Food?" he said.

"Right. So tell me what you've been eating."

What he described wasn't a plan that would support muscle growth. It wasn't his fault though, nobody had ever told him otherwise. And not every teenage boy is ravenous, especially one who hasn't been very active. Eating something small at 7am, a sandwich at noon, and dinner at 6pm has an eleven-hour stretch with one protein-containing meal in the middle. Building muscle with that schedule would be very difficult.

A 2025 review published in Nutrients by researchers at Stony Brook University found that teens engaged in resistance training need 0.6 to 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, nearly double the standard dietary guidelines. The research also recommends roughly 20 grams of protein every three to four hours to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

We needed to find nutritional opportunities in his daily schedule. Here’s what we came up with.

Opportunity 1: The real breakfast. The banana before he leaves his house was not breakfast, it was the pre-breakfast (aka the “pre-brekky”). The real meal should happen closer to 1st period; a breakfast sandwich, eggs on an English muffin, overnight oats with peanut butter, Greek yogurt with granola. Something filling usually an hour or so after wake-up when actual hunger kicks in. If this is offered at his school, he needs to take advantage.

Opportunity 2: The after-school protein snack. This was the easiest opportunity. A protein bar in his backpack, a quick shake when he walks in the door, chocolate milk and trail mix, cottage cheese with fruit. If there are vending machines at his school with high-protein options that will work too.

Opportunity 3: The post-dinner dinner (aka “4th meal”). He was hungry at 9:30 again anyway so this was simple. Have a second plate of dinner closer to bedtime. A big bowl of cereal with milk, peanut butter toast, Greek yogurt with honey, or a protein smoothie. Maybe another sandwich. Maybe breakfast for dinner.

And here’s a pro-tip: have him make extra for his 4th meal that he can tupperware-up for either the pre-brekky, real breakfast, or protein snack. When I was in high school I would always make 2 sandwiches at 9:30 at night. One for 4th meal and the other would be my “pocket sangwich” which I would eat right before first period.

None of these require complex cooking skills, just basic executive functioning skills.

When your son decides he wants to start lifting weights, the training is only half of it. Two sessions a week in the weight room will not overcome an eleven-hour protein gap. But three small additions to his existing routine might.

Every teenage boy needs a strength coach. Someone focused on wellness skills, not just lifting weight.

Be well,

Coach Steve Kiely M.Ed, CSCS
​Founder, Wellness Lit Fitness
​@coachstevekiely