So I'm going to talk a little bit about what a lot of people refer to as "Bulking" and some general opinions I have about it.
First, a lot of people here the term bulking and think it basically means eating like an idiot and packing on tons of fat along with muscle. While that may be the approach preferred by some, I don't agree with it.
The truth is that whether you're natural or on gear, your body has a limit to how much muscle it can put on (and that limit is different for everyone) in a given time frame. Eating more than whatever that amount is will just result in you packing on too much fat.
Whenever I hear somebody say "Man ive been lifting and eating a lot and I just got fat, I gained like 20 lbs in 4 months" the answer is pretty much just mathematical. You ate too much food and didn't gain enough muscle. Its as simple as that. For most people, they can gain a few pounds of muscle a month when they are just starting lifting and then past that it slows down to 0.5 to 1 lb a month if theyre doing things right. Even for a guy on the sauce its a slow roast, 2-3 lbs a month in ideal conditions. To be honest I rarely see anybody put on more than 20 lbs of quality tissue in 2 years, and itll usually be lopsided, with 10-14 lbs the first year than 6 the second.
So with that said, theres a lot of talk out there about different ways to put on muscle and reduce fat gain, such as intermittent fasting, nutrient timing, various diets, ect. At the end of the day it all sort of comes down to whether there is enough protein and enough calories in the diet to grow, but not enough to increase adipose tissue stores. When you look at the fastest growing humans (babies) the ideal eating schedule is every 3 hours and there is a caloric surplus. The caloric surplus is a NECCESITY as the body won't synthesize new lean tissue if it doesn't atleast have enough calories to maintain homeostasis.
If you can gain 12 lbs of muscle in a year in optimal conditions (eating in a moderate caloric surplus and gaining some muscle and a bit of fat as well) and diet off 9 lbs of fat in 2 months, that seems more efficient than doing intermittent-keto-potato-bulkfasting where you put on 4 lbs of muscle in a year just because you're afraid to lose sight of your perfectly chiseled cheek bones.
For the actual break down of what you eat we can actually figure out what to eat using a few guidelines.
A. The most important part is caloric surplus. Period. Your body can grow on less protein than optimal if you're in enough of a caloric surplus to where it doesn't have to scavenge dietary protein and turn it into glucose just to keep the train rolling.
B. The more protein is in the diet, the more muscle you'll gain relative to fat. This however has a limit, and the returns diminish the higher up your protein intake goes. 1g/lb of bodyweight is good.
C. Clean calories result in better results than dirty calories. But not by a whole lot. Brown rice might be better for you than biscuits but if you need to slam some biscuits, honeybuns, burgers, fried chicken or chocolate milk to hit your calorie number, its not a show stopper. The important part is that its part of a controlled eating plan and you don't go over what your magic calorie number is just because you're eating dirty foods. Im not advocating eating like crap, you'll get better results and feel better with healthy foods, but if eating a burger is going to get you that extra 500 cals you need to grow, then eat the burger.
There are a lot of formulas out there for calculating caloric needs and I honestly don't have a whole lot of faith in any of them except the scale method. Heres the premise.
Every morning and night, weigh yourself naked on the scale and record it, and calculate the average weight of each day and find the trend over a 2 week period. This is going to help you get away from the little changes such as water retention, you got a haircut, you took a gnarly shit, ect, and see the big picture. From there you adjust. In my opinion this is the best way to figure out what you need to actually eat to grow or lose weight. Now this isn't rocket science, but you are going to treat yourself like a science experiment and record what happens when you do certain things to your body. Without that you're just pissing in the wind and relying on guesswork. You wouldn't do that with your bank account so don't do it with your body.
First, a lot of people here the term bulking and think it basically means eating like an idiot and packing on tons of fat along with muscle. While that may be the approach preferred by some, I don't agree with it.
The truth is that whether you're natural or on gear, your body has a limit to how much muscle it can put on (and that limit is different for everyone) in a given time frame. Eating more than whatever that amount is will just result in you packing on too much fat.
Whenever I hear somebody say "Man ive been lifting and eating a lot and I just got fat, I gained like 20 lbs in 4 months" the answer is pretty much just mathematical. You ate too much food and didn't gain enough muscle. Its as simple as that. For most people, they can gain a few pounds of muscle a month when they are just starting lifting and then past that it slows down to 0.5 to 1 lb a month if theyre doing things right. Even for a guy on the sauce its a slow roast, 2-3 lbs a month in ideal conditions. To be honest I rarely see anybody put on more than 20 lbs of quality tissue in 2 years, and itll usually be lopsided, with 10-14 lbs the first year than 6 the second.
So with that said, theres a lot of talk out there about different ways to put on muscle and reduce fat gain, such as intermittent fasting, nutrient timing, various diets, ect. At the end of the day it all sort of comes down to whether there is enough protein and enough calories in the diet to grow, but not enough to increase adipose tissue stores. When you look at the fastest growing humans (babies) the ideal eating schedule is every 3 hours and there is a caloric surplus. The caloric surplus is a NECCESITY as the body won't synthesize new lean tissue if it doesn't atleast have enough calories to maintain homeostasis.
If you can gain 12 lbs of muscle in a year in optimal conditions (eating in a moderate caloric surplus and gaining some muscle and a bit of fat as well) and diet off 9 lbs of fat in 2 months, that seems more efficient than doing intermittent-keto-potato-bulkfasting where you put on 4 lbs of muscle in a year just because you're afraid to lose sight of your perfectly chiseled cheek bones.
For the actual break down of what you eat we can actually figure out what to eat using a few guidelines.
A. The most important part is caloric surplus. Period. Your body can grow on less protein than optimal if you're in enough of a caloric surplus to where it doesn't have to scavenge dietary protein and turn it into glucose just to keep the train rolling.
B. The more protein is in the diet, the more muscle you'll gain relative to fat. This however has a limit, and the returns diminish the higher up your protein intake goes. 1g/lb of bodyweight is good.
C. Clean calories result in better results than dirty calories. But not by a whole lot. Brown rice might be better for you than biscuits but if you need to slam some biscuits, honeybuns, burgers, fried chicken or chocolate milk to hit your calorie number, its not a show stopper. The important part is that its part of a controlled eating plan and you don't go over what your magic calorie number is just because you're eating dirty foods. Im not advocating eating like crap, you'll get better results and feel better with healthy foods, but if eating a burger is going to get you that extra 500 cals you need to grow, then eat the burger.
There are a lot of formulas out there for calculating caloric needs and I honestly don't have a whole lot of faith in any of them except the scale method. Heres the premise.
Every morning and night, weigh yourself naked on the scale and record it, and calculate the average weight of each day and find the trend over a 2 week period. This is going to help you get away from the little changes such as water retention, you got a haircut, you took a gnarly shit, ect, and see the big picture. From there you adjust. In my opinion this is the best way to figure out what you need to actually eat to grow or lose weight. Now this isn't rocket science, but you are going to treat yourself like a science experiment and record what happens when you do certain things to your body. Without that you're just pissing in the wind and relying on guesswork. You wouldn't do that with your bank account so don't do it with your body.
