Running A Successful Bulking Phase Part 1 46/84

I'm not going to lie, bulking is way more fun than cutting. I don't think this would be news to anyone, especially because of the look on their face when I tell my weight loss clients that I'm trying to gain weight. With that being said, it's not the free-for-all that people think it is, and so many people do it way wrong. Bulking is not about eating all the food and getting as big as possible as fast as possible. That mentality is a really good way to get fat. Bulking is about gaining quality muscle mass while maintaining as much of the leanness you worked so hard for on your cut. The process should be slow, just like weight loss, and it needs to be just as well planned. In this post, I'll go over the nutrition points you need to focus on when bulking and in Part 2 I'll go over the workouts.

During a bulk, your goal should be to gain about 1 pound per week for men and closer to .5 for women. Any more than that and you are probably not gaining quite as much lean muscle as you can. Obviously, you're going to get a little bit of body fat while you're bulking but the goal is to try and keep it to a minimum while still gaining a good amount of muscle. There are a few main points that you should spend most of your time focusing on. I'll go through those as bullet points to make it easy.

Nutrition

Whether you're bulking or cutting, nutrition is going to be super important to making sure you actually make progress. Here are some basic recommendations that I live by when bulking

- Find your baseline then eat a little more. If your weight is stable right now then all you need to do is add a little more food and you'll start gaining weight. If you want to get more precise there are some macronutrient recommendations you can use.

- Aim for .8-1.0 grams of protein per pound that you weigh. Most people don't get enough protein each day and this might be all the extra calories you need to hit point 1. This mean a guy weighing 180 pound would need between 145 and 180 grams per day.

- Aim for .5-2.0 grams of carbs per pound that you weigh. Yes, I know this is a broad range but it depends on the volume and intensity of your workout for the day. On days you do workouts that are higher volume, you should eat more carbs and days you do less you should eat less cars. most workout days will be closer to .8-1.5 grams per pound. Conditioning days will be on the lower end, even if the "feel harder".

- Fill in the rest of your calories with healthy fats. If you are tracking calories and macros this will just make up the remainder if you daily calories.

- As you progress through your bulk, carbs and protein stay about the same but fat increases. There is a number of reasons for this; protein and carbs have optimal ranges that they should be consumed in but fat doesn't, and fat has the most calories per gram meaning you need to eat less to get more. Want to make this simple? Add a scoop of peanut butter to the end of each meal.

- Still focus on getting protein and veggies with each meal and spread you carbs and fats pretty evenly across your day. Make sure you still eat about 1 cup of veggies per meal, you're going to want the fiber with all the food you'll be eating.

- Make sure you're getting you intra-workout shake each workout. Not only will this help you get more calories in each day but it'll help prevent any potential muscle loss from workouts

- Get protein and fat right before bed. This will help you recover faster and prevent muscle loss when sleeping, I like to blend 2 scoops on whey with peanut butter but if you can get casein protein that will be much better.

- Once you stop gaining weight, increase fat by a couple servings a day and maintain that until you stop gaining again.

- Just like cutting, you'll need to take a maintenance phase about every 3 months to get your body used to your new weight. If you don't you'll quickly lose the weight you worked so hard to put on.

If you can get good at these things and combine them with the workout blueprint I'll be posting tomorrow then you're definitely going to have a successful bulk. Remember to take is slow and enjoy the process, don't just try to rush to the end. Finally, if you want to see what it's like to work with me for totally free then subscribe here and you can join the group of workout testers that I'll be starting with this Monday. You can read about the workout HERE and see the post I but up about it on Facebook HERE. Anyone is free to join so let me know!

See you tomorrow!

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