2862: Why Your Bulk Is Making You Fat (And How to Fix It)

0:00Justin Andrews:If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

0:13Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how to bulk or build without gaining body fat. We explain it all to you. By the way, if you want to know, you want to get an estimate of how many calories you need to eat to build or even lose, go to mapsmacros.com. It's a free site. Enter some information. Less than five minutes later, you're going to have your targets. Again, it's mapsmacros.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Troscription. So this is medical-grade supplements. These are the pioneers in, like, methylene blue, right?

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1:47Adam Schafer:Bulking is the process by which you're trying to gain size and strength, but it's muscle you want to gain, not body fat. This is the struggle. People bulk. They end up gaining more body fat than muscle. What's going on? We're going to break down how you can bulk without gaining body fat. Let's make it all muscle. Let's get into it.

2:06Sal Di Stefano:This is cool because this is a lot of our reverse diet strategy, which is a bulk. That's right. Rebranded.

2:13Justin Andrews:It is.

2:13Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Yeah. Reverse dieting, I think, is just a safer term used by coaches and trainers to not scare people away that do not want to get bulky or put on much weight. But it's the same concept. It's we're slowly going to increase calories over time to help build muscle, speed your metabolism up. And so the steps that we're going to go through right now are very similar to the steps that our coaches take our clients through in order to help them reverse diet or to bulk without putting on

2:41Adam Schafer:how much body fat yeah and the benefits of bulking um are are great uh this is actually what most people should do at least part of the time uh if they're strength training because the goal especially when they first start yeah yeah the goal with strength training um is to build muscle um that's what strength training does it makes you stronger and it builds muscle now you could be strength training for fat loss but again if you're trying to strength train for fat loss the goal is to build muscle. The reason why strength training can be so powerful for fat loss is it can move your metabolic rate in a positive direction.

3:16Adam Schafer:So it can, for lack of a better term, speed up your metabolism. It also preserves muscle when you inevitably go in what's called a cut, when you drop your calories below what you're taking in so you lose body fat. So the goal with strength training is to build muscle. So bulking, the process of bulking should be something that Everybody who strength trains should employ at some point during the year. And, of course, depending on how much muscle you want to gain or how strong you want to get, that plays a role in how often you do this. But if you never do this, if you're strength training and you're like you're never getting a bulk, here's what's going to happen.

3:52Adam Schafer:You're never – it's going to be very difficult to build muscle. It's going to be very difficult to move your metabolism in the right direction.

3:57Justin Andrews:Yeah, the crazy thing is, is like we've recommended too, too. Like whether you're trying to lean out or like lose weight or build muscle, like building is the first step, building your body up and making sure it's healthy and ready, you know, to maintain or build upon the amount of muscle you have.

4:14Sal Di Stefano:I'm glad you said that, Justin, because I want to make it clear that even if you are somebody who needs to lose 30, 50, 100 pounds, and you're getting started on your fitness journey, this is the process at which I would start you yeah i still would process start you in this quote-unquote bulk and a lot and what i'd probably say is reverse diet so i don't scare you away because somebody who goes i need to lose 100 pounds as a trainer when you look back at them and go like all right we're gonna start bulking you it doesn't have to be super aggressive right freaks them out uh and so we would say hey we're reverse diet but the steps are the same right the same concept and uh it's such a good strategy when you when you first get started because most people that even people that are trying to lose a bunch weight are coming from a place of probably somewhat sedentary, not eating the best diet, probably highly processed, more than likely like most people missing their protein targets and goals.

5:07Sal Di Stefano:And so structuring them in a way where we feed the body what it needs and add some good calories while also lifting weights sets them up to build muscle and sets up the weight loss journey for success.

5:22Adam Schafer:Yeah. So trying to build muscle without going on a quote unquote bulk will result in very little to no muscle. So this, what we're talking about here is pretty much necessary towards building muscle, speeding up the metabolism to set you up for better fat loss, or if you want to get bigger and stronger, obviously you got to move in this direction. So we're going to start out with figuring out your maintenance. Okay. In other words, you need to figure out how many calories your body's probably burning on a daily basis. Now, why is this so important? Because I don't know where to go if I don't know where you're at.

5:58Adam Schafer:Okay. If you don't know where you're at, then bulking tends to look like this. For the person who's afraid, who's so afraid of eating more calories, they don't go in a bulk. They eat a little bit more, but then they cut back on other days and it ends up resulting in nothing. For the person who's just so eager and excited, this was me as a kid, like I just want to get as big as, and build as much muscle as possible, as fast as possible. A bulk turns into an excessive bulk. Yeah. Into a dirty bulk. Yeah. Where I'm gaining lots of body fat. I remember the first time this really hit for me, I was in my twenties.

6:34Adam Schafer:I was managing a gym in South San Jose. We had actually grand opened it And I had a fitness manager and an assistant manager that worked for me. And all of us were super into lifting weights. We're super into strength training. And so we had a contest and we said, let's see who can gain the most weight. We should have said muscle, but we said the most weight in 60 days. I think it was 60 or 90 days. And so me being competitive, me also not fully understanding what we're going to talk about here. And also coming from an insecure background of feeling like I was too skinny, I went crazy. And when I say I went crazy, I mean it.

7:11Adam Schafer:Like I ate a bucket of chicken from KFC, all you can eat pizza, hamburgers, cheeseburgers,

7:17Justin Andrews:the highest amount of calories you could.

7:19Adam Schafer:Anything that was calories, I went after it. And I got my body weight up to 240 pounds, which for me is incredibly heavy. That's like a really heavy body weight. Just for people, for reference, right now I weigh about 220 pounds. So I got up to 240 pounds and I was definitely bigger for sure. And then I remember we did a body fat test. This wasn't a part of the bet, but everybody was like, let's just go see what's going on. My body fat percentage had gone up so much that of the weight that I gained, and I believe I gained close to 20 something pounds. So I put on quite a bit of weight in a very short period of time.

7:55Adam Schafer:The vast majority of it was body fat. It was like I gained four pounds of muscle, and it was like 18 pounds or something like that of body fat. And I remember feeling so deflated. It kind of defeats the purpose. Yeah, and I was like, what did I do wrong? And what I did wrong is I didn't know what my maintenance was. I didn't know how much to go up, and I made a lot of mistakes with my diet. And there's definitely people listening who've experienced it. So number one, figure out your maintenance. There's a couple ways to do this. We could do this the super accurate, more difficult way, or we could do it with an estimate, which is super fast and easy.

8:25Adam Schafer:It will take you five minutes. so the more difficult but more accurate way is to track everything you eat for the next two weeks so for the next two weeks you're not trying to bulk you're not trying to cut get a mat some kind of a food tracking app uh and everything you eat every single thing you eat enter it in uh weigh your food and enter it weigh your food and enter it and over two weeks you should have a general idea of what you're eating every single day and then we'll call that your maintenance so that's the very accurate, but time consuming and difficult way to do it. And unfortunately, although I love when my clients would do this, it's difficult to get people to do this over a couple of weeks without trying to hit a goal.

9:05Adam Schafer:So if you're just tracking and doing nothing, it's very difficult to do, but that's the best way to do it. Second way to do this is to get a macro calculator. We have one, we have a pretty good one that'll give you an estimate of your maintenance. So what you do is you go to maps, macro.com maps, macros.com. So M a P S M a C R O S.com. You go there, uh, and you enter in some data. So it's going to ask you things like your height, your weight, uh, your activity level, stuff like that. And then it's going to give you a number, uh, of what you should be eating. So you can enter in there if you want to gain weight or lose weight or whatever.

9:41Adam Schafer:And that'll give you a nice general estimate, uh, to play with. Uh, so you know where you're at. The next thing you do is you want to go above your maintenance for an effective bulk. Now this is reverse dieting. Sometimes we do less, even though it's still a bulk. The reason why we do less than what I'm about to say is because people who are really afraid of gaining weight, we do this even slower than we need to. But honestly, if you want to go above maintenance to see muscle, it's going to be about 300 to 600 calories above what you're eating.

10:10Sal Di Stefano:And the way I decide that is, you know, my female clients, I'd say 300, my male clients, 600. It's a good place to start.

10:16Adam Schafer:The bigger you are, the more you're - Yeah.

10:19Sal Di Stefano:And obviously, that's a generic number. It's not precise. But for most people, it'll fall right around there. It will. I'd say most female clients, I started around a 200 to 300 calorie bulk. Most of my men, I'd start somewhere between 600 to 700 calories. That's normally a good place to start most people, especially if you have a pretty good idea where your maintenance is. And if so, if you use like the gold calculator, the macro calculator, or even better, if you track it for a couple of weeks and get an idea where that's at, this will give you a good place to start.

10:49Adam Schafer:Now, you may read some articles or hear people talking about how little extra calories it takes to actually build a pound of muscle. That math doesn't work in real life. So if you actually look at the, you know, how much, how many grams of protein, how many calories are in a muscle, how much in a pound, how much does it take to actually build it? You'll come back with a really small number. It's like, oh, you only need an extra 50 calories or 20 calories a day. It doesn't work in real life because although not all these calories or few of these calories actually go to the building of muscle, the extra calories go to the energy required to lift and train and push to build the muscle.

11:28Adam Schafer:And again, there's mysterious things that happen to metabolism. I've never seen anybody build good amounts of muscle eating 50 or 70 calories above maintenance.

11:37Justin Andrews:uh it's always had to be body uses it for all kinds of uh different reasons that's right i think

11:43Sal Di Stefano:this is a perfect time for us to talk about like because i think the next question that someone has when when i give this advice is uh where should the calories come from yes so uh and we'll just assume that you're in a healthy place on uh your fats because i think that's the only time that

11:59Adam Schafer:this i guess would be changed for me a little bit so women should be like 65 maybe 70 grams

12:04Sal Di Stefano:minimum guys more like 80 yes so so long as that is good then um we and then also making sure that we hit protein uh then it can come from carbs it come from protein it could come from fat so it's like first make sure you hit your minimum amount of protein so whatever your goal weight is it's grams so if you want to be 150 pounds 150 grams of protein male or female like you said grams of fat need to be there once you have those kind of minimums taken care of then you can disperse the calories however you want and what i've found works for clients is without radically changing everything it's like if you like boosting carbs then we add you know a half a cup of carbs whatever your serving size that you do you boost a couple ounces of whatever that carbohydrate is if it's the protein you add two ounces to your meats that you were eating real simple instead of having to add another meal or change something radically uh you can do that or other people you easy is adding a shake at the end of the day so this is an example of where yeah i i will advise using a shake as it just keeps the bulk easy don't change anything you're already hitting good amount of macros we're good we know your maintenance at just add this shake on to your your night every

13:16Adam Schafer:single night that's also yes now we'll get to protein because there's some some great tips on protein uh a little bit later uh in this episode so some cool stuff on that but next the workout should be focused on getting stronger. One of the best correlates for building muscle is strength. Okay. So when you look at the data, they'll say it's progressive overload, which is a bit confusing for a lot of people. For something you can measure that's pretty black and white, it's strength. So throughout this period of time, if you're in a surplus and you're working out and your weight's going up, but you're not getting stronger, that's usually not a good sign.

13:54Adam Schafer:Okay. That's not necessarily a hundred percent. You're not building muscle, but many times it means we're not necessarily building muscle. So you want to train to get stronger and the lifts you want to get stronger on the ones that matter the most are the compound lifts. Okay. So it's cool to add weight to your leg extension. It's fun to be able to leg curl more weight. It's great to be able to, you know, curl more weight. Um, that's great. But if you add weight to your squat, But if you add weight to your overhead press or a barbell row or a deadlift or a bench press, the weight you add to those lifts has much more far-reaching effects when it comes to muscle.

14:35Adam Schafer:I could add 70 pounds to my leg extension. I'm not going to see major gains in my quads. I add 70 pounds to my squat. My legs are definitely -

14:43Justin Andrews:It's going to translate to pretty much every other lift. I'm going to see my legs get a lot bigger.

14:46Adam Schafer:Okay. Next up, you want to get really good sleep consistently. consistently what's interesting about some people tend to skip over this one but what's interesting when you look at the data on sleep this is true for both uh being in a deficit or a surplus poor sleep skews everything towards fat gain and it skews things away from muscle gain so in in studies on calorie deficits uh you'll see people lose a similar amount of weight people who don't sleep well versus people who sleep well but the people who don't sleep well will lose twice as much muscle, half as much body fat. When you see people who gain weight through a dedicated and structured bulk with strength training, when they gain weight, more of his muscle, less of it is body fat if they sleep well.

15:29Adam Schafer:Sleep really does move the needle on what kind of weight you gain on the scale. So get good sleep and you got to do it consistently. I say consistently because we tend to try to sleep well Monday through Thursday, Friday night, Saturday night. We all like to stay up late, try to sleep in the next day. We end up getting jet lagged every Monday. And that switching of the circadian rhythm, even if it's just a couple hours, actually translates into not great sleep. So it's got to be consistent. Seven days a week, same bedtime, same wake time. This makes a huge difference.