2907: How to Clean Bulk Without Getting Fat (The Exact Formula)

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0:29Sal Di Stefano:The fit is clean, tailored, and super polished, and they come in a huge range of colors. In other words, they feel great throughout a 12-hour shift, and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram. If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out Figs and get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. Hey, Chicagoland. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is coming to the Wayfair store. From July 23rd through 27th, you can score up to 80 % off everything home in person. Like up to 80 % off area rugs, up to 60 % off outdoor furniture, and up to 60 % off mattresses.

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1:23Sal Di Stefano: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 DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

1:37Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history, approaching half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is on clean bulking. What is it and how to do it properly? By the way, we have trainers and coaches here at Mind Pump that can help you with your diet and your nutrition. They'll coach you through it. And these are Mind Pump coaches, so they're good. And we have a code for 50 % off. Go to mindpumpnutrition.com. Use the code MP50 for the half off. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Crisp Power. Look, if you're looking for a snack that actually fits your macros without sacrificing taste or crunch, you need to try Crisp Power Protein Pretzels.

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2:59Adam Schafer:Back to the show.

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3:15Adam Schafer:The topic for today's episode, clean bulking. What is it and how can you do it? Let's get to it.

3:22Sal Di Stefano:Justin's a big dirty bulker.

3:23Adam Schafer:I love bulking, you guys.

3:25Sal Di Stefano:He's a big dirty bulker.

3:26Adam Schafer:Let's break it down first for people who aren't familiar. So bulking is a term that relates to trying to gain size or muscle, right? Strength usually accompanies this. Now, we've changed the term to mean other things, or should I say we've used different terminology that's also describing clean bulking in a way to make it more appealing to certain people. For example, a reverse diet. A reverse diet is actually a clean bulk. And the reason why we call it a reverse diet is because when you tell, in particular, women, we're going to bulk you, even though you're trying to lose body fat, they will run in the opposite direction.

4:05Sal Di Stefano:Well, I think another thing that it implies is that it's controlled, right? because it's a diet, reverse diet. You're still following a plan where bulk doesn't necessarily signal. It sounds like there's no plan. Yeah, it doesn't signal plan really.

4:20Adam Schafer:Yeah, bulk sounds like you're off your diet. Yeah, you're trying to get big. Yeah, but this has been around for a long time. Strength athletes, athletes and general fighters have done this for a long time. Really, it's the attempt at trying to build strength and muscle. And what comes along with that is like a faster metabolism. This is why bulking or reverse dieting is attractive to people who want to lose weight because through this process, you speed up your metabolism. Through this process, in many cases, especially if you're somebody that chronically diets or has always tried to get leaner and you've never tried to do something like this, this can be very healthy.

4:55Adam Schafer:It can balance out hormones. It can make you feel a lot better. It can get rid of pain. I've had many clients who were so afraid of gaining weight. They always ate in this really controlled way. And then we put them in a clean bulk strategy and they feel so good. They have tons of energy, tons of strength, the result of which being more muscle and eventually later on less body fat. So a clean bulk is trying to build muscle with minimal fat gain, okay? Dirty bulk is no strategy. Dirty bulk is I'm just gonna eat a bunch of food. Just a lot of calories all at once. Yeah, I'm just gonna eat a ton of food and just trying to gain weight on the scale.

5:33Adam Schafer:Let's be honest.

5:34Sal Di Stefano:It's what it looked like for most of us.

5:35Adam Schafer:This is how I bulked as a kid. I thought that's how you had to do it, to be honest. Well, I think if I had done it, I'll be honest. That's a good question, Justin, or good statement. Because had I tracked and done things properly, a quote-unquote clean bulk would have resulted in more muscle mass for me as a kid. Oh, yeah. I just knew I needed to eat more. And so what I did as a kid, and I was a skinny kid. Uh, so what I did is just ate as much as possible and ate as much garbage as possible because I could eat more of it. Um, but had I done this the right way, I would have ended up with more lean body mass.

6:10Adam Schafer:I'll never forget that this, this, the first time this really, really hit me was I was, uh, I want to say 21. So I was still young and I knew better at this time, but still I was kind of stuck in that trap of just trying to get big. And I had a competition or I entered into a competition with my fitness manager and my assistant manager. And so the three of us said, let's see who can gain the most like muscle and strength, uh, over 60 days. I think it was. And I went hard. I didn't want to lose. I went hard. I ate as much as I could. It was a lot of garbage. And I don't remember how much weight I gained, but I got pretty heavy.

6:45Adam Schafer:I almost got to 240 pounds, tested my body fat, uh, which I had tested before I started the bulk. And the vast majority of the weight that I gained was body fat. And when I went on the cut, I went back to where I was before. So a good, clean bulk builds lean body mass that you can hold on to later when you want to cut. A good, clean bulk looks like you're building muscle, not just gaining a bunch of sloppy weight.

7:11Sal Di Stefano:I think this is actually really common, even in the competitive world. I saw a lot of this. And I had similar experiences as you did. In fact, I still remember when this was very vivid because I had a competition with my buddy, my buddy Mark.

7:26Adam Schafer:Oh, he won on a bulk with you?

7:28Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, we both went on a bulk together. And I'm the trainer of the two of us, so I had a lot of confidence going in that I was going to whoop him at this, right? Like I should be better at this than he is. And I just went so aggressive with eating a dirty bulk that when we actually got on and we did a dunk tank before and after, and so we had a controlled thing to test it, And I had put on a good amount of weight. I'd put on 25, 30 pounds. So I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to smoke him. And he didn't put on. I think he only put on like 10 or 15 pounds. He ended up winning because he gained more lean body mass.

8:04Sal Di Stefano:I put on more body fat. Wow. And so I did put on muscle. But as much muscle I put on, I put just as much body fat on. That was my first experience. I'm in my probably mid-20s when I experienced that. Fast forward into my 30s when I got into competing. uh i saw this i got to hang out with a lot of other uh uh amateur and pro bodybuilders and you know we all there's a lot of us that worked out at the same facility and we are you know talking about we ate at the same places and dieted and talked about all that was you know you're talking about everything right and you know i'd watch some of these guys in the off season just put on 40 50 pounds you know and just whatever you know burgers fries milkshakes whatever like just to put mass on and then they would cut and get shredded for a show and i'd watch this happen kind of and show to show and again we're all showing up to the same events and i'm their physiques look the same you know or it's arguably sometimes not as good and it's like man you're putting all this work in and and but what was happening was they're they were basically you know putting on 30 to 50 pounds half of it being muscle half of it being fat then when they shred all the way back down they would lose it all they would lose they would lose a bunch of they lose a bunch of fat but they also lose a ton of muscle because they would also extreme cut too so they go from one extreme the other stream so they go from extreme bulk eating to what we talk about what not to do on the show all the time which is just cut calories like crazy increase cardio every day and so you know the same rate that they were losing fat they were losing muscle and so they end up where they started going into the off season it's like man if you would have just like kind of maintained it would have been far easier on your body to do that i think that's an extreme example but this is what i think happens to a lot of people well it's funny too because like i i went through that whole process of just like adding whatever calories i could and uh drinking whatever shakes i thought you know would be able to uh you know get get all those calories in before my workouts and what i found was like there's a tolerance there's there's a point where like i I have insane gastric distress.

10:16Sal Di Stefano:I'm like running to the bathroom. It's like there was like a sweet spot where it's like I could actually hold the food for the whole day, but it was like it was volatile. And like going back in hindsight, if I just kept that at a certain amount consistently and then obviously with like better food choices. It would have been awesome. Dude, I would have gained so much more muscle and like had so much more progress.

10:36Adam Schafer:I was like constantly fighting and battling this distress. Yeah, so let's talk about how much body fat you would gain in a clean bulk. So it depends on how lean you are. So if you're really lean, like if you're a guy and you're 9 % body fat and you go in a clean bulk, you should gain some body fat. Okay? Because walking around at 9 % for most men is a little too lean to walk around. And you're not going to build much muscle at 9 % body fat. But if you're a guy and you're walking around at 15 % body fat, you can gain muscle and maintain 15 % body fat. Oh, totally. So what I mean by that is this.

11:14Adam Schafer:As your body weight goes up, you are gaining some body fat. But as your lean body mass goes up, it also outpaces the fat that you gain. Yep. Because remember, 15 % of your body weight, that's a higher number as your weight goes up. So you can still gain body fat with the muscle because the muscle is outpacing it. body fat percentage stays the same. If you're a woman and you're listening, you're like, Ooh, I got a, you know, I need to go in a bulk. I'm always in a deficit and you're walking around in the teens with body fat, but you're going to have to gain some body fat. Okay. But if you're walking around the low twenties, you could totally go in a clean bulk, get your metabolism to boost and your body fat percentage, not budge that much at all.

11:54Adam Schafer:So just wanted to be clear with that. Cause there are cases where people do need to gain body fat if they want to build muscle. But if you're listening and you're at a kind of athletic body fat percentage anyway, for guys, mid-teens, for women, low 20s. You could totally do this the right way and not gain any body fat.

12:10Sal Di Stefano:Just to use the female example, since you went that way too, this is what happened with Corinne and I. Her body obviously needed to get higher body fat percentage before it was going to respond and build muscle. We're doing all the right things. We're adding calories and seeing strength gains happen. But then when we did the body fat test, according to the test, we hadn't put on that much muscle. But it was also she's coming out of a 17 % to 18 % body fat. She needed to gain body fat. Yeah. So her body needed to gain body fat before it's going to respond and build muscle. And so to your point, if you're really lean, male or female, many times you do have to get a little bit of body fat before the body really starts to pack the muscle on.

12:52Sal Di Stefano:But if you're already kind of in a healthy place body fat range, so mid-teens for men, uh low 20s for women then you can kind of maintain it while you clean bulk and that's to me where where i where i got in in competing i never let myself teeter too much higher than about the 11 12 range and that would be like a big bulk for me was allowing the body to go back up to about 11 12 and then come back down and what was nice about that when it when it's time to switch to the other direction and lean out, you're never that far off from this direct or this cut or this look or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve versus what I think the traditional way was before we talked about reverse.

13:36Sal Di Stefano:Just gain as much weight as you can. Just gain as much weight, put on as much muscle, then you'll worry about it later and cut body fat. And what ends up happening is you just keep gaining and losing the same fat and muscle through that process and never really build or keep any of that. That's right.

13:51Adam Schafer:So the first thing that's important to consider here is you obviously got to lift weights, right? So if you bump your calories, and we'll get there, we'll get to the food part. But if you just eat more and you're not lifting weights, you're just going to gain body fat. Your body doesn't build muscle unless it thinks it needs to. So I know this goes without saying, but you need to lift weights. And you need to lift weights properly. So there's this interesting mentality around bulking and cutting that is, especially with cutting, that is opposite of what actually works in the real world. So here's what, this is what I think a lot of people believe.

14:25Adam Schafer:When they cut their calories, they think they need to dramatically work out more. I'm trying to lose weight, so I need to work out way more. Opposite. And when they bulk, they're like, well, I need to work out less because I'm trying to build. The truth is the time to increase the volume of your training, the time to add more sets and stuff like that within reason is when you're in a bulk. This is when your body will adapt better to higher levels of stress because you have more nutrients in your body. So when you're in a bulk, if you're ever going to add exercises or add sets, again, within a reason, because you get overtrained in a bulk.

14:59Adam Schafer:There's a saying that says you never overtrain, you just under eat. That's not true. But there's some truth to it, but it's not entirely true. So when you're in the bulk, this is when you can increase the volume. This is when you can train a little harder. Why? Because you have extra calories that help with the recovery and that. I mean, this is, in my opinion,

15:17Sal Di Stefano:this is the only time it makes sense. That's right. And this is the mistake I think so many people make is they, and because we know, we don't, not everybody, it's the overgeneralization, but a lot of people are familiar now with progressive overload. I think that wasn't a term that we used as frequently in the 20 years ago, but I think more and more people understand progressive overload, which would be increasing volume over time. And this is what makes the body change. This is what builds muscle. And so people grasp that, especially if you listen to a podcast like this. Most people understand progressive overload is important to building muscle.

15:51Sal Di Stefano:But so many people understand that, but then they do that while in a deficit because they don't want to, you know, oh, I'm trying to lean out. So they're progressively overloading in their workout, but they're reducing caloric intake. It's like counterproductive. So, you know, in those times when you're progressive overloading, you need to be in a calorie surplus. us. You're overloading the body more than what it's used to handling. So you're sending a signal to the body say, we need more muscle. He's increasing volume. He's increasing intensity, or he's increasing sets, however you want to say it.