Bulking is a bodybuilding term that basically means ‘eating in a caloric surplus to build muscle’. However, there are two main types of bulking, lean bulking and dirty bulking. Lean bulking involves eating in a slight caloric surplus of 100-500 calories. As the objective is to build muscle and strength without gaining fat. Dirty bulking involves eating whatever you want regardless of calorie content, which sounds great but is actually a terrible idea. In this article, you’ll learn how to lean bulk, the benefits of it, and who it’s suitable for.
How do you eat to build muscle?
First, you first need to have a basic understanding of how eating to build muscle works. Your maintenance calories is the number of calories that you need to eat to maintain your current weight. If you want to gain a significant amount of weight and (or) build muscle, you have to eat above your maintenance calories. This is called eating in a caloric surplus. This is because the extra calories gives your body the energy to stimulate muscle growth. While it is possible to gain muscle in a slight caloric deficit, the progress you make will be much slower. This, coupled with lifting weights with sufficient intensity, eating enough protein, and 7-9 hours of sleep, is the perfect recipe for muscle growth.
Finding Your Maintenance Calories
‘That’s all well and good, but how do I find out my maintenance calories? And how do I know how many calories I’m eating in the first place?’ Fear not. You can find out your maintenance calories by using a BMR (short for basal metabolic rate) calculator. All you have to do is input your height, weight, age, and sex. And the calculator will give you a rough estimate of your maintenance calories. It’s important to remember that it really is just an estimate and not gospel.
If you want an accurate idea of your maintenance level, eat the amount of calories that you receive from the BMR calculator. Do this for a few weeks and track your weight. If your weight doesn’t change then you know your maintenance level of calories is accurate. But, if your weight increases then decrease your calorie intake by 100. And if your weight decreases, then increase your calorie intake by 100. continue this process until you have a weeks period of little to no weight change. So you can be sure of your true level of maintenance calories. That way, you know the baseline at which you need to be eating to achieve a caloric surplus.
How to Track Calories
To know how many calories you’re eating, you need to use a calorie tracking app. These are readily available and the most popular one is myfitnesspal. However, I personally use Lifesum and there are others available. These involve scanning the barcode of what you’re eating and the app will tell you how many calories it has.
It is important to note that you will need a scale to weigh your food. Since guessing how many calories you’re eating just won’t work. People often hit plateaus, because they they’re not closely tracking their food intake. If you’re just eating a protein bar it’s not a problem because it’s only one serving. But if you have a 1kg bag of rice, then the bag contains more than one serving. So you need to be able to weigh it each time you eat, in order to get an accurate reflection of your calorie intake.
How many calories Should You Eat Lean to Lean Bulk?
To conduct a lean bulk, you need to eat in a slight caloric surplus of 100-500 calories. And you should aim for a weight gain of between 0.5-1lbs or 0.2-0.4kg each week. Weigh yourself each day and draw an average every 7 days to account for daily fluctuations in weight. By doing this, you can determine whether what you’re doing is working or not, and adjust accordingly.
What types of foods should you eat to lean bulk?
Because you’re trying to minimise the surplus that you’re in and gain as little fat as possible, you need to make your calories count. This means that you need to be eating high protein and carbohydrate foods with low calories. As well as healthy fat sources and of course, the obligatory vegetables. Think of it as eating foods with low risk and high reward. For your sources of protein, lean meat is going to be your best bet such as:
- Chicken
- Turkey
- Lean beef
These are my personal go to’s for high protein foods on a lean bulk. It’s generally accepted that you should try to eat around 1g of protein per pound of body weight. So if you’re 150 lbs, you should try to eat 150 grams of protein. And just because you’re limited for calories, doesn’t mean you should be neglecting carbs either. Roughly 50% of your diet should come from carbohydrates because they help to give you the energy to train. Some healthy carb sources include:
- Oats
- Rice
- Bananas
When you’re tracking your macronutrients, keeping an eye on your fat intake isn’t too necessary as long. As you’re eating healthy protein and carbs, it’ll take care of itself. However, if you’re looking for some healthy fat sources, you could eat:
- Nuts
- Eggs
- Fish
And of course, don’t forget your fruit and veg. You need to get your micronutrient intake in to optimise your body’s performance. So try to eat a portion of various fruits and veg with each meal, to get the vitamins and minerals needed to perform optimally in the gym.
Why Should You Lean Bulk?
You can gain muscle for longer
You can cut down at any time. If you’re lean bulking, and gaining weight at a rate of 0.5 lbs a week, then after a 9 month bulking period it’ll take half that time to lose all the fat that you gained, assuming that you’re in a moderate calorie deficit and losing 1lbs a week. It should only take a few months to get down to a lean level of body fat. However, a few months of gaining muscle just wouldn’t cut it for a substantial level of muscle gain. So you need to spend a long time eating in a caloric surplus.
If you were to do this by dirty bulking however, you would gain a large amount of fat which would not only have negative psychological effects, but would prolong your cutting phase and make the whole process of ‘looking good’ much longer. With a lean bulk however, you can spend the majority of your time building muscle and getting stronger, while maintaining a fairly lean physique year-round. So its a win-win.
Your joints will be healthier
when you’re carrying around a large amount of body mass, your joints have to cope with the load. According to Harvard medical school, ‘When you walk across level ground, the force on your knees is the equivalent of 1½ times your body weight’. And the level of force that your knees are subjected to increases when you add in extra factors such as walking up inclines or bending over.
Your joints can adapt over time, but there is a threshold as to what they can handle for an extended period before they sustain damage. So by mitigating the amount of weight that you’re gaining on your bulk, you can keep your joints nice and healthy. Besides, you need them to lift weights so why would you want to impede your ability to do what you enjoy?
Your diet will be healthier
Due to the limited number of calories that you can eat on a lean bulk, your food intake will come from whole foods, which are obviously much better for you than processed alternatives due to a number of reasons.
An example of this is that whole foods are packed with fibre in comparison with processed foods, which are completely void of fibre. From a bodybuilding perspective, this means that you’re going to be full after you eat. Which prevents you from overeating and going over your daily caloric limit. But fibre also has a number of other benefits for your general health, including regulating cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Some examples of foods that are high in fibre are:
- Chia seeds
- Oats
- Almonds
Whole foods are also important for the various minerals that are needed for your body to function. But since we are viewing this through the lens of building muscle, calcium, potassium, and magnesium are a few examples of minerals that are related to sport performance, as they all support muscle function. Whole foods contain more Vitamins too, which also have muscle building benefits outside of just maintaining your body. Vitamin A for example, plays a role in muscle protein synthesis and testosterone levels. Two very important things for someone looking to build muscle.
Is lean bulking suitable for hardgainers?
In the world of bodybuilding, a hardgainer is someone who struggles to gain weight. While the target audience for lean bulking is people who gain weight easily, as these are the individuals that will be worried about gaining too much fat, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for lean bulking in a hardgainers diet. Just because you struggle to gain weight, this does not mean that you get a free pass to stuff your face with junk food.
This is because, a diet full of high calorie processed foods will be empty of the vitamins, minerals and fibre that your body needs to operate. Not only in day to day life, but also in the gym. And just because you’re lean bulking, that doesn’t mean you can only eat low calorie foods. There are plenty of high calorie ‘clean’ foods. Raw cashew nuts are something I use in my own diet when I need to get some calories in with a small snack. They’re a good source of protein, a healthy source of fat, and a 100g serving is equivalent to 614 calories. That’s not a big portion either. Some other healthy, high calorie foods include:
- Oats
- Bananas
- granola
- Whole Milk
Conclusion
the result of lean bulking is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s clear that lean bulking is a much healthier and more efficient way of building muscle than just stuffing your face with junk food and hoping for the best. its suitable for all lifters, and it improves the quality of your training and recovery, whilst getting you the results that you’re looking for. In my opinion, lean bulking is a no-brainer.
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