November 22, 2020
1427: Don’t Make These 6 Bulking Mistakes | Mind Pump
Key Takeaways
- Bulking doesn’t just mean eating anything and everything you want
- It’s easy to ignore overall health when bulking: if you are bloated and having digestive issues, you won’t perform well
- if you don’t train properly, you’ll just pack on fat without gaining strength
- Meal prepping and eating whole foods are just as important in bulking as they are in losing weight
- Bulking goal: gain lean body mass, minimize fat, and gaining strength – you want to be stronger at the end of a bulk session than when you started
- The scale doesn’t tell you everything you need to know – it’s important to measure lean muscle gain
Introduction
The Mind Pump hosts are Sal Di Stefano (IG: @mindpumpsal), Adam Schafer (IG: @mindpumpadam) and Justin Andrews (IG: @mindpumpjustin).
In this episode, hosts Sal, Adam & Justin detail the six most common mistakes people make while trying to bulk and how to gain muscle without the fat.
Bulking Myths
- People think bulking means you can eat as much food as you want and quality doesn’t matter
- Most people think bulking is easy because you are trying to gain weight versus lean out
- Bulking is more complex than just eating more calories
- It’s easy to ignore overall health when bulking: if you are bloated and having digestive issues, you won’t perform well
- In the search for calories, people often eat too many grams of carbohydrates and not enough protein
- Consuming too many calories of saturated fats and processed foods will probably make you will lethargic and cause digestive problems
- Just because weight is going up on the scale, doesn’t mean bulk is successful
- Bodyweight fluctuates regularly because of water retention, sodium, etc. – don’t be a slave to the scale and assume you lost/gained muscle
- Overapplying intensity without good programming
Bulking Tips
- This is a great time to switch to bulk while you’re probably consuming more calories anyways
- Gaining muscle is a slow process, gaining fat is easy
- You can gain lean body mass from whole foods even if you don’t have the calories
- 80% of the time you should be consuming whole, natural foods; the other 20% can be less healthy
- Alternative strategy: if you can use whole foods to hit your protein goal early in the day, supplement with less healthy foods to reach your calorie goal
- The goal should be to consume whole foods, even protein shakes should be an emergency food
- Hack: start your day with high protein to front-load the day – eat extra eggs, use leftover protein from the previous dinner in an omelet
- After 3-4 weeks of bulking, take a few days and stay at a slight deficit
- Hydrostatic weight is the most accurate way to track muscle gain
- Next most accurate, tape measure waist (for men) and hips (for women)
- Shoot for 1LB of body fat for every 2LB of muscle
- Make meal prep easy: Ground beef, chicken thighs, rice
The 6 Bulking Mistakes
- Mistake 1: Consuming too much junk food to hit calories but ignoring whole foods
- Mistake 2: Not tracking and hitting protein
- Mistake 3: If you stay in surplus too long (e.g, 3-5 months) your body will adapt to high calories and you will gain fat and look “skinny fat”
- Mistake 4: Being married to the scale
- Mistake 5: Not meal prepping
- Mistake 6: Don’t just train hard, train properly – strength should be increasing
