Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1335: How to Clean Bulk

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the proper way to clean bulk to speed up the metabolism and build muscle. Bulking needs a rebranding for women. (3:11) The value of building a faster metab...olism. (9:12) It’s bulking season! (13:02) What is the goal of bulking? (15:14) Mind Pump Realizations: Personal tales, the importance of the strength to weight ratio & MORE. (16:13) Muscle gain is NOT a fast process. (24:42) How to add calories the RIGHT way. (27:27) Sending the effective muscle building signals to your body. (32:26) The myth of eliminating cardio. (34:52) Treat your sleep like you treat your workouts. (41:29) When does the bulk stop? (48:55) Avoid heavily processed foods. (52:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Promo code “STRONG50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** How To Properly Clean-Bulk – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1027: 3 Steps To Speed Up Your Metabolism Mind Pump #1072: What You Need To Know About Protein For Muscle Building & Fat Loss MAPS Fitness Products Does Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) Actually Help With Fat Loss? - Mind Pump Blog MAPS Total Daily Energy Expenditure Calculator  When Exercising Less and Eating More Burns More Fat and Builds More Muscle – Mind Pump Blog Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! How To Use Mini Cuts & Mini Bulks To Maximize Gains Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Stan "Rhino" Efferding (@stanefferding)  Instagram

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Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of MIND Pump, the World's Top Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast, we talk about bulking, gaining, getting more muscles, speeding up the metabolism, increasing the way your body looks in terms of its curves and firmness, or just building more mass. But we talk about doing it the right way,
Starting point is 00:00:32 oftentimes when people try to increase their calories and train for weight gain, what they end up with is a lot of body fat and a little bit of muscle. So we go through the process of how to clean bulk. Clean bulk refers to gaining lean body mass and not all the body fat and crap that sometimes can follow with it. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Now Legion makes some of the best performance enhancing supplements you'll find anywhere.
Starting point is 00:01:00 Now the reason why we like working with Legion is their supplements are transparent. So when you look at the bottle of whatever you get, it says it has, it has in there. It's all verified by third party testing. They also show the amounts of each thing so you don't get proprietary blends and a lot of people don't like that because they don't know exactly how much crate team they're getting and their crate team supplement for example. None of Legion's products are flavored with artificial sweeteners. They have one of the most popular pre-workout supplements that are out there. Pre-workout supplements are good to give you that extra stimulant energy, sometimes people need, but this pre-workout called Pulse by Legion also contains beta-align, citralline,
Starting point is 00:01:38 and other components shown to improve performance, especially in advanced lifters. The other favorite supplement we have from there is Recharge, that's their Crateene supplement. If you listen to Mind Pump for more than five episodes, you know how big of fans we are for Crateene from everything, from building muscle, speeding up the metabolism, and just improving overall health. So you can get the Legion Mind Pump discount by going to buy Legion.com. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump at checkout.
Starting point is 00:02:11 Get 20% off. If it's your first time purchasing from them, if you're a returning customer, you get double rewards points. Also, all month long, MAPS Strong is 50% off. Now, MAPS strong is an excellent program for building strength and muscle. It's a strong man inspired resistance training program. Now that means you're gonna be doing a lot
Starting point is 00:02:32 of traditional exercises, but you're also gonna be doing a lot of fun, different movements that you probably haven't done in your routine in a long time or maybe ever. Another thing about MAPS strong, it really does place a special emphasis on the posture or your chain. That means your back, your butt, and your hamstrings. Okay, so if those are areas
Starting point is 00:02:50 you want to focus on and you want to build, MAP strong is a great program. So it's 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsstrong.com that's MAPS-S-T-R-O-N-.com, and then use the code strong50. That's STROMG50, no space for the discount. Let's talk about bulking. The concept of... This is the fun part of trading. The bulk. Actually, before we get into that, can you, or like, it's getting into this,
Starting point is 00:03:20 but I mean, can we say it, call it something else, because I feel like right away it turns off women. It's true. Yeah. Totally true. That means... You need a rebrand. I mean, can we say it, call it something else because I feel like right away it turns off women. It's true. Yeah. Totally true. That means we need a rebrand. I mean, we're saying bulk because that's what it's commonly referred to.
Starting point is 00:03:31 But really, it's a cycle of diet and training that are where the goal, the target is to gain lean body mass. And I think it's a sense. It's called bill. Can we say it's essential? A hundred, this is a hundred percent true. Yes, it is an essential cycle. I think even if your goal is to lose weight and get leaner, the process of, I'm going to be doing quotes, you know, bulking will help with that process. And again, that's a good point you make out of. Really, it's about building. It's about getting into a positive tissue growth phase.
Starting point is 00:04:07 But there's also a lot of other side effects that come along with that. Besides the lean body mass gain, it speeds up your metabolism. It results in a body that burns more calories all the time, both because you now have more lean body mass and more muscle requires more calories to support, but also because the signal of bulking, which we're going to go through how to do this properly, the signal that it sends to the body is to not worry so much about being so efficient with calories. And the reason why I said that is you'll have some people say, oh, the metabolism boosting effects of building muscle are overstated because three pounds of muscle really
Starting point is 00:04:49 only requires x amount of calories to support. It's not that big of a deal. But that doesn't tell the whole picture. Because I would routinely take clients through a proper building process. And they may only gain, like a female client, for example, might only gain two or three pounds of lean body mass But their caloric
Starting point is 00:05:08 Maintenance, in other words, the amount of food that they could eat and not gain any body fat would go up hundreds of calories 500 calories. I've seen people's metabolism go up by 800 calories, small people too. So this is definitely there's definitely some Some some tremendous benefit to this aside from the building lean body mass, which by the way speaking of women and building lean body mass, this is what gives you that sculpted look, gaining two or three pounds of muscle on your body, you're not gonna look bigger,
Starting point is 00:05:38 it's not enough muscle to make you look bigger, but you are gonna look tighter and you're gonna feel. You're defined, more carbs. It's ironic that I know the title, whatever dug into the title, and if he puts bulk in there, it's going to turn off a lot of people that don't think they want to bulk and so think it's not for them. That's why I wanted to address that right out the gates because the truth is, as we go through all these points and talk about this, in my opinion, it's more important for women.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Well, usually because they don't want to do this at all. Right. Right. And it's the grain. And similar to like we talk about, you know, the best thing that you can do is the thing you're not doing when we talk about exercise and program design and because it is novel, I think the same thing is similarly true to nutrition. It's so common that when I would assess a female clients diet that they were under consuming calories and normally for long periods of time, by the time they hired me, they're frustrated.
Starting point is 00:06:38 They've already been doing this for a long time. They've gone up and down or they've plateaued for a long time. And I don't know how many times This has happened to me where I get a client who is you know 30 50 hundred pounds Overweight and when I assess their diet I'm just blown away by how low of calories they eat and it used to be one of the biggest challenges for me as a coach It took me years to get over this hurdle. Oh, I thought people were lying for years. Right.
Starting point is 00:07:08 I went through that, and that's why it took so many years. The first half or the first few years or whatever, it was, I thought people were lying. And then once I realized, oh, wow, this, this is, they're not lying, that they actually have slowed their metabolism down over years of diet, yo, yo, dieting and eating excessively low calories. And now what I know I need to do is going to be really the other half was, okay, now I got to convince this lady who's sitting in front of me who, you know, is, you know, really down on herself because she's up 30 or 40 pounds.
Starting point is 00:07:41 I need to convince her. She needs to eat more calories. Yeah. That's not an easy conversation. Oh, it's a real difficult one. 30 or 40 pounds, I need to convince her she needs to eat more calories. That's not an easy conversation. Oh, it's a, it's a real difficult one. And to your point, like I, I just remember the mentality of, you know, some of my female clients that I've had forever, where if they go, if they exceed their calories at all above their maintenance, it was like, they failed. And that's just been something that they've kept in mind
Starting point is 00:08:06 for years. It's not just like something that's like, every now and then, they allow themselves to splurge a little bit. It's the sense that if they're exceeding their maintenance calories and they're not in a deficit, then they're doing something wrong. And so you think about that over,
Starting point is 00:08:25 you know, a long time period of constantly trying to reduce calories, reduce calories, and like how easy that is to see how their metabolism slows down. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with reducing calories to burn body fat, but when that's all you do, and it's combined with other signals that tell the body to become efficient with calories, typically what happens, people cut their calories,
Starting point is 00:08:44 cut their calories, and it does work at first. And then they add cardio, and it does work at first until the body starts to adapt to that new, because here's the thing, your body gets good at whatever you do a lot of. And if you're eating a low calories and doing lots of cardio, your body gets really good at having endurance and burning few calories. It's just what happens over a long period of time. And so it's important to try to reverse that through a proper building phase.
Starting point is 00:09:11 I used to have female trainers that work for me. I used to love using them to demonstrate to potential clients the benefit of doing this because whenever I used to manage gyms, a lot of what I did was talking to new members or potential new members about proper exercise, proper resistance training, why they should probably work with a trainer
Starting point is 00:09:33 or how being a member of the gym, if they do it properly, is gonna really benefit them. And I would often talk about this, what we're talking about right now, how you speed up the metabolism, because having a faster metabolism today is a huge advantage, mainly because there's a lot of food around us and we're busy, but we don't move a lot. We're just not burning a lot of calories and there's a lot of food.
Starting point is 00:09:55 It's everywhere. We're going to eat it. It's enjoyable. So you want to put yourself in a position to be able to mitigate all that or at least live in this modern world with some advantages. So I talk about this, and oftentimes I'd hear the women say something like, well, I think I have a lot of muscle already, I don't wanna gain any weight, I need to lose weight.
Starting point is 00:10:15 Let me just focus on losing weight. Once I lose a lot of weight, then I'll worry about building. Now what I would do is I'd say, give me a second. I'm gonna have someone come in here, I wanna show you something. I would page one of my, give me a second. I'm gonna have someone come in here, I wanna show you something. I would page one of my trainers, my female trainers to my office. There was one in particular. She was five foot one, and lean.
Starting point is 00:10:33 I think her body fat was probably 16 or 17% all the time, which is visible definition. It's not so lean that she, you know, she was too lean, but she was, if you saw her, you'd think to yourself, oh, that's a fit, athlete. And she'd walk in, you know, all five foot one of her. And I would tell the person to guess their trainer's body weight. I'd say, don't, you know, they of course feel embarrassed. And I'd say, you know, my trainer would say, no, no, don't worry, you can guess my weight. And it's okay. How much do you think she weighs, be totally,
Starting point is 00:11:00 totally honest. And sometimes I would even spruce it up a little bit. And I'd say, if you're right, if you get within five pounds, I'll give you some free personal training sessions. And that would motivate in the be honest. And they'd say, no, they're going to fail. Yeah. Never. They would never guess right. And they would look at her and they'd say, oh, she's, I don't know, 110, you know, 105 110. It's okay. That's a pretty good guess. Let's go walk over to the scale. We'd walk to the scale. We'd weigh my female trainer who would weigh good 20 pounds heavier than what they thought. So I was able to illustrate that the muscle is,
Starting point is 00:11:32 that muscle is very dense. She looks like she weighs 110. She actually weighs 130 or 125 or 130. Then I do this follow up question. I'd say, can you please be honest and tell this person, how much you eat every single day? And she, oh, I eat like, I don't know, 2700 calories, 2800 calories.
Starting point is 00:11:49 And I'd show them in food with that means, and they'd be blown away. And I'd say, wouldn't you like to be in a position where you can eat maybe as much food as you're eating now in terms of calories, which still have to be healthy, but you're eating it, many calories you are now, but you're losing weight? Wasn't that a better situation to be in
Starting point is 00:12:06 than reducing your food intake? And losing weight and then stopping and having to reduce it more and more each time. And they would always, they would get it at that point. That was always a very powerful way of communicating that. But that's the value of going through that building phase. I know I don't have to sell the other values of building if you wanna build, obviously.
Starting point is 00:12:28 If you wanna build, you wanna know how to build. Well, that's why I wanted to start with addressing women right out the gate, is because I don't wanna lose the attention of our female audience, because they don't think that they fall in the category of bulking. It applies to both.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Right, and we're talking about obviously every hard gainer or skinny guy ears perk up when you say bulk because that's what they're interested in. But the reality is that I probably spent more time with female clients talking about this and trying to communicate this than I did with men. But on the men's side, so the conversation was a little bit different.
Starting point is 00:13:04 When I'd have male clients at bulk, most of them did it really wrong. So guys love to do it. And I'm just as guilty of this. Oh, I got some stories. Yeah, I'm just as guilty of, all right, it's bulk time, or it's bulking season, you know? Which really all that meant was there was no strategic plan
Starting point is 00:13:24 to build muscle really or to gain strength or to just- This is about shivering food. It was about, I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted because I was in a bulk and I was trying to build therefore I get carte blanche, I can go bananas with whatever I wanted to eat. And it was a season because there was no end to it
Starting point is 00:13:40 at the time. Right, right. And you would time it normally around thanksgiving and Christmas so you can excuse yourself for all the crazy extra calories that you would eat. And what will you would find? And let me tell you, this is so prevalent in the gym culture that even at the highest level of professional competitors, I see this. I think I've touched on this on the show before that when I would see some of these athletes,
Starting point is 00:14:08 my peers at that time, dieting and training for a show, they would still kind of live by these rules. And I would watch, we'd all be training in the same gym in the off season and we'd all be in the quote unquote bulk time. You know, it's and we're not ready. Prep time is the final, you know, six to 12 weeks before you get ready for a show. All the months leading up to that would be considered, you know, it's, and we're not ready. Prep time is the final, you know, six to 12 weeks before you get ready for a show. All the months leading up to that would be considered, you know, bulking time or building, you know, and I'd be watching the way they all eat and they're putting on, you know, 25, 35 pounds during this, you know, few months of getting ready for prep. And what would happen is, you know, they would peel all the way down,
Starting point is 00:14:46 get shredded, three to five percent body fat. And I would be looking at the same exact physique that I saw, you know, maybe like a one, two pound difference. Not even the same, same, literally like the same. It was just part of how they work. Right. And not to knock them, they look great. They got on stage. They compete, they competed at the highest level, but they weren't improving, and they weren't improving because of their method of bulking. Right, so, you know, what is the goal with bulking? The goal is to gain lean body mass, not body fat.
Starting point is 00:15:18 Now, in some cases, some body fat gain may be desirable. This is for people who are super, super lean. Like, if you're a man and your body fat gain may be desirable. This is for people who are super, super lean. Like if you're a man and your body fat percentage is below 10%, and you wanna start to gain some muscle, you're gonna probably have to gain a little bit of body fat to do that. When you're really, really lean, your hormones get affected a little bit.
Starting point is 00:15:39 It's harder to gain muscle. The body likes to gain when you're lean, but not shredded. For women, this is probably when you're below like 17 or 18% body fat, you're probably gonna need to gain a little bit of body fat. Not a lot, just a little bit to get into that good, you know, building stage. But aside from that, the goal is not to just gain body fat.
Starting point is 00:16:01 This was my problem. So I was, or just gain weight, you should say, because like, of course, no one's goal is to gain body fat. Nobody goes on a bulk and says, I want to gain body fat. This is this was my problem. So I was or just gain weight you should say because I of course No one's goal is to gain but nobody goes on a bulk and says I want to gain body fat Well, that's where I'm going because like this was my this was always my challenge Now I was that that skinny hard gainer. I was the ectomorph that you know my body Just didn't seem to want to gain any weight So when I went on a bulk it was all about the scale. I didn't look at anything else
Starting point is 00:16:24 It was how much weight can I gain? To the point where I would prefer foods that would make me even hold water because the scale would go up. And I liked the fact that the scale would go up. I remember one time in particular, this was when I was, I was in my 20s. So at this point, I'd been working out for a little while and I, and I, you know, I was really, really dedicated to, to gaining weight. And so I was really, really dedicated to gaining weight. So I was pretty good at it. And I went through this bulk period where my body weight went from, I don't know, 205 to 10 to 240 pounds.
Starting point is 00:16:54 I gained like, you know, almost 30 pounds on the scale, which is a tremendous amount of weight for somebody to gain, especially someone with my frame. And somebody who's in advanced lift,. You're 15 for a long time. And I'm lifting a lot of stuff. I mean, 210 for me is pretty much the same. So I gained, you know, 30 pounds on the scale. And I remember this was the first time, first off that I went all in and consistently.
Starting point is 00:17:17 And second, I tested my body fat. So I tested my body fat before, and then I didn't test it until after. And I was, it wasn't pleasantly surprised, what the opposite of pleasant is, that's how I was surprised. I tested my body fat, all 240 pounds of myself, super proud of all the weight that I gained
Starting point is 00:17:36 and I took me like four months or whatever of this bulk. And I had gained like a few pounds of muscle. According to my body fat percentage, like 27 pounds or something like that was all not muscle that I had put on my body and I had this rude awakening like what it like I it was a waste of time I gained a few I could have gained that few pounds of muscle without gaining the additional 20 something pounds of body fat and a big mistake a big part of that was All I did was look at the scale 20-something pounds of body fat. And a big mistake, a big part of that was,
Starting point is 00:18:05 all I did was look at the scale. I didn't use any other metric, and so I kind of lied to myself a little bit as I was going through that process. We used to do these competitions, Justin probably remembers this, with my trainers, I love to do this. We would get the hydrostatic way,
Starting point is 00:18:21 so the dunk tank, right, where you submerge underwater, get your body fat percentage, one of them are accurate ways to do it. And we'd have an outside source do it, so it was fair, and we'd have these competitions. It was a fun way to engage my staff with staying focused on staying fit and do some sort of a cash reward afterwards for the person with the greatest muscle gain. If we did a muscle gaining one, if we did a fat loss one, the greatest percentage of fat loss, and that was when I really, like, when I first started doing that, that's muscle gain, if we did a muscle gaining one, if we did a fat loss one, the greatest percentage of fat loss. And that was when I really, like,
Starting point is 00:18:47 when I first started doing that, and that was about five, six years into my career, where we had something like that that was, someone else was tracking, we were all competing each other. And that was like the consensus. And I'll never forget, like, when it first happened, when I first started doing it,
Starting point is 00:19:02 how many trainers were like, oh, this is bullshit. This thing's inaccurate. You just can't believe it. Yeah, you can't believe it. It happened to me. Yeah, I want to believe it. Right. And I agree. I felt the same way. Like, this can't be possible. Not all of us can't be this bad at this. Like, we're all trainers. We should know what we're doing. But it was, it was true. It was accurate. And it was because we all kind of fell into that, that old way of, of training and dieting of when you go on bulk, you just, again, like you said, Sal is trying to gain on the scale and what would end up happening is, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:31 you would put on as equal, and this is what sucks about it is, even if you added, let's say you're 30 pounds, because this would happen to me. Maybe I added 20 or 30 pounds, and I actually gained 10 pounds of muscle, which is awesome, 10 pounds of muscle, but because I gained 20 pounds of fat with it, when I decided to pull off the 20 pounds of fat, because I don't want, you know, if I put on all this extra weight to build the muscle, the idea is that I have just the muscle and get rid of the fat.
Starting point is 00:19:55 So then okay, okay, now let's go to a cut. And you start cutting. Well in order to lose 20 pounds of fat, it's really hard to not lose 10 pounds of muscle along the way. And this is what happens even at the professional level, is you see guys and they do, they put on some muscle, they don't fail at putting muscle under in that time and they know it because they can see their strength go up and they can visually see it, but because they put so much excess fat on with the muscle, that when it comes time to cut, they've got to
Starting point is 00:20:22 go through a pretty aggressive cut to get rid of 20 pounds of fat, and it's almost impossible to not lose some muscle. And when the ratio is that high to fat to muscle, and you've got to go that far back down, it's inevitable. So you end up doing 30, 30 pounds to cut off 20 pounds of fat, and when you do that, nine pounds of the muscle, you netted one pound.
Starting point is 00:20:42 You know what I'm saying? Like after it's all said and done, you went through training for three months of all this up and down dieting to get one pound of muscle. And you could have done that in a way that was way easier and didn't require so much, I guess, damage to the body.
Starting point is 00:20:54 Yeah, after. It's so misleading because you do feel the strength gains because like being on a higher calorie amount makes you feel like better. I have more energy. I have more strength. I'll put my performances increasing. Therefore. I have more energy. I have more strength output. My performance is increasing. Therefore, I have to be gaining muscle through this process. And it's one of those
Starting point is 00:21:11 things like even like on the athletic level, you'd see guys that would like through the entire offseason or through the summer, their whole goal was to gain this muscle. So that way, they come back in with all of this new strength and performance ability. And when they have to go down to shed the weight and get back into the cardio and move quickly, all of that progress is just completely back to where they started.
Starting point is 00:21:38 Right, so you can use the scale, but also use body fat tests and also look at your strength. But don't just look at total strength. Also look at your strength to weight ratio. This is important because let's say you gain 20 pounds on the scale, but in your bench press go or your squat goes up five pounds. So you did get stronger, five pounds,
Starting point is 00:21:59 but you gain 20 pounds on the scale. As a percentage of your body weight, you technically got weaker. Does that make sense? Now, it doesn't have to be one to one. It doesn't work that way at some point, you know, when you're smaller, you have a better strength to weight ratio than versus when you're bigger.
Starting point is 00:22:14 But that's a pretty big difference. So what I would start to do later on when I got good at this, is I would look at my strength gains, look at my weight gains and say, okay, I gained 10 pounds of a body weight, my strength went up, you know, five to seven pounds. I think I'm okay. If it was 10, if it was one to one, I knew I was great, but have I gained a little bit of strength and a lot of weight?
Starting point is 00:22:34 Then I knew, oh, I gained a lot of body fat, especially when you do the body fat test, which I'll take it even step further. So I literally went from one side of the paradigm to a complete opposite. Like it was a spectrum, I mean. So I went from from one side of the paradigm to a complete opposite. Like it was a spectrum, I mean. So I went from the guy who all he cared about was the scale and watching that like you saw just, you know, and eating same thing, eating foods that held water, whatever, just to keep that, get that number up because I was obsessed with it to actually going the complete opposite on a book.
Starting point is 00:23:01 So now when I bulk, I actually don't, I, I'm only watching the scale to make sure I'm not losing. So my goal is actually not even to see the scale go up that much. If it goes up one or two pounds, whatever, not a big deal, but I'm actually using the scale to say, make sure I'm not losing. And my goal is to actually slowly keep adding calories without seeing a major fluctuation on the scale. Can I keep adding calories in the diet without seeing my scale dramatically go up two or three pounds? And if I can see that and then I can also watch my strength, I know I'm in a really nice place.
Starting point is 00:23:36 So if I, let's say my goal is to bulk right now and I weigh 215 pounds and I want to bulk, I'm monitoring my weight while I'm increasing calories and watching my strength. And if I see my strength go up and I know I've added calories to the diet and my scale doesn't say the same, I like where I'm at. I'm in a very good place. I'm probably building muscle, I'm getting stronger,
Starting point is 00:24:00 I'm adding calories to the diet. I feel confident about, in fact, I might even be losing a little bit of body fat at the same time. Oh, you mean the calories stay the, the weight stays the same? Yes. That's okay.
Starting point is 00:24:09 Which to me, that would have been, I'm failing, you know, but 10 years ago, if I was trying to be in on a bulk, and my scale wasn't going up, I would have thought I was failing, but I actually look at it now as a very good place to be. Now, it's hard mentally because your goal is the bulk and to not see
Starting point is 00:24:25 the scale. But hey, listen, if you know, for a fact, you've added calories to the diet and you are maintaining strength or gaining strength on your big lifts, you're in a very nice place. A slow gain is king when it comes to a bulk. You got to understand one thing, especially if you're natural, right? If you take anabolic steroids, it's a little bit different. It's a different color. But if you're natural, muscle gain is not a fast process. It just isn't. You gotta understand that muscle, number one, is a very expensive tissue for the body, meaning it requires a lot
Starting point is 00:25:00 of calories to maintain. And number two, muscle is very adaptable. If you have more muscle, it's because your body thinks you need more muscle. You never have more muscle than your body thinks you need. You're never stronger than your body thinks you need to be. It just doesn't. It's expensive. It would make no sense, especially considering how our bodies evolve for most of the time that we've been on Earth, makes no sense for your body to be super muscular and burn all these calories.
Starting point is 00:25:25 When you sit around all day long, you don't lift heavy things. You don't need it. So the muscle gain process is actually, when we're talking about lean muscle, is actually pretty slow. Now in men, here's some numbers, okay? And of course, this can vary depending on your genetics or some genetic freaks out there that are a little bit different
Starting point is 00:25:42 here, but for the vast majority of people, I would say for men, you're looking at anywhere between a two to four pound gain in a month. And that in four is aggressive. You're getting four pounds a month. That's pretty aggressive for a man. So you're probably going to be closer to the two pound gain a month if you're going to be leaning, if you're going to be bulking properly.
Starting point is 00:26:03 For women, you're looking at about one to three pounds. One to three pounds a month of gain is perfectly fine. I used to like my female clients to maybe gain a pound in a month. Oftentimes, what would happen is what Adam's talking about, where I test their body fat and they did in fact gain a pound of muscle, but they also simultaneously lost a pound of body fat, and so the scale actually didn't move at all. If your scale is moving up faster than that, you can be pretty sure that what you're gaining is not necessarily
Starting point is 00:26:31 muscle, maybe water, and of course it may be body fat. That's why you got to be careful not to allow the scale staying stagnant as a sign of you're not doing really well. There's actually a very good chance, again, if you know you're increasing calories and you have good programming, there's a very good chance that you've hit the sweet spot. And it's a great place to be where you have a very close to even exchange where you're losing a little bit of body fat and you're also gaining a little bit of muscle.
Starting point is 00:27:01 And so the scale is kind of maintaining. That's why, and this is also why I do like to track, and I think it's so important to learn this about your body and how it responds because if you know for a fact that you're adding calories and you know for a fact that your program's on point, you know, you're probably building muscle, even if the scale is not going up, you're just also probably losing a little bit of body fat and And that's a great place to be. That's the best place to be. Now, for calories, I'm going to give some general numbers
Starting point is 00:27:29 that are going to apply to a lot of you, not everybody but a lot of you. But typically, of course, you need to eat more calories in your burning, so let's start there first. Your body won't add new tissue unless it has the building blocks to do so. So that means if you're burning every single day when you include your activity,
Starting point is 00:27:45 I don't know, 2,000 calories a day, you can't add new tissue at 2,000 calories and certainly not at lower than 2,000 calories. You need to supply your body with extra calories, extra nutrients to build this new tissue. Now typically, what you wanna do is go up, increase your calories about 10% above maintenance. That's generally where you wanna go if want to do this the right way.
Starting point is 00:28:08 So what does that mean? Well, if you're maintenance calories, you figured it about 2,000 calories, and now you want to go on this clean bulk or whatever, you add 200 calories. That's 10%. What if your calories are 1,300 calories at maintenance? Well, that's 130 calories. So you guys get the idea. Add about 10% above maintenance
Starting point is 00:28:28 and then wait a few weeks to see what happens. If you're not gaining muscle or strength, you can add a little bit more. But for most people, 10% above maintenance with good programming, that's really important. We'll do the trick. Now, do you guys have a preference of where that 10% comes from as far as proteins fats or carbs
Starting point is 00:28:46 You that you typically recommend or find people have more safe Well if protein is not at one gram per pound of body weight Yeah, then I'll go approaching yeah, but once I'm about a gram per pound of body weight And if fat is a sense if they're eating enough fat Then I tend to add carbs carbohydrates tend to build a little bit my my experience I tend to do better on this phase than more fat. Those are the two essentials.
Starting point is 00:29:07 And then carbs is really where I start to play around with adding that in and seeing how that then increases, their performance specifically in the gym. That's one of those where you can really see the difference when you start adding carbohydrates. That really wasn't very high for a lot of clients beforehand. So, so if I actually like to push a little bit more with protein, so I'll push it to the upper limits of like 1.5 before I start to do other macros.
Starting point is 00:29:36 I just find that if we're trying to stay lean and we're, we don't want to go over it all and you, I have room where they're you know at one or less Grants per pound all all start pushing the upper limits of that before I start and that's we're also taking a consideration They're hitting the essential fats, right? You're getting the fats that you need I prefer to go make sure you have a good fiber with that right? Yeah, so I I'm gonna prefer to go the the protein route first Before I start to go over in the carbohydrates. Because there's another thing you have to consider when you start to increase carbohydrates. For every three grams of carbs that you add to your diet, you're going to hold on to an
Starting point is 00:30:13 extra whole bottle of water. Three ounces of water, right? So it's a nice exchange as you start to add up. So if you are increasing carbohydrates, one of the things that throws people off sometimes is they're like, oh crap, I only increased 200 calories, but you did it all in carbohydrates, and now I'll say, and you're seeing weight gain go pretty fast, and it could throw you off on if you're doing a good job, because you see the scale measuring. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:30:38 Right, so. Not also holding water, you do feel the difference in your performance, too. That's something I've noticed specifically, you know, maybe I am a bit water-retentive, but man, like I could just feel the strength gains in the gym as a result, which then motivates me to then push it. No, that's actually 100% right.
Starting point is 00:30:55 I experience the same thing. When you have a little bit more fluid in your body, especially if it's in your muscle, they tend to contract harder and perform a little bit better. This is why, but here's a, we're kind of splitting hairs right now. Right. Because at the end of the day, if you're trying to bulk,
Starting point is 00:31:12 you probably shouldn't go below one gram of protein per pound of body. And I say probably because there are those people out there that might have digestive issues with that much protein. In which case, at the end of the day, by the way, you have to be healthy. You can't follow a protocol. And if you're trying to gain mass or muscle and you're unhealthy, it's not going to work.
Starting point is 00:31:31 If you do move your protein up to a gram or 1.5, as Adam said, per pound of body weight and you find digestion is terrible, you don't feel good. Bring it down, increase the calories with one of the other macronutrients. One thing is for sure, you definitely should not be too low on carbs or fats. I don't think a keto diet, for example, is a great way to, even if the calories are high in my experience, for most people, it's not a great way to gain lean muscle. Now in the cases where that's an exception, you may be somebody where your gut health really benefits from going super low carbs in which case health trumps all. You may be somebody where,
Starting point is 00:32:11 you know, too many fats does the same thing to you in which case I'd say, you know, bring the fats down a little lower. But most cases, you don't want carbs or fats. You don't want to be a low fat, you know, on a low fat bulk or low carb bulk that typically doesn't work well for a lot of people. Now the most important thing when you're trying to add lean body mass is to send an effective muscle building signal. If you don't do this, you're not going to build muscle. You can add calories all you want, add protein. Your body has no reason to add muscle.
Starting point is 00:32:41 So you want to follow a routine that is uh... really revolves around muscle and strength game i mean it's gotta be the goal right that's your goal you don't want to go into a hit workout or like a pliometric type of training or circuit or or theory type of thing with this intention no it's i would say the range would be to be you know between power left on bodybuilder like that's the kind of program you want to follow the program that we have the programs that we have that would be great In a lean bulk would be like maps and a ball like maps aesthetic maps strong maps strong zone sales half off this month That would be a great lean muscle gain program
Starting point is 00:33:15 But yeah a hip program or a program that's working on stamina and endurance You're not going to really do well with those because they don't really send allowed, you know, hey, build muscle, you know, type of signal. Now, I also like so and that there is an exception to that rule and that is it depends on what I've been doing also, right? So when I make a transition from a bulk or a cut, I also like to transition my programming at the same time. So if you were following a map, Santa Ball, I can, that's what you've already ran. And then you're gonna transition in a bulk.
Starting point is 00:33:49 I would change to, you know, map split or strong or something different. That's novel. Sure. Because there's benefits to that, right? Like your, like Sal said earlier, when we were talking about calories, say anything goes for programming that, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:02 your body gets efficient and adapted to whatever it is that you've been doing. And so, if you've been doing something consistent, training a certain way, a certain modality, and you're about to make a transition to either a bulk or a cut, it's also a really good strategy to change your programming up
Starting point is 00:34:17 because it's going to be novel. But that program should still be a muscle or strength. Right, right. And that's why I use the analogy of, okay, let's say you're running on a ball, like making it to an a muscle or strength. Right, right. Focus, right. And that's why I use the analogy of, okay, let's say you're running anabolic, making it to an aesthetic, you know, split or strong is a, a, probably more advantageous strategy than going to a,
Starting point is 00:34:34 a hit workout or maybe maps performance. Yeah, you're, you're looking at maps aesthetic, maps anabolic, strong, split. Those are probably the maps power, you know, those are probably the best programs to build. If you really want to build muscles. Got maps power lift would be an incredible one actually. That's another one, right?
Starting point is 00:34:50 Now here's another myth around bulking that I believe for a long time, which was to eliminate cardio, do zero cardio, right? You don't want to burn any excess calories because God forbid you burn those calories and don't use them to build muscle. Now, I discovered this as a myth years ago, or remember I was doing, I was going through
Starting point is 00:35:11 this process of trying to gain muscle, I was always trying to gain muscle, but I was trying to attack it pretty aggressively. And I remember one of my trainers, he was a pretty muscular guy and he was laughing because one day he was on one of the spin bikes and I was going to go take him through some sales training and he said hey would you mind doing it while I'm doing the spin bike because I learned better when I'm moving and you know it helps me out and I said yeah I don't care of course no problem. So I went in the room, the spin room with him, I got on the spin bike next to him
Starting point is 00:35:42 and I started you know doing my training with him. And I was, as I was talking with him, every once in a while, I'd start pedaling the pedals and I find myself, you know, at a breath. And the reason why I was at a breath was I was always trying to build. So I avoided cardio like it was kryptonite. Like this is anti-muscle. I'm not gonna do it. And he commented on it. He goes, man, he goes, your cardio is really bad. And I started laughing. I said, I know, I'm terrible. I said, but I'm trying to gain muscle. And he goes, you know, I tend to gain more muscle if my cardio is at least pretty good because then I'm not so limited when I do squats
Starting point is 00:36:15 and deadlifts and my health's a little better. And then I kind of dawn on, man. I'm like, you know, if I'm getting winded by messing around on a spin bike while I'm talking to this guy, maybe it's preventing me from building muscle. Maybe my health isn't good to build muscle. So what I did is I started incorporating just some light cardio, some hikes, some incline treadmill work, a little bit of the stationary bike, and lo and behold, I found that I built
Starting point is 00:36:42 more muscle. And the reason why I built more muscle was my health improved. So yes, you can overdo cardio. Overdoing cardio can cause you to burn too many calories and maybe send a wrong signal, but eliminating cardio might reduce your health, in which case if you're not healthy, good luck trying to build muscle.
Starting point is 00:37:02 It's not gonna happen. Well, a good example of this are a good gauge. I like to use. And I know the, the rhino right stand efforting talks a lot about 20s. And if you can't do 20 swats, um, oh, geez. You know, and do that. That's a great measure. Right. Three sets of that. Then your cardio endurance is limiting your potential. Because I'll tell you what, one of the things that made my legs explode
Starting point is 00:37:27 was running a phase where I was running 20 sets or 20 reps of squats. It's just, it's brutal and it's so novel and very few people like to train up in that range. And you'll build muscle, even though it's not in that one to five rep range, which is tends to be the more typical place that people stay, going and doing 20 reps of squats,
Starting point is 00:37:46 if you've never really trained that way consistently, I'll tell you what, we'll definitely bulk you and build some muscle. But if you can't do it because you're so gasped because you don't have the cardiovascular endurance, it's hindering your potential to build muscle and bulk properly. Yeah, and I think about this too,
Starting point is 00:38:03 of low frequency or low intensity type movement and activity throughout the day too. Staying in remaining active is another signal in itself that your body wants to respond and promote more muscle and strength to provide stability and support around this movement. One thing to consider too is cardio comes in various forms. It's not just like running around on a treadmill or going out and running or jogging or it really is just staying and remaining active
Starting point is 00:38:34 and frequently moving and that's a signal in itself which I think is relatively not talked about enough in terms of neat and being able to do things constantly throughout the day that adds up to you know quite a bit of extra Kelly. Yeah, daily walks and hikes was my favorite way. Yeah, that was my favorite way to do it. Well, I think of this too that it doesn't compete with the muscle. A big part of bulking obviously is or the whole part of bulking is building muscle and you know a big part of building muscle is the recovery phase, is the ability to recover fast and efficiently so you can build more muscle and staying active and keeping your knee up and moving and doing cardio is only going to facilitate recovery faster.
Starting point is 00:39:18 Right. So you have to factor that in. Now that being said, there's also a balance, right? Like who I'm talking to, there's always going to be that individual. Now that being said, there's also a balance, right? Like who I'm talking to. There's always going to be that individual variance. And us always saying depends. Because there's also that kid that I was when I was, you know, 20 years old that was wakeboarding, snowboarding, basketball, playing sports all the time and lifting weights seven days a week that I was getting plenty of knee, plenty of cardiovascular exercise and, that it was hindering me from getting enough calories.
Starting point is 00:39:46 It was just hard to keep up with 4,500 to 5,000 calories. And so you need to know that about yourself. Like if you're somebody who is extremely active, you don't need to go out of your way to probably do more cardio if you're already that active. Well, that all comes into factoring that TDD. TDD. Yeah, so basically you're taking your maintenance of calories, but also factoring in what that activity looks like for you individually.
Starting point is 00:40:12 And so if you can really nail that down, you'll have a better idea of like not to exceed that or to like maybe pull back a bit in order to allow room for you to build muscle. Yeah, TDD stands for total daily energy expenditure. Just means how many calories you burn throughout the day. Speaking of high rep squats, you know, it's funny. Back in the day, the old time muscle builders and strongmen, which I love looking to for wisdom because this was before,
Starting point is 00:40:36 Annabolic steroids before all the bad information was coming out in the muscle building magazines or internet that were driven by supplement sales. They didn't even have crating or oftentimes protein powders. So they just did what worked. You know what they used to advocate for, for building big muscular legs. 20 reps sets of squats, deep breathing.
Starting point is 00:40:57 These come deep breathing squats. So what they would do, and they didn't do cardio back in those days. It was just, they were probably active in their jobs. Let's be honest, back in those days, people were pretty physical, but they didn't go and do cardio, but they did lift weights.
Starting point is 00:41:08 And what they would do is they would do sets of squats and in between every rep, they would take two or three deep breaths and then they do another squat. That's gonna be a little bit of cardio. Oh yeah, not even doing that is hard. Imagine taking the deep breaths in between and then having to squat and they would say
Starting point is 00:41:23 that it was just phenomenal for building good muscle. The next thing, which is, this next one is very important, regardless of what your goals are, but it's especially important if you want to build muscle, which is get good sleep, prioritize good sleep. Now remember, your body does not want to build muscle unless it has to, because more muscle means more calories to support and keep you alive. Your body's always trying to increase it or improve its odds of survival. And because we evolved, our bodies evolved
Starting point is 00:41:58 where food was scarce and things were dangerous, it was always on alert and ready to say, oh, hold on a second, let's burn less calories. Just so we don't need as much food, well lack of sleep is a great way to tell your body not to build muscle because lack of sleep is a strong stress signal. And if you think of, for most of human history,
Starting point is 00:42:19 if you're not getting good sleep, it's probably because you weren't safe, or it's probably because you weren't safe or it's probably because you were trying to find food because you weren't able to find food during the day. Not sleeping is a fantastic way to lose strength and muscle. In fact, I shouldn't even have to convince people. Everybody listening right now knows exactly how weak they feel when they go to the gym the day after they get terrible sleep.
Starting point is 00:42:43 It's just, it's a terrible one. So I tell people this, we all prioritize our workouts, we all prioritize our priming and the pre-workout, and you know, we have our programming set, but we treat sleep as a total afterthought. We all expect to just lay in bed, hit the pillow, and get excellent recovery muscle building sleep. We do, at least, do we get in our 40s, right,
Starting point is 00:43:04 or close to our 40s. And then we value the shit out of it. That's what I just really think it's that. Like I think we're just in so invincible in our 20s that it's like, I don't care. I really believe that because it comes easy. I really believe Adam today could not go back and convince Adam of 21 that he needs to do sleep.
Starting point is 00:43:19 That's why like, you know what's funny? I've Adam in his 20s had all the responsibility of Adam in his 40s. He would be convinced. Because this is what I remember, you's funny. I've Adam and his twenties had all the responsibility of Adam and his 40. He would be convinced. Because this is what I remember. You're right, I did the same thing. But you also, when your twenties had the freedom, you didn't have all these responsibilities.
Starting point is 00:43:32 You had the freedom to sleep all day on a Saturday. Yeah. I can never have that opportunity now because I have kids and responsibilities. And you think you become just more aware of your own body. Like, I don't think that I wouldn't have benefited from it in my 20s. You know, I absolutely, I just think I was so stubborn back then and I thought I was doing just fine.
Starting point is 00:43:51 I probably would have seen twice as much results in my 20s had I prioritized it. Now, when I see, and I guess older, wiser, smarter me now is, I can move my weight, change my body composition relatively fast because I know how to turn all these knobs really well. And sleep is one of them that for a long time wasn't one of the knobs that I focused on and is a game changer when you do.
Starting point is 00:44:13 And it doesn't always mean too, like, you know, like, it's inevitable, right? You're going to have a not a great night of sleep. I mean, if you have a normal life, you know, work is going to stress you out one day, your partner is going to piss you off one day or your partner is gonna piss you off one day, or baby's gonna wake you up in the middle of the night. I was gonna shoot on your carpet. Yeah, or you're gonna shoot on your chest, right? It does not make sense.
Starting point is 00:44:32 Yeah, so you know that's gonna have, these things are gonna happen. It's a piss to write, right? That's what it looks like. Sorry, shit. So these things are gonna happen, and when they do happen, learning to adjust the workout to it,
Starting point is 00:44:44 and really trying, I was having this conversation actually and when they do happen, learning to adjust the workout to it. And really trying, I was having this conversation actually this morning with my client. I was telling her that we're manipulating her calories right now and I was telling her to try and time the higher calorie, good sleep, good workout all in one day if you can, just so we get the max benefits. So if you know that you didn't have the greatest sleep ever and you were planning to do 20
Starting point is 00:45:09 rep squats that next morning, maybe that's not the best morning for you to train that way. Maybe you take it a different day or take it easier and leave the day that you get really good rest to get after it in the gym. I just, I have found that when you learn to navigate that way with your workouts, your sleep, and your nutrition, your body just responds really well. When it's already stressed, because you didn't sleep very well, and then you decide you're going to punish it inside the gym. It's harder than you've gone any time recently. It doesn't, it doesn't really respond the way you think you do. Where's the time for all the muscle
Starting point is 00:45:43 building? No, it all, it views it all as too much stress. Yeah, it revolts. You can actually lose muscle that way. Right. If you push it too hard, you can be working out, eating more calories, but you're, because you're getting shitty sleep and your workout isn't appropriately intense,
Starting point is 00:45:56 you can actually lose muscle. I've actually seen this happen on people before. And I'm not giving you the, I'm not giving you the excuse to not go to the gym now, right? Or the item says if everything's not perfect. Yeah, yeah, right. So you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful.
Starting point is 00:46:08 Because some clients are just waiting for that, right? They're like, oh, you don't need to work out hard. Oh, great. I'll take the day off. No, you just, you work more in, you take it easy, you back off the intensity. Instead of that being an 80 to 100% intensity type of training day, you go in, you train, you move, you still exercise, it's still good for you. That's still beneficial.
Starting point is 00:46:25 You just learn to pull back because you know you didn't get good sleep that night and just watch how your body responds differently. Totally. So treat your sleep like you treat your workouts. And what I mean by that is take it seriously. So here's a few tips that typically make a pretty big impact on somebody sleep quality for most of you, okay? Number one, about two hours before bed, make sure you shut off all electronics and go by dim light in your room or in your house.
Starting point is 00:46:51 Now, if this is not feasible for you, if you need to be on electronics two hours before bed or you like to watch TV right before bed or you can't turn down your lights because you got kids or whatever, then try wearing blue light blocking glasses. Blue light blocking glasses block the light that comes from electronics that most affects your brain because here's what happens. When you go to bed and you lay on your pillow, it takes your brain a second to register that the sun has gone down. So for most human history, this was natural. We'd be outside, we'd be doing things.
Starting point is 00:47:26 The sun slowly starts to set, light starts to get darker. It gets dark, the brain has already started registering, oh, it's almost time for sleep. Then when it's time to go to sleep, your brain is prepared, you lay down and you get right into that quality sleep. If you don't do that, if the lights are bright, your brain is getting the signal, it says,
Starting point is 00:47:47 sun is up, sun is up, sun is up, and then you close your eyes and your brain goes, oh wait, we need to sleep. All right, give us a second to get ready. And it delays that. Even if you fall right asleep, because I know some people will say, well, I fall right asleep when I hit the pillow,
Starting point is 00:47:59 so I don't need to do that. Studies show that, although you're asleep, you're getting less of that quality sleep, and they do this by measuring all the stages of sleep. So do that. Studies show that although you're asleep, you're getting less of that quality sleep and they do this by measuring all the stages of sleep. So do that, that's number one. Number two, don't eat right before bed. A lot of people have issues with sleep when they do that.
Starting point is 00:48:13 Make sure the room is cool or cold. Sleeping with minimal clothes seems to improve sleep, quality and a lot of people. And then if you need something to help you relax, if you tend to be one of those anxious people, you can try some natural herbs. Passion flower has some natural relaxing properties. Although you can't use passion flower all the time, but chamomile's great. chamomile's so mild that in Europe, they oftentimes will recommend it to children. You can sleep, you can drink chamomile on a pretty much regular basis. It's a very, very mild but natural relaxing kind of sedative.
Starting point is 00:48:48 I like to do that about an hour before bed to kind of ensure that I'm, you know, relaxed and I get to go to sleep. Now, the next question is when do I stop? When do I stop? When does the bulk stop? When do I, you know, when do I start to reverse gears or whatever? The big sign for me is when the strength gain stop. Like I'm not getting stronger right now in the gym
Starting point is 00:49:10 and no matter what I do with my programming and calories, the strength isn't really going up. That's when I know that, okay, my body's had enough of this signal, now it's time to reverse gears, either focus on mobility or maybe do a mild cut, do a real light cut to kind of change the signal a little bit. That usually gets things moving again. So we didn't really touch on that. I think that's important. So we kind of, we talk a lot about cutting and bulking and we recommend mini cuts and mini bulks, which are
Starting point is 00:49:42 you know, relatively short, two to four weeks tops, right, of staying in a phase of cutting or bulking. And so if I'm in a bulk phase, I may extend my phase longer than four weeks of bulking. I may be bulking for as long as six weeks, but I will interrupt it with little mini cuts. And that may just be, you know, a few days or even just one week of a more lower calorie diet for a while to interrupt that and to go back on the bulk. I definitely recommend that. That's like one of the way and I'm watching strength,
Starting point is 00:50:12 I'm watching scale. And if I feel like I've started to plateau, then I'm going to interrupt that by going the other direction for a little bit. And this is the individual variance that may be three low calorie days. It might be a whole week of kind of lower calorie days and then go back to your bulk after that. Body responds really well to that versus just constantly trying to push calories, push calories for extended periods time, five weeks, six weeks and beyond.
Starting point is 00:50:40 Yeah, and I like this because it allows you to continue this building process for a long period of time because you are interrupting it with these shorter periods of maintenance or lower calurs. This is extremely valuable for women who are trying to balance hormones. Whenever I had worked with women who have gone through long processes of dieting and over training and their hormones are all over the place. We would do, we would build. We would focus on building for a long time. But I would interrupt it with a few days or a week here and there
Starting point is 00:51:10 of maintenance or slightly lower calories, just to minimize fat gain. But the whole, the overall process would maintain until we'd start to see hormones start to bounce. I've had female clients who couldn't get pregnant. We went through a building phase, and then finally we're able to, because things bounce up. Same thing with men. Not as common, but sometimes guys who stay lean all the time. The testosterone suffers quite a bit.
Starting point is 00:51:33 And through a building phase, you start to see testosterone levels go back on. I also like that strategy for people that struggle with being able to eat enough calories because they're just not hungry. So sometimes when you've been eating high calorie, high calorie, you know, and this has happened many times with clients and myself where it's like, oh my God, it's just so hard at it. We get to that. It's a 20. Yeah, and so I like to reverse out and go low for a while. A lot of times that will stimulate that appetite again.
Starting point is 00:52:00 They'll be like, oh my God, I went from being stuffed all time to now. I feel like you're starving me all the time. And then now we go back up, that sometimes we'll help stimulate them, that appetite and them wanting more calories. That's a big indicator for me, especially like inflammation being a factor in that as well, like being on a higher calorie amount consistently,
Starting point is 00:52:19 like my digestion gets affected after a while, like I could feel the, you know, those common symptoms of like being under a lot of inflammation where the achy joints things like that But yeah, like to be able to interrupt that and then go back into a Bit of a cut to really help to kind of relieve a lot of this. Yeah, now here's another tip that'll help you with this Try to stay away from You know overly processed or highly processed foods. And here's why.
Starting point is 00:52:45 Not necessarily because they're unhealthy, although usually they are not as healthy for you as whole natural foods for the most part, but mainly because those foods encourage you to eat more. This is just what they do very, very well. So if you're already in the mindset of gaining and you're throwing in these hyper-palatable highly processed foods, the slow gain that we're talking about, not gonna happen. It's gonna turn into a fast bulk or what they call a dirty bulk.
Starting point is 00:53:08 So I would say try to avoid the heavily processed foods unless there's somebody that really struggles with appetite, which is pretty rare. I'm glad you went that direction because I know there's gotta be somebody that who's listening right now, who struggles with getting enough calories, especially trying to stay all clean.
Starting point is 00:53:25 This applied to me when I, especially when I was competing. The real hard gainers maybe. Yeah, well, and even somebody who's, I mean, when you get to, when you start getting to, what's that upper end? When I got up to, you know, when I was competing,
Starting point is 00:53:39 I was eating, you know, 5,000 calories. Yeah. Try and eat 5,000 calories of chicken breast and sweet potato. Yeah, it's just unprocessed foods. Yeah, right. It's just, so a good strategy is to hit what your body needs through all whole foods in natural. This is, this was the rule I gave myself.
Starting point is 00:53:56 If I was going to enjoy a five guys burger, or I was going to pile on some, you know, processed type foods in the diet, if I was going to allow that in there, I first was going to get what my body needs, the protein intake, get the good essential fats, and my basic carb, the basic macro breakdown of what my body needs through whole foods.
Starting point is 00:54:16 And then I would use the hyper-palatable foods to help push me to that caloric intake that I needed. So that's just, there's no great science to support why that's better not. I have just found that works really well for me. It's worked well for my clients is to go after getting everything through Whole Foods first and then you use those hyper-palatable foods
Starting point is 00:54:36 to help push you beyond. In that case, I used to say this, I used to say, I want 80% of your calories to come from, at least 80% to come from unprocessed whole natural foods, and then I would allow the 20%. Just because, and this is only for some people, people like Adam, like what he's talking about, because when I would allow other clients to do this,
Starting point is 00:54:57 or even myself, it very quickly inevitably would spiral, it would spiral every time, because remember those foods are really, really good at getting you to eat more. You're already in the. Oh, it would spiral every time. Because remember, those foods are really, really good at getting you to eat more. You're already in the mindset of building. If you're not tracking everything, very fast, it gets away from you almost every single time. Yeah, this is really only, it mostly applies to my male clients.
Starting point is 00:55:16 It was rare that I had a female that, you know, I couldn't take her from 1500 to 2000 through healthy, healthy calories. Yeah, sure, sure. That's when you start getting up to those numbers, like, 4,000, 5,000 calories, that's a lot. I mean, that's a thousand calorie meal. Right, a thousand calorie meal four, five times a day. And if you're doing that through, like I said, whole foods, that's a monster mountain to climb
Starting point is 00:55:38 for some people. That's the only exception to the rule that I would say that I would do that with. But I know there's people listening that can relate to that. So I wanted to address that. Excellent. Look, mine pump is recorded on video as well as audio.
Starting point is 00:55:49 You can watch us on YouTube. If you like listening to us, imagine how much you like watching us. So go check us out, mine pump podcast. Also, you can find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at mine pump Justin. You can find me at mine pump sal and Adam at mine pump at them. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,
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