Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1427: Don’t Make These 6 Bulking Mistakes

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss how to bulk and the mistakes to avoid. Let’s talk bulking during the holidays. (3:23) The misconceptions around bulking. (5:35) Don’t Make These 6 Bulking Mistakes. #1 - Consuming junk food to meet your macros. (7:33) #2 - Not tracking and hitting protein intake. (19:24) #3 – Bulking for too long. (22:34)  #4 – Paying attention only to the scale. (27:00) #5 – Not meal prepping in advance. (35:38) #6 – Improper training. (40:08) Related Links/Products Mentioned November Promotion: MAPS Ultimate At-Home Workout Bundle for Only $99.99 Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** How To Properly Clean-Bulk – Mind Pump Blog How To Eat If You Want To Pack On Muscle – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Macro Calculator Mind Pump #1220: The 4 Best Sources Of Protein The Full Diet Break Why The Scale Is Not Always The Best Way To Measure Progress – Mind Pump Blog Nutrition Advice for Skinny Guys Who Want to Gain Muscle – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Fitness Anabolic | Muscle Adaptation Programming System MAPS Aesthetic | Muscle Adaptation Programming System Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

Now I don't know any studies that have been done on bulking, but I can't speak from personal experience. In my experience, and this is for me and for clients, when I would include bulking breaks, I would gain more lean body mass and less body fat. It was like my body would become resensitized to calories. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, up with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You are listening to the number one fitness health and entertainment podcast.

This is Mind Pump. Now in today's episode, we talk all about bulking. Now this is the process of trying to gain muscle and strength and size. Maybe a little bit of body fat, but really you want to minimize the fat gain. Now, a lot of people when they bulk, they make a lot of mistakes that results in less muscle

and more body fat. In fact, we've isolated the six most common mistakes that we saw our clients make time and time again when they were trying to bulk that it did result in a lot of fat gain and not a lot of muscle. So you're gonna love this episode if your goal is packing on the strength and the muscle. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion.

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A lot of people are transitioning into the bulk right now. Winter time. Wings come. Lockdowns are coming. They're giving you around the corner. Yeah, you like, go with the flow. Let's eat. I was on a bulk for most of my life, I would say.

It's a kid. What do you guys thinking about that though? Seriously, are you pro switching to the bulk during a time when you're probably gonna be eating in a surplus with the holidays? I totally, it makes more sense to not add more resistance to, like imagine trying to lean out during the holidays. Well, I don't have to say, imagine I've tried it before and to paint in the, and you avoid.

You end up missing out a lot of good times with your family and friends. So it makes more sense to bulk during those times, and it does to cut a little way more sense. Plus it's cold, so you can be wearing sweaters. So I agree. So I totally agree with you. And I think I'm more on this train now,

but I was always the guy that was fucking backwards. I never time the summer get shredded thing. I was always off. And so it always- I was always trying to be a rebel. Yeah, no, it's not even trying. It's just that whatever was going on in my life, you know, as far as consistency and dieting down

or whatever, it just never lined up well for me for summertime. I was always off to her then. And for some weird reason, come wintertime, just the things lined up well for me for summertime. I was always off turn then and for some weird reason, come winter time, just the things lined up for me. And I think maybe what it is is that in the summer I'm going. I'm taking trips, I'm traveling more, I'm outside, I'm going, doing places. And so I guess when the winter time comes, I'm just not doing as much. And so you're more focused. Yeah, I think so. I actually, I've died and competed. In fact, I don't know if you guys remember

this, but you know, I competed the day after Thanksgiving. I do remember that. Yeah, I had to go to it. Yeah, it was my first pro show. I did was down in Southern California and Katrina and I spent Thanksgiving eating a burger king burger for

Thanksgiving. That was our Thanksgiving dinner. I tried and I promised her that night. I said, I'll never do this to you. Oh wow, again. Wow. At least super says me. Well, you know, you know, it's funny about that.

Forget the competing, but when you were younger and how you were alternating or whatever, it does highlight some of the, I think, mistakes or maybe misconceptions are around bulking. Because I think people, they think of dieting to get lean as let's say on a scale of one to 10, a 10 in terms of challenge and difficulty and they think of bulking and it's not,

they don't think of it as being challenging or difficult. In fact, people think of bulking as just, I'm just not watching what I'm eating. Yeah, there's this implication that it's like free reign. Like all food is on the horizon for you. Like anything you can eat because you just need the calories, right? People make just as many mistakes bulking as they do when they're trying to get leaner, just as many mistakes.

But the misconception is that bulking is easier. It means I don't have to watch what I'm eating. Just eat more food and I'm gonna end up gaining the kind of mass or lean body mass that I'm looking for. And nothing could be further from the truth. I spent a lot of my lifting career in a bulk. I was a skinny kid. I was a real fast metabolism.

And so for me, it was just put on weight by all means necessary. And I made so many mistakes that later on as I started to figure out the mistakes that I made, bulking became so much easier and it was so much easier to gain muscle. I do want to speak up though for the skinny kid because you guys are looting right now that most people think that bulking was easy. I did not think. I thought it was extremely difficult. I thought that was hard for me. Getting lean was easy. I used to make the joke that all I had to do

is look at a treadmill and, you know, weight would fall off. So getting lean was very easy, but so there's definitely a percentage of people out there that, and I think that the stuff that we're gonna go over today are so important. It's all the mistakes that I made trying to bulk. You know, I spent at least a decade and a half

in a calorie surplus or what I was trying to be in a calorie surplus, I should say. And failing. And the number one thing that I think about that where I was probably making the biggest mistake was I knew I had to get more calories. And so I was chasing all these high calorie foods, processed foods, fast food, milkshakes, whatever I could get my hands on. I was consuming thinking that, of course, a number one for McDonald's that's 1500 calories is going to help me get to my targets faster than a chicken breast and rice lunch. So I would always opt for the fast food. I mean, I ate a ton of that.

That's the exact same thing that I did, exact same mistake. To me, I understood early on just from reading the bodybuilding magazines and stuff that you had to eat more calories than you burned. And I remember reading an article where they made a big point about that. They said, look, no matter what, if you're not taking in enough calories,

you're not going to gain any muscle. You just don't have the building blocks. By the way, this is true. This is a true fact. But this is all I thought, everything was this right here. And to me, all calories were calories. Didn't matter where they came from,

didn't matter what I ate. And so if I had an opportunity to drink soda or juice, I would because, oh, there's 200 calories right there. If I had the opportunity to supersize my fries, I would because oh there's 200 calories right there. If I had the opportunity to super-size my fries I would. If it was the different, for me it didn't matter what it was. I wasn't gonna aim for any type of hell. Those all about calories. Oh pizza. Oh five slices. That's about a thousand or twelve hundred calories. Ollie, you know, Ollie, pizza. Or I'll have that ice cream. Oh no, go with the full fat stuff because I need the couch.

And I would just pile on the junk food. And this was a huge mistake. It was a huge mistake for many different reasons. Yeah, believe it or not, I was a skinny kid. And I did. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait I was in high school, dude. I was like a freshman. I barely weighed 200 pounds. It was my software. It really took off and just gain all the muscles. It was crazy. But no, I approached it in a way where I, the same way I was training.

I was all in. I was all about intensity, in spite of sort of a mentality. So I would take these crazy concoction, just any amount of calories I could throw into a shake and down. It didn't matter about my digestion,, didn't matter about my digestion, didn't matter about my stool, my sleep, like none of that stuff considered to where, like I was in pain and miserable this entire process.

That's the biggest part. The biggest part is if you are anything you're doing, I don't care if you're trying to build muscle or lose body fat or improve your performance, if your health starts to decline, and I don't mean like terribly, it's obvious if you have terrible health, you're not going to be able to build muscle.

But if you're just, if you're bloated and your digestion is off and you're lethargic because you're eating a lot of junk food, your capacity to build muscle, adapt, and perform well is significantly reduced. It took me a long time to put this together. I mean, my post-workout meal of choice because of the calories used to be a number four supersize for McDonald's, which was a double quarter pound of a cheese, supersize fries, regular Coke, and then I get another six piece nugget,

and I'd be like, all these calories are great. And then I'd feel like garbage for like four hours afterwards. And I'd sit on the couch and now realizing I was killing myself in the foot. Yeah, I got all those extra calories, but my health wasn't doing any better because of it. So I remember when this changed for me. So this is going to just date me a little bit, right?

So when I, when we were doing this, like the fast food thing, and I'm right with you sell on this is exactly how I was eating, this was back when there was none of these cool phones with apps and tools. Before Ed Hardy. Even before Ed Hardy. Even before Crocs. Yeah, even before, yeah, way before Crocs and definitely before Ed Hardy. This was when calorieking.com was a thing, right? And so I was only really tracking calories at this point because of law of throwing dynamics, right? That we touted all the time.

And I knew that like with the science said, about being able to build, I have to be the surplus, I'm chasing all these high calorie foods. So that was how I decided how I was needing to, but at this point, I'm not really breaking my macros down. That was too much work for me. It was just enough, like let's figure out my calories. This meal or that meal, choose the meal

with the higher calories, that was it. It wasn't until Body Bug came around, and we were tracking how much we were burning. So this is like, I don't know, I wanna say about five years into my lifting career, which is probably about seven to 10 for your saw when Body Bug comes around, somewhere around there. So it's like 2000 what, four, yeah, yeah, somewhere around there.

That's when I remember it coming out. And this tool at the time was the most accurate thing that we had out there to get a good idea of what my metabolism was burning, how much steps I was taking. And then also with the app came a food tracker and then you would implement your food and then it would break down the macros.

And what I found was I just, I wasn't hitting even, and this is why I've talked about this on the show at Nazium now, I was never hitting my protein intake. At least not consistent. Maybe I have one day, like of course, if you have four big Macs and 20 chicken McNuggets, you get pretty high up there on protein from that. But I mean, for the most part,

I was missing protein on a regular basis, but then over-consuming carbohydrates and saturated fat. And so I was getting like skinny fat. I would put on weight sometimes, but then I didn't feel like I really put muscle on and then I'd come right off because then I'd have three days in a row where I couldn't hit the calorie intake.

But it wasn't until I really started to look at all of my macros, did it really start to kind of come full circle. Same here, because, you know, the here's the thing with the junk food is, for me at least, I noticed, and I noticed with the clients as well, is I just wasn't able to perform as well in the gym. So I'd wake up in the morning,

and I'd think to myself, I need to have a high calorie breakfast. And so either I would go to McDonald's and get six bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits and whatever I could get over there and I get a lot of them. Or I'd be at home and I'd eat a big old bowl of fruit loops cereal with whole milk and then I'd have a bunch of eggs and toast and pancakes.

And I mean, I was dead after this. I would feel absolutely terrible. And my workout suffered. And I didn't really necessarily notice because this. I would feel absolutely terrible. And my workout suffered. And I didn't really necessarily notice because I was just concentrating on the calories. Once I started to clean it up a little bit, I felt so much better, my workout's got so much better. And I used to gain, and I gained more lean body mass.

Now, as far as protein is concerned, that light bulb went off for me when I started to pay attention to these weight gain shakes that I would make. The 2000 calories and I mixed this crazy gainer and then when I pay attention to the protein like 40 grams of protein. Yeah. This is no joke, 2000 calories. Barely any.

40 grams of protein. This is insane. This is all sugar and carbohydrates and garbage in there and I need these proteins. So protein became a big one for me. When I was started to chase that over calories, it did make a big difference. Well, you know what I also noticed too, is the just your digestion, right?

So if I would eat these big fast food meals or big junk food meals, even if they were really high calorie, 2000 calories and 50, 60 grams of protein, because of all the saturated fat and how much calories I was eating in one sitting, it would make me feel all lethargic and bloated for like the next four or five hours.

So I wasn't motivated to eat again. And it was such a, it was so weird when I switched over to like leaner stuff like chicken thighs and rice and avocados. Just whole natural foods. Yeah, whole natural foods. Sure, I was eating a quarter or a half of the calories, but what I found was within an hour or two,

I felt like my body had already digested that was starting to utilize that and I could eat again. And so I would be able to get two, three meals in in the same amount of time of doing the junk food. And then the food that I'm getting the quality of it was so much better and it was easier to hit the protein. Yeah, one year, I think I was, I want to say 50 or just turn 16.

My parents had gone out of the country for like I was like almost two months. And so we stayed with my grandma and my grandma, old school Sicilian grandmother. So her goal in life is to make you food. That's her favorite thing to do. And I'm in the middle of like trying to gain muscle. I've started working out at 14.

So by the time 16, I'm like, really into it. And she says to me, she goes, I don't want you to eat out no more. She goes, I'm gonna make you whatever you want. So I thought, oh, what are the two foods that are the best for building muscle that are reading the magazines? I'm like steak and rice.

I'm like, no, no. I want you to make me steak and rice. Now my grandma, if you tell her you want something food-wise, she can defeat it to you until you explode. So I had steak and rice, and then she threw out their stuff on top of like vegetables and eggs. Four or five times, it's basically as much as I wanted. Definitely breakfast, lunch, and dinner,

and then in between she'd always ask me if I wanted more. And I did. In that two month period, I gained more lean body mass for me in those whole natural foods, and I felt better than what I had done previously when I was eating lots of cereal and bread and sandwiches and junk food and juices and sodas, just to try to pack on the weight.

So when I cut out that junk food and had those whole natural foods, I just noticed, and here's the thing, the scale didn't move up like it did before, but the lean body mass definitely went up, and I noticed the performance was much more. Yeah, a lot more gradual, but your digestion, I'm sure it was way better with that. Now stronger.

Yeah, and it's like you bring that energy into your workouts too, which I feel is another thing that people tend to neglect a lot while they're going through this bulking process. Yeah, I would say if you're bulking, now junk food does play a small role, especially if you're somebody who, you have a really fast metabolism

and so junk food can be kind of palatable and so sometimes throwing it in is okay. But I would say this for bulking, probably 80% of the time you should be eating whole natural foods, 20%, maybe 10% to 20% of time you can have in that junk food. Don't make the mistake. A lot of people make, which is the flip, 80% of time it's processed food, 20% of time.

It's whole natural foods. That's a big mistake. So I used to have a rule that I said is like, okay, if I can get myself to my protein goal in the day through whole foods, I would allow myself to use junk food to pile the calories. That's a great strategy. So it was like, it was like, I had no early on junk food at all.

It was as much whole foods as possible, trying to get to my protein and take through whole natural foods. If I get there, then I would allow myself to do that. And then the other thing was, I would toggle back and forth between that or a protein shake. This is also how I use my protein shakes, by the way, too. So a lot of times people talk about having a protein shake right after your workout, or

it gets into your muscles so much faster. Again, I use my protein shakes as like an emergency. So it's not like integrated into my daily meal planning. My daily meal planning is always going whole foods ideally, that's where I'm pushing always. But I also know that sometimes should happen, you get busy, you don't get a break for four or five hours, and so a meal gets missed.

And so here I am at seven o'clock at night or whatever, I've had most of my meals, and maybe I missed one in the middle of the day because I worked for four, six hours, and so I'm behind 30, 40 grams of protein. This is where I allow the protein shake to go in there. Yes. So there's, I would set these little rules that ended up really helping me

always hitting my protein intake and then also not abusing the junk food. Yeah, when you're in a bulk eating that stuff, you can get away with it more often. But again, if I know that most of the time I'm going after whole foods and I make sure I get my protein and more often. But again, if I know that most of the time I'm going after whole foods and I make sure I get my protein and take through whole foods first,

then it was a lot easier. I like that because it's more behavioral-based than anything else. So if you hit your protein intake early with whole natural foods, then you're gonna have a little bit of room for the process stuff. And you hit the most important thing.

That's the, I mean, the second biggest mistake is just not tracking and hitting protein. And I would see this too with clients, when people would hire me, and it's obviously, it was much more common for people to hire me to wanna lose weight, but I would get the occasional person that wants to gain mass and size and strength

who really wants to pack on the muscle. And the first thing I would do is I would have them track and lo and behold, I'd have 150 pound man who's consuming a lot of calories and not even hitting 120 grams of protein. Not forgetting hitting one to one, but not even hitting 120 or 100. And it's because most of these processed foods

and junk foods are not very high in protein. So hit that first for sure, avoid tons of junk food, hit your protein, and then with food, it becomes much more successful. So a hack for that, right? I think another, and you've talked about this sal before about the whole made up breakfast foods, right? But if you look at breakfast foods in general,

it's mostly like carbs and sugary type of stuff. It's not very high protein. There's, so I think one of the biggest strategies that changed it all up for me was being able to stay ahead of my protein. So that's what I, when I get somebody who DMs me or asks me like, you know, I have a hard time hitting my protein intake.

The key is the first meal. That's what I think. I think that the rest of it, like lunch and dinner, I think is easy to get higher protein meals. It's breakfast. Because even if you have four eggs, which is a lot, or six eggs, which is a lot for... It's not as much protein as you think.

Yeah, it's not. It's almost 30-something grams of protein tops with six eggs and who eats six eggs? Most people eat two to five, maybe eight eggs. Even bacon doesn't have a lot of protein. So that, to me, is, you know, have a high protein, so maybe you ask, how, okay, well, this is what I would do, is almost always,

whenever we make dinner, we make enough dinner for leftovers. So, and we do a lot of, Ville, ground beef, ground turkey. So we have a lot of dishes. I always use that extra ground beef, turkey meat, and I throw that in a scramble of it. That's perfect. And that's an easy way to take a 20 gram like egg type of meal.

If you're just how were to have eggs by itself, you're getting 20 something grams. You throw in an extra four ounces of beef or veal or ground turkey and there now you take that all the way up to 50 something grams of protein and being ahead of the protein as the day goes on, it's much easier. Otherwise, you're playing catch-up all day. Okay, so here's one reason why. What Adam's saying is very, very true. One reason why is that protein is very satiating. It's better to eat protein consistently throughout the day from that standpoint than it is to

try and eat it all at once. What happens when you get to 6 p.m. and you notice, oh my gosh, I'm 100 grams of protein behind. It's gonna be hard to eat anything else. You eat 100 grams of protein at one sitting. That's a chore. Oh, it's your stuff. You don't wanna eat anymore. Now that's all you had.

You don't get your carbs, you don't get your fats or whatever. So it is important to start out with a good high protein meal. Staking eggs is my favorite. So I would have the steak from the night before. And then the next day I would have the steak from the night before, and then the next day I'd have my eight ounce of steak with my eggs, and I'd hit my protein targets.

And once you stay ahead of it, you're doing pretty good. 100%. Now here's the next big mistake, and this was me all the time. I think there's a lot of people here. Yes, and it was what they call it, Perma Bulk.

Perma Bulk, yeah. I was just bulking for too long. Now here's the thing with when you're eating in a calorie surplus at first, especially when you combine it with a really, really good workout. You do gain great strength and great muscle. But if you stay on it too long, that surplus, your body tends to get used to it. And then the gains are mostly body fat. And this is when you see people are bulking for three,

four, five, six months in a row. And they're like, oh, I packed on 15 pounds on the scale. And then they go get a body fat tax. They're like, oh, it's 10 pounds. That happened to me once. I remember I gained 30 pounds. And something like 20 something pounds of it was body fat. It was such a, it was like,

like some a bunch of me in the stomach. I think it too, like if you grew up skinny and like it's a complex, you sort of, you don't have around it. This is a tough one, right? To not, to go away. Just like if I was always trying to kind of get leaner and look leaner, like, to be able to bulk for them

is like very difficult. I think it's a psychologically one of those things that, you know, you have to do both. You have to be able to have that healthy break from constantly inundating your body with calories. Well, talking about the psychological part, I think there's, and this took me a long time before this hack came, which is,

and I do this to competitors myself. If I'm on a bulk and I see I notice like we kind of stall weight gain wise or even if I notice that we've strung like a couple weeks in a row of like constantly surplus surplus surplus. I love to throw a really low calorie day in there. Just the psychological break of your constantly overfeeding overfeed. It's the same concept with what I love to do with somebody who's on a cut all time. Diating so hard salads, eating hardly anything every single day to day, and then also I say, hey, guess what? Go ahead. We're going to eat all these calories.

The psychological break that it gives you when you're focused on that, it's always hard. The grass is greener on the other side, right? Always. So if you're somebody who's trying to be, you know, a bulk and you're a skinny person, it's hard. If you're somebody who's bigger trying to get lean, it's, you feel like it's just as hard. Yeah. Well, the studies that have been done on diet breaks actually show a physiological benefit as well. I don't know of any that have been done on bulking, but I'll speak from personal experience. But the ones that have been done on dieting show that people burn more body fat and preserve

more muscle when they include what they call in the study's diet breaks. So the way it works basically is, they would compare two groups of people, all of them on a diet to a low calorie diet to burn body fat, both of them for 12 weeks. One group, it's all the way straight through. The other group, every week or so, they'll take a day or two,

well they'll increase their calories, or they'll take a week after three or four weeks and increase their calories. Now at the end of the study, everybody's consumed relatively equivalent calories, but they find is that the group that does the diet break burns more body fat and preserves more muscle. Now, I don't know any studies that have been done on bulking,

but I can't speak from personal experience. In my experience, and this is for me and for clients, when I would include bulking breaks, I would gain more lean body mass and less body fat. It was like my body would become resensitized to calisthenics. I guess I assimilated it better here. Okay, so you talked to any competitor who's ever dieted and gotten down super, super shredded

and you asked them how they feel after the show is over and they can consume a lot of calories. That's feeling it. And they'll tell you it's the most anabolic they've ever felt in their life. It's like everything they eat, they're training, everything that they do just turns into muscle. It's like their body became

hyper-sensitive to calories and protein and wants to build muscle. You can, in my opinion, you can induce this in yourself when you're bulking by going on a bulk break. So after about three weeks or four weeks of bulking, I like to do three, four days of slightly below maintenance, a slight deficit. And then I go back on the bulk.

And what I notice is it's like my body is more sensitive to the calories again. I get that initial feeling that I got the first time I started the bulk. So bulking for too long, too consistently, you start to get diminishing returns, throwing those breaks.

Don't bulk. My experience, don't bulk for longer, getting a consistent basis than three or four weeks, throw in at least a few days of a break and then go back on. I love sharing this hack because the next mistake we're going to talk to about is being kind of like married to the scale. And when I, the reason why I like sharing this hack was this was, this was a major struggle for me for a really long time. As the skinny kid who was teased for being skinny for so long wanted to put weight on,

like Justin was looting to before, I would do anything just to put weight on. I was so afraid to take a day of not trying to eat it in a calorie surplus because of how fast my body would drop on the scale. And that was me watching the scale literally. I remember I used to weigh myself two, three times a day, every morning and every night for sure at least. And I would be so frustrated when I'd wake up the next day and see that I lost a pound.

And in my head, of course, because of my because of my insecure, it's muscle, right? A pound of muscle just fell off my body. I'm just, I'm, that's, and I know there's a lot of young people that are trying to build that think the same way too. And so then you hear guys like us give this advice of, oh, you're trying to bulk your skinny guy, try taking a day of fasting, or try taking a day of really low,

one day of really low calories, hell no. There was no way you would convince 22 year old me that that would be a good idea. No, you end up losing three, four, five pounds of water. Yes. And now you're like, this diet break was a terrible thing. You know, it's a disaster. Yeah, it was a disaster, I lost muscle.

Exactly. And so those that are listening right now and then that are hearing this advice, you have to be mentally prepared for that, right? If you eat significantly less calories for a day, there's a very good chance that your carbohydrate intake is going to be lower, your sodium is going to be lower, therefore your body is going to hold significantly less water, which for some of you, that could be several

pounds. I mean, when I was drinking well over a gallon of water a day, my body would fluctuate six to nine pounds through the night of just water, not muscle, not fat, just water being held and released. And so if you restrict calories for a day, very easily, you could sway that many pounds in a day. You didn't lose muscle. I promise you, you didn't lose muscle, and promise you you didn't lose muscle and you will benefit

when you go back to increasing the calories again. Right. Which takes us to the next one, which is paying attention to just the scale. The scale is the most important thing. This is how I measure all my progress because I'm bulking as long as the scale is going up and weight. That means I'm being successful. This is totally not, just suggest this false as people who are losing weight who only pay attention to the scale. I mean, literally, I remember I used to fall trapped to this.

What I would do is I would eat foods that intentionally made me hold more water. So I'd notice, oh, and I eat pizza. I gained a couple pounds. So now, pizza is a great bulking food, right? Burritos or I'd weigh myself at night rather than in the morning because I knew at night I'd be heavier.

You know, obviously the scale is only measuring away. It is not measuring lean body mass. It's not measuring just water. It's not measuring just body fat. It's measuring all of that. It's adding your clothes on top of it. It's adding everything. And so the scale can go up simply because

you're gaining body fat or simply because you're holding more water, which in my case, I ended up with, you know, inadvertently seeking out foods that made me hold more water because it would give me this positive number on the scale. It's not the BL end all at all. Yeah, I remember talking to a competitor and I used to be in a golds gym

where there was a lot of competitors and Adam shared a few of these stories before where you just see these guys like working so hard and to gain weight in the off season to really like boost up their lean muscle mass and you see them go through the peeling down process in the cut and you find out they literally only gain maybe like one pound of muscle through that entire process

from the beginning. This is like months in the making and it's just gotta be so frustrating. Oh dude, I went on this crazy bulk once. I think I weighed almost 240 pounds which is that's really heavy for a guy from my bone structure. I mean right now I'm heavy on about to maybe close to 215. So throw on another 25 pounds. And I remember I went through this crazy bulk and I was so proud of myself. I got to the highest weight I'd ever gotten before.

And then I got my body fat tested. And I subtracted the fat mass that I had gained. And I had gained like six pounds of muscle. I mean, it was such a small percentage of the total hard work and everything he put in. And I remember thinking to myself, like, dude, I got myself to gain so much body fat. Now I gotta go back and try and lose this body fat.

And there's no way I'm gonna keep that lean body mass on my body, insure enough, when I cut back down, I went right back to where I was before. So I literally went nowhere. All I did was got myself. I did a similar thing, Sal, too, with that, and that was the beginning of this for me. It's, but it didn't come full circle

till I actually truly competed. Like competing really changed this, how I communicate to clients this now, because when I, I did the same thing as you did, I did, I did this aggressive bulk. So I did a hydrostatic way, right? So where you get in the water and they, they, they test all this,

and they tell you the, and it's one of the more accurate ways to do this. And the goal was to put on as much, you know, masses I could as much lean body mass I could. And I did I put on like 20 something pounds also and I was stoked. Like I couldn't wait to go get measured again. And when I saw that I had literally added like one pound of muscle, you know, all those 25 pounds of, and so my body fat percentage was through the roof, like all of that bulking and aggressive training, all for one pound, like that is just ridiculous. That was the beginning.

Then when I started competing and I started, I mean, I was tracking sodium, I was tracking carbohydrate intake, I was tracking water every single day. And I was watching how much I would fluctuate. And then I was also, because this was back when I was tracking on Instagram and YouTube, I was taking these selfies first thing in the morning

and at night, and like really paying attention. So even though this part we're just talking about the scale, there's even a mental fuck with the visual. Because when you're loaded up with carbohydrates and you load up with water, it fills the muscle belly's up too. So there was this other part, not only the scale mess with my head, but then like so I'd be listening to you guys tell me this advice right now and I'd be like, I don't give a shit what you say. I'm looking at myself and I look small. I look smaller with all without without that water,

without the carbohydrates in me, and that would really scare me. It would scare the shit out of me. Not only did I see the scale go down, but I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I look way smaller. And for somebody who's trying to bulk and put size on, it really messes with your head. And it wasn't until I was tracking at that level to really see how much that can be manipulated. And by the way, this is,

this is, it's manipulated even more, the leaner you get. So if you're a really lean skinny kid who's trying to build muscle, this really fluctuates up and down. It does, it does fluctuate quite a bit. So here's my recommendation. My recommendation is to use,

if you don't have access to something that can test your body fat, and you can do the electronic impedance, although that's not very consistent. I prefer calipers, underwater wing, is the most consistent you'll get. Test your body fat so you can see the what kind of weight you're gaining. If you don't have that, measure your waist.

So for guys, you could put a tape measure around your waist for girls, you can also use your waist, but you can also measure things like your hip, your thighs, your upper arms. And then watch what your numbers do. So if the scale goes up 10 pounds, but you notice you also simultaneously gain an inch and a half around your waist, you probably gained a lot of body fat. But if your scale goes up 10 pounds and your waist measurement doesn't go up at all or

barely, then you probably gained a lot of lean body mass. Here's the number that I ended up with later on when I would do my bulks. Because gaining body fat is a part of bulking, by the way. I'm not trying to say that you only can gain lean body mass and gain no body fat. That's almost impossible, especially if you're an all-natural lifter. So here's the number that I started to work with later on. I would allow myself to gain a pound of body fat for every two pounds of muscle. That was it. So I wouldn't even do a one to one where I'd gain five pounds of muscle, five pounds of fat. That was even too much. I would say, okay, if I gained six pounds of muscle, then I would be okay

with gaining three pounds of body fat. Now, here's the deal. It's a slower process, but that's because gaining muscle is a slow process. That's the whole, that's why it's slow to begin with. Gaining body fat is fast and it's easy. So, that's something that you need to pay attention to. It is gonna be a slow process, especially if you're trying to gain muscle mass to fat at a two to one ratio. Now, the next thing was a big one for me that this one took a lot longer,

it took me a while to get wise to this, was that I just wasn't prepared for the next day. Now when I was trying to get lean, I would prepare more often. I would measure things out and figure out what I'd eat. But when it was bulking, I was just like, I'm just going to need a lot of food. Yeah, it's not going to be a problem. The issue with that was sometimes I would miss a meal, in which case I would be screwed, or I'm at work, and I normally would be able to go out and buy some food, but I got a meeting, I only have 15 minutes, my food's not with me, or I'd wake up late, and I'd miss breakfast.

Prepare your meals just like if you're dieting to cut. Same thing when you're trying to bull- I feel like protein is the most crucial for that. It's not just really easy to find a quality version of protein just easily accessible. So to really make that point of having those sort of prep days and people talk about this, but I've gone through that where it really makes a big difference if you take like at least one day on the weekend and you grill up a bunch of meat and different options

for you to then be able to store and use it for your breakfast, use it for whatever meals that you find appropriate for it, it helps tremendously. This conversation's really fun and interesting for me. It's like as we're doing this, I'm like thinking back this time. Reminishing?

I am, I'm reminiscing of like my whole fitness journey and just how a lot of things that I believed to be true that I took a hard stance in and a lot of things that I believed to be true that I took a hard stance in and a lot of that stuff has evolved and changed. And I was somebody who, like, once I figured out what a difference prepping made, that was like mandatory for me. Like if I trained clients like you had to,

like I was super snatched about that because it changed, it forever changed my results. Like I remember up until this point, and it was a long time, at least a decade of training with no real, like serious prep, not like what I got into later on. Like I started to dedicate Sundays to like all prep day and I would have, I would say I would have 75% to 80%

of all meals mapped out for the entire week. I always left some leeway there because what I found is if I prepped 100% of meals and it was some food. Yes, I would waste. So I learned to prep about 75% to 80% of all meals I'll be eating and then I can use like fillers like bars or shakes or being able to go get something

eating out that's a healthy choice to fill that in. But it made such a difference on my results. Not only getting to my goal, but how fast I got to my goal, knowing if I didn't, why I didn't, because it's all weighed, measured, and tracked. And so it became something that I like made all clients too. I just, you had to learn about your macros,

to learn, because there's all kinds of research around people when they estimate their own calories and food, they're always way off. So until they weigh out what six ounces looks like, or what 30 grams of something. You have to have a baseline. Right, and so that was something you had to do. Now where I'm at is I want my clients to do that.

I wouldn't force them to do that. And ultimately we talk about it on the show a time that in two to eating is the place that we want to get to, right? To where you don't have to weigh, measure to all this. But I think it's- But if you're chasing a goal. Yes. Yeah, then planning is- Crucial.

Yeah, it's so crucial. Yeah, in two to eating is great. Maintaining your health, maintaining general fitness, but if you're trying to cut or bulk and you don't plan, it's gonna be, it's good luck. Am I experienced it's almost impossible? Well, yeah, because you're behind the aball. It's inevitable that you're gonna have, you're gonna have a hard day where just,

you don't have time to make those meals in the day. And so having it ready and the fridge are ready, where you just have to heat it up, that's so crucial to making sure that you have success have time to make those meals in the day. And so having it ready in the fridge already, where you just have to heat it up, that's so crucial to making sure that you have success doing this. Yeah, now here's some staple foods that I used to love for bulking that are easy to prepare.

Ground beef, very, very easy to prepare in bulk. Chicken thighs, you can grill up a ton of chicken thighs and they're really, really good warmed back up. And rice, there you go right there. You got your proteins and your carbs and your fats, super, super easy. And then for vegetables, if you, another easy food to prep,

as you can buy frozen broccoli, frozen asparagus, you have boiled it up, put it in a big container. And it's very, very easy now to portion that out for your four meals or five meals or whatever to hit your calories. This is my favorite thing. Now, the last one, this is a big one. Okay, this is a big one for a lot of people,

especially when they're focused just on the scale and how much weight they're gaining. You gotta train properly, okay? Not just hard, not just beating yourself up in the gym and getting sore, but if you're bulking, you better be getting stronger. This is a big one. Like if you're bulking, you better be getting stronger. This is a big one. Like if you're bulking and gaining weight

and your strength is not going up consistently, you're probably gaining body fat. It's a bad indication. Yeah, you're probably gaining body fat. Really, you gotta understand one thing here, when you're trying to gain lean body mass, eating more calories, eating more protein, we'll do nothing for you if you don't have the right signal

that's being sent. If your body doesn't want to build muscle, then all those extra calories, extra protein, all that extra prep and planning all that stuff, you're just gonna gain body fat. It's not gonna go anywhere. But if you send the right signal and your body is primed to build muscle,

it's like a dry sponge where you soak up all that protein and all those carbohydrates and all those fats and calories and you end up packing on muscle. That's why I keep stressing digestion to this whole thing. It's such a vital portion of all this stuff. If you're not digesting your food properly, it's gonna affect when you go into the gym and you're all gassy and bloated,

you gotta go to the bathroom like half the time. I swear to God, this happens. You know, when you're eating all this junk, and so that's gonna happen, then the other days in between, I see a lot of times guys, well, you know, well, I don't wanna do any cardio or anything, so they're just laying around,

and they're not actually moving, which also promotes good digestion as well. Oh, and recovery, and all these things, recovery is a huge part of actually gaining muscles. So to, you know, to impede on all that, you're gonna have issues. So there's a couple of things that come to mind for me when it comes to making mistakes

when bulking and training wrong. And the first one that I find common, especially with the skinny kid who's trying to build, is what comes with that too, is a lot of times the over application of intensity. I just, as a young kid trying to build muscle, I figured the more I was hitting the weights, the more I was in the gym, the harder I left in the gym,

the more muscle I would build. And that's not necessarily true. You still need good programming, and you don't wanna get cut in what South calls the recovery trap where my body is constantly breaking down, breaking down, I'm never giving it time to recover. The other thing is out training your calorie intake.

That was another thing that I struggled with. I just was an active kid. I was moving around all the time. I played sports, I was outdoors a lot, and I was lifting six, seven days a week. You're talking about somebody who was burning 4,500 on a low day, 6,000 calories a day, in that range, to,000 calories a day,

in that range, to eat that many calories day in and day out and to be in a surplus was just hard as shit. So one of the best things I ever did was to back off of a six, seven day week of a program and drop down to a three to four day week program, and I started to put weight on. Yeah, the best program that we have, the best two programs I would say that we have

for mass gaining would be maps in a ballock and maps aesthetic hands down. Maps in a ballock for most people, maps aesthetic for more advanced lifters. Both programs really are tailored to stimulate muscle growth, like muscle hypertrophy, maps in and a ballic in particular, and it's centered around three full body workouts a week.

There's obviously much more that goes into it, and then there's trigger sessions on the off days. But when I started training like that, it was like I turned on a light switch, I'll never forget, you know, I went from the crazy split and going to failure on every lift and the insanity with the workouts to, you know, a structure that was more like maps on a ball,

and it literally felt like I turned on a light switch, all of a sudden, and I felt it within the third workout, like, whoa, I feel different, I'm stronger, what's going on? Now I'm meeting these extra calories and it's going to lean body mass. It makes a huge difference. If you don't train properly, nothing else you do will matter. All you're gonna do is pack on body fat. The training aspect is very, very important. The easiest

way to measure this is, are you getting stronger? If you're bulking, you should be getting stronger. You should not be maintaining strength and you definitely should not be losing strength. And the other thing I think about Tuesday, what I did is a young kid is skipping out on all the big compound movements, man. Don't avoid those, don't avoid those because they're hard. Don't avoid the hard exercises and stick to just machines. You absolutely wanna have those big exercises in there. I know that a lot of young guys that I coach

that were in their 20s or teens trying to put muscle on, they didn't squatting, they didn't like dead lifting, they didn't like overhead press, maybe they bench pressed, but a lot of those big compound movements. And I, so I would say maps in a ball, just because I think that's where you start and then maybe you progress to aesthetic. I think most people would benefit with that type of program three days a week, full body routine. You're doing that. I mean, most young, young guy, and I know there's obviously girls too that are listening to that.

Well, a lot of women want to bolt through. There's a lot of women that are trying to build their butt, their lower half, and they're struggling to put size on. If you, three times a week squatting and deadlifting and doing movements like that, which is an anabolic, to me, that is, that's gonna promote more growth and aesthetic or any of the other programs that we have.

Yeah, totally. I mean, bulking properly for men produces a more muscular, balanced, stronger looking physique for women, it produces more firm curves, more glutes, more hamstrings, better posture. So bulking is for, definitely for both sexes. And proper bulking is really about gaining lean body mass and minimizing fat gain. And also, again, I'm going to emphasize this again, getting stronger. Again, if you're bulking properly and you're training properly,

you should find yourself lifting heavier and heavy. Maybe not every week, but you should be stronger than you were before you started bulking. That's probably the best way you can gauge your progress or whether or not your work out successful or not. Look, MindPump is recorded on video as well as audio. You can come find us on YouTube, MindPump Podcast. You can also find all of us on social media. You can find us on Instagram and now on parlor, you can find

Justin at MindPumpJust and you can find me at MindPumpSouth, Adam at MindPumpAtom and Doug, the producer at MindPumpDuck. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for formants and maps aesthetic, nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sour, animal, and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.