 First question is from Dan Granucci. How do I put on muscle without putting on a lot of fat? I have a million dollar question. Mm-hmm. This is a secret. This is a big one because part of putting on muscle or part of the formula for putting on muscle has to do with increasing your calories, right? You want to be in a surplus of calories to provide your body with the nutrients it needs to build muscle. Now the challenge, of course, is will this surplus be shuttled to muscle or will it just be turned into body fat? And again, that's a tough question. The fact remains that storing body fat is an automatic function of the body. If you take in extra calories and do nothing else, your body very easily will take those calories and turn them into body fat. What we have to do is figure out... It's an insurance policy. Exactly. 100%. And so we have to figure out what can we do to ensure that these extra calories go somewhere else? Because remember, extra calories don't just evaporate into thin air. They have to be converted and stored into something else. Again, this is a rule of physics and thermodynamics. Now the first thing, and I'll focus on this one, that you need to do is send a proper muscle-building signal. If your body wants to build muscle because of the workout that you provided in your life, the workout sends the right signal, everything's appropriate, then those calories, or at least a portion of those calories, will get turned into muscle. If that signal doesn't happen, the default is to store more body fat. For that point, that's why I love to change my routine while I'm also switching over into like... Send the loudest signal? Yeah, so if I'm getting ready to switch over into a bulk or transition out of a cut or a maintenance phase, I also like to transition into a new program. So it's just a whole new stimulus. And that way, I almost, you know, I don't guarantee, but I better insurance that the extra calories... Is a muscle-preserving effect. Right. We'll get allocated over into building muscle instead of storing body fat. But if you're in a bulk, it's really really... And if you're measuring on a daily or weekly basis, it's almost impossible to add muscle without putting a little bit of body fat on. Now, if you measure every three weeks to a month, and you stretch that out long, it's actually very reasonable if you do like many cuts and many bulks in there, right? So if you run in a surplus for a couple of weeks, and then you have a two, three day cut, and then at the end of the month, there's a really good chance that maybe the scale stayed about the same, and you gained two pounds of muscle, and you lost two pounds of body fat, and you've done exactly what you're trying to do. But if you get hung up on measuring every single day or every week even, and then you freak out because you see the body fat go up a little bit, I mean, that's going to happen when you're watching that close. Yeah, wouldn't you say, I mean, drawing this out for an elongated period of time versus like trying to do a more extreme approach to this would make a big difference as well in keeping the body fat low? Yeah, and it really does depend on the individual and the circumstances. Typically, yes, but there is evidence to show that sometimes a shorter, more aggressive bulk might actually be more beneficial. It really does depend on the individual. You know, here's the truth, and this is what makes it so challenging. You don't need that many extra calories to add muscle to your body. Now, some of you might be thinking, how does this make any sense? I thought you had to, you know, dramatically increase your calories. Okay. First and foremost, if you're the, like most people, you're an average lifter, you're working out, okay, let's just imagine you're doing everything right. Gaining one pound of lean body mass in a week is a lot. Okay, that's a lot of lean muscle. That's four pounds in a month over the course of two months. That'd be eight pounds of lean muscle. That's pretty aggressive. That's actually probably expecting more than what most people can achieve, except unless you're a beginner and you get those kind of new beginnings. But just for the sake of argument, let's say that you're gaining a pound of lean muscle in a week. Now, if you do the math in terms of how many grams of protein and calories that requires, it's not much at all. We tend to think we need to have all kinds of extra calories to make that happen. Now, here's where the challenge comes from. Extra calories on top of that also, believe it or not, sends a small muscle building signal. Just adding calories when you're working out, even above and beyond what you need, also might trigger a little bit of extra muscle. And then the second part that makes it hard are the strength gains. Extra calories will make you stronger in the gym, even if you don't gain extra muscle. This is why you see power lifters oftentimes have higher body fat percentages than body builders even in the off season, because adding body fat, I've done this, right, where I'm gaining weight on the scale and I'm probably not gaining a lot of lean body mass, but my strength keeps going up. It's all the extra calories, extra energy, body fat can change leverage, make joints feel more secure. Some lifts respond better to this than others. Like, if I just gain weight, my squats tend to go up no matter what versus my dead lifts, which not necessarily. And it can be different from person to person. So this is kind of the balancing act in the challenge. Now, the leaner you are, the more likely it is that you're going to need to gain body fat just to gain muscle. So if you're, and I'll use an extreme example, if you're 5% body fat and you're in male, you're shredded, right, you got like ripped abs and you might have veins in your quads and all that stuff. Your body may need to gain body fat just to gain muscle, because that lean of a body fat percentage for a lot of guys isn't optimal for building muscle. So also consider that. Now, what if you're really overweight? What if you're, you know, body fat is a man, you're 20% body fat? Well, you could probably get away with not gaining any body fat and gaining muscle. In fact, what oftentimes happens, if you do it right, you might actually lose a little body fat while gaining muscle, because you've got so much extra stored energy on your body. But I think the keys are this, right? Make sure you're doing everything right, getting good sleep, your workout is really effective. You're not overdoing it, you're not underdoing it. You're noticing strength gains. It's appropriate. Like Adam said, you change the phase that you're in to kind of send the loudest muscle building signal, and then increase your calories, but do it minimally. I would say probably, you know, two to 300 above maintenance is probably more than enough to get that lean body mass to come on your body. And then the last thing I'll say is to be patient. What always used to screw me up with bulks was one, you know, if I gained four pounds in a month on a bulk, that was too slow for me. Even though, even if it was all lean body mass, I'm looking at the scale going, Oh, I could gain more than that. And I would aim for twice as much in a month. It would be easy for me to put on 10 pounds on the scale in a month. Was that muscle? No, it was just a bunch of bloat and body fat from really being aggressive with the bulk. So those things I think we'll give you that we just talked about, we'll give you the best chances of gaining lean body mass without putting on too much body fat.