 Hello everyone, welcome to Mind Pump. We're going into the holidays. Chances are you're going to eat a little extra this year. And if you're not careful, you might get a little fluffy. However, you may want to consider bulking but doing it the right way. The average person may be thinking, why should I bulk at all? Like my goal is just to be lean, fit and healthy. Bulking when you do it right is actually quite incredible. Like if you do it right, you're going to increase your strength. You're going to build more muscle. You're going to feel better. You're going to boost your metabolic rate. Like a bulk done properly produces some pretty favorable results even if your goal is just to be lean. We're going to teach you about how to do that, how many calories to eat, what kinds of foods to eat and everything you need to know to bulk properly. All right, enjoy the show. If you bulk properly, you really can perform some magic on your body. You build muscle, speed up your metabolism, have tons of energy. Here's the problem. Most people do it wrong. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to bulk the right way and how to avoid doing it the wrong way. Yeah. Who's idea of this, Andrews? Don't dirty bulk. Yeah. So I think selfishly, he just wants to hear this. He wants to bulk himself. He's getting ready to go to bulk. You know what it tells us? The analytics says that we should do a bulky episode. You know what I was thinking about? Like we talk a lot about, because this is the number one goal, right? It's to lose body fat. So cutting and how to do that right and how so many people do it wrong and what happens to be wrong. Just as many people bulk wrong. You know what I mean? It's also, just like with cutting, there's a right way to do it. And then the wrong way gets you very little, if it results at all, in the direction you actually want to go. You can be quite, it can mean illusion in terms of what you think you're actually accomplishing with your bulk. And it can set you back quite a bit. So I actually think this is one of the bad things. You know, we talk about the pros and cons of like the bodybuilding industry and how it's brought so many good things to the space, right? The bodybuilding community. But this is one of the things I think that I blame us for that, because when you look at them as like, they're the ultimate cutters and bulkers, right? Like where we look for like who's doing it the best. Like you would look to the bodybuilding community and in the bodybuilding community, it's still very popular to dirty bulk to, because you get so shredded, you have so much more you can get away with. So the average consumer, and I mean, this is where the birth of cheat days and cheat weeks and yeah, that type of philosophy came from the bodybuilding community and it's blood its way into like, you know, general population of, oh, like it's now got out that bulking and cutting is a good thing to do. And so who do we look to? We look to the people that are the professional in that arena, which is the bodybuilders. Oh, how do they do it? And unfortunately, most of them, of course I'm over generalizing there is always a percentage of people that I think are doing it the better, safer, healthier way. But for the most part, it's really, it's so common practice that competitors would be talking about and showing pictures of what they were going to be destroying like after a competition. Like they go shopping like weeks in advance and they would stock. I mean- It's also, it's also because bodybuilders, especially competitive ones, have really good muscle building genetics. Many of them diet so hard before a show that they, dare I say, can get away with more of a dirty bulk, if you will, than the average person, because their body's like basically so- That's exactly why. It's because they can eat like an absolute asshole for an entire week straight and still stay leaner than the average person who's trying to lose body fat in the gym. And then the other part of this is when people do decide, okay, I'm gonna try and gain some good weight. I'm gonna try and eat in a surplus. It's hard to not go from, hey, I'm always watching what I'm eating so I don't gain too much weight to, hey, I'm gonna bulk and build muscle. It's hard to do that without going, oh my God, the reins are off. My gates are open. Let's go, right? Like that's the name of the game. And you get away with it for like a week, right? Or two, where you eat so much food and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not gaining tons of body weight. Well, it's a lot more justifying, I think that happens too. It's like, well, I just need the calories. And so it's not really, there's not like a quality control in terms of a lot of the types of calories you consume. I just need more because I need to gain the weight. And they are seeing things move in terms of the scale. So they'll see like some weight gain. But really assessing what type of weight they are putting on is where they're totally missing the mark. What's up, everybody? Black Friday starts right now. All maps programs, 60% off. All maps bundles, 60% off. Everything's 60% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code blackfriday. And also here's the giveaway for today's episode. The RGB bundle, maps metabolic, maps performance, maps aesthetic. I'm gonna give one of those away for free. To one of these people, you have to leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. You also have to subscribe to this channel. You also have to turn on notifications. And then if we like your comment, we'll notify you in the comment section. And you got free access to the RGB bundle. Everybody else, it's Black Friday. Our programs are heavily discounted. Once again, mapsfitnessproducts.com use the code blackfriday. All right, here comes the show. Well, speaking more towards the bodybuilding community and the psychology that was going on, I remember being really fascinated with, as I was eating this crappy food, like a day or two afterwards, I was feeling and looking better too because you were so depleted. You went from starving. So there's a bit of a psychological phenomena that happens too is that even though- You get a confirmation bias. You do, you get a confirmation bias that, oh, this isn't just okay. This is good for me. My workouts are better. I look better. Like you have to kind of stay there because like we talk about all the time, right? It's unhealthy to be 3% body fat as it is unhealthy to be 30% body fat. And so, and the body knows this, right? And so it totally responds to the, like this flood of calories. Finally, it's like, oh, thank God. You don't feel down. Yeah. And so you feel good. It actually takes a while of eating like that before you start to go the other direction. So it is a bit of a confirmation bias. Totally. And they're the ones giving out the information. Now the average person doesn't do that, right? The average person doesn't get down to 3% body fat. The average person, in fact, the average person may be thinking, why should I bulk at all? Like my goal is just to be lean, fit and healthy. So bulking when you do it right is actually quite incredible. Like if you do it right, you're going to increase your strength. You're going to build more muscle than you did before. You're going to feel better. You're going to boost your metabolic rate. Like a bulk done properly produces some pretty favorable results. Even if your goal is just to be lean. Even if your goal is just to be lean, having more strength, more muscle and a faster metabolism will only make that easier. And then of course, if you want to build muscle, well, yeah, now this is where you need to go. But also it feels good. Like being in a good bulk, you'll have more energy, you'll feel more calm and you'll feel better than you did at maintenance or at a deficit. If you do it right and if you do it wrong, it'll feel terrible. Well, you're feeding the muscle. I mean, you're building. Your focus is on building and gaining strength. And I think that at some point, we talked about this as needing to be rebranded at some point in bulk because I know for, especially for the female side, it's like that's another deterrent is just like the name of it. Well, I don't want to go to a bulk. And it just sounds like you're going to turn into this big meatball. But really it's your building muscle. That's the focus. So you're not depleted. You're not like refraining from feeding yourself as you're training and being active. You're promoting the building materials for you to then really kind of utilize that and help to build muscle. I also think it's another area where I don't actually think that we all the way fully understand all the benefits of this too. I mean, the metabolism is such an interesting thing. And when the idea of eating the same foods all the time consistently to me, just it seems a bit obvious that wouldn't be ideal and that challenging the metabolism in ways where you overfeed it a little bit for first small periods of time and then you underfeed it small. It's very logical. To me, like every other system of the body, yeah, that's kind of what it's been. We've started to piece together about our bodies. Your immune system is like that. Your muscular system is like that. All these systems, I would think that it would, regardless of what you want to happen aesthetically from it, whether you know, bulking or cutting is gonna make you look a certain way. I think it's healthy to challenge the metabolism north and south. If you do a bulk properly and for the right person, so the context works, they will notice improvements in hormone profile. So in fact, if I worked with a male or female client where they had hormone issues and they were chronically dieted or overtrained, a bulk was a part of the protocol. And that is, it was a key part of the protocol to help regulate and balance the hormones. And I would always work with a functional medicine practitioner in conjunction, but that was part of the process. You'll notice improvements in sleep. You'll notice improvements in mood and libido. In fact, eating a chronic deficit or being overtrained or both at the same time kills your libido. So when you do this right, you feel amazing. I used to love doing this, especially with female clients because I think women in particular are more likely to shy away from eating in a calorie surplus or trying to, at least planning to. And so when we would do it, they were always a little apprehensive, but then they were always two weeks into it, three weeks into it, like, whoa, I feel so good. Oh my God, this is amazing. I have so much energy, I feel so great. But again, if you have to do this the right way, because it's really easy to go from, well, I'm eating X amount more calories a day, I'm eating more than I did before, I feel good. You know what, let me slide in that bag of chips. Let me have some of that pizza. Let me have some of that burger. And that doesn't really affect me negatively at first. So I'm gonna keep going. And then it's easy, it's very easy to go from doing it the right way to doing it the wrong way. And then you get all kinds of, you get all the negatives that anybody gets from overeating, you get lots of negatives. You don't build the muscle. You know, doing it right, doing a proper bulk results in minimal fat gain. Now fat gain is basically inevitable with a good bulk. You're gonna gain some body fat or maybe not gain any body fat. Definitely not gonna lose body fat for the most part. But you could expect to gain some, but it's gonna be minimal. Like what you shouldn't expect is that you gain 10 pounds on the scale and half of its body fat. Like that's not a very good bulk. Or what I used to do when I was younger, I gained 10 pounds and eight of it was body fat. And I gained maybe two pounds of lean body mass, maybe one of its water. So I gained like one pound of lean body mass. This is what happens to a lot of people when they try to go in a bulk and they do it the wrong way. You know, I'm helping my sister-in-law out right now. And I'd like to hear maybe how you guys communicate this because back to my point about, I feel like we still are still learning so much about the metabolism. And I still haven't figured out how to communicate what happens in this case, right? And tell me if you guys experienced this, I imagine you have. Where I have a client like her who's eating a thousand calories a day and she's exercising and she's moving. She's moving seven to 10,000 steps a day on average. She's eating around a thousand calories and she consistently stays there. And she just can't seem to budge or move anything and she wants to lose weight. And I've had this happen so many times where I take a client like hers, slowly convince her that we're gonna go on a bulk, but she really has never really done. You know, she's always trying to, either she's not paying attention, not tracking, not eating, not exercising, doing anything, right? And putting on body fat or she's in a cut. That's like the two modes, right? Never a scheduled plan. Yeah, never like a structure of, I'm gonna increase calories and try and build muscle. That's never been a part of the strategy. So trying to explain that to her and tell her the things that we need to focus on. Of course, it's like we always talk about the protein and things like that, cause she's way under. But where I'm getting at is this phenomenon that happens where I get someone like her to start to be focused like that for let's say four weeks of this like bulking and training and we get her calories just say up to like 1500 or something with not gaining any weight. And then also explaining to them like, that's such a huge win for us. And then bringing them back down to where they were and then all of a sudden they just start to drop weight. Like that, how do you communicate what is going on there? Cause we obviously didn't build enough muscle to metabolize that many more calories. You know what I'm saying? Like, I've seen this happen time and time again. That's why I think this is so important to communicate this because I know there's a lot of people that listen that they do not have any desire to go up and wait. And the thought of adding calories seems so counterintuitive. Yeah, the best explanation I've heard because again, the metabolism is very complex. Okay, so it's not as easy as going, you have this much lean body mass, therefore you'll burn this many calories. It doesn't work that way. We know this. We know that you could have two very similar people and have two completely different basal metabolic rates. So the best explanation I've heard is that you have a range of calories that your body will burn with the same lean body mass. And your body can decide based off its environment and the signals it's being sent to become more or less efficient. Yeah, let's break that down a little bit. Meaning like environment, meaning like, how stressed are you right now? That's right. Are you sleeping really well? Your hormone profile, you're stressed all day long. Yeah, your sleep, your exercise or the kind of exercise you're doing, that'll tell your body, hey, be more efficient with calories. So try to store every single one we possibly can and don't burn any extra ones or be less efficient with calories. Hey, this is an environment where we could totally be less efficient. What's more important is that we fuel our bodies for energy or maybe produce heat or whatever so you can become less efficient. So it's more or less efficient with calories. So it's like having an AI car that can decide to burn more or less gas with the same size engine. It's almost like survival mode or thrive mode. It's like one or the other, it's like it flips. Like when your body's like, it's just not available. So we have to keep this energy, we have to store it up. Oh, well, it's been stressed from so many different things. Lack of sleep, stress at work, stress in your home. Too much exercise. Stress or exercise like crazy. And so it's under attack constantly. And then on top of that, you are nutritionally stressing it by giving it very little calories. Very low calories also normally equates to nutrient deficiencies because you're not getting proper new fissions or nutrients that your body needs to function properly. And so it's got this stress all the way across or so what you're telling it is like, hang on to any sort of energy. It's just gripping for your life. Yeah, because you're hitting it. I don't know how many times this happened where I actually have just dialed in a few of those things, feed this person a little bit and actually on the way of a calorie increase, see weight going on. Have you ever seen this happen? Where all of a sudden I go, hey, training seven days a week plus the hour cardio I've seen today, we're gonna drop that all the way back to like three, four day straight training. No intense cardio, just walking. And I actually want you to bump your calories and then we start to see and they go down in body fat, that's the trip. Yeah, explain that. I've seen that before. And again, it's the body adapting and becoming more or less efficient. Look, here's the bottom line. The bottom line is the environment of a calorie surplus or the environment of a bulk, proper bulk with the proper type of exercise is the environment that gives you more energy, improves vitality, builds muscle and builds strength. So that's the environment. If you're trying to boost your metabolism, balance your hormones, improve energy, if you're trying to build muscle, that happens in a bulk environment. That's when that happens. All of those things are very challenging to create in an environment where the calories are not at a surplus or almost impossible. Some people argue it's impossible. I don't necessarily think so because the body has an interesting way of adapting in some cases, but it's very hard. Like try to speed up your metabolism, build muscle, increase your energy in a calorie deficit. Good luck with that. That's like trying to turn lead into gold, right? It's like alchemy. Right, so this is the environment. So if you're trying to get any of those things, you're like, look, I want more energy. I want more strength. I want to build muscle. I want a faster metabolism. So being lean is easier. Well, then the bulk is for you. It's not just for somebody who wants to just gain weight on the scale, right? So I think it's important that we talk about the right way to do this because although calories are very important when you're talking about a bulk, if you ignore everything else, then you're gonna be in trouble. What ends up happening is you just look at the weight gain on the scale and there's really no quality to the calories and you don't focus on your workouts like you should because your workouts are gonna send the right signal to say, hey, extra calories, turn it into muscle. Otherwise, extra calories turn into body fat, right? So all these things have to be considered. So I think we should talk about the factors of a proper bulk. The first thing is the type of calorie surplus or how much of a calorie surplus. In my experience, it's about three to 600 calories over maintenance. That seems to be right where you get, if when everything else is done right, you get that sweet spot of muscle gain with minimal or no fat gain. And I think there's an individual variance to that, of course, but I think that's a valid range because anything in excess of that like 1,000 or so, it's like, your body is just, at that point, like we don't wanna get to the point where we're gaining too quickly. And I think drawing it out further is really gonna help your body to process it all and synthesize and utilize it for what the work you're presenting it with. So to kind of start on a more of a smaller side and really see how your body starts to kind of trend with that, I think is a special idea. Yeah, well, here's what's important with that. It has to be consistent. Cause I know that there's people out there, especially guys who are like, well, if I'm not at 1,000 plus calorie surplus, I don't gain any weight. Well, look, I've worked with a lot of people and I've had experiences with myself. The truth is it's not consistent. The reason why they think that is cause they could do 1,000 calorie surplus five days a week, but then two days a week, and really it averages out to like 400. I was just gonna address this. The same thing was going through my head when Justin was saying that is, and the reason why I don't like giving like a generic number like this is, I think the first step before even saying this is that most people don't do is to actually track themselves for a couple of weeks. Yeah, how do you know what a surplus is? Yeah, at any time I'm about to go on any sort of a cut or a bulk where I'm intentionally trying to gain weight or to lose body fat. The first thing I always do is recalibrate. And to this day, okay, 40-something years old been doing this for 20-something years, it's fucking different every time. So to think that you- Like you knew what it was before, so let's do it again. Yeah, it's almost never the same. My steps are changing, my daily habits and routines have changed, my sleep is different, my eating patterns have been different, the amount of lean body mass I have this time versus the last time that I was 230 pound different, there's so many factors that change that number. And so I throw all of it out the window and just go, I'm gonna eat when I'm hungry, I'm gonna make good choices when I do that, I'm gonna be dialed for two weeks and I'm just gonna see where my weight is. And the goal is to not go up or go down really. And I want a two-week shot because of the ebb and flow of day to day, right? Because of water up and down. So you know what your new basal metabolic rate is? Yeah, so I have a good starting point of, okay, when I eat this many calories a day on average, it maintains my weight. Okay, now let's go increase three or 600. And to your point, Sal, now I probably don't need 1,000 calories even for, but you're right. Kind of a generic rule I always did when I had a hard gainer and that would tell me like, oh, I add calories or I eat surplus, I go, oh, at 1,000. You know, I'll give a crazy number because they always underestimated what they were moving and they always overestimated what they were consuming. And so that was a good general rule. And they didn't realize that Saturday because they slept in or whatever, that calorie deficit really screwed up the rest of the week. So that's number one with this. Just like with the cut, with the bulk, figure out how many calories you're burning to stay at your weight and then add three to 600 calories to that every day. You gotta be every single day consistent because you could do this five days a week, Saturday and Sunday be under and actually negate the bulk completely and find yourself at maintenance. So it needs to be consistent every single day. Now, part of that is meal prep. Now, I'm gonna argue that meal prepping, I'm gonna make an argument, I think it's so important for cutting as well as bulking, but I'm gonna argue it's even more important for bulking because it's really easy to go off the rails with a bulk. It's really easy to not have food prepared for you and where you have your meals and then you're like, oh, I gotta eat, well, I'm on a bulk. Easy to go get that frozen. There's an intensity that you need the food, you need the calories and so if it's not there ahead of time, well, you'll grab whatever's the most quick and convenient because it's justified in your pursuit of having to get those calories by all means necessary. So this is why I used to make this rule for myself that before I were to do a burger or something like that, I have to hit my macro targets first. So because I also, if there was gonna be time I get some metabolic flexibility. It's in a time where I'm bulking so if there's a time that I get to have burger and fries or something like that, like I'm gonna normally do it on a calorie surplus type of week, right? So when I do that though, what I don't wanna do is go, oh, it's lunchtime right now. Oh, I have an eight for like four hours. Now the craving's okay, no, I'm gonna go run through five guys. It's like, no, I've only got X amount of grams of protein in for the day. I need to hit that target first through like good plan meal and then, okay, if I'm still hungry later on then I allow the additional calories to come like that because I know that's the other thing that people are gonna ask, okay, you guys are recommending 300, 600 calorie surplus. Where do those calories come from? Where do you guys prefer them from fat? Do you prefer them from carbs? Do you prefer them from protein? I would normally push someone in a protein in two kit until we push over, let's say, you know, one and a half, yeah, one and a half grams. I'd push all the way up to one and a half. I'd still push towards protein all the way up to one and a half grams per pound of body weight or until they are digestive issues, right? So if I have a client, sometimes where I push them, you know, just up to one or a little over a one and we're eating their surplus in protein and they come back and they tell me things like constipation or they feel like it's like a rock gas. Yeah, or gas or anything. Okay, then I would go to probably carbohydrates as a source of their calories. But typically I like to push towards the protein. Well, I'll tell you, for bulking for me, meal prepping was a game changer because when I didn't, I either under eight and didn't realize it or I'd try to make up for it by eating these huge, just garbage filled meals. And then you didn't hit protein and then you over consumed carbs, sugar. And I just gained tons of body fat. But when I did it right, I knew like, oh, 3,300 calories, like here's 3,300 calories, here's my meals. And then the bulk was like, it was muscle and I felt so good. So meal prep is really important for bulking, especially for somebody who thinks that they have lots of room like, oh, I can bulk, I'm gonna go crazy with this. Like, you know, what'll end up happening? And this used to happen to me as I gained 20 pounds in a bulk, then I'd do a cut and I'd go back down to where I was before. I was like, well, that was a big waste of time. Yeah, all that effort for a little bit. Yeah, here's another thing. Start your day off early. If you're trying to eat high calories, you're really gonna be screwed if your first meal is 10 a.m., okay? You get behind the April. So having a good meal in the beginning sets you up. Otherwise, you play this catch-up game where you start hitting the end of the day and like, oh my God, dinners left, I have 1,700 calories left. The biggest hack for me for this as you know, considering myself a hard gainer and even like talking to any clients that struggle with getting enough protein take was making breakfast always the leftover dinner plus eggs. Just eggs send to go like almost every meal. I don't care if I'm having bison, turkey, ground beef, chicken, like I just, for dinner, we're making three, four X the serving amount that I need for dinner that night. The leftovers then add scrambled four eggs and some cheese on there. You can handle cheese. You can throw some rice in your set. And you've got yourself a super high protein meal that tastes bomb and easy because eggs are really easy to whip up and then to heat up the food that you was preparing the night like that was, and if that's not first meal, second meal, like I love, I know we work with creatures of habit now and that's now become like one of my favorite staples morning but those two is a one and two type of meals to start your projection on protein for the day high before noon. That was such a hack for me to go by noon I need to have X amount of protein in. If I did that, I always hit my protein taste. This is also good for regulating your blood sugar. Right, totally. By the way, that's a great first meal is either depending on how many calories you need. One, creatures of habit packets, let's say 30 grams of protein, 40 grams of carbs, I think eight grams of fat and some scrambled eggs or two packets. You have two packets of it. You got 60 grams of protein, 80 grams of carbs. You have a high calorie breakfast and it's easy and whatever. But yeah, start your day off well because what I would always screw up or when I would see clients screw up with a bulk is when they'd get behind the eight ball and then they get home from work and they're like, they have to make up all these calories. It always ended up turning bad that way. A blessed just feel like crap. Like you eat a huge meal before you go to bed which some people would do to try and make up for the lack of calories. Then their sleep was interrupted and. Totally getting into sleep which is all part of this whole process of like being able to build. Like you need adequate sleep for all the magic to happen. And so to cut into that with eating too late, I know for me is a huge factor to that. Like it's gonna totally like disrupt and then you're gonna be behind because now you're gonna make different decisions the next day too, when you get the cravings when you're lacking sleep. So it's just one of those things that kind of spirals. I wanna, as we're going through these, I also wanna give like these either hacks or epiphanies that we had through going through all the different bulks we had. And one of the first ones that come to mind, and again, I'm reliving this conversation, I just had with my sister-in-law and we're trying to technically bulk, right? We're trying to increase her calories. And something that is, I had no idea until I actually really started tracking like this was how little of meat you get when you eat out. Pretty standard, almost all restaurants and like sandwich shops. So that's four ounces of meat is what they serve. So you get a big old Togo's turkey avocado sandwich which used to be like one of my favorite sandwiches. It's like 25 grams of protein. Bro, it's four ounces, not even that. It's like, and part of that's from the bread, right? So it's the worst. They're all like that. So they all, the four ounces is the standard serving size of meat on a large sandwich, not on a regular or small, on a large sandwich. So understand that. If you go to Chipotle in places like that, four ounces is what's in the spoon. So doubling your meat up on servings that you're having or getting it inside of a bowl instead of having it on a bunch of bread which ends up taking up 800 calories of your day of carbohydrates and then now you're high on your calories but low on your protein. Like understanding that when I made food choices for lunch made a huge difference for me because I was a big sandwich eater for most of my life and always struggled with hitting my protein intake. Totally, which takes us to the next point which is eat high protein. So of the macronutrients, now they all contribute to muscle gain in some way or another, but protein is directly related to muscle gain and if you have high calories but your protein is low, you're not gonna build as much muscle than if your calories are the same, high, but your protein is high. It just builds more muscle. And since the goal here is not to gain body fat but rather build muscle, speed up the mat, metabolism, do all that great stuff, then we wanna prioritize protein. So really what you do is your meals should be built around your protein. So if you know you need to eat 150 grams of protein a day, let's say that's your body weight. So you wanna eat your body weight and grams of protein and you're gonna have three meals that day. Well, each meal needs to have 50 grams of protein. So make sure you have your 50 grams of protein there and then you organize your meal around that. What you don't wanna do is just look at the total meal and not consider the protein because again, if you eat a 3,000 calorie diet and your protein's low versus a 3,000 calorie diet and your protein's high, one of them builds more muscle than the other and one of them results in less body fat. This is quite proven. There's many, many studies on this. So your protein needs to be the kind of center focus of your diet. Okay, also an important point around that. This was also something that kind of blew my mind when I started. Okay, when you say 50 grams of protein, 50 grams of a protein meal, that's a big protein meal for the average person. You need to wrap your brain around what that looks. An eight ounce chicken breast is only like 36 grams. So think about it, the eight ounce of those big old boxes. Yeah, so you need like one and a half of those to get to hit your 15 grams. So that was the other thing is like you get clients who'd be like, oh, I eat lots of protein because they eat meat at every serving. Or two eggs for breakfast. Right, they have exactly, they have eggs for breakfast, one or two on something. And then they have a lunch where they have chicken and rice, whatever that sounds good. And then dinner they have steak. Oh, that sounds like they eat a lot of protein. Not at the servings are four to six ounces. They're four to six ounces and you're not a 97 pound little girl and you actually need 130, 140, 150 plus grams of protein. That's actually a lot of meat. You know what's funny? Use the example of a 97 pound girl. A 97 pound girl who wants to bulk is gonna have to eat about 100 grams of protein. You know how hard that is? Yes. Someone who only weighs 100 pounds. Which is why I bring that up. That means she's eating three different meals that have a good six to eight ounces of chicken in it. That's a lot. So here's some tips. Here's a, this is a hack, right? This is a great hack. It is track your calories and your protein and at the end of the day, an hour after dinner or so, look at your totals and see how much protein you're off by and that's when you add a shake. That's how I, that is my favorite way. It's a very easy way to hit your protein targets. That is my favorite way to use way, right? That's my favorite way to do that is to use it as an immersion. Just that's exactly what I was talking to my sister-in-law. I said, listen, I said, I don't want you using protein powders and bars. She was like, huh? She's like, I thought they were healthy for me. I'm like, yeah, I know. That's how we've marketed to you guys, is that they're- It's a health food item. Yeah. I said, it's better than you go to the gas station and getting fire Cheetos. Yes. Okay. And so if that's in it, if that's what I have- Fire Cheetos. I'm gonna pull over, get some fire Cheetos or I have the protein bar. We'll have the damn protein bar. But the goal should be actually to eat whole foods all day long. And then at the end of the day, when you're adding in your fat secret to see what, and you're like, oh shit, I'm still 30, 40 grams from my protein intake. That's a shake. Go make a shake real quick and now I'm either closer or I hit my protein target. That's how I want to eat. And it makes it easy. And usually when people are off, they're off by anywhere between 30 to 50 grams of protein. That's a shake. That's a shake. It makes it a water if you want to be real precise. And many shakes today are almost only protein. So it's really easy way. It becomes really crucial for someone like her to do that when you're even further in the whole, right? You talk about quality of protein when you're, and like, if you look at your day and you're at 60 grams of protein and I'm telling you, you need 150. Like, yeah, you definitely need to make sure you have that shake before you go to bed because you're missing out on all the potential from all this weight training that we're doing. So the other part that was hard to help her make that connection is like you're working out five days a week. And then you're wondering why you're not getting rewarded for it because you're not giving your body the building box to go do anything with materials. Yeah. All you're really doing is burning calories right now. You're getting in the exercise for your heart. So good job, exercise for your heart. Good job, you're burning calories. But you're sending the signal for the body to build muscle but that you're not giving it the building blocks in order to do that. And so the metabolism is not going to speed up. That's right. So the next point, this is really important because one of the biggest hurdles for anybody who's on a bulk, especially when you're eating high protein in a calorie surplus or digestion issues. Like, if you start to feel bloated or overstuffed or full or gassy, it's gonna be very, very hard for you to hit any more of your targets. It's gonna be really hard for you to eat more calories and more protein. Then it just feels like you're stuffing your face and that doesn't feel good. That leads to inconsistency. It also leads to a poorer relationship with food which I don't like to promote even in the context of, hey, we need to bulk type of deal. So eat foods that are easily digestible. You're eating more calories anyway. You want to be able to assimilate these calories. Now, for most people, the worst offenders when it comes to digestive issues include gluten. So wheat and wheat containing types of foods, dairy, that's another common one. And then typically it's just really greasy or ultra-processed foods. Like fast foods tend to fall in this category. It's like you could eat 700 calories of foods that you prepared yourself that include things like rice and chicken thighs or some high quality ground beef and some vegetables or you could buy something at a restaurant, don't know what oils you're using, what they're frying things up and what they're cooking things in. And then you can feel dramatically different depending on what they put in the food. And when you feel bad, it's really hard to continue down this path. So really focusing heavily on easily digestible foods makes a huge difference. Here's another one. I hope my poor sister-in-law doesn't mind me throwing her out of the house. I mean, this conversation is just so, I just had this conversation and she does represent a lot of clients that I used to have in the typical challenges. So I'm telling her we need to increase her proteins. We're at 1,000 calories, we're only getting 60 grams of protein, right? And she's not 90 pounds, right? So she's way underneath. And the thing that I'm looking at is I'm like, okay, we have to at least get you up to like 110, 120. So we're way underneath that. Well, then her response to me is, you know, Adam, every time I eat protein though, I feel like it sits like me, like a rock. So any guesses on what was dramatically off in her diet, what I can look at, I'm looking at her fat secret for two weeks. Not enough fiber? Five grams of fiber on average a day. Someone her size should be 20 to 25 grams a day. She's, and you're five times under about what normal should be for where you're currently at right now. So it ain't the protein, but she has made the connection that it's the protein. Because it happens, yeah, when she eats it. That's right, it happens after she eats it. So, and of course, you know, and explaining that to her is like, that's cause you're fibers, unbelievably low. So talking about digestive issues, that's also one of the most common things I would see with somebody who feels like a high protein diet really backs them up. They have a time when it's well, what ends up happening is you go high protein, you end up doing low carbohydrates and you're eating healthy. So there's not a lot of fiber in the food that you're eating. If you're grossly under consuming fiber every single day, you're gonna get it filled backed up like that. Yeah, you know what, it's some good, kind of like some really good foods for this category, well-cooked vegetables. So if you really cook them well, boil them, cook them so that they're even mushy, easy to digest and they help the digestive process. White rice is an excellent source of carbohydrates, easy to digest. Most proteins or meats are good for, are easy to digest for some people. Some people have issues with really, really fatty cuts, so then maybe go towards the kind of leaner cuts. Fruits, for the most part, berries are an excellent source of fiber. Berries are the best, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries. Yeah, they're really good. Graspberries are the best. They are the highest on antioxidants, they have a great source of fiber and they're low calorie. So they're some of the lowest on calories slash sugar, but they're the highest on fiber and antioxidants in relation to the calories. So you could have a big old, like she was already eating the meal one from, or protagonist is what it was back then, for creatures of habit. And I'm like, you can throw a whole another cup of berries in there, blueberries in there, throw that in there. Like we need to get that fiber up five times where it's at right now. So that becomes an, and it's not gonna add a ton more calories to their diet. Pretty easy. A huge bang for the buck is what you get with something like that. All right, the next important point is to focus on gaining strength. So here's the deal. If you're on a calorie surplus and your body weight is going up and you're not getting stronger, we have a problem. You're probably not gaining muscle. You should be getting stronger in a bulk. If you're not getting stronger, the odds that you're gaining body fat and not muscle are high. If your weight is going up, but your strength is going up a lot, the odds that you're gaining muscle in that process are very high. So strength is my favorite metric to look at when bulking. Cause I know this with clients and with myself, if I'm on a bulk and we're doing this and you're not getting stronger and your weight's going up, I'm like, okay, this is back off for a second. Let's figure out what's going on. And usually it's the workout. Usually the workout sucks. So you have to have good workout programming. You still have to amplify that strength building signal. I mean, that's all part of the process of building muscle, which is, you know, the bulk side of it is our focus is really is to build muscle. So if I'm gonna gain weight, I want it to consist of muscle mass as much as possible. So that includes weight training as a big part of that. You know, and we'll get to sort of like cardio and all that, but that is definitely something your metrics is strength in the gym. And then how can I feed myself to fuel that? You should see really good strength. My bulking guys get this. My girls struggled with this. My female clients that I would try and explain this to them. Again, my sister, I love you if she's listening to this. And I think that she's just a classic example of the challenges that I think these clients have. And I'm talking about her training. Now we get to that portion. And she's been following maps programs for months now consistently. And she's having a real hard time in this area, right? And I go, when was the last time that you increased the weight on your squat? Or increased the weight on your deadlift? Or increased the weight on your shoulder? She goes, oh, I pretty much do the same. Weights that I always do. And you know what she said back to me was, well, don't you always say that my mobility is more important? So I've been really trying to focus on that. I'm not trying to put a bunch of weight on. I'm trying to get deeper in my squat, right? So she, and I said, okay. I said- She misunderstood a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I said, fair enough. I said, and I don't ever want, I would never want to say, you know, oh, don't worry about mobility anymore. Just put lots of weight on the bar. Yeah, you're gonna sacrifice more. Yeah, they're equally important. But when we are talking specifically about speeding your metabolism up, building muscle, it goes in the order of what we've already talked about. The way we need to feed it, the way we need to take care of your body, that's first and foremost. Now we need to send a good signal inside the gym. And if you're doing the same weights, the same kind of, even though you're changing your map's routine up, but you're not challenging yourself weight-wise to get stronger in the gym, then the body, you're not demanding that the body adds muscle. If you throw more weight on it, and afterwards it goes, whoa, that was new, or that was harder, that was more than I've ever done, you send a loud signal to the body to say, hey, we need to adapt, we need to build muscle. If we're not sending that loud signal, then even if we're eating in this calorie surplus, not much is gonna happen as far as building muscle. This is when you hit PRs. When you hit PRs and lifts, or when you get to your strongest ever, it's when you're in a bulk. So that's what you should expect. Not that you're gonna hit PRs every time, but rather you should expect to feel like your stronger self when you're in this particular. That's exactly what I said to her. I said, don't get so hung up on how much I'm telling you. But your goal should be, hey, you squatted last week, and let's say you were working on depth and range of motion. Don't now neglect that, still do that, but now get put a little more weight on it than what you did last week. Add four pounds. Yeah, two pounds. Add some weight to where it was before, and then just slowly, but your goal each time we come into these sessions should be challenging yourself a little bit more. Now, here's a mistake some people will make. So they're on a bulk, they're doing everything right, they start to get stronger, they have more energy, obviously, because they have more calories, then they just start ramping the volume through the roof with their training. This is a big mistake. This is one that I always run into myself personally, and that'll stop your progress right in your track. You over-train while you're bulking, you're just gonna get fatter. So be very careful to not add tons of exercises and volume just because you feel good. You're supposed to feel energized and good. That doesn't mean you necessarily need to do more. And the other thing is get strong at the big lifts. Like that's really what I care about with my clients. So if I'm training someone and I'm putting them in a bulk, I don't care if their curl went up or the tricep press down went up or, you know, okay, that's fine if it did. What I care about is is your bench higher? Are you rowing more? How's your squat and your deadlift? What about your overhead press? That's where you'll see the big strength gains and that's where you get the most bang for your butt because you go up, you know, you go up 30 pounds in your squat. That's a lot of potential muscle that you're bringing. I actually think that's really good. Just wanna carry over there. I think that's actually really good general advice for the general pop that's listening to this about a bulk would be like, I look at those big lifts, those four or five main lifts and like just focus on. Those are the important ones. Focus on those and even to your point, even if you're just adding the two and a half pounds each week, you know, just incrementally a little bit more, but just stressing and challenging the body a little bit more is going to send that loud signal to build muscle. Bro, they make weights that are magnets and I experimented with this where you can add them. They're the two and a half, right? No, less half a pound. You literally, the strategy was, and I've done this before, where I just add a half a pound to every lift, to every major lift every week. And at the end of the week or end of the month, I should say, you know, you're up two to four pounds on a lift. You do this over the course of three months and your strength gains have gone up quite a bit. Just incremental progressive overload. It's pretty interesting to see what happens. Yeah, so I mean, that's not a be all end all, but my point with this is if you get stronger while you're bulking, you're probably going in the right direction. If you're not getting stronger and you're bulking and the weight is going up on the scale, you got to reevaluate everything because what probably is happening is you're probably gaining body fat. All right, here's the next one. This one's really important and that is to get eight to nine hours of sleep. Not your normal seven to eight, but eight to nine hours of sleep. This one is huge, like huge. You want to revert back to like being a baby. Dude, I've worked with clients where all we did, we had them, you know, eat a little extra calories or lifting weights and we're seeing some progress. And then I hammered the sleep thing. And within a week of them getting, like making sure they get eight to nine hours of sleep every night, their strength gains went through the roof. I've experienced this myself. This by the way is old school muscle building wisdom. The old time lifters used to talk about this. They would talk about getting a full seven to eight hours at night and getting a nap in the middle of the day. So they're, you know, totaling eight to nine hours. This is what I think of right away for us. Modern times is the sun and caffeine. Making sure that you get some natural light outside for 20 minutes or so a day early on in your day. To set that circadian rule? Yeah, to set that up. Minimizing the amount of caffeine you do, definitely shutting it down well before or at noon for your day. Otherwise, those two big things I feel is like some of the biggest culprits disrupting sleep and just getting my clients to kind of tune those in, made it more difficult. So caffeine, which is interesting. Caffeine, one of the things I would do with people who had trouble bulking is I'd have them cut their caffeine in half, mainly because they'd slept because they were tired and they'd sleep so hard and we'd save a little bit of caffeine for before the workout. And even though it was kind of hard, you'd see their muscle gains go up. That's a big one by the, even if you have caffeine at six a.m., people don't realize this. Oh, I had six a.m., it's not a big deal. It still affects your sleep. Try, in fact, try going down to 130 or normal caffeine and see if you don't sleep like a baby, you know, that night makes a huge difference. And then what you said about the sunlight is I think so important, especially in the era of working indoors on computers. All right, here's this next one. Minimize your cardio. Okay, now before everybody freaks out. Everybody freaks out when we talk about cardio. You wanna have a certain level of cardiovascular health and you wanna have activity. What you don't wanna do is fall into this trap that a lot of people would fall into back in the day, especially when I was a kid, which was I lifted weights and then I didn't move at all all day long for fear that I'd burn calories and potentially rob my muscles of gains, right? That was terrible because actually that was detrimental. It actually causes a decline in health, mobility, and you actually don't build as much muscle as when you're healthy and moving. Now, I say minimize cardio because there are people who go from cut to bulk and they go from their hour of cardio a day to their hour of cardio a day in addition with the higher calories and all that stuff. And they get some effects from the bulk, but they're just doing way too much damn cardio. Like cut it down and make the focus the strength training. And in my experience- Well, they're just competing signals. Yeah. If you're really trying to maximize the benefits of the bulk, it's a competing signal to the body. One of them is being efficient with calories, others are being less efficient with calories. So it's, I wish we came up with like a baseline recommendation that we think everybody should be able to do cardiovascular wise is like so that we have this like fallback. Like as long as you stay if you can do this. Right, like let's say you were, like we would say something like, you know, run a mile under eight and a half minutes. Like you need to be able to do that. You should be doing at least, you know, seven to 10,000 steps a day. And if not, you should be doing at least 30 minutes of moderate to low. So I like the seven to 10,000. That's what I tell people. Seven to 10,000 steps, I don't care how you get it. Just if you hit that every day. Well, that's the biggest thing is activity. And I think that that's where this kind of goes in a different direction for me. If I'm talking to somebody that just sits all day and then only has that one hour a day to get any kind of activity. Yeah, that's a necessary thing for you to do to keep promoting the fact that your body needs to move and build. Otherwise, you know, you're gonna get, you're not gonna get the good effects of the bulk either. So to remain active, but have it benefit you in terms of recovery is sort of the focus. Well, I like that. I like that suggestion too, because just the benefits too of the having facilitate recovery faster. Just getting up and moving and pumping blood and oxygen and nutrients. Studies show that a little bit of cardio, like an appropriate amount that keeps you healthy helps the muscle building process. So it doesn't hurt it, it helps it. It's when people, when they're workouts, when you look at their workout plans and you notice they're doing as much time doing cardio as strength training or more. That's when I go, uh-uh. Your strength training needs to be the corner stuff. You're trying to gain. That's another good generic way of saying it. I think that's a good way of saying it like that. If it's the cornerstone where in other words, if you spend three hours lifting weights and three and a half hours of cardio, and you're trying to bulk, you've got this upside down. Yeah, no, I would typically tell people 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner of walking 30 minutes a day. And then if you want to do a few days a week or a couple days a week of 30 minutes of cardio, that's totally fine. Or if you like to be athletic, I see no problem in throwing some sprints or some conditioning in your workout, like driving the sled or farmer walks or stuff like that, which gives you some cardiovascular conditioning. It's when people do the like, and again, this would tip me on the stereotyping, but usually this would female clients where they would do their 45 minutes of strength training, you know, good focused routine, training, you know, compound lifts, trying to get stronger, everything looks good. And then they follow it up with 45 minutes or an hour of cardio. And I go, the majority of your workout was cardio. This is gonna hurt us. So that's, okay, you're doing 45 minutes of strength training, 20 minutes of cardio. Let's do it that way. At least, you know, half the time doing the strength training, the cardio, let's do something like that. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me only on Twitter at Mind Pump, Sal. This one's really important, and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did a bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of, let's say, 15 to 20 reps, and then they'll throw in some supersets, at the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out. And less injury, that's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.