 The Dirty Bolt, alright a lot of you are probably like, don't do that, that's bad for you, and oftentimes it's true, however in today's episode we're going to talk about the value of a dirty bolt. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes a dirty bolt is just what you need, now in today's episode we're going to talk about who it's not for, who it's for, and then we'll give you some advice on how to do it the right way. The good, the bad, the ugly. Yes. The dirty, the dirty. So I think we should define first what we mean by dirty bolt because what we don't mean is eat all kinds of garbage all the time with no structure whatsoever. Yeah. That would be... No, a dirty bolt in my opinion is just utilizing heavily processed foods, hyper palatable foods. Yeah, hyper palatable, so desserts and sweets and things like that to push your calorie intake into a much higher level, which sometimes you need that extra boost. It seems very counter for our podcast to talk about considering we are typically addressing the majority of people and their relationship with food and being healthier versions of ourself and the psychology of wanting to be buff or shredded, right? So I do think that this is a bit controversial for... Oh, very controversial. Yeah, we're going to piss some people off that will probably not even listen to this or we'll get five minutes in and be like, I can't and then they'll get on Instagram. I can't believe you guys were advocating for this, right? So that'll come. Yeah, I would say that the dirty bolt really is really trying to get a large calorie surplus, right? A calorie surplus in excess of 700 or 1000 calories, right? Most of times when you go into calorie surplus, what's advised is 500 calories or so above maintenance and in some cases, you want to go far above that and within that context, certain foods can make that doable, right? So that's why Adam said the foods that are very palatable because let's say you want to get 1200 or 1500 calories above maintenance and it can be hard with whole natural foods because they hit that satiety button really quick so it can make it very difficult. Now, for many people, it's not a good idea. To go this hard, but for some people, it's a great idea and there are some potential benefits to doing so. Now, I do think that quote unquote dirty bulks should be limited even for people that it's really good for mainly because it can get out of control. But I think we should start with, I guess, the stuff that dirty bulks or quote unquote dirty bulks are associated with the bad, right? What are some of the bad things that get connected to these and why most people say don't do this? Yeah, well, the first thing that comes to mind for bad is just the extra fat gain that you get with it because you are pushing calories so high and you're using things like processed foods a lot of times. It's you're going to be less, less accurate to like your exact amount of calories you need and you're pushing well beyond that. If you're pushing well beyond that, you're more than likely going to add more body fat than you would be if you're hovering just around maintenance or doing a small surplus. Yeah, well, because a lot of times too, you're going to be doing this through liquids and, you know, shakes and whatnot like the calories themselves dense, dense calories you're going to get from this can get away from you pretty quickly if you're not like equating that into your diet. Yeah. And then, you know, people are really afraid of that extra fat gain. Now, to be clear, you know, I think people in the gym who are, you know, lift weights were really overweight. They'll often get that title of, oh, they're always doing a dirty bulk. There's definitely a point where you'd want to stop. But I get this, right? Because if you go, if you're 500 calories above maintenance and you're lifting weights and you're training properly, you're going to gain mostly lean body mass, gain some body fat, maybe, but mostly lean body mass. Like if you go above that, there is going to be additional fat gain. And for some people, this is really scary. And for some people, this is not a good thing at all, right? If you're in the category where your body fat's already really high, then you may not want to do something like this. So that's true. It is true that a quote unquote dirty bulk can result in some extra or, you know, non-essential fat gain that you may, you know, be okay with with a traditional bulk, but maybe not so okay with a dirty bulk. The other one that's hard is the ability to reverse out of it. Because these foods are highly palatable, borderline addictive, you know, you start eating these and it's, and you decide, okay, I've put on the 10 pounds I wanted to, now it's time to cut them out. And you find yourself having a really tough time letting go or quitting a lot of these foods that you've now introduced into your diet. So I would say that's another big, bad or negative to the dirty bulk. Oh, it can be really tough because if you get used to eating, you know, 4,000 calories a day, let's say that's a good 1,200 calories above what you've identified as your maintenance and you've been doing this for a while. Like to go from 4,000 down to 28, that's a big drop. And that's two large meals essentially that you'll be cutting. And so it can be a big contrast. I mean, one of the challenges with, or should I say one of the strategies with helping someone create a sustainable approach is to not introduce too big of a contrast when it comes to diet, right? The larger the contrast, the more the person has to acclimate to the more that they have to change their lifestyle in order to accomplish the new task. So if the contrast is big, there's a lot of things that are changing. Like if you cut 300 calories in your diet, you know, that's just a little bit less than what you're currently eating. You're eating 1,200 calories or 1,000 calories or 15 or calories less than what you were eating during this dirty bulk period. That can be really hard for some people. Oh yeah, a lot of these foods are a little bit more processed. They are have such a distinctive flavor profile that's engineered in there to really, you know, enhance that. So it's like you compare that now to whole foods and it's like a dramatic difference. And once you get used to that, your body really promotes that craving. So it makes it difficult to cut it out. By the way, too, like most people probably are thinking that we're talking just about, you know, desserts and sweets and these package types foods or like, you know, highly processed foods that like junk food. But I actually experienced this with protein bars. So I've shared with you guys before that I had one prep where I said like as much shakes, bars, whatever I would allow, as long as I hit my macros, eat whatever I wanted to eat, basically. And then I had another prep where I said, I'm going to do this all through whole foods, no bars, no shakes. I'm going to do this all through diet and try and compare. Like, you know, how my physique would differ. Now, I've told you guys that even though the macros were all supposedly the same, I felt a notice, a difference. But one of the things, but it was very little. The average person wouldn't be able to tell. I got on stage on both of them. I presented a great physique. I came down to single, small, single-digit body fat. So all in all, not much of a difference. The biggest difference, though, that I noticed was the cravings for the bars. I remember when I gave, said, OK, I can have as much as I want. There was times where I was eating four or five of those quest cookies and cream bars. Well, think about like how the industry has changed and evolved over the years. Like, I remember when I was playing in the three on three basketball tournament and they're introducing power bars and they just tasted like. Yeah, terrible. Like cardboard. Yeah, like awful. And so their, their mentality was to really engineer in like more flavor and a lot of these things that like, yeah, like we, we want stuff that tastes like birthday cake. We want stuff that tastes like, you know, donuts and all these things. And so to be able to engineer that into like, quote, unquote, healthier, like protein bars or protein shakes, it's it's it's following that same pattern of what they've done in the food industry. Exactly. And I had a really hard time after I had allowed myself to do that to go back the other direction. I found myself craving those, those sweets, those protein bars all time. And now someone might be going, oh, what's the big deal? Then why not their protein bars? Well, it's still not ideal. I've talked before about the goal is for me to eat all whole natural foods. We're just, there's certain things we're not getting when we're not eating it through whole foods and we're getting it through this, this, you know, packaged food, not to mention the addictive properties that came with the processed foods of me wanting more and more each time. So it isn't just these treats like ice cream or candy or things like that, even these protein bars, which people would consider a health food. Right. Right. I remember that market started to shift with detour bars. That was the first one that actually tasted like a candy bar. You guys remember that? No, I remember that. You remember that detour got sued because they were off the list of their macros were, which also a point too, is that, you know, these, these labels, we've talked about this before, they can be up to 20% inaccurate. So that's what they're allowed. Yeah. They're allowed to, FDA allows them to be 20% off. So in my case, if I'm eating four of these quest bars a day and the, and the, and as a protein bar, they're in the health category. Well, if each one is on average 300 calories, they could be off by as much as 60 calories each 60 times four, 240 calories. You could be off right down, right. And it's in their best interest to skirt the line on the opposite side when it's healthy, whatever it tastes better is going to work. Yeah. Yeah. And so if they're categorizing as a low calorie, high protein treat, well, they're going to say it's higher protein and lower within the confines of the 20% that FDA allows. It's in their best interest to do that. So, you know, and I'm not saying that I have any proof that, you know, quest is going out there and doing that by any means. I'm just saying that I would caution you if you're just buying these protein bars and shakes and assuming that the macros are exactly what it says. It's less likely to be precise because of how much FDA allows them to go left or right. Today's program giveaway is math strong. Here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below this video. The first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. Everybody else, we got a sale going on Black Friday right now. 60% off all programs, 60% off all bundles. Everything's on sale. It's crazy. This only happens once a year. If you want to take advantage, you got to click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. The other challenging thing or bad, I would say, about the dirty bulk mentality is it can definitely give someone the perception that it's like, oh, it means I can eat anything and everything, right? Like I could just go without, you know, abandon, right? Without any confines or discipline or structure. Now, you know, remember we said a dirty bulk puts you at a high calorie surplus, but that doesn't mean an infinite calorie surplus. Now that's, I think, where people really go wrong. And I think that's where the term dirty bulk came from was people were like, oh, I want to pack on size. I don't even know what my maintenance calories are. I just going to eat a ton as much as I possibly can. And so they end up with a two or 3,000 calorie surplus and they're eating a lot of garbage, a lot of candy, a lot of ice cream, a lot of fast food. And if what we're talking about makes you move in that direction, it's definitely not for you because that does the next point, which is it definitely will encourage an unhealthy food relationship where if you do this for too long and then you try to reverse out of it, then you may go in the extreme opposite direction and then you get caught in that, you know, crazy bulk, crazy cut, crazy bulk, crazy cut conundrum where you're never, you never have this healthy relationship with food. It's always super restrictive or it's always an unhealthy binge type mentality. That to me is the biggest bad. Well, back to your point about the permission to eat bad food. You know, I think I shared this with you guys off air. I'm not sure if I shared this on the podcast or not. But one of the hardest things actually for me to reverse out of was so I had trained myself for a long time that I could when I would eat these, Friday used to be like my burger and Friday was like just all week long. I was eating my meals that I prepared Friday. I would have a lot of enough calories to get in there that I could, I could eat at five guys or in and out one of my favorite places. And at this time in my lifting career, you know, I'm 225, 230 pounds, single digit body fat, training hard and intense, moving a lot. So I can eat when I had ordered that it would be two, two burgers, a large fry and, you know, which is like a, almost a 2000 calorie meal that I'd be consuming and no problem. I mean, it was in within my calorie budget. I could totally do that high protein. Yeah. I'm getting some extra saturated fat palatable probably helped you hit those calories. Yeah. Right. So it helped me push there. Uh, that was long ago, still to this day. I were five guys just the other day last Friday or the Friday before we left, uh, to, to London and I still have a habit of ordering two of those, even though I'm half the man I was back then, I'm not moving nearly as much as what I was. I'm not training as intense I was, but I have given myself permission to when I eat this way, I'm going to eat this way and that it's okay. And really it's not. I don't have, I don't have the muscle mass on me. I'm not moving as like I used to. I'm not training as intensely. And so it's way beyond my, but yet I've, I've created that relationship with it for so long that I, I have to like catch myself and go like, no, I can't order two of these right now. This, the, the, God, the best evidence for what you're talking about, I would get with, um, clients who were high level athletes in college and then, let's just, you know, 10 years out or something, they maintain the same eating habits, the same calorie intake and all that. And they're not moving anywhere near as much. They just, they're just skewed. They're just skewed on what a normal meal should look like. I remember I had a young lady who, um, she was a competitive swimmer, um, and rower. She also did rowing, uh, in college. So that's, they really train the shit out of you in those sports. And I remember her telling me, well, I just had, you know, chicken and rice and, you know, a salad. And I said, well, can you show me what this looks like? And I'm like, that's a, that's like a 10 ounce chicken breast. I said, you know, you're serving as five ounces. She's like, what? I'm like, yeah, half of that, like that, right? That's like two cups of rice. You need to have maybe like a three quarters of a cup of rice. She's like, it's so weird because I was, I was, for so many years, I had to push myself to eat so many calories that it's really hard for me to really know what is an appropriate meal size for me. So I was, I used to get that all the time with those, uh, ex athletes. Now, now here's the person that this is the worst for. Okay. I was a terrible person. I'm an, I'm, I fall in this example. Okay. This is a terrible approach for somebody who has an insecurity of being too skinny or too small. Okay. If you're really insecure about being skinny going on the, the dirty bulk, you'll just end up going way crazy in that direction. That was me. I was so afraid of being skinny that I learned nothing from going on a bulk. All I learned was watching the scale, making sure that it would go up a pound every single time. And even if it meant that I had the old water, that I had to weigh myself at the end of the night, by anything's necessary, by any means necessary. And so I never really developed a better relationship with food when I was bulking. In fact, I, for me, going on a cut was how I learned how to develop a better relationship to food. Now, I know most people are in the opposite category, but for those people who are like really, really insecure, I should say, not that they're skinny, but that they're insecure about being too skinny. And you know this, then this dirty bulk strategy is probably not for you. No, I mean, that's, that's, we are that person. I mean, you are, I was 100%. This is not, it was the wrong way. And we did that, right? So I made that mistake. This is no different than the client that we've trained who is obsessed with their weight staying low and they're afraid to put on a single pound or two on the scale and they choose to do intermittent fasting because they're, they're more light. And the reason why that is, is if you're insecure about putting any weight on you, you follow a diet that gives you permission to basically starve yourself for long periods of time, you're more likely to push those boundaries. You're more likely to, oh, I'm supposed to not eat for 24 hours. Oh, why not 36 or 48 or maybe 72 or maybe what I do eat, I'll eat less than half of what I was supposed to eat. Like you flirt with those lines. The same goes for the, the skinny kid, right? Who is so skinny, he's insecure about being skinny and all he wants to do is just put weight on the scale so bad because he's been skinny his whole life and he's insecure about that. And then someone gives him the green light to eat whatever you want to bulk, to put calories on, you need this. And so you take it to the competitor, which is exactly what I did. I took it to such the competitive level that I used to weigh myself after every meal. Yeah, so obsessively like see, and like watching like, oh, wow, that meal put three pounds on me. Like, even though you know it's food and it doesn't even matter. It just shows you what a psychological disconnect that you have to like reality and just you become obsessed with wanting to see a number on the scale you've never seen before. And the reverse is true. Like it works for the person who's obsessed with being skinny and doesn't want to put weight on the same thing works for the kid who's so obsessed with wanting to put more weight on and is afraid the other direction. And so, yes, it is a terrible idea for someone like that, which by the way, this is the person that will be attracted to this advice or this podcast. And so you need to have the self-awareness to know that you're that person that you are insecure about being skinny. This is not an ideal way. A controlled bulk would be good. Yes, this is not an ideal way for you to go about this. All right, so let's talk about who would benefit from doing a quote unquote dirty bulk. Well, first category are men and women who are in an unhealthy lean place. People who are really lean, who always maintain themselves really lean and never really let themselves creep up above that really lean level. These people, their bodies are craving nutrients or craving calories. They would feel amazing or at least they would have improved health outcomes from from doing this for, you know, six to eight weeks. Right. So what do we talk about with this unhealthy lean? Now, this depends from person to person. So it can be quite a quite a range. But for men, it's usually people who men who maintain under eight percent body fat and for women who maintain kind of under 18, 17 percent body fat all the time. These people probably, again, there's always exceptions, right? So this can be different from person to person. But generally speaking, if that's you and you're living in a way to maintain that and you're hyper structured about it and you're afraid to gain a single pound type of deal, like a dirty bulk would probably be a good way for you to change your relationship to food and change your relationship to how food affects you. When I get clients like this and I would convince them to really push the calories after they settled with, OK, I'm not afraid anymore. It was like, oh, my God, I'm so strong. Oh, my God, I feel so good. Or my female clients, my period came back. My hair is thicker. I feel so good. This is amazing. And it's life changing for people like this. Yeah. I mean, this is what I was just talking about with the people obsessed with being skinny. Like sometimes this is exactly what they need to do is go have a cheeseburger. And you've probably heard us on the podcast, right? If you've been listening long enough, we've had enough live callers call in before and normally after a short period of time that we're talking to them about where they're at with their diet and their body fat percentage. We've we've I know we've given that advice before, like go have a cheeseburger like. Yes. Well, usually it wasn't the orthorexic. It's sort of that like over analytical people with food and like how everything has to be so healthy and organic and everything. I feel like. Yeah. Just bringing back that flexibility that you're going to be OK. We're just going to bump up your calories a bit and we can introduce some of these foods that, you know, like it really isn't going to have that damage even impact as long as like it's well balanced and we remain flexible. Yeah, loosely. I mean, this is for people who are so afraid of fat gain and they know it. Like I don't like I don't want to gain a single pound of body fat. And we'll know this because I'll ask them. When's the last time you went on a bulk? Oh, I really don't do a bulk and you know that they're really lean. Yeah, or they say they've been on a bulk with their costs. It's like they let a day of like I had an extra salad. Yes, it's so structured that it's like 100 calories. In fact, we had a caller a while ago. Yes, I've been on a bulk 150 calories above, you know, my maintenance like you don't even know you might have been like sneeze that sometimes. Yeah, so people are really, really afraid of fat gain like this may be just what the doctor ordered. This is what I would do clients like this. They're so afraid of gaining a single pound. Their body weight has always been the same. They're trying to build muscle, trying to build strength, can't figure out why the hell it's not happening when the answer is right in front of them. And then I'll put them put them on a bulk like this and we'll include those types of foods because it actually helps. It actually helps them. You know, you take someone like this who's afraid of getting fat gain and you have the meat super clean, you know, you know, types of foods that are satiety satiety producing. It's actually more challenging difficult and it also doesn't really show them that it's OK sometimes. That's really the main thing is I like to show people in this category. Hey, you ate, you know, you ate some food that isn't quote unquote unhealthy three times or four times last week. You know what we noticed you're way stronger. Yeah, well, that's the way better. That's I mean, that's how you know if you are this person or like the a lot of times what ends up happening is that same person tends to have a lower sodium diet. They don't get a lot of saturated fats. They're just never in a surplus or always in a deficit and that meal kind of checks all those boxes. Yeah. Many times highly palatable foods or processed foods are high in sodium. They have more fats in them. They have obviously a bunch more calories. That person eats that one bad meal and they look better. They feel better. They were more better. It's like, whoa. And it's normally a huge indicator of like, yeah, that's because you've been starving your body of nutrients for so long and you've been low calorie for so long. Your body was needing that. And so there is a place for that. You're a perfect example of yours who I think would serve them to do this. Now, the last category is the hard gainer. Now, this is not you don't want to be a hard gainer and also be super insecure about being skinny. You know, we talked about that earlier. But if you're a hard gainer and you're OK with yourself, but you are trying to put on some size and you find it really challenging, a calorie surplus that's, you know, 50% or twice as big as what is recommended to the average person might just be what you need. I mean, I had this when I was younger. My metabolism had this amazing ability to speed up when I would bump my calories. It was like, if I did a 500 calorie surplus for me when I was in my teens in early twenties, you might as well have put me at maintenance. Not going to do anything. I had to go two or three times that much to start to notice some I found this with the high school athletes. It was one of those. And like trying to stress as much as I can, the importance of whole foods and like protein and protein sources and where to get them from and all that. And you know, we went through a good month or so with, you know, decent progress, but their calories were still so low and they're finding it very difficult for them to, you know, meet that need that they had to increase calories. So to be able to now add in shakes and other ways of like getting more hyperpalatable foods was like crucial for them. Well, I would, I mean, I would probably categorize you there right now, Sal. Like I would think that I obviously you're more evolved than the, you know, 19 year old version of you who was insecure about being skinny. So that's not you anymore. But you've now ramped your metabolism up so much with the amount of lean mass that you have on your body that I imagine when we do a trip like London, you don't get fat from a trip like that. You just lose muscle. Yeah. And so you're an example. I would say if somebody who still falls in that hardgainer category of you've you've ramped your metabolism up so much that, you know, you were probably better off while we're on that trip, enjoying that dessert or that high calorie, hyperpalatable type of food when you could because otherwise your metabolism is roaring so much right now, you're more likely to lose even more muscle if you didn't at least feed it some calories. Yeah, if I wanted to bulk now, I would definitely have to go a thousand calories above maintenance to notice because of that. But I'm in a different position now because I have more even more lean body mass. When I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of lean body mass like I do now. I just had this metabolism just on fire for some damn reason. And there's hardgainers out there that can understand like we've had them on the show where they'll call in and it's some, you know, 20 year old kid and he's like, I'm eating, you know, 4800 calories. I can't get away. And I'm 175 pounds. Like, okay, we got some strategies that might help you. I do have a tip for the kids that are or it doesn't be kid with just the people that are listening to this and they identify as that hardgainer. So probably the single best thing I ever did when I realized that I'm in this category, I've moved past my insecurities. And now it was like, it was actually this was during like getting ready for, you know, building a physique to compete. You know, what I would do was I I would make myself hit my my minimum macro targets through Whole Foods. And then and then I would use the food on there. Sure. Because what I had learned the young insecure version of me that was just trying to put weight on the scale and eat calorie calorie calories that I would actually end up missing some of my protein targets and my macro targets over on the car. And I was over and all on all the crap. And I wasn't getting what my food, my body needed, yet over consuming on things that it didn't need. And so I find that you do this in a much more controlled way and it'll serve you more if you still go after hitting your at least your protein intake, right? And healthy fats through good sources of food. So whole natural foods. And then if you notice you're still under your calories, OK, that's where I could have my dessert or have the hyper palatable food to push the calories up beyond that. That seemed to serve me much, much more. That's excellent advice. All right. So what are some of the benefits if this is for you? If you fall into the categories of that we're talking about, what are some of the benefits of doing this? Well, first thing is it can definitely improve your mental health. Now, physiologically, it can improve your mental health. If you're always skirting the line of getting exactly and only what my body needs, never going above that, or probably possibly even missing that sometimes, because when you're always trying to be at the line, that means, especially if you're afraid of getting body fat, that means you're probably just under the line most of the time. Increasing your nutrient intake or calorie intake can feel like the most powerful neutropic of all time. I mean, I've had clients like this where I bumped their calories, their mood and their cognition dramatically improved. They'll come to me and be like, I feel like I took, I'm taking antidepressants or something and my energy is through the roof and I can remember things. You know, I was so absent-minded before and I told them, well, you were getting enough nutrients and now you're getting those nutrients. Now, it also can be beneficial to your mental health. If you're that person that's so scared of gaining body fat that you just, everything's so perfect, you finally break free that, oh, that is a freeing feeling and mentally that can be very healthy because then you can feel more free in the world. Not feel like you're so constrained by these, these, you know, rigid, you know, lines that you put yourself into before. Well, it can also improve your physical health, which I think then in turn improves the mental health. Of course. Just going back to that point I made that, you know, a lot of times what you'll see with the person that needed this is you give that meal to them and then all of a sudden they see a difference in their physical performance. You know what I'm saying? Their muscle bellies fill out so they look even better. They perform better in the gym and then all of that reverts back to like, oh, they have, they have better, they have a better mental relationship and better psychology now around it because they saw the physical performance that this meal that they would consider bad all of a sudden serve them in a good way. And so that helps shift the mental part to sometimes your bias is craving these extra calories for build and like we're depriving it. And so your bias is not functioning at its highest capacity. So once you start feeding it and like really fueling that process for you, like your body starts responding pretty, pretty great. Yeah, I've seen testosterone. So men who maintain too lean of a body fat just through restriction and overwork, you'll see them bump their calories in this way and you'll see their testosterone go up significantly. I mean, I'm not talking about a small bump. I'm talking about a big bump. And then women, I see libido, hair, nails, skin. This was this was like this was step one in getting a woman's period to come back. If I had female clients and I would always work by the way, I want to be clear. I would always work with a functional medicine practitioner. But if I had female clients who had lost their cycle because they were athletes and they were always, you know, very careful with their calories. I mean, step one was we're going to really bump your calories. And like clockwork, we would do that and a couple of things. But this made the biggest improvement in getting their period to come back and improving their fertility because, you know, look, women have this incredible sign of health, which is your fertility. If you lose your period, it's because your body thinks you're not healthy enough to support a child. So if you're not getting your period, that's a sign right there. OK, something's off. Well, one of the common things that come in these highly palatable foods is fat. And we went through this, you know, 80s and 90s kick where we demonize fat. And women left over. Yeah, women were already eating low calorie diets because of the what we had promoted as what looked healthy to us on these these super models and shit. So they were already eating low calorie and then the macronutrient they were cutting out was fat. So you have someone not even hitting the RDA in their healthy fats every single day. So and that will impact libido. It will impact hair, skin, nails, all these things. Simply bumping that and adding that meal in there with all of a sudden all those things would improve instantly. Now, one of my favorite benefits of doing something like this is strength and performance boost. Now, you do this with the right person. They will notice a performance improvement the day after. I mean, you take someone whose calories are always borderline low. They're always trying to maintain lean and they're an athlete or they're an endurance athlete or a strength athlete or anything. And you have them do a day of high calories. I mean, I can't tell me times people would message me be like, oh, my God, like I gain 10 pounds and my squat in one day for meeting more. I'm like, it's more energy. It's more fuel. Your central nervous system is firing harder. Your muscles are stronger because they have nutrients. This actually I would do this more often with endurance athletes because I would have oftentimes my my experience people who ran a lot and did lots of marathons were also the same people that were afraid of gaining a single pound of body fat. So they would like not only run a lot, but they were always so afraid to eat too many calories and they'd come to me because, you know, I remember one person in particular was trying to qualify for the Boston marathon and I just had her increase her calories. We didn't do anything else. I just had her eat a lot more and boom, she was so much faster and she was afraid she was going to get slower. Yeah, think about the recovery that provided. Yeah. So that's the thing is like that's a big component to when you train, like you have to be able to recover to then perform at a higher level or build muscle or maintain muscle or, you know, you need the nutrients there to pull from. So if you're not getting that nutrient, your body is going to feel that difference. Well, I think I mean this one is it can be so dramatic for some people, especially if they've been, you know, depleted for so long. But I don't think it's just the the calories are plus for the recovery and energy purposes too. Don't you think too? It's like a lot of times you're going to get the surge in sodium. We talked about the benefits of cholesterol. Like so I think it's like calories, cholesterol, sodium, micronutrients. I mean, I think that's why this can be such a dramatic swing for somebody that if you are hovering at maintenance or below and you've been doing that for an extended period of time, plus you're also training the body, it's like just trying to survive your redlining. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you give it a surplus of all these things that can impact performance and recovery and training energy. It's like, oh my God, like it's it becomes a huge difference by feeding them. There's also this, which is very like if like I don't I'm not eating at some deficit and I'm not eating a crazy maintenance. I'm just kind of eating when I'm hungry and hitting certain targets. But if I knew, for example, Thursday, the three of us were going to go see who could lift the most weight. I would bump my calories for the next two days. That would be the one thing I would do and it would make me a little bit stronger. So for athletic performance, that's it. It's great for like even short term strength, strength gain. Now, the last benefit, this one is interesting. This one might be a little controversial, but, you know, it became very evident to me later on in my career, talking to ex, you know, bodybuilders and people who had gotten to massive sizes. Muscle memory is a very real thing, meaning if you gain 10 pounds of muscle and let's say it takes you two years to gain that muscle and then you lost it, you gain it back very easily the second time around very quickly. Okay. So if you, let's say, did a quote unquote lean bulk, right, where your calorie surplus is just enough to gain lean body mass, and let's say you gained five pounds of muscle and only one pound of body fat, but let's say you could do a dirty bulk where the calorie surplus was even higher and instead of gaining five pounds of lean body mass, you gained seven pounds of lean body mass, so two more pounds, but you gained four pounds of body fat, so way more body fat in that particular scenario. It still might be worth it because you're building muscle memory when you carve that fat off your body. Now, of course, this can get crazy, so I don't want people to flame me here with the whole I gained 30 pounds of body fat and I'm trying to lose it every time, but there is some in the old school bodybuilders knew this, they knew this when they would do a bulk was they would push the calories to a certain point to gain that extra muscle because it was easier to gain at the second and the third time around. Now, this is very evident when you look at athletes who abuse and use anabolic steroids for years go off and they of course lose a lot of muscle, but they don't lose all the muscle. Some of it sticks around due to that muscle memory. So the occasional, you know, if you're relatively healthy and you do the occasional massive bulk where your calorie surplus is higher than the traditional five to seven her calories, the benefit may be if you do this right over time, you gain more muscle than you would have had you not done it. Yeah, I think that by far that's the most controversial thing that we've said so far. And you are going to get some shit for that. But I also think that this is the justification with why bodybuilders continue to do this. Yeah, I know a lot of really smart, I shouldn't say a lot. I know some smart that are science based and they and they do understand like how to do this correctly. Yet they still choose to go this path where they all do these massive bulks. Anyways, even though they understand the science, I think that's the reason why I think they realize how difficult it is to push the body to that next level of size and weight and doing whatever it takes by any means, even if they put on a bunch of extra body fat along the way, is their justification of breaking through that that next size plateau and that the body will be that much easier and more adapted to getting there. I think that's the logic behind that. It's probably also the most controversial tip or point. So you have to have some good self-awareness around, you know, where you at with your relationship with food and diet and exercise. Where do you stop? Yeah, and exactly where you allow that, like intermittently doing that. I get it. And I think there's some there's always value to training and stretching yourself to limits like that. That becoming the way you bulk all the time going forward. Or you live in there. Yeah, or you live in there. Not a good strategy whatsoever. So that final tip, in my opinion, I totally get it. And I see where the logic behind it. But for sure, you need to have that self-awareness to know where you fall in. Yeah, the tips with this that I would say to be that are important to focus on are hit your protein targets, try and hit your maintenance with whole natural foods, then add the hyperpalatable foods to get that extra surplus that you're looking for. And also give yourself a limit like when do I stop? OK, when does this stop? Now, if you're a man, you probably don't want to go above 16, 17 percent body fat or something like this for the average person that keeps you still in a pretty healthy range and for women somewhere in the mid to high 20s with body fat percentage. And you want to give yourself a place to stop. What you don't want to do is get stuck in this. Like again, you're that I'm afraid of being skinny. And so you just push, push, push, push. Next thing you know, you're a guy and you're 23 percent body fat because you've been dirty bulking for five years type of deal. But I think those those parameters make this effective. Not following any parameters whatsoever. It just becomes eating a bunch of junk food. It doesn't work out so well. Look, if you like the show, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out our free guides. We have free fitness guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal. Sorry, Mind Pump to Stefano. And you can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam.