 Next question is from T. Kaliman. What is the most effective way to bulk? What are your guys' secrets or perspectives on trying to bulk up? All right, so step one with bulking is this. Have a good workout. Have a good workout that is sending a muscle building signal. Because if you try to bulk on a workout that's not effective, you will just get fatter. And when you're doing an effective workout, you don't need to push your calories nearly as much because your body wants to build muscle. So step number one, train in a way that's really effective for building muscle. I think we need to, what you mean by that, I think is really important too is that, because somebody might be listening and going like, oh, I do that. I have a good muscle building routine. And more importantly, probably something you're not used to doing is the best thing you do. That's how I was just going there. Yeah, so if you think you're doing something, you have a great muscle building routine or you have a great program you're following, if you've been doing that for a while, it's not a great one to be doing while you're also adding a ton of calories. Because the gains that you're getting from the way you've been training, if you've been doing that for weeks or months on end, have diminished so much. Now you increase a calorie intake, so you decide you're gonna go on the bulk, still running the same routine, well, you've already kind of adapted and changed the bulk of your changing. Everybody knows that when you get the beginning of a program or the beginning of training or anything, you get most the gains at the beginning and then it falls off and over time it slows way down. So if you decide that you're going to make a calorie surplus when you're at the tail end or you've been following a program for a long period of time, you're not giving a good place for a lot of those extra calories to go. You wanna do something like, so if I'm like somebody who's following like a MAPS Black or a bodybuilding type of routine consistently and I know I'm gonna give myself a surge of calories, I wanna make sure I switch to something like strong, MAPS strong, or I switch over to MAPS, something really different than the MAPS like bodybuilding type of a program because I know that that novelty again will send a new signal to the body, I'll get those kind of beginner type gains when I first start and now I'm in a calorie surplus so that's a little secret right there. Perfect storm that way. Send the right stimulus, increase your calories. Okay, so step one was the workout. Step two, increase your calories. So we've been talking about that, right? You have to take in more calories because you're trying to get your body to add new tissue and hopefully it's favorable tissue like muscle. A high protein diet's important. Now that's important whether you're trying to bulk or cut, okay? A higher protein diet preserves muscle when you're trying to cut also has a much greater effect on satiety, meaning it keeps you full longer. And for bulking you want a high protein diet because your body builds more muscle when your protein intake is high. Now how much is the right amount? We talked about this earlier in this episode about point, generally for most people it's about 0.8 grams or one gram of protein per pound of body weight if you are at a relatively normal body weight. If you're really obese you can't use that number because that's just too high, right? If you're a 300 pound man don't aim for 300 grams of protein. In that case I would aim more for your lean body mass where you subtract your body fat after you get a body fat test. But in this case with bulking you're probably somebody who is skinnier or whatever. You wanna gain more weight. One gram of protein per pound of body weight. Carbohydrates are excellent for building muscle. So contrary to what some of the fitness influencers out there will say about low carb diets and that they're the best for everything. And this of course on an individual basis almost anything can be true when it comes to diet. But for the most part carbohydrates help build muscle. They fuel your energy when you're lifting with weights. They increase the intracellular fluid that's stored in your muscle. So you get they appear fuller and bigger. That also stimulates muscle protein synthesis. They affect how your body recovers. You wanna aim for on the low end one gram of protein of carbs per pound of body weight on the high end for the faster metabolism people two or three grams where you're eating a lot of carbs. Go ahead. I also avoid starchy and saturated fat early on in my day. I don't eliminate it from my diet. I avoid it early in the day because those things tend to slow down the digestive process for me and it doesn't promote hunger the same way as like a fast acting carb like rice would. And that's a secret, right? Or a tip that I've learned from bulking so many times over years and years and years. I used to struggle as a kid because I'd start off with ego waffles and peanut butter and syrup and I'd have all this stuff but then I would just be, boom. I would be so full that I didn't want anything till afternoon where that's why I like doing things like eggs, oatmeal and like a whey protein shake was a staple morning breakfast for me when I was competing because I was hungry again for another meal within two hours. Then I was having steak and eggs and something else again. You make a great point. When you're bulking, don't chase fat, chase protein and carbs. Now, when it comes to fat, don't go for low fat stuff. So when you eat your protein, go ahead and eat the high fat protein. Right, right, have a good rib eye steak. Yeah, like the steaks and the ground beef and don't take the yolks out of your eggs, eat the whole egg. And if you have dairy, have full fat dairy. You could eat vegetables, use olive oil. That's it, but no need to chase fat. Chase carbs and protein when you're bulking and it's a way better strategy. If you try to chase fat. I'm a fat chaser. If you think you're gonna get all your calories from fat and you chase fat, like Adam says, you might find that you're just not gonna be able to eat that much. And then the third thing I would say is sleep. Get really good sleep. Prioritize eight hours of sleep every single night. I tell you what, great diet, great workout, shitty sleep equals no muscle. Okay, no muscle whatsoever. You gotta have the sleep, it's gotta be a part of the formula. I'll give you another one that for me that took a long time to piece together, which was I used to connect, you know, the more I trained, the harder I trained in the gym, the more muscle that I would pack on. And one of the best bulks or times I ever built muscle was when I scaled back my training and you could be somebody like this. So just because you wanna build muscle doesn't mean that the more you're in the gym is necessarily gonna mean you're gonna build more muscle, especially if you're a fall on the side like I was, which is the fat kind of faster metabolism. I moved a lot through the day. So I was already burning a ton of calories and then I'm throwing on seven intense workouts a week on top of a guy who already is stepping 15 to 20,000 steps. Man, it was just so hard to eat 5,000, 6,000 calories consistently. It was almost impossible for me. So scaling back on how often I was training, I wasn't training, I went from seven days down to four days. And man, I put on size. Like, and it was probably a combination of two things I would think. One, I was probably flirting in the over-training area when I was training seven days a week. So just backing off the over-training probably promoted some muscle growth. And then two, cutting out three intense workouts was now saving, now was an additional, you know, 1,500 calories to 3,000 calories. My body is now using now or allocating over to building muscle. So if you're somebody who can relate to that, where you struggle with getting enough calories to bulk up, maybe assess how often you're training in the gym and maybe scaling back on more effective workouts than driving the intensity thing. I'll add one last thing, creatine. Take creatine, great supplement for most goals, but especially for building muscle. Most people respond really, really well to creatine. Two to five grams a day would be enough, but it does put muscle on your body. Will not replace your diet and your workout and your sleep. It's not gonna give you the same effects as those things, but as far as supplements are concerned, creatine does help build muscle.