2907: How to Clean Bulk Without Getting Fat (The Exact Formula)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind up, mind up with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in history, approaching half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is on clean bulking. What is it and how to do it properly? By the way, we have trainers and coaches here at Mind Pump. They can help you with your diet and your nutrition. They'll coach you through it. And these are Mind Pump coaches, so they're good. And we have a code for 50% off. Go to MindPumpnutrition.com, use the code MP50 for the half off. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, crisp power. Look, if you're looking for a snack that actually fits your macros without sacrificing taste or crunch, you need to try crisp power protein pretzels. These are pretzels. They taste like pretzels. They look like pretzels. 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Yeah, he's a big dirty bull. Let's break it down first for people unfamiliar. So the bulking is a term that relates to trying to gain size or muscle. Strength usually accompanies this. Now, we've changed the term to mean other things. Or should I say, we've used different term, terminology that's also describing clean bulking in a way to make it more appealing to certain people. For example, a reverse diet. Reverse diet is actually a clean bulk. Yeah. And the reason why we call it a reverse diet is because when you tell in particular women, we're going to bulk you, even though you're trying to lose body fat, they will run in the opposite direction. I think another thing that it implies is that it's controlled, right? It's a diet. Reverse diet. You're still following a plan where bulk doesn't necessarily. It sounds like a real plan. Yeah, it doesn't signal plan, really. Yeah, bulk sounds like you're off your diet. Yeah, you're trying to get big. Yeah, but this has been around for a long time. Strength athletes, athletes and general fighters have done this for a long time. Really, it's the attempt to train to build strength and muscle. And what comes along with that is like a faster metabolism. This is why bulking or reverse dieting is attractive to people who want to lose weight because through this process, you speed up your metabolism. Through this process, in many cases, especially if you're somebody that chronically diets or has always tried to get leaner and you've never tried to do something like this. This can be very healthy. They can balance out hormones. It can make you feel a lot better. It can get rid of pain. I've had many clients who were so afraid of gaining weight. They always ate. This really controlled way. And then we put them in a clean bulk strategy. And they feel so good. They have tons of energy, tons of strength, the result of which being more muscle and eventually later on less body fat. So that's a clean bulk is trying to build muscle with minimal fat gain. Dirty bulk is no strategy. Dirty bulk is just going to eat a bunch of food. I'm actually a ton of food and just trying to gain weight on this scale. That's what it looks like for most of us. This is how I bulked as a kid. That's how you had to do it. Well, I think if I had done it, I'll be honest. That's a good question, Justin. We're good statement because had I tracked and done things properly, a quote unquote clean bulk would have resulted in more muscle mass for me as a kid. Oh, yeah. I just, I knew I needed to eat more. And so what I did is a kid and I was a skinny kid. So what I did is just ate as much as possible and ate as much garbage as possible because I could eat more of it. But had I done this the right way, I would have ended up with more lean body mass. I'll never forget that this, this, this the first time this really, really hit me was I was, I want to say 21. So I was still young and I knew better at this time. But still I was kind of stuck in that trap of just trying to get big. And I had a competition or entered into a competition with my fitness manager and my assistant manager. So the three of us said, let's you gain the most like muscle and strength over 60 days. I think it was and I went hard. I didn't want to lose. I went hard. I ate as much as I could. It was a lot of garbage. And I don't remember how much weight I gained, but I got pretty heavy. I almost got to 240 pounds. I tested my body fat, which I had tested before I started the bulk and the vast majority of the weight that I gained was body fat. And when I went on the cut, I went back to where I was before. So a good clean bulk builds lean body mass that you can hold on to later when you want to cut. A good clean bulk looks like you're building muscle, not just gaining a bunch of sloppy weight. I think this is actually really common even in the competitive world. I saw a lot of this and I had a similar experience as you did. In fact, I still remember when this was very vivid because I had a competition with my buddy, my buddy Mark. Oh, he wanted a bulk with you? Yeah, we both went on a bulk together. And I'm the trainer of the two of us. So I had a lot of confidence going in that I was going to whoop him at this. I should be better at this than he is. And I just went so aggressive with eating a dirty bulk that when we actually got on and we did a dunk tank before and after. And so we had a controlled thing to test it. And I had put on a good amount of weight. I put on 25, 30 pounds. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to smoke him. And he didn't put on, I think I only put on like 10 or 15 pounds. He ended up winning because he was more muscle. He gained more lean body mass. I put on more body fat. And so I did put on muscle, but as much muscle I put on and put just as much body fat on. That was my first experience. I'm in my probably mid 20s when I experienced that fast forward into my 30s when I got into competing. I saw this. I got to hang out with a lot of other amateur and pro bodybuilders. And you know, we all there's a lot of us that worked out at the same facility. And we were talking about we ate at the same places and dieted and talked about everything. And I'd watched some of these guys in the off season just put on 40, 50 pounds. And just whatever. Burgers, fries, milkshakes, whatever, like just to put mass on. And then they would cut and get shredded for a show. And I'd watch this happen kind of and show to show. And again, we're all showing up to the same events. And I'm their physics look the same. Or arguably sometimes not as good. And it's like, man, you're putting all this work in. And but what was happening was they were basically putting on 30 to 50 pounds, half of it being muscle, half of it being fat. Then when they shred all the way back down, they would lose it all. They would lose a bunch of fat, but they also lose a ton of muscles. They would also extreme cut to go from one extreme to the other extreme. So they go from extreme bulk eating to what we talk about what not to do on the show. A time which is just cut calories like crazy, increased cardio every day. And so, you know, the same rate that they were losing fat, they were losing muscle. And so they end up where they started going into the off season. It's like, man, if you would have just like kind of maintained you, it would have been far easier on your body to do that. I think that's an extreme example. But this is what I think happens to a lot of people. I think it's a great thing to do because I went to that whole process of just like adding whatever calories I could. And drinking whatever shakes I thought, you know, would be able to, you know, get all those calories in before my workouts. And what I found was like, there's a tolerance. There's a point where like I have insane gastro distress. I'm like running to the bathroom. It's like there was like a sweet spot where it's like, I could actually hold the food for the whole day. It was like, it was volatile and like going back and hindsight. If I just kept that at a certain amount consistently and then obviously with like better food choices. It would have been awesome. Dude, I would have gained so much more muscle and like had so much more progress. I was like constantly fighting and battling this distress. Yeah. So let's talk about like how much body fat you would gain in a clean bulk. So it depends on how lean you are. So if you're really lean, like if you're a guy and you're, you know, 9% body fat and you're going to clean bulk, you should gain some body fat. Okay, because walking around at 9%, 9% for most men is a little too lean to walk around. And you're not going to build much muscle at 9% body fat. But if you're a guy and you're walking around at 15% body fat, you can gain muscle and maintain 15% body fat. Oh, totally. So what I mean by that is this, as your body weight goes up, you are gaining some body fat. But as your lean body mask goes up, it also outpaces the fat that you gain. Yep. 'Cause remember 15% of your body weight, that's a higher number as your weight goes up. So you can still gain body fat with the muscle because the muscle is outpacing it. Body fat percentage stays the same. If you're a woman and you're listening, you're like, "Ooh, I gotta, you know, I need to go on a bulk. "I'm always in a deficit." And you're walking around in the teens with body fat, you're gonna have to gain some body fat, okay? But if you're walking around the low 20s, you could totally go into clean bulk, get your metabolism debused, and your body fat percentage not budge. That much at all. So just wanted to be clear with that, 'cause there are cases where people do need to gain body fat if they want to build muscle. But if you're listening and you're at a kind of athletic body fat percentage anyway, for guys, mid teens, for women, you know, low 20s, you could totally do this the right way and not gain any body fat. Just to use the female example since you went that way too, you know, this is what happened with Karen and I. What we, what her body obviously needed to get higher body fat percentage before it was going to respond to build muscle. We're doing all the right things. We're adding calories, you know, and seeing strength gains happen. But then when we did the body fat test, we, according to the test, we hadn't put on that much muscle. But it was also, she's coming out of 17 to 18% body fat. - Did you gain body fat? - Yeah, so her body needed to gain body fat before it's going to respond and build muscle. And so to your point, if you're really lean, male or female, many times you do have to get a little bit of body fat before the body really starts to pack the muscle on. But if you're already kind of in a, you know, healthy place body fat range, so mid teens for men, low 20s for women, then you can kind of maintain it while you clean bulk. And that's, to me, where I got in competing, I never let myself teeter too much higher than about the 11 12% range. And that would be like a big bulk for me, was allowing the body to go back up to about 11 12% and then come back down. And what was nice about that when it's time to switch to the other direction and lean out, you're never that far off from this direct or this cut or this look or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, versus what I think the traditional way was, before we talked about, - You just gain as much weight. - You just gain as much weight, put on as much muscle than you'll worry about it later and cut body fat and what ends up happening. Is you just keep gaining and losing the same fat muscle through that process and never really build or keep any. - That's right. So the first thing that's important to consider here, is you obviously got the lift weights, right? So if you bump your calories and we'll get there, we'll get to the food part. But if you just eat more and you're not lifting weights, you're just gonna gain body fat. Your body doesn't build muscle unless it thinks it needs to. So I know this goes without saying, but you need to lift weights and you need to lift weights properly. So here's, there's this interesting mentality around bulking and cutting that is, especially with cutting, that is opposite of what actually works in the real world. So here's what, this is what I think a lot of people believe. When they cut their calories, they think they need to dramatically work out more. I'm trying to lose weight, so I need to work out way more. - Opposite. - And when they bulk, they're like, "Well, I need to work out less because I'm trying to build." The truth is, the time to increase the volume of your training, the time to add more sets and stuff like that, within reason is when you're in a bulk. This is when your body will adapt better to higher levels of stress 'cause you have more nutrients in your body. So when you're in a bulk, this, if you're ever gonna add exercises or add sets, again, within reason, 'cause you get over trained in a bulk. There's this, there's this saying that says, you never over train, you just underneath, that's not true. But there's some truth to it, that's not entirely true. So when you're in the bulk, when you're, this is when you can increase the volume, this is when you can train a little harder. Why? Because you have extra calories that help with the recovery and that. I mean, this is, in my opinion, this is the only time it makes sense. That's right. And this is the mistake I think so many people make is, they, 'cause we know, not everybody, it's the over-generalization, but a lot of people are familiar now with progressive overload. I think that was in a term that we used as frequently in the 20 years ago, but I think more and more people understand progressive overload, which would be increasing volume over time. And this is what makes the body change, this is what builds muscle. And so people grasp that, especially if you listen to a podcast like this, most people understand progressive overload is important to building muscle. But so many people understand that, but then they do that while in a deficit, because they don't want to, I'm trying to lean out. They're compromised. So they're progressively overloading in their workout, but they're reducing caloric intake. It's like counterproductive. So in those times when you are, you're progressive overloading, you need to be in a calories repulsed. You're overloading the body more than what it's used to handling. So you're sitting a signal, tell the body, say, we need more muscle. He's increasing volume. He's increasing intensity or he's increasing sets. However you want to say it, therefore I need more material to go build this tissue. But what ends up happening is, so we people do that while also in a deficit, and it's like, that's a terrible time to do it. You're putting more stress, more demand on the body. This is the time to do it. So to give an example with our programs, if you listen, you follow maps programs, let's say you're following maps in a ball, or PPL, a good program to go to that would be similar, while you're increasing your calories for a clean bulk, would be our new program maps up or lower. Upper lower has a slight increase in volume. This is the time to do it with your strength training is when you're increasing your calories. The next thing is to hit your target body weight and protein. This is true if you're cutting your bulking, but here's a difference. When you're cutting your target body weight is less than what you currently weigh. When you're bulking, your target body weight is more than what you currently weigh. So by the way, be realistic with this. Don't think to yourself, I wanna get 100 pounds muscle, that's like gonna work. But realistic would be like, okay, I wanna gain eight pounds of lean body mass, or 10 pounds of lean body mass, or 20 pounds of lean body mass over this period of time. That's your new target protein intake. So if you're a 200 pound guy, you wanna weigh 215, hit 215 grams of protein. So you're gonna be eating more protein than you probably already do, and this will only help contribute to the muscle building process. It definitely doesn't hurt. But in my experience, this makes a difference. Well, it makes more sense. You're increasing volume, you need more material to recover and adapt. And so what a better time than to now increase protein also. That's right. And then increase your calories. So here's what people get weird. How much do I increase my calories for a clean bulg? You don't need a ton. You don't need to eat a ton extra calories. Now, you could definitely make the case, especially if somebody's really walking way up. Somebody who's really, really lean, typical fast metabolism person, they can make the case for more calories. But on average, in my experience training people, the average person will have a nice lean body mass gain at about 500 calories above maintenance. Okay. So whatever calories you need to eat to keep your body weight the same, add 500 calories to that. By the way, there's data on this. And the data shows that more calories don't build more muscle. They just tend to add more body fat. Now again, for somebody who needs the game body fat, if this is a young woman coming to me that I finally convinced to go on a bulk who's walking around a 13% body fat has hormone issues, I'm gonna try and have her eat more calories. The limiting factor there is what she's comfortable with. If I'm talking to a guy walking around 8% body fat, I may do the same thing. I may go up to as much as 800 to 1,000 calories. But the average person, it's about 500 calories more than what you're currently eating. You don't need a ton of extra calories to build that extra muscle. I was gonna say another kind of generic way to say that is if you're in that kind of healthy body fat range you already talked about, then 500 is perfect. If you're in that lower percent than 1,000, if you need to gain body fat and you're going into a bulk, you could easily surplus 1,000 and be totally fine. And even if that's a little high, say, it's better to be around 750 or 800, it's not so much over that you're gonna see pounds of body fat going. You're talking about it. That's a while. Yeah, we take quite a while. Arguably by that time those extra calories will you will feel them in the workouts and your strength will go up and then you'll end up adapting and building muscle. You're just a touch on that, Adam. When you're walking around too lean, you could gain body fat and have an increase in your performance and strength without even gaining much muscle. That's what I'm recovering. I know. And so again, a lot of times people are like, oh, I want a clean bulk, I'm 8% body fat. I just want to gain muscle, not gain any body fat. You probably not, it's good luck. You need to gain some body fat to build some muscle. And that extra body fat will make you stronger and feel better in that particular situation. But if you're walking around or relatively healthy body fat percentage, like I said, man, your guy mid teens, you're a woman, you know, low 20s, 500 calories above, watch yourself gain muscle with minimal to no increase in body fat percentage, which is pretty expected. Next, keep your daily activity high. Now, notice I didn't say tons of cardio. That's not what I'm talking about. But there is this mentality sometimes, especially with those that really want to gain weight, where they need to be like, I can't move it all throughout the day, I got to conserve calories. This can actually be counterproductive because being idle and super sedentary is actually counter muscle building. Now, I'm not also saying when you do the extreme, where you're going to do tons of cardio outside of the gym, but what I am saying is walk. - Yeah, the body system just work better. - That's right. - Yeah, when you add movement. And that doesn't need to be intense movement, but yeah, if you take a nice light walk, like digestive system, everything else was going to be able to shuttle, you know, blood's going to circulate more efficiently. Everything like vital for healing tissue, it's all going to happen. happen. So I build more I build better muscle, everything being the same, when I'm averaging 8,000 steps a day, for sure. For sure. Yeah. More movement, more oxygen, more blood flow, more nutrient, better muscle, better better better recovery, better digestive. And in this context where we are increasing volume, increasing calories, this makes a huge difference. And I don't know I'm not familiar with any studies that we have to really highlight how effective this. I mean, I've just experienced it not only with all my clients, but especially at the high levels of competing and watching this so diligently, like it makes a big difference. When I increase or I would take this for a client or me, where I increase volume like this. So they're doing more workload increasing calories, always moving them up in steps, always help this process so much better. And the theory is the exactly what we're saying is just more blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients, getting to the muscles, get a facilitate recovery factor. It's also this, like you send the synthesizer, everything better. It's also this, like you send a signal to build muscle when you string-thrain, you're feeding yourself properly. The strongest lose muscle signal you could send besides starving yourself is not move. It's to not move. You could lift weights so perfectly in hard today and let me put, you could do crazy set of, you could do squats today. We're going to do squats in dead lifts and leg press. We're going to really work your legs well. And then what I'm going to have you do until the next time you're supposed to train your legs, let's say it's a week from now. I'm going to make you better at it. You're not allowed to get up off the bed. You would actually come back weaker. Whenever we talk about this, we used to believe that. I did. I was 100% I did. It was done. So my first, my first trainer job was across the street from 24th fitness. I live my grandma across the street. I could just walk across the street. And this was like a dream come true for the kid trying to bulk. And this is not only did I dirty bulk, but I would dirty bulk eat as much as I could and then I would go lay down and I would literally lay down and watch set my alarm for when my next client was. Just bro. Yeah, they're middle of the day, two o'clock of the afternoon, suns out, I'm laying in a bed. After a 2000 gallery, cheeseburger type of lunch, waiting waiting for my next client and wait five minutes for God be there long goes off and then I'd run across the street and go to and just so while thinking that I'm like trying to give myself as much recovery, like such a terrible, terrible approach to not only dirty bulk like that, but then the parent also with less movement because I'm just trying to think recovery recovery. Yeah, and the reason why I'm communicating this, this is more for the like really the people are really eager to gain size. And I like I'm talking to myself as a kid. I thought well, every calorie I burn is taking away from the calories that go in my muscle. You know, I feel your gains and so I did the same thing. I don't know, as a kid I'd lift, I'd eat like crazy, and sit on the couch as much as I could. So, oh, gotta let the muscles grow. If I move them too much, I'm not going to read it. Just sit here and let them grow. And I'll never forget, I've told you, I've told this store, I haven't told this store in a long time, but there was a summer where my cousin and I had bought BMX bikes. And so throughout the day, we go ride these bikes. So this was like a summer where I wasn't just sitting around trying to build muscle. And at this point, I was trying to learn how to bunny hop. And when you don't know how to bunny hop, you yank on the handle arms, you're hard with your arms. And my arms grew. And I remember being like, and I was afraid, oh my god, all this work on my arms, they're not going to grow because I need to let them recover. And they built. And I've tracked this throughout the years. Like I said, I know we don't do a lot of steps because, or I don't take a lot of steps because what we do for work. So if I let that happen, I'm hitting 4,000 steps in a day. That's it. If I cautiously move and walk, I can get myself up to about 8,000, 10,000 could be hard, except for on our off days or whatever. But I know when I'm trying to build and get stronger, the difference between, there's a big difference in how I build when I'm taking 8,000 steps or 4,000 steps. So, now the key isn't to go, you're not going crazy activity. I'm not telling you go workout all time, but move. So those people are afraid of that. Go and walk. Get those steps up. The other thing that I had to that demographic of people, because these are the same people that are dirty bulking and so on that because they need to eat as many calories as they can. The other thing that I, I really didn't realize at first, but then later on, once I started tracking was, I was eating all these calories because I could eat more calories through junk food and dirty bulking. But what I also recognized when I actually started to track diligently was I was super high on calories, but low on my protein. All your calories were from fat and carbs. Yes. And that was like the real eye opener for me was like, I felt like I had to eat all this food just to get the calories at the 4,000 plus calories. But then I struggled to hit 130, 150 grams of protein and I needed to be somewhere towards 200. And so it really shifted like, I was like, oh man, I got at least go get the good calories first. And that alone kind of organically made me clean bulk. And that's the last point, which is avoid garbage food. Garbage food, processed food, junk food. Yes, you'll hit high calories. You're probably not going to get really, really good protein. So, it's not going to protein. And it affects your digestion and it makes you feel ethargic and it makes you hold water. So now you're gaining weight on the scale. Am I gaining muscle? Probably not. It's probably water. Yeah. So you still want to avoid garbage food. Now the occasional, you know, in a clean bulk, the occasional pizza burger is okay. I also think that's okay on a cut as well. The person where I allow that to happen more is a person that really struggles to get those extra calories. They've already hit their protein. They really struggle. And like, man, I don't know if I can eat more. I'm like, "Is something tasty to help?" "Could you have a burger?" Yeah, I think I could do that. Well, my, that's my hard-gainer advice used to be this because I would have considered myself in this category, trained a lot of people in this category that would just be like, "Man, I just, I strongly keep the calories consisting of there." And so the goal was always go get your protein and take through a whole natural foods. After that, then I would allow you to do the french fries, the shake, whatever, whatever, whatever you needed to, that was palatable to boost the calories. But go through and that advice worked really well for myself. When I was a hard-gainer, it worked really well for clients that also were like that was otherwise what ends up happening is you do. You end up getting a bunch of calories through saturated fat and through carbohydrates. And you end up putting on as much or more body fat than you do muscle because all your surpluses coming from that. Totally. Look, so here's what we have, right? So we have coaches and trainers now that work for MindPump. And what we have is a nutrition call or appointment where you can get on with a coach, with a MindPump certified coach or trainer, and they'll walk you through this. They'll organize this for you. They'll organize how many calories, proteins, fats, carbs, they'll give you advice on your workouts. It's MindPumpnutrition.com. If you use the code MP50, you'll get this appointment for half off. So again, MindPumpnutrition.com talked to a personal trainer that works for MindPump, trained to coach by us, use the code MP50 for the 50% off. So you can also find us on Instagram. It's MindPump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPSANABOLIC, MAPS PERFORMANCE, and MAPSASTETIC. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam & Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. 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