Do you want to build muscle and have an extremely fit body that attracts everyone's attention? So, although you are now ready to achie...
Do you want to build muscle and have an extremely fit body that attracts everyone's attention?
So, although you are now ready to achieve your dream body, what should you do and what should you eat? Do you know exactly?
I know how you feel because it took me 4 years to separate the most important information from the unimportant and apply it to achieve the body I want.
But I have good news for you, you don't have to spend years not knowing what to believe like I did.
Because in this article, you will be able to learn and put into practice all the information you need to know about nutrition to transform your body.
At the end of this article:
- What is bulk?
- How many calories should you consume to build muscle?
- What is the trap you should avoid when bulking?
- What should your macro distribution be like to build muscle?
- Is it possible to build muscle without bulking?
You will learn the answers to questions such as. This way, you will reach the fit body of your dreams by taking the right steps. So, without wasting any more time, let's get started right away...
WHAT DOES BULK MEAN?
First, let me quickly tell you what it is, in case you don't know what "bulking" means with the goal of building muscle.
Bulk 's literal meaning is volume, heap. However, in bodybuilding, it means the period when you aim to build more muscle by eating lots of food and consuming more calories than you burn .
SO WHY BULK?
What I want to talk about in the first place is “why should we bulk?”
Can't you get the muscular and attractive body of your dreams without bulking?
The bottom line is this: Your body's ability to build muscle has a very strong relationship with the amount of food you eat.
So, if you are thinking of gaining muscle as quickly as possible, you should be doing the right things in your diet.
Eating enough protein is NOT ENOUGH!
If you want to build muscle as quickly as possible, you need to consume enough calories in addition to the amount of protein you eat. If you don't eat enough, your body won't be able to build as much muscle as it could!
Yes, this situation may be slightly different in the first 6-12 months of starting sports. Beginners can build muscle even while eating in a caloric deficit during exercise… but eventually, to achieve an impressive body and build muscle fast, you need to eat in a calorie surplus.
We get a certain amount of energy into our body from food and drinks every day. Our body spends a certain amount of energy in various activities.
This relationship between our energy expenditure and energy (calorie) intake is called energy balance .
For example, in order to lose weight, we must create a "calorie deficiency" by creating a negative energy balance, otherwise losing weight is out of the question. You achieve calorie deficiency by eating fewer calories than you burn in a day.
For example, if you neither gain nor lose weight when you eat 2000 calories, you will see that you start losing weight when you start consuming 1500 calories by creating a 500 calorie deficit in your diet.
However, there are some negative effects on the body caused by a caloric deficient diet (trying to lose weight).
1. Eating a low-calorie diet reduces your body's ability to synthesize muscle proteins.
In other words, when you are eating in a caloric deficit, your body cannot build as much muscle as it normally could.
2. When the body is in calorie deficiency, anabolic hormone levels decrease while catabolic hormone levels increase.
Decreasing testosterone and increasing cortisol hormones make it more difficult to build muscle while eating in a caloric deficit. (The body is generally in a more burning state)
3. It reduces your performance in training
Have you ever felt like your performance suffered in training when you were eating less than usual?
When you just start lifting weights or exercising your muscles in some way, you can build muscle despite being on a calorie-deficient diet, and you may not feel the effects of the calorie deficiency much during this period. (The first 6-9 months when you start exercising, you are in a special period called "nooby gains"... but that is the subject of another article)
However, athletes who have been lifting weights for a longer time know how much their performance in sports is affected when they eat in calorie deficiency. If you've experienced this, you know what I'm talking about.
Of course, the decrease in your performance in sports negatively affects your muscle building. While you can do 8 repetitions with 80 kilos, suddenly dropping to 6 repetitions with 80 kilos is not a very constructive thing in terms of muscle development.
You can better understand why in my video about the golden rule of building muscle .
In short, eat as much chicken, salad, bulgur rice and high-quality meals as you want, but if you do not consume enough calories, your muscle development will not progress as you want.
I'm not saying that choosing quality food is not important, but the type of food you eat alone is not enough to make your body look muscular, lean and remarkable.
For these reasons , if you want the best and fastest muscle development, you should definitely not eat in a calorie deficit.
The easiest way to do this is to consume slightly more calories than you burn in a day.
In short, if your goal is to build muscle as quickly as possible, you should be willing to gain some fat. However, you should be very careful while doing this. You ask why? Let's talk now.
WHY LEAN BULK? (Lean=Fat-free, lean bulk)
If you need to consume more calories than you burn, as we just talked about, should you eat everything that comes your way in the bodybuilder's eat-big-be-big mentality?
This is where bulk programs generally fail.
While athletes who hear that bulking is important to build muscle are taking a step in the right direction by starting to bulk, there is a "trap" that they fall into, and I don't want you to fall into this trap.
Generally, when giving advice, it may be said by teachers or some bodybuilders that you need to eat MUCH MORE calories than you need to eat in a day to bulk up.
But this quickly takes you away from the body you want to build.
Here's the thing: You don't need as big a calorie surplus as you think.
The mistake made when giving bulk advice is to think that a large calorie excess is much more effective than a small calorie excess.
This is not true. The amount of muscle your body builds with a 10% calorie surplus is no different from the amount of muscle it builds with a 30-35% calorie surplus.
You may have thought that your body would build more muscle by eating more food with a 30-35% calorie surplus, but you must understand this; No matter how right you do everything, your body has the capacity to build a certain amount of muscle over a certain period of time.
Above that, the calories you consume will start to be stored as fat in your body rather than turning into muscle, and you will see that your belly will start to appear quickly.
Let me explain with an example: Let's take a person who maintains his current weight by consuming 2000 calories. There will be no difference in terms of building muscle between consuming 2200 (+10%) calories and consuming 2600 (+30%) calories by creating a calorie surplus to build muscle .
Since the body can only build a certain amount of muscle at a certain time, after using some of this 30% excess calories to build muscle, the remaining part will start to turn into fat.
You can think of it like this: If you give 500 bricks every day instead of 300 bricks to a worker who can place a maximum of 300 bricks a day to build a wall, the worker will not be able to build the wall any faster.
These excess bricks will start to accumulate day by day and will now start to pile up and cover a large area.
You can think of these bricks accumulating around as oil. When you give your body excessive calories, the body will store the excess as fat after using the energy for muscle.
This excess fat will not only help you get away from the "atlefit" appearance. While your fat storage rate will increase, your muscle building speed will decrease.
Because as the fat level in your body increases, your body's response to insulin begins to decrease.
Insulin is a hormone that allows nutrients to enter your cells.
As a result, as the amount of fat in your body increases :
- Your body's fat burning capacity decreases.
- The possibility of gaining weight increases.
- The amount of protein synthesis decreases. (gains are decreasing)
So, as you get fatter, your ability to build muscle decreases. For this reason, it is important to do "lean bulk" in order to keep the fat you gain at a minimum while building muscle.
Also, getting rid of some excess weight before starting to bulk is a good way to start this journey.
Therefore, it is important for men to start doing "lean bulking" after reaching an average of 10-12% body fat and women reaching an average of 20-22% body fat, in order to get the best results.
Additionally, as you get fatter, testosterone levels decrease and estrogen levels increase.
As everyone knows, testosterone is one of the most important hormones that enable muscle development, and high estrogen levels cause the body to retain more fat.
If you start to gain excess fat while trying to build muscle in this way, it will slow down muscle development and gradually increase the rate of fat gain.
When he comes to the end of his bulk, it will be a long and arduous road to burn all that fat while preserving his muscles. (Believe me, I know firsthand how bad it is)
As you can see, being oily negatively affects you in three ways. Getting too fat:
- It slows down muscle growth
- Increases fat storage rate
- Eventually the amount of fat you need to get rid of gets higher and higher
That's why "dirty" bulking (in short, eating whatever comes your way) gives bulking a bad name and deals a blow to the idea of eating in excess of calories.
However, eating in excess of calories is a key point to maximize muscle growth, and the real power of bulking is revealed when done correctly.
How to Bulk Correctly (LEAN BULK)
Now you know why bulking correctly is important. So how many calories should you consume in a day for this? How much of these calories should be protein, how much should be fat, and how much should be carbohydrate so that you can build a body effectively?
You can follow these 4 very simple steps that I have created to answer these questions for yourself.
At the end of these steps, you will find out exactly how many grams of protein, fat, carbohydrates and calories you need to consume to build your body.
Are you excited? Beautiful. Let's start…
4 Easy Steps to Finding Target Macros:
1. Multiply your weight by 35-38 if you are male (multiply by 33-35 if you are female). The resulting value is the amount of calories you need to consume in a day for “lean bulk”.
The amount of calories everyone burns in a day may vary depending on many factors such as age, gender, activity status and body type. Therefore, do not consider calculators and the resulting values as final results.
Remember that calorie output is a good starting point.
The way to bulk well is to start close to the target and then make the necessary adjustments in your calories according to your body's response.
For this reason, a good place to start for lean bulk is to multiply your weight by 35-38. As long as you gain 1.5 - 2 kilos per month, you are doing lean bulking successfully. (1-1.5 kilos for women)
If you find that you cannot gain weight at these values, you should increase the amount of calories you consume. (it's a natural process for this to happen, we'll get to this in a moment)
2. Make sure you consume enough protein
To do this, multiply your weight by 2 and eat as many grams of protein as the resulting value. For example, if you weigh 70 kilos, you should eat 70 × 2 = 140 grams of protein in a day. This value is more than enough to ensure muscle development.
Multiply your own weight by 2 and write it down.
3. Find the amount of fat you need to consume
When your weight is multiplied by 35-38 , 15-30% of the calories should come from fat .
If you are wondering whether 15%, 20% or 30% should come from fats, you must find the answer to this question yourself.
While some people feel more energetic by eating more fat, some people feel better by eating more carbohydrates and less fat. This may differ from person to person.
On average, 15-20% of my calorie distribution comes from fat because I know that a higher carbohydrate diet improves my performance in sports and my energy level in general, but this may be different for you.
For this reason, you can consume fats in a range of 15-30%, this is a personal preference.
For the sake of example, if you need to consume 3000 calories, let's assume that we consume 20% of this value. This means 600 calories should come from fat.
Since 1 gram of fat = 9 calories, this makes 600/9 = 66-67 grams of fat . For a straight calculation, it can be taken as 65 or 70 grams of fat.
After making these calculations based on your own caloric value, you now know how many grams of protein and fat you need to consume in order to bulk up effectively.
Now it's time for carbohydrates.
4. After determining the amounts of fat and protein, all remaining calories belong to carbohydrates.
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
Now you can easily find out how much carbohydrate you need to consume.
Amount of protein to consume (we found) x 4 = amount of calories from protein (x)
The amount of fat you need to consume (we found) x 9 = the amount of calories from fat (y)
kilo x 38 (we found) = total amount of calories you need to consume (z)
z – (x + y) = the amount of calories that should come from carbohydrates.
When you find the amount of calories coming from carbohydrates, divide this value by 4 to find out how many grams of carbohydrates this makes. The resulting value will show how many grams of carbohydrates you need to consume per day.
Now you have the protein, fat, carbohydrate and calorie values you need to consume to build maximum muscle! Congratulations, you've taken the first big step towards bulking = )
But remember: These values are not final values. If you gain more or less than 1.5-2 kilograms of weight per month, which is likely to be the case, you should adjust your diet so that you gain 1.5-2 kilograms per month by adding and subtracting the amount of carbohydrates you consume per day.
In this way, you will be able to find your ideal "lean bulk" point and build a body successfully.
So, You Can't Gain Weight / Build Muscle Even Though You Do It All... What should you do?
As I mentioned before, to bulk effectively, you need to gain between 0.2-0.5 kilos per week. (For women, this value is 0.1-0.3 kilos per week)
So what should you do if you gain less weight than these values or if you cannot gain any weight at all?
Assuming that you follow a well-organized program and give your muscles enough time to rest, there is only one thing you need to do in this case: consume more calories.
The bottom line is this: If you see that you're getting stronger in exercise, but you don't see a weight gain (which also means an increase in muscle mass when you're bulking), you're not consuming enough calories to maximize muscle growth.
If you are in this situation, do not worry, this is a process that every successful bulking athlete (including me) can experience and when you start increasing your calories from this point, you will reach the ideal calorie amount for your body.
How many calories should you increase?
If you consume 2 grams of protein per kilogram, you do not need to consume more protein. This value is more than sufficient for muscle development while bulking.
If you do not see an increase in your weight, add 100-150 calories to the amount of calories you eat in a day.
These excess calories must come from carbohydrates. So, add 25-30 grams of carbohydrates to your daily intake and see how it goes.
If you do not see any weight gain within 1 week and 10 days, repeat step 2 and repeat this process until you start gaining the right amount of clot.
Bulking successfully is actually that simple.
However, there is an important exception that I cannot help but mention here.
You must have heard the terms "hardgainer" or "ectomorph" somewhere. It is typically applied to people who have a fast metabolism and have difficulty gaining weight, and such a thing really exists.
However, this does not mean that you cannot build muscle if you are a “hardgainer” (ectomorph), you just need to consume more calories than someone with an endomorph or mesomorph structure to see muscle gain.
For example, a hardgainer weighing 70 kilos may need to consume high levels of calories, such as 3800-4000 calories, in order to gain 0.5 kilos per week.
In this case, if you have reached a point where you cannot constantly increase your calories from carbohydrates, you can slowly increase your calories from fats and proteins.
If the carbohydrates you consume per day as a hardgainer have reached 7-8 times your weight and you cannot gain weight as you want, it will become difficult to go above this.
In this case, you can now start to provide the necessary calorie increase from fats and proteins.
Yes, if you have read this far, you have learned very good information about bulking effectively, congratulations!!
A Few Important Points You Should Pay Attention to for Your Bulk to Be Effective:
- Give due importance to heavy basic movements.
Compound (basic) movements such as bench press, squats, overhead press, rows, chin ups are indispensable for the muscle development of a natural athlete.
Since more than one joint and muscle group works simultaneously in these movements, you will be moving heavier loads than in isolation movements.
Over time, you can significantly increase the weights you use, and as the weights increase, the amount of muscle you build will also increase over time. (If you follow what we talked about in the Bulk guide, you will be on your way to having an amazing body.)
- Push yourself every workout – but don't overtrain by overexerting one muscle.
Trying to surpass what you did before in your training is key. For example, if you did 8 repetitions of bench press with 80 kilos the previous week, this week you should benefit from the progressive overload principle by trying to do 8 repetitions with 82.5 kilos or 9 repetitions with 80 kilos.
This way you will be constantly forcing your muscles to adapt to a higher tension. When you do this for a long time, your muscles will grow and reward your efforts.
However, if you do excessive amounts of movement and the pain in your muscles often persists for 4-5-6 days, you may need to reduce the number of reps and sets in your training by a certain amount.
The notion that “more is better” does not apply here. Because just as it is important for you to exercise your muscles hard, it is also important for them to recover and work again as soon as possible.
When you're just starting out, giving each muscle group 40-70 repetitions a week is a good start. This value may vary from person to person and also depends on how long you have been exercising.
to a muscle group
That's why you can exceed these values. If your muscles are toning well from workout to workout, you can push the limits over time and see what your body responds well to.
Consume plenty of carbohydrates and quality foods to help your body and muscles recover . Also, make sure to get at least 7-8 hours of quality sleep a day.
- Eat Your Favorite “Delicious” and “Unhealthy” Foods During Bulk, Without Exaggeration
One of the biggest mistakes made is constantly consuming excessive amounts of high-calorie meals outside, thinking "I'm already on the bulk side."
When you do this for a few weeks, you can gain 2-3 times the amount of fat you would normally gain by lean bulking, and your belly starts to grow rapidly.
Therefore, when rewarding yourself, be careful not to exceed your target calorie amount.
So how long will it take to achieve your dream body?
While it is important to do everything right, it is also important to have realistic expectations.
If you expect things from your body that it cannot do physiologically (such as expecting a fitness model body in 5-6 months), no matter how good the results you get, you will think that you made a mistake somewhere and be disappointed.
However, there is a certain amount of muscle your body can build at a certain time, and if you want to create an incredible change in your body that everyone will notice, you must give your body the necessary time.
The time it takes to build a truly impressive body
It is not possible to build enough muscle to become a fitness model in 2-3 months or even in a year (as long as you are natural - and if you are not doing this sport professionally, I definitely do not recommend using growth hormones and endangering your health).
I'm not trying to demoralize you with this information. I want you to have a realistic expectation.
While the fitness journey is not a short one, you can expect to see significant changes in your body within 6-12 months.
Once you see that you can change your body, the rest will follow.
So instead of thinking "this is a long time, how will I do it?", focus on making every week as good as you can.
Finally, you will see that you have almost reached the point you want and that it is not that difficult.
So how many pounds of muscle can you expect to gain per year?
If you have a good fitness program and are committed to putting the things we talked about in this article to effective use:
While men can gain between 7kg-11kg of muscle in their first year , women can gain half of this .
While men can gain between 3.5kg and 6kg of muscle in their second year , women can also build half as much muscle.
While men can gain around 2kg-3kg of muscle in their third year , women can also build half of this value .
In the following years, when men have a successful year, they can gain an average of 1kg of muscle, while women can build half as much.
A side note here: If you haven't been able to build muscle even though you've been going to the gym for years, it means you're still in your first year. Even if you start doing the right things in your third year, you will see that you can gain around 7-11 kg of muscle per year, as if you were starting from the first year, since you started building muscle for the first time.
Yes, we have come to the end of this long, information-filled article. Here's what you need to know to build muscle quickly:
In Conclusion For Bulk:
- Create a small calorie surplus.
- Don't let your fat percentage get too high. (bulk without exceeding 17% for men and 27% for women)
- Give due importance to compound (basic) movements in sports . In order to build maximum muscle naturally, the majority of your training program should consist of compound movements.
- Work hard and try to beat the “you” from a week ago – Work hard on the movements you do, but don't overtrain by doing too many different movements and overtraining your muscles .
- Give sleep and rest as much importance as your training
- Set a realistic goal and be patient
If you follow these steps and don't give up, I promise you, when you look in the mirror, it will all be worth it and you will be a changed person.
In this guide, you have learned tons of information correctly from the very beginning, which caused me to lose time and work hard for years and not get results. Now it's time to put this information to work.
No matter what – don't give up.
Is there anything you want to ask after this guide? Or will you immediately put into practice what you learned here?
Let me know by leaving your questions or thoughts in the comments section, I'd love to hear it!
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