How to Clean Bulk Without Getting Fat (The Exact Formula) | Mind Pump 2907

The topic for today's episode, clean bulking, what is it and how can you do it? Let's get to it. Justin's a big dirty. I love bulking. He's a big dirty. Let's break it down for people aren't familiar. So the bulking, uh, is the term that, uh, relates trying to gain size or muscle, right? Strength usually is, uh, accompanies this. Now, uh, we've changed, uh, the term to mean other things, or should I say we've, 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, reverse diet, reverse diet is actually a clean bulk. Um, and the reason why we call it a reverse diet is because when you tell in particular women, um, we're going to bulk you, even though you're trying to lose body fat, the, they will run in the opposite direction. Well, I think, I think another thing that it implies is that it's controlled, right? Cause it's a diet reverse diet. Uh, you're still following a plan where bulk doesn't necessarily sounds like there's no plan. It doesn't signal plan really. Yeah. Bulk sounds like you're off your diet. Yeah. Trying to get big. Yeah. But you know, this has been around for a long time. Uh, strength athletes, um, athletes and general fighters have done this for a long time. Really? It's the attempt to trying 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. Uh, it can make you feel a lot better. It can get rid of pain. Um, 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, um, you know, 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, uh, less body fat. So that's a clean bulk is, is trying to build muscle with minimal fat gain. Okay. Dirty bulk is no strategy. Dirty bulk is, I'm just gonna a lot of calories. I was eating a ton of food and just trying to gain weight on the scale. Let's be honest. It's what it looked like for most of us when we, this is how I bulked as a kid. I thought that's how you had to do it to be honest. Yeah. Well, I think if I had done it, I'll be honest. That's a good, that's a good question, Justin, or good, uh, good statement. Cause had I tracked and done things properly, a quote unquote clean bulk would have resulted in more muscle mass for Oh yeah. Uh, I just, I knew I needed to eat more. And so what I did as a kid and I was a skinny kid. Uh, 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. Um, but had I done this the right way, I would have ended up with more lean body mass. I'll never forget this, this, the first time this really, really hit me was I was, uh, 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 I entered into a competition with my fitness manager and my assistant manager. So the three of us said, let's see who can gain the most like muscle and strength, uh, 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, tested my body fat, uh, which I had tested before I started the bulk and the vast majority of the weight that I gained was body fat. Uh, 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. Um, I saw a lot of this and I had similar experiences as you did. In fact, I still remember when this, I was very vivid because I had a competition with my, my buddy, my buddy Mark. And, uh, oh, he wanted a bulk with you. Yeah. We both went on a bulk together and, uh, you know, and I'm, I'm the trainer of the two of us. So I, you know, I had a lot of confidence going in that I was going to whoop him at this, right? Like I should be better at this than he is. And, uh, I just went so aggressive with, you know, eating in a dirty bulk that when we actually got on and we, 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, you know, I put on 25, 30 pounds. So I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to smoke them. And he didn't put on, I think only put on like 10 or 15 pounds. He ended up winning because he built more muscle. He gained more lean body mass. I put on more body fat. Wow. And so I did put on muscle, but, uh, as, as much muscle I put on, I put just as much body fat on. That was my first experience. I'm in my probably mid twenties when I experienced that fast forward into, uh, my thirties when I got into competing. Uh, I saw this, I got to hang out with a lot of other, uh, uh, amateur and pro bodybuilders. And, you know, we all, there's a lot of us that worked out at the same facility and we are, you know, talking to what we ate at the same places and dieted and talked about all that was, you know, you're talking about everything. Right. And, you know, I'd watched some of these guys in the off season, just put on 40, 50 pounds, you know, and just whatever, you know, burgers, fries, milkshakes, whatever, like just to put mass on. And then they would cut and get shredded for a show. And I'd watched this happen kind of show to show. And again, we're all showing up to the same events and I'm, their physiques look the same, you know, or it's arguably sometimes not as good. And it's like, man, you're putting all this work in and, and, but what was happening was there, they were basically, you know, 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, they would lose, they would lose a bunch of, they lose a bunch of fat, but they also lose a ton of muscles. They'd also extreme cut too. So they go from one extreme, the other extreme. So they go from extreme bulk eating to what we talk about, what not to do on the show all the time, which is just cut calories like crazy, increase cardio every day. And so, you know, the same rate that they were losing fat, they were losing muscle. And so they'd end up where they started going into the off season. It's like, man, if you would have just like kind of maintained, you would have been far easier on your body to do that. And I think that that's an extreme example, but this is what I went through 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, 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, but it was like, it was volatile. And like going back in hindsight, if I just kept that at a certain amount and consistently, and then obviously with like better food choices, dude, I would have gained so much more muscle and like had so much more progress. I was like constantly fighting and battling this, uh, distress. Crisp power. Look, if you're looking for a snack that actually fits your macros without sacrificing taste or crunch, you need to try Chris power, protein pretzels. These are pretzels. They taste like pretzels. They look like pretzels. They're pretzels, but each bag packs up to 28 grams of protein with only six grams of what are considered net carbs. When you subtract out the fiber, cause they're also very high in fiber. They're baked. They're not fried, no added sugar. They're vegan. They taste good, really good flavors. Cheddar, flaming crunch, cinnamon crunch. They're delicious, but again, very high in protein. So if you want that extra snack, you like the crunch, you want the protein use crisp power. So go to crisp power.com slash mind pump and use the code mind pump 10 for 10% off your order. We offer nutrition coaching here at mind pump. We have personal trainers. They work for us. They're good. And you can get half off with them right now. Go to mindpumpnutrition.com. Use the code MP50 for the 50% off. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you. Why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. 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 go on a clean bulk, you should gain some body fat. Okay. Because walking around at 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. 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 mass goes up and also outpaces the fat that you gain, because 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, but you're going to have to gain some body fat. Okay. But if you're walking around the low twenties, you could totally go into clean bulk, get your metabolism to boost and your body fat percentage, not budge that much at all. So just wanted to be clear with that because 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 twenties, 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 Corinne and I, what we, what her body obviously needed to get higher body fat percentage before it was going to respond and 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. Yeah. So her, 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, a, you know, healthy place, body fat range. So mid teens for men, uh, low twenties for women, then you can kind of maintain it while you clean ball. And that's to me where, where, where I got in, 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. It 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, when it's time to switch to the other direction and lean out, you're never that far off from this, this, this direct or this cut or this look or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve versus the, what I think the traditional way was, uh, before we talked about gain as much weight, put on as much muscle, then you'll worry about it later and cut, cut, cut body fat. And what ends up happening is you just keep gaining and losing the same fat and muscle through that process and never really build or keep any of that. That's right. So the first thing that's important to, um, 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 going to 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, uh, there's this interesting mentality around bulking and cutting that is, uh, 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 early, well, I need to work out less, uh, 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 because you have more nutrients in your body. So when you're in a bulk, this, if you're ever going to add exercises or add sets again, within a reason, because you get over trained in a book, there's this, there's a saying that says you never over train. You're just under eat. That's not true, but there's some truth to it, but it'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, uh, that help with the recovery. And then, I mean, this is, in my opinion, this is the only time it makes sense. And then this is the mistake I think so many people make is they, and cause we know, uh, we don't, not everybody's over generalization, but a lot of people are, are familiar now with progressive overload. I think that wasn't 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. Um, 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 will do that while in a deficit because they don't want to, you know, oh, I'm trying to lean out. So they're, they're progressively overloading in their workout, but they're all, but they're reducing caloric intake. It's like counterproductive. So, you know, in those times when you are, you're progressive overloading, you need to be in a caloric surplus. You're, you're, you're overloading the body more than it's used to handling. So you're sending a signal to 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. Uh, therefore I need more material to go build this tissue. But what ends up happening is so many 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 and you follow maps programs, uh, you know, let's say you're following maps, anabolic or, or PPL, a good program to go to that would be similar. Uh, while you're increasing your calories for a clean bulk would be our new program maps, upper, 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 or bulking, but here's the 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're currently with. So by the way, be realistic with this. So don't think to yourself, like I want to gain a hundred pounds of muscle. That's not going to work, but realistic would be like, okay, I want to 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, uh, protein intake. So if you're a 200 pound guy, you want to weigh 215, hit 215 grams of protein. So you're going to 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, and it makes more sense. You're increasing volume. You need more material to recover and adapt. And so, uh, what a better time than to now increase protein also. That's right. Uh, and then increase your calories. So here's where people get weird. Uh, how much do I increase my calories for a clean bulk? You don't need a ton. You don't need to eat a ton extra calories. Uh, now you could definitely make the case, especially if somebody's really walk your way up. Yeah. Somebody who's really, really lean, uh, you know, typical fast metabolism person, you know, 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 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 bowl, who's walking around a 13% body fat has hormone issues. I'm going to try and have her eat more calories. The limiting factor there is what she's comfortable with. Uh, if I'm talking to a guy walking on 8% body fat, uh, I may do the same thing. I may go up to as much as 800 to a thousand 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 amount. Yeah. I was going to say another, 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 a thousand, if you need to gain body fat, uh, and you're going into a bulk, you could easily surplus a thousand and be totally fine. And, and even, uh, and even if that's a high, say it's better to be around seven 50 or 800, uh, it's not so much over that you're going to see pounds of body fat go on, you know, you're talking about it takes a while. Yeah. We take a quite a while. And arguably by that time that those extra calories are, will, you will feel them in the workouts and your strength will go up and then you'll end up adapting and building. Just to touch on that, Adam, uh, 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. I know. And so you, so again, uh, a lot of times people are like, oh, I want to clean bulk. You know, I'm 8% body fat. I just want to gain muscle and not gain any body fat. You're probably not. It's good luck. Uh, 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, uh, situation. But if you're walking around a relatively healthy body fat percentage, like I said, man, you're a guy, mid teens, you're a woman, you know, low twenties, uh, 500 calories above watch yourself gain muscle with minimal to no, uh, increase in body fat percentage, which is pretty expected. Next, uh, 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 at all throughout the day. Got to can actually be counterproductive, uh, because, uh, being idle, uh, in super sedentary is actually counter muscle building. Now I'm not also saying when you do the extreme, where are you going to do tons of cardio outside of the gym? But what I am saying is walk. Yeah. The body systems just work better. Uh, yeah. When you add movement and that doesn't need to be intense movement, but, uh, yeah, if you take a nice, nice light walk, like digestive system, everything else was going to be able to shuttle, uh, you know, blood's going to circulate more efficiently, everything like vital for healing tissue. It's all going to happen. So I build more, I build better muscle, everything being the same when I'm averaging 8,000 steps a day versus more movement, more oxygen, more blood flow, more nutrients, better, better, better recovery, better digestive. And, and, and in this context where we are increasing volume, increasing calories, this makes a huge difference. And, uh, I don't know, I'm not familiar with, uh, any studies that we have to really highlight, uh, how effective this is. I mean, I've just experienced it not only with all my clients, but especially on the high levels of competing and watching this so diligently, like it makes a big difference. Uh, when I, 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 helped this process so much better. And I, the theory is that exactly what we're saying is just more blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients, getting to the muscles, get a facilitate recovery faster. It's also this, like you said, synthesize everything better. It's also this, like you send a signal to build muscle when you're strengthening, uh, you're feeding yourself properly. The strongest lose muscle signal you can send besides starving yourself is not move is to not move the catabolic. You could lift weights so perfectly and hard today. And let me put, you could do crazy set us. You could do squats today. We're gonna do squats and deadlifts and leg press. We're going to get, 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 bedridden. You're not allowed to get up off the bed. You would actually come back weaker. Whenever we first, my first, uh, trainer job was across the street from 24 fitness. I lived 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, you know? So, and this is not only, not only did I dirty bulk, but I would, I would dirty bulk eat as much as I could. And then I would go lay down and I would literally watch it, set my alarm for when my next client was just grow. Yeah. You just lay there in the middle of the day, two o'clock in the afternoon, sun's out. I'm laying in a bed, you know, after a 2000 calorie, you know, cheeseburger type of lunch, you know, waiting, waiting for my next client and wait five minutes before I got to be there. Alarm goes off. And then I'd run across the street and go trim and just 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 to pair it also with less movement. Cause I'm just trying to thinking recovery. And the reason why I'm communicating this, this is more for the, like, like really the people are really eager to gain size. You know, like I'm talking to myself as a kid, I thought, well, every calorie burn is taking away from the calories that go into your gains. And so I did the same thing. I don't, you know, as a kid, I'd lift, I'd eat like crazy. I'd sit on the couch as much as I could. So we've got to let the muscles grow. If I move them too much, they're not going to grow. I just sit here and let them grow. And I'll never forget. I've talked to you guys. I've told this story. I haven't told a story in a long time, but there was a summer where my cousin and I had bought BMX bikes. And, uh, 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 handlebars with your arms and my arms grew. And I remember being like, and I was afraid I'm like, Oh my God, all this work on my arms. You're not going to grow because I need to let them recover. And they built a, 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 of what we do for work. So if I let that happen, I'm hitting 4,000 steps in a day. Like that's it. If I consciously move and walk, I can get myself up to about 8,000, 10,000 can 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 between or 4,000 steps. So now the key isn't to go, you're not going crazy activity. I'm not telling you go work out all the time, but move. So those people are afraid of that. Uh, go and walk, get those steps. The other thing that I add to that, to that demographic of people, cause these are the same people that are dirty bulking and stuff like that because they need to eat as many calories as they can. The other thing that I, I real 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. And that was like the real eye opener for me. It 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, why I got to at least go get the good calories first. And that alone kind of organically made me clean bulk. And that's, and that's the last point, which is avoid garbage, food, uh, garbage, food, processed food, junk food. Yes. You'll hit high calories. You're probably not going to get really, really good protein. It's not going to protein and it affects your digestion and it makes you feel lethargic and it makes you hold water. So now you're, you're gaining weight on the scale. Am I getting muscle? Probably not. It's probably water loaded. Yeah. So you still want to avoid garbage food. Now the occasional and 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 as a person that really struggles to get those extra calories, they've already hit their protein. They really struggle. I'm like, man, I don't know if I can eat any more and I'm like, would 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 struggled to keep the calories consistently up there. And so the goal was always go get your protein intake through a whole natural foods. After that, then I would allow you to do the French fries, the shake, the whatever, whatever, whatever you needed to, that was palatable to boost the calories, but go through. And that, that advice worked really well for myself when I was, 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 it 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 surplus is coming from that. Totally. Look, so here's what we have, right? So we have coaches and trainers now that work for mind pump. And what we have is a nutrition call or appointment where you can get on with a coach with a mind pump 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 talk to a personal trainer that works for mind pump train to coach by us. Use the code MP50 for the 50% off. All right. I know you liked that episode. If you did check this one out, 30% body fat for men. This is way too high. This is actually a bit high for women as well. So today's episode, we're talking about how you can go from 30 to 10. What is 10% body fat? This is when you have a visible six pack. Can you go from 30 to 10%? Yes, it's possible, but not if you guess along the way. So we're going to talk about how you can do that today's episode. Now there's a huge range, right? Of like body types. Some people can run a little bit heavier or a little bit higher.