For most people, the way they set up their diet consists of constantly going from bulking up to cutting, back to bulking and then back to cutting. Some will time their cutting and bulking cycles with the seasons; like having your cutting cycle during the summer so you are nice and shredded when you’re at the beach, and then bulking during the winter when everybody is covered up in clothes anyways. But no matter when you do it, or how you do it, bulking up can be a real pain. Lots of people end their bulking cycle with a lot of fat added to their physique, but very little added muscle mass. To help prevent this the next time you are bulking, we have put together a list of “must do’s” that you should be doing the next time you are bulking. For information on cutting, see our how to cut without losing muscle article.
As you probably know by now, your bulking and cutting diets should be based around your maintenance, or the number of calories your body uses a day. Any number higher than maintenance and you will gain mass (either fat or muscle depending on your diet and level of physical activity), and any number lower will cause you to lose mass, again, either fat or muscle. Bulking up can be boiled down to one little phrase: calories in > calories out. So it would seem that the only option here would be to eat well above your maintenance to ensure that you grow; but this actually isn’t always the case. Of course, you do have to eat over your maintenance level to grow, suggesting otherwise would violate the most basic laws of thermodynamics. But, for instance, if you severely limited your daily activates then you could, theoretically, lower you maintenance. No, we aren’t suggesting that you sleep all day except for eating and hitting the gym, but there are little things you can do to make sure you don’t burn too many calories. For example taking the escalator at a mall, rather than the steps, or when going to the grocery store or something similar, parking as close to the store as possible, will make sure you don’t burn off calories walking to and from the store. It may sound like a lifestyle for the lazy, but these little things can add up and significantly lower your maintenance level, enabling you to eat above maintenance much easier than before. All this, of course, will help you bulk up.
If you have ever been through a fairly hardcore bulking cycle, you know just how much time is spent preparing meals every day. Whether its chicken breast or a nice steak, preparing meals can be a real pain and it is something that no one enjoys. An easy way to get around this would be to make huge quantities of food you like to eat when bulking up at the beginning of each week. Just throw it in the fridge when you’re done, and take out however much you want to eat throughout the week. This works great for foods like chicken and rice, because it can stay fresh for a while, and whenever you are hungry just scoop yourself out a bowl and you are good to go.
Read our article on how to bulk to learn more about bulking up and the strict diet that comes with it.
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