The Pitfalls of Excessive Bulking

Have you found on the other side, like with guys in a surplus who want to put on muscle, Have you found using this approach is showing them for the ones who think they need to be in like a thousand calorie surplus that it does not actually take that much? 100% because people take that way too far. And I think it's probably worse to take a surplus too far than it is to take a deficit too far. Because over time, when you take that surplus too far, you're creating a situation where you're promoting more and more insulin resistance and not in a good way. because insulin resistance isn't bad. People look at it. That is a bad thing. It's just, it's just a compensation mechanism. Um, so when you're overeating food and you have insulin resistance, that's a bad thing. Now, if you're in a diet and you're insulin resistant, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is insulin resistance, but it's for different reasons. Right. And that's actually a good thing when you're losing fat to be a little bit insulin resistant because it ensures that you have plenty of, uh, fat going into the bloodstream. That's a whole nother conversation. But a lot of the guys, they go on a surplus and they put on some weight and they hit a plateau. Now, let's think about this from a fat loss perspective. Are plateaus normal? 100 okay so if you hit a plateau on fat loss maybe maybe you started the diet you lost a heap of weight right up front well of course you've got less poo in your guts you've got less carbohydrate you've got less um you've got less water retention so of course you're gonna you're gonna lose a lot of water and and gluc and glycogen and and feces right off the bat but then you're eventually going to hit a plateau so we need to look at the law of averages you know, set how much you want to lose on average. If you lose a heap of weight and you don't lose weight for a couple of weeks, three weeks, as long as it's still averaging out good, you're good. You don't need to starve yourself anymore, do any more activity, just ride it out. And the minute you're below your average, now you make your adjustments. The same thing has to happen with a surplus because you start adding food Now you got more poop more glycogen more water more sodium You going to put on a heap of weight Initially you going to hit a plateau and people have to understand like building muscle is really slow right If we look at guys who are natural the first year, you're lucky to put on six kilos of actual dry, lean muscle tissue. You may put on more because again, you've got more storage for glycogen, but actual muscle tissue, you're lucky if you're getting 100 120 grams of actual muscle lean muscle every week well they put on a heap of initial weight and then they stall out and what do they do they add more food which you actually probably don't even need yet and then the next thing you know they're eating a thousand calorie surplus and they do that for six or seven months and they're feeling pretty good everybody's telling them oh you're looking really big you're filling out your your sleeves in your t-shirt one day you get naked out of the shower and you look at yourself and you look like a fucking melted candle and you go oh i've taken that too far so you look like use that joke like you look massive in a shirt and you're feeling strong but you're looking worse and like the whole point is to look better right if that's your physique thing um so it's like how much do i need to you know get all my daily shit done all my daily caloric needs you don't need that much more to keep putting on weight. What you need is more patience, right? Now, a lot of the guys that listen to this will be like, oh, you just need more drugs. That's fine too. But like, if you want to speed it up, you know, you can't speed it up simply by eating more food and training more. You can't speed it up with performance enhancing drugs, right? But that also has its limits too. Like at some point, it can only do so much. It's not magic. It's super helpful and we love them, but they're still limited on what they can do. You still need, if you want to put on a heap of muscle weight, it's still going to take a long time. So if you push your calories to a point where you're eating calories that aren't really facilitating that you're getting bigger, you're getting bulkier, but it's not, it's not the book you're looking for. You're just getting, you're starting to look worse and you're creating systemic inflammation, insulin resistance, insulin management is going to get fucked up. Your leptin is going to get fucked up. Your metabolic rate is going to get fucked up. Your sleep is going to get fucked up. Everything is going to get fucked up. And you're going to have to diet that off eventually anyways. So just try to keep your body as tidy as possible. Set your ranges of acceptable body fat. I like to use something for men. I like to cut that off about 17%, 18%. If you hit 17%, 18%, we're going to do a mini cut, try to get that back like 14%, 15%, and then go back into a bulk. because as you get to 20 and above, you're going to get to a point where you're not really gaining muscle anymore. You're just layering on more fat. And what's the point of that? Yeah.