When Bulking - Is It Muscle Or Just Fat?
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At the moment, and ive only recently started, i do strength training 3 times a week - i do a mixture of squats, bench press, pull ups, chin ups, bicep curls, and core exercises (as well as a few others) and some cardio workouts (cycling, cross trainer) on non-strength days
My current macros are about 30:30:40 (carb:protein:fat)
And i dont eat at a surplus, still trying to work all that stuff out
I would change your macros to 50:30:20 for bulking.
Why do you say that ?
She can bulk how she wants aslong as she gets in adequate protein and fat .
Cuz I have freedom of speech?
Sure
But its incorrect0 -
I dont think my body fat % is overly high at the moment anyway (or what do you guys think judging from my profile pic? )
Do you believe this to be a good question to ask? Are you fishing for compliments? Because if you look at the photo you posted for your avatar or just glance in the mirror, you must see something pretty obvious about your body fat percentage.
Sorry i didnt mean it badly, i have just been researching and all the 'pro' looking people keep talking about you being an 'optimal candidate' for bulking/cutting so i thought that maybe somebody might have seen my pic and thought that i was clearly not in a position where i should be trying to bulk/cut etc and thus i would get to the position first before trying anything further
If you wanna do a bulk, do a bulk!0 -
At the moment, and ive only recently started, i do strength training 3 times a week - i do a mixture of squats, bench press, pull ups, chin ups, bicep curls, and core exercises (as well as a few others) and some cardio workouts (cycling, cross trainer) on non-strength days
My current macros are about 30:30:40 (carb:protein:fat)
And i dont eat at a surplus, still trying to work all that stuff out
I would change your macros to 50:30:20 for bulking.
Why do you say that ?
She can bulk how she wants aslong as she gets in adequate protein and fat .
Cuz I have freedom of speech?
Sure
But its incorrect
Elaborate. 50:30:20 is good for bulking, I am doing that myself. Also, it was my suggestion to the OP, not something I insisted her on doing. So there is no right or wrong here. :P0 -
a good bulk shouldn't be defined by how much weight you gain... but how much weight you add to your lifts.0
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you gain fat while building muscle and eating more cals then you burn.
you lose the fat while maintaining muscle and eating slightly less then your tdee.
you dont look over weight. you look great. in saying that by gaining weight you can reduce your % of fat. what exercise do you do now? what do you eat now?
Want to emphasize your words "eating slightly less then your tdee". From you previous post I see a massive cut. Going from 3500 on bulk and 2000 on cut? Well fair enough, if you want to gain weight fast with more than 500 cal surplus, otherwise I'd say your cutting is quite drastic.
you've got a good eye! during my last bulk i was also training for a tough mudder, i was doing more cardio then is necessary in a bulk - so i ate more! my tdee is around 2300 at the moment. if i do go for a run or do extra cardio i will eat more. 3500 is waaaay over my tdee. this was extreme eating to cope with extreme training.0 -
At the moment, and ive only recently started, i do strength training 3 times a week - i do a mixture of squats, bench press, pull ups, chin ups, bicep curls, and core exercises (as well as a few others) and some cardio workouts (cycling, cross trainer) on non-strength days
My current macros are about 30:30:40 (carb:protein:fat)
And i dont eat at a surplus, still trying to work all that stuff out
I would change your macros to 50:30:20 for bulking.
Why do you say that ?
She can bulk how she wants aslong as she gets in adequate protein and fat .
Cuz I have freedom of speech?
Sure
But its incorrect
Elaborate. 50:30:20 is good for bulking, I am doing that myself. Also, it was my suggestion to the OP, not something I insisted her on doing. So there is no right or wrong here. :P
But not necessary.
Back to the OP question. Yes you will gain fat during a bulk. If you do it slowly and train hard the gain will be more muscle. If you then cut (again slowly) the loss will be more fat. This is how a bulk/cut cycle increases muscle. Key points are gaining slowly and losing slowly. Roughly, Gain faster than the rate of about 1 pound a week and the extra is mostly fat considering a) female b) new gains.0 -
you need to look in the mirror as muscle and fat don't look the same. Also pay attention to where you're gaining fat. Muscle is denser than fat, so adding a couple of pounds of muscle probably won't give you many additional inches. Ten lbs of muscle would. But the inches will be in places where your muscles are big, e.g. biceps, shoulders, lower thighs/quads (i.e. towards the knees), glues muscle, i.e. firm flesh on the butt (flabby = fat) while fat gain (in women) will tend to be on the hips (saddlebag fat) or stomach and in the boobs.
also muscle when tensed doesn't jiggle. If you tense your muscles and your flesh still jiggles, then what jiggles is fat. And you can pinch fat, but you can't pinch tensed muscles.
and I agree with the above statement about defining it by how much weight you add to your lifts.0 -
you gain fat while building muscle and eating more cals then you burn.
you lose the fat while maintaining muscle and eating slightly less then your tdee.
you dont look over weight. you look great. in saying that by gaining weight you can reduce your % of fat. what exercise do you do now? what do you eat now?
Want to emphasize your words "eating slightly less then your tdee". From you previous post I see a massive cut. Going from 3500 on bulk and 2000 on cut? Well fair enough, if you want to gain weight fast with more than 500 cal surplus, otherwise I'd say your cutting is quite drastic.
you've got a good eye! during my last bulk i was also training for a tough mudder, i was doing more cardio then is necessary in a bulk - so i ate more! my tdee is around 2300 at the moment. if i do go for a run or do extra cardio i will eat more. 3500 is waaaay over my tdee. this was extreme eating to cope with extreme training.
I understand what you are saying but just to be pedantic for a second your TDEE includes training needs. If you are training and not gaining at 3500 that's your TDEE. True TDEE varies based on activity. /end pedant0 -
you need to look in the mirror as muscle and fat don't look the same. Also pay attention to where you're gaining fat. Muscle is denser than fat, so adding a couple of pounds of muscle probably won't give you many additional inches. Ten lbs of muscle would. But the inches will be in places where your muscles are big, e.g. biceps, shoulders, lower thighs/quads (i.e. towards the knees), glues muscle, i.e. firm flesh on the butt (flabby = fat) while fat gain (in women) will tend to be on the hips (saddlebag fat) or stomach and in the boobs.
also muscle when tensed doesn't jiggle. If you tense your muscles and your flesh still jiggles, then what jiggles is fat. And you can pinch fat, but you can't pinch tensed muscles.
and I agree with the above statement about defining it by how much weight you add to your lifts.
While it seems like a reasonable surrogate measurement why not do one of the various bf% measurements also? They aren't especially accurate but they translate better.0 -
Is it true that women are only capable of gaining about 100g (0.25 pounds) of muscle per week?0
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Is it true that women are only capable of gaining about 100g (0.25 pounds) of muscle per week?
According to the McDonald model the average gain a woman can expect the first year year is about 1 lb a month or 0.25 pounds a week. Personal gain can be up to twice that - depends on genetics, training and nutrition. Aragon model comes out about the same.
So as a beginner, working at limits consider your natural potential somewhere between 10-12 lbs a year - That's a good growth if you take it with respect to total BM and a lot of hard work. Visually and on the scale it might be very different because along with muscle, we have increased glycogen storage which can make you look more muscular but it's water and carbs to fuel you.
Of course - that's without chemical enhancements or "super" genetics.0 -
Didnt want to answer with the truth. Its considered mean.0
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Is it true that women are only capable of gaining about 100g (0.25 pounds) of muscle per week?
Have you taken a look at this? Not only this page, but the entire site is a really good resource for information related to healthy weight lost and transforming your body.
http://scoobysworkshop.com/bulking-up-and-gaining-muscle/0 -
Is it true that women are only capable of gaining about 100g (0.25 pounds) of muscle per week?
Have you taken a look at this? Not only this page, but the entire site is a really good resource for information related to healthy weight lost and transforming your body.
http://scoobysworkshop.com/bulking-up-and-gaining-muscle/
qouting so I can read later.0 -
Is it true that women are only capable of gaining about 100g (0.25 pounds) of muscle per week?
Have you taken a look at this? Not only this page, but the entire site is a really good resource for information related to healthy weight lost and transforming your body.
http://scoobysworkshop.com/bulking-up-and-gaining-muscle/
Scooby recommends meal spacing which is isn't shown to be significantly useful.0 -
you gain fat while building muscle and eating more cals then you burn.
you lose the fat while maintaining muscle and eating slightly less then your tdee.
you dont look over weight. you look great. in saying that by gaining weight you can reduce your % of fat. what exercise do you do now? what do you eat now?
Want to emphasize your words "eating slightly less then your tdee". From you previous post I see a massive cut. Going from 3500 on bulk and 2000 on cut? Well fair enough, if you want to gain weight fast with more than 500 cal surplus, otherwise I'd say your cutting is quite drastic.
you've got a good eye! during my last bulk i was also training for a tough mudder, i was doing more cardio then is necessary in a bulk - so i ate more! my tdee is around 2300 at the moment. if i do go for a run or do extra cardio i will eat more. 3500 is waaaay over my tdee. this was extreme eating to cope with extreme training.
I understand what you are saying but just to be pedantic for a second your TDEE includes training needs. If you are training and not gaining at 3500 that's your TDEE. True TDEE varies based on activity. /end pedant
at 3500 i was gaining. my tdee at that time was 2500 - 3000 depending on the training that day. my tdee (which includes training as it should) at the moment is 2300, which is why im losing while eating 2000.0 -
Yeah i noticed the scooby thing says meal spacing, but i do IF daily (fasting for 20 hours, eating in a 4 hours window) mainly due to health reasons anyway, so thats really not going to change
Positive though is that leangains says IF can help with increasing weight so hopefully it should turn out alright0
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