Last Updated on January 22, 2024
Everybody knows that in order to gain muscles, you need to consume more calories than you burn. It is very important and even essential, to consume enough calories and nutrients, otherwise your muscles will not grow. But should you really go on a bodybuilding bulking diet to gain muscle? Is bulking really such a good idea?
It is certainly true, that by not consuming enough calories and nutrients, your muscle growth will be impaired. For a lot of people this is good news and it means that they can eat whatever they want and they will grow muscle. But it doesn`t necessarily mean that the more food you eat, the more muscle you will gain. When you consume way too many calories, then you will surely gain some muscles (if you train correctly) but you will also gain plenty of fat.
I am sure that the main reason why you got interested in bodybuilding and weight training, is to build a muscular and aesthetically physique that you could be proud of, right? But one of the biggest mistakes you could make, is consuming way too many calories from all kinds of junk foods and accepting the large body fat gains that come with it.
Young guys have trouble understanding that the body has a limited capacity to build muscle. There are many different factors that determine how fast you can gain muscle. For example, how effectively and quickly your body is able to synthesize new muscle tissue from digested protein, determines how quickly you gain muscle. Your testosterone levels determine your body`s capacity to synthesize protein and your cortisol and testosterone levels also play a role. So there is very little you can do to accelerate the protein synthesis and trying to gain more muscle by eating large amount of of food, only leads to excess body fat.
A lot of guys believe that gaining 20-25 pounds of muscle in 3 months is nothing special and should be easy to achieve. And when they „only“ gain 10 pounds of muscle in 3 months, they become disappointed. It is impossible for your body to build 20-25 pounds of muscle in 3 months naturally. Sure, it is very important to have high expectations, because they keep people motivated. But if the expectations are too unrealistic, then people get easily discouraged.
For example, if you are an average male you can expect to gain 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of new muscle tissue a week. And this is only possible if your diet is perfect, you train correctly, take necessary supplements and give your muscles time to recover. There could be „genetic freaks“ who could gain muscle faster, but for the average person, gaining 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of new muscle tissue a week, is the limit.
One of the major problems that young guys are having, is that they go too far with their bulking. Even if they do gain plenty of muscle, they also gain plenty of muscle and if you look fat, then you don`t look impressive, even if you are big and can lift heavy weights. When someone, who has been on a bodybuilding bulking diet for a long time, finally decides to start getting lean, then they have so much fat to lose.
So not only does it takes you a long time to lose all that fat to reach the body fat level you are happy with. But you are also very likely to lose some muscle mass along with the fat, especially if you are inexperienced and impatient. And most people are very impatient.
So of course you need to consume plenty of calories and proteins to build muscle. But if you go too far with the bulking, then you will just get fat. And if you eventually want to have a lean, muscular, aesthetical physique, then you need to get rid of all that fat. Why would you make your life harder? You really need to watch yourself in the mirror and it would be even better if you could measure your body fat levels, so you don`t get too fat.
