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Been trying to slow bulk for the past 2 months. Thought I was doing alright, occasionally weighing myself here and there and seeing +2-3 lbs gained so far. Week ago finally decided to weigh myself on fully empty stomach - +3.2oz net gain. Upped my daily intake from 2.5k calories to 2.7k now and it's been hell. 2.5k was already tough, but manageable, and 2.7k is hell. I pretty much eat something every other hour from 11am til 8pm and still often fall 50-75 cals short. Don't know if I can keep this going without succumbing to mass gainers. I've already started eating more dirty - ice cream daily, welch's 'fruit' snacks daily, but it's still difficult. The times when I was cutting and only eating 2k calories a day were so much easier, I just had to have a light breakfast, 1 heavy meal and 1 snack and all my needs were taken care of, I miss it.
There's infinity protein formulas and of course simple instantized whey. You don't have to slam 1000 kcal of mass gainer if you don't want to. Is there a reason you want to avoid this?
~200 calories in 2 tablespoons (32g) of peanut butter in a bowl of cereal. It's nothing. With whole milk that's a "light" 500 calorie breakfast. Protein fortified yogurt slop or skyr a couple hours later? Bam, another 150. Eating perfectly lean is too hard. I say don't go crazy, but CICO. Work it out later.
3 meals a day, 2 snacks could come out to 500 breakfast/150 yogurt/700 lunch/350 shake pre-gym/1000 dinner rice chicken avocado extravaganza. 7am/10am/12pm/4pm/7pm.
Full Disclosure: messed up bulk big time and got fat(ter than I wanted) by stuffing my miserable not hungry face all day. Not particularly dirty, just bad at arithmetic and studiously monitoring the scale. Still got stronger, didn't care. I cared.
No specific reason, just trying to eat healthy whole foods as principle.
That's roughly my routine now, it's annoying. I go to the gym early midday, I try to not stuff my face before then, so breakfast is only 500-600 cals. Quick carb snack right before gym 100-200 cals. Then a quick carb snack right after gym 100-200 cals. Then late lunch at around 3-4pm 800-1000 cals. Then dinner 800-1000 cals at 6-7pm. And finally, if there's any leftover macros to hit, quick snack at 8:30pm latest. I pretty much get like 30-90 minutes in between food breaks, it's not ideal. Comparing it to when I was at 2k cals: medium breakfast before gym, 1 huge late lunch/early dinner, evening snack. That's it, all needs covered. Food was an afterthought, now it's a big part of my day.
I don't think I'll have that problem - I naturally don't eat enough if I don't count my calories unless I'm abusing uber eats.
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2700 calories is only two pounds of good cheese. What's the problem?
2 pounds of good cheese is also 4-5 days worth of my target fat intake. I'm trying to gain muscle, not fat.
Eating fat doesn't cause you to get fat.
I am aware, but it doesn't help building muscle either. I eat 165gr of protein, 360gr of carbs and 75 grams of fat daily. The hard part is hitting the carbs, not fat. I should've went with my macros in the original post rather than calories.
You probably don't need that much protein unless you're 230 lbs. It helps you build muscle in the sense that you need to consume sufficient calories to do so.
I thought you had posted a different article or I had misremembered the contents based on:
But from the article:
Which would only put him at 185 lbs? Which is not ultra huge for a normal height man.
Am I missing something? Personally, especially on a bulk, I don't see a downside of just using 1g/lb for the simplicity. Whey isolate is dirt cheap, for anyone who is reasonably taking macros this seriously.
From the same article:
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For sure, I'm definitely consuming too much protein but that's not the worst problem to have. I'm trying to overcompensate for having only around 60% come from perfect protein sources like chicken, the rest comes from incomplete slop. Like I said, the hard part has been carbs. Protein and fats are a solved problem, for now.
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In all seriousness, the last time I needed to build muscle for a role, I had to cut my carb intake and up my fats just to get the required calories inside a reasonable volume. How married are you to those macros?
I'll stick with it for 2-ish months, then we'll see depending on results.
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