In this podcast, Christine gives great advice on how to bulk when bodybuilding without having to feel as if you can't stomach another bite. She explains what the process should look like, why people might not be getting results, and how long she'd be bulking for before she starts to shred.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
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In this podcast, Christine gives great advice on how to bulk when bodybuilding without having to feel as if you can't stomach another bite. She explains what the process should look like, why people might not be getting results, and how long she'd be bulking for before she starts to shred.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
Ash Horton:
Our host, the world renowned, Christine Envall, an IFBB professional, three times world champion, a mentor, an icon, and of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein.
Ash Horton:
In this podcast, Christine gives great advice on how to bulk without having to feel as if you can't stomach another bite. She explains what the process should look like, why people might not be getting results, and how long she'd been bulking for before she started to shred.
Ash Horton:
All right, Christine, so tips on bulking, what's the process, and are there any sort of common myths about bulking out there?
Christine Envall:
I don't know about common myths, they'll probably spring into my head as we go along, but there's definitely a process to bulking, and it's a part of bodybuilding because to get the muscle size that you want, at some point you're going to have to put on some weight, and that's what we call bulking.
Christine Envall:
Now, everyone lives in the world where we want to gain lean muscle and we don't want to have to gain any body fat. But the reality is that to get where you need to go in terms of how much muscle you want to carry, some body fat is going to come on, unless you're genetically incredibly gifted, and you can exactly put on only lean muscle, most of us will put on a little bit of body fat as well. And that's because you really need to make sure that you're in excess calories to grow that muscle and recover that muscle. And as a result, there's always going to be a little bit more than what you actually need, and that's where the body fat comes on.
Christine Envall:
Now, the younger you are, the harder you can bulk, the more food that you can consume, and the quicker you can gain that weight. The older you get, so as you get into your 30s and then into your 40s, that bulking cycle, or that bulking season needs to be a lot more controlled because the excess weight that you do put on is a lot harder to get off, and then also the stresses that you put on your body from fluctuating your body weight like that is less desirable as you get older. And then the types of foods that you need to use, you need to be a little bit more stricter as you get older.
Christine Envall:
So if you're young, young guy or girl just getting into the gym, you really want to gain some muscle size, that is the opportunity there. Those first couple of years is when you can really hit it pretty hard, put the food away, gain those kilos pretty quickly, and the body seems to respond very quickly. You're still normally in a growing phase at that time as well, like 18 to 25 guys are still maturing, their body will respond very, very well to the extra calories and the extra weight training. So the simplest thing with bulking is obviously you need to eat excess calories over what you're burning, and-
Ash Horton:
How long? For what time period?
Christine Envall:
Again, this is a really, really individual thing. For some people it can be a year, they might want to do a whole year of bulking before they actually start thinking about getting ready for a show. It depends how hard they go at it. So if they go at it really, really hard, I would say not to do it for more than about two to three months, because you obviously putting a lot of extra stress suddenly on your body, having to carry around that extra weight, potentially the food that you're eating is going to stress your digestion, all the extra food and stuff.
Christine Envall:
And if you're a person who gains... Like leaner than other people, so you're putting on more muscle than what you're putting on body fat, then you can probably go longer. But if you're a person who puts almost two to one for every kilo of muscle, you're gaining two kilos of body fat, and you'll know because of how you look, like whether you start to look a little bit pudgy, or whether you still got your abs roughly in. If you're one of those people that tends to gain the body fat quicker than the muscle, then keep those bulking cycles a little shorter, and then try to level out for a little bit, maybe even do a little mini cut, and then go back on another bulking cycle.
Christine Envall:
So that's a safer, healthier way of doing it. A lot of people do, I guess, trick themselves into that thing of going, "Oh yeah, I'm big and I'm not carrying that much." And then when they go to cut up for a show, they realise they've got a lot more to lose, and then there's a lot more pressure on getting cut up in the timeframe that you need to. But when you look at where the excess calories come from, your body obviously runs off either it's going to have carbs, fat, or protein is where your calories are going to come from. So when people talk about a dirty bulk, they generally mean that you're just throwing the calories in, you're not really worrying so much whether it's protein, whether it's fats, carbs, where it's actually coming from. And obviously fat has a lot more calories than carbs or proteins so it's easy to get those extra calories.
Christine Envall:
But on the flip side, it's also easier for them to store as body fat, because you do need to be in that excess. If you're just borderline exactly what your body needs to grow muscle, it's a much slower process. So even though it's what we talk about, it's more quality, it's a slower process, and that's something that you save for when you're older, when you already have a decent amount of muscle, and you're just really trying to just grow quality. But when you're young, you can lose it quickly, you can gain it quickly so you might as well take advantage of that.
Christine Envall:
And I would normally say the best time to bulk is obviously right before you decide to compete, or when you first get into the gym, give yourself probably a good six months of training to get some kind of baseline before you start to really want to throw that weight on. Don't kind of like walk in the gym, take up weights, and then decide you're going to go on a big bulking cycle. I would say that you need to get some fitness into your muscle first, and then that way the muscle that you're gaining is good and true because otherwise you run that risk of not actually gaining as much muscle as what you think because you're not really training correctly still at that point in time.
Christine Envall:
Simplest way to bulk, obviously, as I said, is just adding extra calories. So that can be just increasing the portion of each meal that you're eating, it can be adding in a whole extra meal. This is where all the weight gain has come in, this is where it's so simple. You've got your diet set out, but you want to add in extra calories so you just get a pre-done mass gainer, like Extreme Mass, or Heavyweight that International Protein does, and that's going to give you the extra protein, fat, and carbs. Just put an extra meal in, you can put in like somewhere around 400, 500, 600 extra calories, and that's enough for a lot of people to start to get into that calorie surplus to start to grow muscle.
Christine Envall:
So nice and easy, and it's also a little bit more controlled than just going on a bit of a free for all, and just kind of eating whatever. Because a lot of what you'll hear me talk about it and how I talk, it is about routine, it is about structured, it is about control, and I never liked that point of just kind of randomly eating whatever and eating anything. Thinking about you always want to have something to come back to be able to get your body back in shape, or get ready for a competition where it's all about more structured meals and things like that.
Christine Envall:
So adding in a mass gainer to me is the easiest way for people to get everything that they need because you do want to make sure that those calories are good quality calories. As I said, as you get older, it becomes even more important that you get good quality calories, that you're not just eating a whole bunch of sugar, or a whole bunch of fats off of unhealthy things. Because the second thing with anything is you want to be healthy. It's one thing to look a certain way, but you got to think about your internal health, heart health, cholesterol, what's happening to yourselves, if you're eating too much sugar, then that's obviously going to be detrimental to your health in the long run.
Christine Envall:
So you want to always keep that in the back of your head, and that's why I'm saying that kind of crazy eat whatever you want, dirty bulk kind of thing should really only be at the very early phase of anyone's weight training career, or bodybuilding career. And then as you get into it a lot more, you have a really good foundation, and then from one year to the next, you want to just make some little bit more progress, it is going to be slower, but you really want to make sure that what you're eating is good quality with that.
Christine Envall:
So with bulking, if someone is a really, really hard gainer, some of the rules go the opposite way. So normally you would tell somebody to eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, and eat a lot of whole grains, and things like that. If someone's a hard gainer then they're going to fill up too quickly on those kinds of foods, so they do need to look at more concentrated food. So they do need to eat the peanut butters, and they do need to eat more of the things that all of the rest of us have to avoid. They can, I guess, have the full cream milk rather than the light milk, or low fat milk. So different rules apply to people who really, really struggle to gain weight because sometimes they'll increase their calories and it just seems to just have no impact.
Christine Envall:
So one of the most common things that I see, or people come to me and they say, "Oh, but I increased my calories. I'm eating more, and I still can't gain any weight. What do I do?" It's like, "Well, the answer is you still need to eat more." Because it's not like there's a set level where, oh, you magically put 500 calories in and everybody's going to start to grow muscle or gain weight at that amount. For someone it might be that they need to add an extra 1,000 calories a day. Someone else it might be 2,000 calories a day. Someone else it might be 200 calories a day. So, particularly for hard gainers, their bodies seem to just utilise those extra calories and put it into burning energy rather than into growing. So you just have to keep going up and going up.
Christine Envall:
And the way to do that is to really, at every single meal, just start to add in... Increase every little part of the portion, so if you're having a scoop of your protein powder, try to have one and a half scoops, or if you have two pieces of toast for breakfast, have three pieces of toast. So everything just has to go up slowly, slowly. And again, if you're having one extra weight gainer a day, then try to have a second one, try to fit an extra meal in.
Christine Envall:
And then another really good thing is to make meals more concentrated. So one thing that we all tend to do is we think about having a protein shake or a mass gainer, and I know we put the directions on the pack to put it in 500 mils of water or whatever, a lot of the time it's that volume of food which you're not... The volume is there, but the calories aren't there. So you can always reduce that amount of liquid, make it more like a paste or a thicker consistency, and then that way you can actually fit that in without bloating yourself. Because often water actually fills you up, and when you're trying to diet you drink more water to try to fill your stomach.
Christine Envall:
So, the opposite is true when you're trying to get those extra calories in, is you make the food more concentrated, all of those little... They're supposed to be so healthy, but they're actually for people who are dieting, they're a nightmare. So, for people who are bulking, it's good, they call it squished foods where they get like all the dates and everything and mash it into a little ball and they are so concentrated in calories. A person who's trying to bulk probably doesn't think about eating those, but a person who's dieting thinks that they're wonderful and doesn't realise why they're not losing weight because the foods so concentrated.
Christine Envall:
So calories per gram, trying to think about getting foods in that has small as volume for highest calories, and that's where obviously the fats come in, obviously try to get good fats in, but that's where reducing the amount of liquid that's with a food and trying to eat a more concentrated type of food, and see how you go with that type of thing. So more nutrient dense and more calorie dense are the type of foods that you're looking for when you're trying to gain weight, or things that are easy for you to eat, and that's, again, think about all this stuff, which is so kind of bad for you for, I guess, a person who's trying to trying to lose weight.
Christine Envall:
And that seems like your chips, and your lasagna, and your slightly more fried foods. So, while I don't recommend that for people on an ongoing basis, but it's a food which is fried in a healthy fat, it is obviously absorbing that sat into the food so instead of having steamed fish, like someone who's trying to lose weight, you maybe have to have a battered fish, or a crumbed fish, which is fried and it's absorbing those calories.
Christine Envall:
So, fat is only bad if it's a bad type of fat, or if you don't need it because your easily gaining weight. So for someone who's hard to gain weight, it's almost like the rules are all reversed. So it's little things like that where you think about, "How can I get more calories into these food without actually making more volume so it's easy for me to eat?”
Ash Horton:
That's interesting.
Christine Envall:
Yeah.
Ash Horton:
So what is the timeline on just... I know it's different for every person, but for you, if you're going through this bulking phase, what's your timeline?
Christine Envall:
The timeline for bulking for me was always dictated by my competitions. So when I was heavily competing, the cycle would go January 1st, we would pretty much start prepping for the season of shows that would be around May, so I'd give myself a good 20 weeks. If I had a competition in October, sometimes I would have a one month period, so a very, very short period where I could kind of come off the diet, but I always tried to keep that under control because I only then had a shortened period to get back in shape. So if you went full, crazy off season and then tried to bring it back in in three months instead of five, and it was never going to work so well. So it was almost still a controlled relaxed diet, but not a full bulk.
Christine Envall:
And then the comp season would end in say October, so I'd have half of October, November, December. So I'd have two and a half months before the diet season would start again. So it was very short, sharp, intense periods of bulking. Particularly in the younger years, I would go up quite a distance from my weight, maybe 25 kilos and come back down again. And that's why I say in the early years you can cope with that. I mean, a couple of the other reasons why you can cope with that at that age is your skin stretches a lot more, bounces back again. You don't want to be doing that when you're in your 40s because your skin's going to have more chance that it's going to be stretching out of shape, it won't pull back into shape, your metabolism isn't as quick so to get that weight off takes a lot more work and it tends to be a lot more stubborn.
Christine Envall:
So when I was obviously competing in my later years, I didn't really have a crazy bulking phase as much as I would have a relaxation period where the body would be allowed to rest. Because if you're a very low fat diet all the time, your joints will suffer. A lot of your lipid membranes are all made up of fat, so you are impacting your health by trying to eat too low fat. Injury does tend to creep in. So then it becomes, I guess, less about bulking, it becomes more about just maintaining health and allowing your body that chance to recover and repair.
Christine Envall:
But if you're still trying to push up and you're still trying to grow muscle at that phase, then that's where you're trying to look at more better quality proteins, just good calories, good amounts of fat, and when you're talking about fats, you're really focusing on having your healthier fats, so your polyunsaturated fats, mono-unsaturated fats. So you might be adding olive oil to something, looking at eating and your nuts, and those type of things, rather than going for just the fats that are coming in from say cheeses, or what we typically would call junk food, fried food, takeaway food, creamy sources, all that kind of stuff. Those are the kinds of things that you would tend to stay away from when you're older, and you're trying to bulk up from there.
Christine Envall:
And that's where you're probably also relying more on a good quality weight gainer like the Extreme Mass is hands down having your omega fats in it, having a good ratio of... 50/50 protein and carbs, so you're still making sure that you're getting the right nutrients in for those calories that you're taking in, and you're maximising that you have the protein there to grow. Because obviously when you're growing muscle, it's protein that you need, but it's not only the protein, it's obviously still the extra calories to spare the muscle, and to allow you to train harder.
Christine Envall:
Because that's the other part of it too. You're not going to grow muscle if you're not overloading the weights that you're doing, if you're not overloading the muscle and stimulating it to grow. So it's one thing to talk about the food side of it, but you also have to talk about the weight training side of it. Because if you're just in a status quo, going in the gym, you're not really putting your weights up, why would you expect your body to grow? You're not stimulating it for that growth so just eating more calories is simply just going to lay down as body fat, because you're not giving your body a reason to grow.
Christine Envall:
If you're increasing the intensity of your weight training, then obviously you're going to have... You need more calories to fuel that training. So that's where you need your carbs to come in there. So it is a two fold thing to bulk. Bulking doesn't exist without the extra weight training, or the heavier weight training to go with it. So, because you're getting extra calories, you're getting what you need to recover, you're in a much better position to be able to force your body to do those forced reps, force the weight up, get your training partner to really be there to put you outside of your natural lifting zone, and force that strength to come up. So it does have to happen hand in hand. So if you're not planning on doing that and really pushing yourself in the gym, then there's no point in doing that bulking phase.
Christine Envall:
And again, this is definitely more true when you're older, when you're younger your body still is in that natural growing phase so it's easier to see those changes because some people will get changes just from doing more reps on something when they're younger, particularly if they're genetically predisposed to it. But once you've been training for a while, it's got to be that increase and that overload and getting that strength up, which then directly relates to the muscle growth. So the two things go hand in hand. So if you're not going to train harder, you don't get to eat more.
Ash Horton:
I bet people really enjoy that bulking phase too.
Christine Envall:
The bulking phase, well, funny that you say that, Ash, because if you talk to a lot of... Particularly the really big bodybuilders, they actually hate it because they say you're ready for your next meal, and you still really haven't digested your last meal, and they feel like it's a force feeding phase because you don't realize how much those boys need to eat to really fuel what they do. And I do know some people who vitamise their food, including their chicken, which I think would be kind of nauseating to drink chicken-
Ash Horton:
What do you mean, vitamising?
Christine Envall:
Blend it. Bullet it.
Ash Horton:
[inaudible 00:17:19].
Christine Envall:
Exactly. But I do know guys who go to that extent because like we were talking about having a more concentrated food, the other side when you got to eat a lot is the jaw cramping from chewing so much food, chewing so much chicken, chewing so much steak. And just that whole process of eating. Like most of us is like, "Oh, I'd love to eat more." But when you see the amount of food that they really need to eat, one, just to maintain what they have, but then two, to actually grow from that point there, and I'm going to talk about some of the people are around 140, 150 kilos, yeah, they say they actually hate the bulking phase because you just feel like from morning till night you're just eating food, and it becomes to a point of [inaudible 00:18:00] delirium, "I don't want to do this anymore.”
Christine Envall:
And they do try to eat still relatively clean because they asked all mindful at that age that it's can kind of lay down as body fat and everything so they want to eat the right kind of food. But even with eating the fats and things with it, they're still struggling to fit that food in, and hard gainers will say the same thing, and that's why they do struggle. It's easy to say, "Oh, you just add more food in." But for a lot of people, that is a challenge.
Christine Envall:
So yes, I enjoyed my off season very much because I could relax and have more food, but for a lot of the bigger guys, it's quite a chore to have to eat 300 grams of steak, not just once, but like, okay, now in three hour’s time, you got to do another. You have to eat that again because you know, that's how many calories that you need, and again, that's why the weight gainers are a great option because they have a very concentrated source of calories and they taste good, you can drink them easily, and it's a lot nicer option.
Ash Horton:
All right. So anything else you sort of want to add into this?
Christine Envall:
Tips on bulking. Have a bigger pair of clothes. I mean, if you're still fitting into the clothes that you wore beforehand, hey, you haven't been successful, but it is a definite thing that going into a bulking cycle, you would expect that your back's going to expand, chest is going to grow, legs potentially going to grow. So you don't want to be, I guess, restricting yourself because of that. For men, it's probably like, "Whoa, yay, I'm getting bigger." And that. For women, it can be a bit of a mind game of knowing where I need to get.
Ash Horton:
I was just about to say that, how's the head through the whole process?
Christine Envall:
Yeah. That's an interesting thing because when you are trying to get somewhere, you can be focused on that, but people can be a little bit mean, I guess, where they don't understand where you're trying to go. And particularly with women, I would find that women at the gym would be saying things like, "Why did you let yourself go?" And it's like, "What do you mean? This is a controlled part of my process." And then I'll be back into comp phase. And that's why I always [inaudible 00:20:05] keep those cycles very short because it was uncomfortable. You'd be looking and going, "I don't really like that I have this squishy bit here." But you always knew that come January 1st, okay, diet was on again.
Christine Envall:
So it wasn't like a never ending just free for all, no control to this because that does become dangerous. And that is again, actually one of the downsides of it where I do know a few women who've had the other mindset where they've done a competition, gotten into shape, worked very hard, relaxed, come off, gone into an off season, got into a bulking phase, and it has got a little bit out of control, but in their mind, they're like, "Oh yeah, I can bring in any time I want because I know how to get in shape." And then they leave it a little bit too long and it is hard to get back into that routine. You get used to eating more, your stomach expands, you've been enjoying a lot of food, and to actually flip that switch and go back into prep mode for some people is then the other situation occurs where it's hard to bring it back in.
Christine Envall:
So again, that's where I am always a fan of a little bit more of a structured type of a bulk. And particularly for females saying, "Okay, I'm going to increase it by 500 calories a day, or 300." whatever it is that they need and really kind of keeping the rest of your diet pretty much your contest diet, and then just increasing that 500 calories above, or whatever that number is for you because that way you're still, again, eating in a structure. As I also said, that free for all of allowing yourself to just kind of like, "Oh, I'll have these nibblies here and this here because I'm on bulking diet and I can have whatever I want." It's really easy to overestimate what you need, and how much you're having. And then as I said, it's bringing it back again, which gets really, really difficult because your body's used to it, and it's telling you it wants it, and your mind is telling you that you want it.
Christine Envall:
So there's always different... Some people find it very easy to flip back onto the diet and hate having to gain the weight, and other people it's too easy to gain the weight, and coming back onto the prep mode again is quite hard. So I guess, recognise who you are, like recognise what your... Are you avoiding it, and you're holding your games back, and you can actually relax a little bit more, recognising that you need to rest and let your body repair, that it actually needs those nutrients, and competition is an unnatural state and an unhealthier state versus the person who's kind of fooling themselves into thinking that, "I'm only a few kilos over my contest weight." And then not realising that they've actually kind of slipped totally into an unhealthy body fat level from having bulked a little bit too.
Ash Horton:
Very, very interesting. It's not a process I've been through. I'm one of those bodies that needs to always lose weight [inaudible 00:22:51] the other way around. So I totally cannot relate to those skinny guys that need to put on more weight, I just don't get it, but I wish I was in that body. To me, that would be the perfect opportunity, or the perfect body to live in. What do you live in?
Christine Envall:
I gain weight very, very easily.
Ash Horton:
Do you?
Christine Envall:
But yes I do. But again, that was part of why I was able to grow so well as a youngster, because one, I had the appetite, two, I like to train heavy, and my body would just explode, literally exploded. So then as I got older, I would keep my weight way more in check, and that's why I talk about... It wasn't a matter of just a free for all of eating whatever, it was still very, very structured. I would have an off season diet, and I would work on that structure of eating basically the same meal plan as when I was competing, but allowing that relaxation of that 500 or whatever calories. Sometimes even dieting through the week and then weekends being my relaxation. But my body kind of found a natural weight that it liked to sit at. But yeah, I can gain weight incredibly easily. So yeah, I'm one of those people. Endo mesomorph.
Ash Horton:
Right.
Christine Envall:
Right. [inaudible 00:24:05].
Ash Horton:
All right. Let's wrap this up. Thank you very much. Very interesting stuff.
Christine Envall:
And happy bulking.
Ash Horton:
Yes.
Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips, they are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down, and hit that buy now button. So once again, like, share, and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only, Aussie muscle guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.