Muscle Lab Podcast

Welcome back to the Muscle Lab Podcast. I am Dr. Pack, and alongside me, aka across me, I have Dr. Milo Wolf. How are we doing? Good. You I thought I would introduce, I would let you introduce yourself, but then I introduced you, and here we are. Breaking the roller wall. Today, juicy episode, Pan Unintended, the Science of Bulking. One of the topics for every lifter, beginner or experience, a topic that is still of interest and will likely be of a lot of interest for many years to come. We're gonna break it down. The science, the practical takeaways, our experiences, very unique experiences, incoming. And that's all we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Right. And then all of that, have we even mentioned what this episode was about? Yeah, I said the science of bulking. Well, here we are, the science of bulking. Let's go. See, most people think legendary zone out that bulking means eating big, and that you kind of just accept the fact that oftentimes aiming for 500 calorie surpresses. But what if you need far less of a surplus than you think? What is a surplus even doing? And is it doing what people think? In this episode, we'll have three segments. From the lab, coaching corner, and the verdict. So we'll start the research, move on to practical applications and kind of our experiences, and finally give Lifter some takeaways from this.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Indeed. You may have heard that uh bulking is may also not be necessary whatsoever. Maybe it's vaulted. Maybe it's vaulted. Stay cued to find out. I'm I'm building tension for the audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

It's working, I think. You mentioned Pun in the episode. We can't go the whole episode without mentioning Big Pun. Big Pun King of Bulking.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

R.I.P. Big Pun, for those of you that don't know, is the first ever Latino rapper to go platinum. And you may remember him on video clips with Fat Joe. And he died at um 720 pounds. If I were taken. Great size looking thick. Indeed, at like 5'5 or something. Solid tight. R.I.P., check out his music. Alright. RIP.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Let's break it down. Alright, so what does bulking even do? Well, the idea is that gaining weight helps you build more muscle. And to gain weight long term, we can just refer back to the infamous laws of thermodynamics, which have been established for a long time. You need to consume more calories than you burn, forcing your body to store some of them in some sort of way. Now, your body has a variety of ways to store energy. One of those is storing energy as glycogen in your muscles. But that storage is typically only up to like, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I'm saying like eight, ten thousand kilocalories total. So I have not that much energy. And that can be stored across muscle and liver. So each gram of fat has nine kilocalories. So storing a kilogram of body fat might mean roughly or just under 9,000 calories stored, which is huge. And that's why your body preferentially stores energy as fat. But fundamentally, the idea behind bulking is gaining weight helps you build muscle. So the way you kind of validate that you're bulking and therefore enhancing your muscle growth process is by checking your weights and making sure you're actually gaining weight. But also that something about being in a calorie surplus fundamentally alters your body's balance towards anabolism. So the hormonal milia or whatever that might be shifts towards being favorable for muscle growth. So to gain a calorie surplus, you need to figure out how many calories you burn on average and shoot for a bit more than that to be in a surplus. So that's the broad concept of bulking. But let's talk about mechanisms because people have argued for different things favoring bulking for hypertrophy. I think the mechanisms are pretty well summarized in a review paper by Slater and colleagues. Shout out. Shout out. 2019, I believe, yeah. Um I don't remember the title, I thought I had something about isn't energy surplus required to maximize muscle growth?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Don't remember the title. States the title. Hey, listen, I I think to maximize skeletal muscle.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Ah, close enough. Let me find that while learned your riff. So in that paper, they kind of summarize what the mechanisms of play might be. Because it's often argued, for example, that building muscle is calorically expensive and that therefore you need to be in an energy surplus to build muscle, because the process of literally putting together the proteins for muscle fibers takes a lot of energy. Or it's argued sometimes that energy stores benefit from a surplus because you get more glycogen around, which in turn boosts recovery, boosts performance, and as a result boosts growth. Because it's often argued that, for example, and even I've made this argument before, carbs are more important than you think, because some studies have found, for instance, that although whole muscle glycogen deplenishment might not be that large, like oftentimes 20 or 30%, the biggest, fastest twish muscle fibers can lose about 40 or 50% glycogen during even a moderate to high volume workout. And that's the level of muscle glycogen replenishment that could harm performance and as a result harm hypertrophy stimulus. What's the title of the paper now you've looked it up?

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Is an energy surplus required to maximize skeletal muscle hypertrophy associated with resistance training?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Well, I got it somewhat right. Almost. So kind of different arguments for why bulking would be helpful. Again, one argument centers around the process of building being calorically expensive or energetically expensive, and the second one being around glycogen or energy stores being more available, which in turn enhances recovery, performance, and as a result, growth stimulus. That's kind of the glycogen depletion argument. Another argument comes more from a uh addition by subtraction sort of thing. Being in an energy deficit has been shown to reduce antor or P70S6K signaling, which are pathways associated with the muscle growth process, um which suggests at the very least, being in a deficit is bad news. As we covered on episode two. We did. And so you could argue, okay, well, at the very least we don't want to be in a deficit. And if there is any sort of dose response relationship, being in a deficit is bad news. Being in maintenance is better, and maybe being in a surplus is even better, even strictly from a hypertrophy signaling standpoint. It's worth noting that most of the research on signaling stuff, I think, is in a deficit, more so, as in a deficit harming hypertrophic signaling rather than in a surplus being, you know, magical for a depth. But it's worth noting that that's a mechanism people mention. Importantly, none of these mechanisms are really that black and white. It's not as though any of these are super well established, and many of them are true in a vacuum or in a smaller capacity than people assume. For example, let's start with the claim that building muscle is calorically expensive. In their review, Slater put the metabolic cost of building skeletal muscle mass around 12.7 to 19.5 kilojoules per gram of muscle mass. Then you also need to account for the energy density of the actual skeletal muscle mass of tissue, which is around 16.7 kJ per gram of protein. To give you some more interpretable numbers, because who the fuck is using kilojoules? I am. There's actually people, so this is an aside. I was uh Googling some stuff and I rarely came upon a thread of a on Reddit, of course, where I always go. Ban Reddit. Ban Redd. Red needs to be cancelled. Um Just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Or am I? I don't leave it anymore. If people like it, fair enough. I don't sums up Reddit.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Anyways, red thread of a nutrition app where people were specifically requesting a mode to switch from kill cameras to kill jewels. Really? Yeah. Which is honestly news to me. I don't understand what sort of six circumstances you're in that require it.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

I'm face palming for those that uh can see me. Um, but you should be watching because we have top quality visuals.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

We've been referred to as the number one previously.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

The number one baby. Universally. We are up and coming. We are mostly coming. Up.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

So to give you an idea in calories of how much energy the muscle growth process actually requires or necessitates, two to four pounds of muscle would require, including the cost of energy of tissue, right? And the cost of building. So the materials and the building process would require 9 to 27 27 calories per day for the muscle building process. So two to four pounds per muscle of muscle in a year. And you'd only need to be in a nine to twenty-seven calorie surplus. That magnitude of surplus, nine to twenty-seven, is tiny, it's effectively impossible to apply, and it can almost certainly be endogenously sourced. So we'll kind of go over each one of those. Tiny, uh, 9 to 27 kilocalories is like 1%. If you're assuming it's a top end, right, like 30 calories, let's say. That's like one to maybe 1.5% of your total calorie intake for the day, like 2,000, 3,000 calories. So it's already very small. That's being generous, being charitable. It's impossible to apply in the sense that all calorie labels for all foods are estimates. You know, like even bomb calorimetry, which is how food calories are estimated, isn't perfectly accurate. Yeah. Then you're dealing with the fact that many foods you buy and consume are multi-ingredients. So you're dealing with like multiples of margin of margins of error. And so oftentimes your actual calorie day-to-day, if you change food composition, might be up or down 20% plus.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah. And you also that there are certain foods that you'll spend less or more energy to digest. Some are not fully digested, so it's not, they don't fully convert, etc.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Like fiber, for example, or like fiber might have ons. Yeah, the husk, right, or something. Yeah, yeah. So that's the second thing, is it's basically impossible to actually apply a calorie surplus of nine to twenty-seven. Even if you're like, look, I believe the science, that's all I need. Let me shoot for this. I can on average be like uh two to three hundred calories off early.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

I could totally see some people out there. Let's say we hadn't put out this information, they just read the paper. I could totally see some of the I love science crowd going, like, yep, I'm on a nine calorie surplus today.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Maximizing without any fat gain. So, yeah. It's tiny, it's impossible to apply, and because of the magnitude of surplus actually required to build muscle or the amount of energy required, it is very, very likely that your body can source those calories and that energy endogenously. So, what does endogenously mean? It means it can source it from within the body. Exogenously, like exogenous steroid use, means you're actually ingesting hormones from outside the body and putting them inside you. Vice versa, endogenously mean you're sourcing it from inside. So, while there does seem to be something to the claim that, hey, building muscle is calorically expensive, the magnitude of energy required is really small. And it's not on its own a very strong argument for saying, hey, you need to be in a surplus to maximize muscle growth. Because 9 to 27 kilocalories per day, assuming you're gaining two to four pounds of muscle in a year, that can very easily be sourced from like two grams of carbs if you're at nine calories, which you have two grams of carbs around your body and your bloodstream and your muscle glycogen, your liver glycogen, your body's constantly shuffling things around. It's breaking down proteins, it's synthesizing proteins, it's taking energy from here, putting it there when you haven't eaten in a few hours. It's constantly doing stuff. It's a very complex system. The idea that you need to supply it in a black and white, dichotomous manner, with this amount of calories, and being a surplus for it to build muscle as a categorically yes or no process. Completely unbounded. So that's number one. The second argument, the recovery argument of, oh, if you don't have enough calories, that's a big one as well. Recovery takes a hitch and gets worse, you can't train the same deficit as a cut as a bulk. There's some truth to it, and there is a lot of uh nuance and caveats to it. Like I mentioned earlier, yes, workouts can deplete whole muscle glycogen by 30 to 40%, and up to 50% for individual faster twitch muscle fibers. So, for example, a study by Hulken and colleagues, which were published a few years ago, showed specifically that faster twitch muscle fibers might be the ones that get disproportionately depleted during lifting, which is a big deal. However, whether baseline glycogen levels are super different when you're in, say, a 300-calorie surplus versus just the maintenance is relatively unclear. Chances are, unless you're in a huge deficit, your glycogen levels are going to be relatively similar. And there's I think this is again a phenomenon which we discussed a few episodes ago when it came to volume, maybe? I don't remember. We discussed that many guidelines for lifting have kind of came from um endurance sports.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah, that was um I I think it might have been for volume. But yeah, the fact that we have been going off of the three or four to seven grams of carbs per kilo body weight uh guideline, which is for endurance sports. Might might have been the cutting episode. Listen to both episodes to find out. Whoever finds it, please comment it below.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Found it. Thank you. Um so that I think that discussion of being in a surplus really helps top up your glycogen stores, helps you perform better. Probably largely comes from endurance research or other sports. Especially when considering that lifting in general doesn't deplete as much glycogen. So I think this is one of those cases. The better argument when it comes to recovery and being a surplus might come from relative energy deficiency. So one thing that's very well established in the research across many sports, um, at higher levels of competition, lower levels, leisurely, et cetera, and you have an estimate, I think, of how many athletes are in relative energy deficiency.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

I think um on the latest 2025 meta-analysis, it was about like 44%, so like almost half. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

So that's obviously at the front level where people are meticulously managing their diets. But being in a large deficit and being at a point where your total energy intake for the day drops below around 30 kilocalories per kilogram of fattery mass seems to result in a wide variety of negative side effects. Things like increased injury risk, worse performance, irritability, worse sleep, uh, disrupted menstrual cycle, worse bone health, all sorts of things. So being at a very low calorie intake is bad. But that doesn't necessarily mean that once you go above this threshold and getting into a surplus is going to somehow like flip that around and give you like great bone health. Um there is also the argument of protein synthesis. So a study by Oxfeld and colleagues, for example, had trained females put through a workout and looked at females who were in relative energy deficiency versus ones who weren't, and found that the ones that were in a relative energy deficiency state saw worse protein synthetic responses in response to the workout. So obviously being in a large deficit, bad news and being in relative energy deficiency. But that doesn't necessarily mean that being in a surplus is going to be more advantageous than saving and maintenance, or that being in a large surplus is going to be more advantageous than a hundred or two hundred calories surplus. And the truth is simply that a few extra 100 calories is not going to make or break your recovery.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yep. And any we'll touch on that later on as well in the coach's corner, but any experienced lifter who's been through stages of cutting can probably attest to that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

And it's true that being in a deficit is probably a net negative for growth. Like we have um obviously research by Oxfeld and colleagues, for example, there's other studies out there. Being in a deficit is no good. But that alone doesn't create a strong rationale for bulking, it just makes for a strong rationale for avoiding a deficit or at least a large deficit, if your goal is to maximize hypertrophy. There's a final big mechanism, and this is the only one I'm honestly somewhat sold by. Yep, same. Which is if you're substantially below your genetic ceiling, then at some point you get into a surplus. I'll need an example. If a lifter comes to me and we estimate their potential of how jacked they can get in their lifetime naturally, and we'll get to methods to do that in a moment. And let's say it gets to 200 pounds at 10% body fat as a matter of whatever. And they're currently 140 pounds, short of getting into a surplus and actually getting to 200 pounds, they're never going to reach physically their natural potential. Because to get to their maximum fat-free mass naturally, which at 10% of 200 pounds would be 180 pounds, they would literally have to have minus 40 pounds of fat mass somehow. So they need to carry 180 pounds of muscle or skeletal muscle mass or lean body mass, let's call it rather, while weighing 140 pounds. It just doesn't work. So if you're substantially below your genetic ceiling, you will need to get into a surplus, gain weight, and get to at least your genetic ceiling and probably plus essential body fat less. So if, for example, your lean body mass potential naturally is 180 pounds, on top of that you add, say 8 to 12% body fat as a man to get kind of your essential levels. So you're talking like at least 200 plus pounds long term. And to get there, you would need to get into a surplus at some point. To estimate your natural potential, I think you could go off of just kind of gut healing, to be honest, a lot of time. So like if you're 5'10, all right. What are many lifters of 5'10 walking around after a decade or two of lifting? If you know lifters who are similar to you but have been lifting for a long time and you know at least a few of them, you can kind of derive a real-world reasonable average. Heading for that, roughly. A slightly more scientific, albeit not necessarily better, I would say, way of doing it, is the Casey Butt calculator. So Dr. Casey Butt put together a formula where essentially he looked at pre-steroid era bodybuilders, took measurements of their ankle, wrists, and circumferences and height, and created a regression formula that allows you to say, okay, this is my height, this is my ankle circumference, wrist circumference, what is my natural genetic potential likely to be? You can use that and calculate it, and you can go off that. Um he take it out of his butt. Adam. Um so that's one reason why bulking or scenario in which bulking is like, okay, there's a very strong rationale for this being a lot better than staying in maintenance or DNA deficit. You could also argue that if someone's a suboptimal body fat or body weight, then bulking can also be advisable. So this is a bit more speculative. On the one hand, we have research on very lean athletes where they tend to experience like some side effects that are kind of akin to relative energy deficiency. So worse mood, worse sleep, worse training quality, all that stuff. It's hard to parse out how much of that is relative energy deficiency versus how much of that is your body fat is simply too low, even though your calorie intake is appropriate. So it's one thing. The second thing is if well, let me rephrase. A few years ago, there was a great P ratio debate, and we can briefly discuss what P ratio is with defined. Uh-huh. A P-ratio is effectively just the division of how much muscle mass you gain during a bulk divided by how much fat mass you gained. So, for example, if you gained 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat, you would divide 10 pounds by 10 pounds, get a ratio of one. So you gain 20 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat, you get a ratio of two. You get the idea. The higher the P ratio, the better. The debates a few years ago between Metal Henselmans and Eric Trexler and Grave Muffles centered around is there an ideal body fat percentage to be to maximize the P ratio? So do you need to be leaned before you bulk to make sure the muscle or the weight you put on is mostly muscle? Because when you're bulking, you always want to maximize how much muscle you build and minimize how much fat you gain. That's the dream, right? You put on 20 pounds, all of this muscle, you look amazing. So the debate effectively centered around Meno saying, look, for you to maximize your P ratio, you need to start your bulk being prudely. On the other side, Trexler and Knuckles said, no, actually, based on the research, we don't think that's true. We're not really gonna delve too much into it today, like because it's uh a four-article series with rebuttals to the rebuttal to the rebuttals, so not really worth going into. Shut up. Um it's great reading if you're interested, but just not us. Not worth us delving into it for the listeners. TLDL. Yeah, then listen. There you go. Then watch, maybe. Then watch, yeah. Go on YouTube, watch this on YouTube, it looks cool. I'm pretty sure you can release uh can leave aside. You can release podcasts as a video on Spotify now, at least. Yeah, who's doing that? Yeah, I just get annoyed when I listen to a podcast on Spotify and have to swipe it aside because I don't want to see the video.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah, and the funny thing is that. That when have you ever watched a podcast?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Now.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

You're watching movies?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Shout out to you. Shout out to you. Shout out to mydept.com.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Buy it.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Um. So the TLDW, TLDL, whatever you want to call it, is basically no, it doesn't seem like your initial body fat percentage matters. Whether you're a bit fatter, a bit leaner, doesn't really matter. Two, there might be a body fat percentage that is too lean to maximize muscle growth. Specifically in their analysis, uh, Eric Tracks Long Knuckles basically extracted the data from a few studies where participants' body fat percentage were reported and they also reported how much muscle they gained. And they compiled the data from these studies and tried to draw a line through that data to see whether there was a relationship between initial body fat percentage and how much muscle was gained. They basically found a flat line, which for the most part suggests, hey, there's no relationship between initial body fat percentage and how much muscle you gain. Makes sense. They did find some evidence of below about 8%, I believe, or 10% body fat for men, you might see reduced hypertrophy. If you're that lean when you start a bulk. And that would kind of lend some credence to the idea that, hey, if you're quite lean, you may first need to regain some body fat. And then your body's like, all right, we're fine. Yeah. We can actually cope with stuff and start putting on muscle and prioritizing that versus just energy storage. Because ultimately your body, when it's gaining weight for the most part, at some point it has to prioritize energy storage just survival-wise. And so it makes sense that if you're very lean to begin with, your body's like, hey, if we enter fan right now, we're cooked. So maybe we start storing body fat first, even though we're lifting, even though we're all this stuff. Storing body fat is a higher priority because it's our preferred storage form for the long term. They stay resilient to famines rather than okay, let's build some biceps. You know, it makes sense. It doesn't, but it does. It's speculative, to be clear. Like it's what analysis on a few studies.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

I'm joking, as it like it doesn't make sense because who doesn't want big, bigger biceps? That's true.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Famine stuff around, you're like, hey. You could argue the people who are starved the most care the most about biceps, usually. Bodybuilders. That's true. So take that body. Anyways, so you could argue one, if you're substantially lower genetic weight, genetic potential muscular weight. That's probably arguably the single biggest reason why a larger surplus or surplus in general will benefit you. And two, if you're below kind of uh essential or healthy body fat levels or body weight levels, a surplus might be slightly less effective in the short term. As you get back to more healthy levels and more productive levels, let's call them, your bulk will likely get more effective and your P ratio will improve. So yeah, all you need to know about P ratio, initial body fat percentage doesn't matter overall, especially if you're between like 10 and 40% as a man, presumably, because that's kind of what we studied. Similar ranges for women weights about maybe like 18 to 50% as a woman. Um, but if you're super lean or a suboptimal body weight to begin with, then it'll matter a bit more. So those are kind of like the mechanisms as to why bulking might benefit you. Um now we move on to applied studies. We always start these things with concept mechanisms, and then we move into applied studies to actually see what happens when the rubber hits the road.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

In this case, not much rubber. Not a lot of rubber, believe it or not. And um I'll pass on to you in a second. Even though bulking is such a cornerstone, a cornerstone part of lifting, lifting culture, and getting bigger, bodybuilding, pretty much it's a thing for anyone who's ever stepped a foot in a gym. As you'll see very shortly, not a whole lot of literature.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah, and that's the unfortunate truth. It's uh it's always interesting for me because we hold a double standard with many things. Where we look at bulking and we're like, oh, bulking's well established, everyone bulks. It's uh the way to pile on the muscle, baby. When we have four studies.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Meanwhile, things like volume. Length and partials, my little say it. Stretched partials, baby. Stretched partials, stretch partials, stretch supersets, the stretch in general, volume, training to failure. All of that stuff has literally an order of magnitude more research. So we have like closer to 40 studies as opposed to four. And if you're like, you know, the mean, the fuck off, I don't believe in that shit. And it's so true. Yeah. It's the same with uh the stretch volume, train to failure, you know, people not believing in that, while also simultaneously believing bulking is very scientific and very evidence-based. Well, we only have four studies. Yeah, we wish it was. Yeah. So I'll go chronologically here and I'll give you a broad overview rather than delving into the methods of each one, and then give some limitations of what we have. Because we only have four studies. The first ever study on bulking, quote unquote, was by Rosnick and colleagues.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Classic.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

And they compared, essentially, they gave participants different supplements, so they had three groups, a maintenance group, a protein supplement-only group, or a carb supplement only group. So control, carbs only, and carbs and protein supplement. Effectively, what they ended up doing was having the comparison of maintenance, so just keeping the body weight steady, versus gaining around 2% of their body weights per month. Importantly, this was performed in beginners, which are the most primed to build muscle. Like, you could argue a training program matters, you could argue all these things matter, but beginners gain muscle at a pace that is hard to compare to, unless you're on steroids. So for our listeners, I'm currently staring at Pac intensely, trying to get him to reveal his uh recent PDUs.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

My recent PDUs, nicotine gun, and I need 100 milligrams of caffeine, because we are in a deficit and indeed not building any more muscle. If we were on steroids, you would know. Because we would be insanely huge.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah, so that was the first study we had in beginners, and they effectively saw better hypertrophy results when bulking at a rate of 2% of body weight game per month versus just maintaining salt like that. The second study we got was by Garth and colleagues in 2013. This time, this wasn't really the aim of the study because they did like a dietary like counseling intervention versus uh intuitive eating sort of thing? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So literally the aim of it, but hey, we we take what we get.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

We're not gonna start uh we take what we get. You not maybe not all the listeners, but let me brand here, because we we've gone to the other extreme. Back in my day, we would be like, Wow, look, a study that look at something else, but we can look at bulking from this. Great. Nowadays we have so many cool studies coming out on lifters for stuff that we lifters care about, and people are not as excited as they should be, in my opinion. But yeah, great example. Both of those studies weren't bulking studies. They weren't like, oh yeah, we're investigating bulking, but we can still look at them.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

We're just out here taking small sample-sized studies, which can't really tell you that much. I mean, like, eh, well, they kind of looked at bulking. Let's use them for our understanding. And importantly, it's also worth noting, Rosnik, first study, 2002. Garth, second study, 2013. Smith, 2021, next study. Literally a decade. A decade. Between individual studies on bulking. 30 years. It's an absolute glacial process. So we don't know that much about bulking it. Anyways, back to Garth 2013. Different interventions, but effectively what it boiled down to was about 0.75% of their body weight gain per month in a bulk versus 1.5% of their body weight gain per month. Importantly, in this study, they were trained. So they have found some training before. I believe they were athletes with like a relatively decent training status. I think they reported some characteristics. And in this case, they reported similar growth between groups, but more fat gain in the aggressive bulk group. However, the results are kind of a bit of a Rochach test. Rochschacht. I don't know how you say it in German. Is it in German? I'm pretty sure it's German or Swiss or something. Badless speaks fluent in Gerschach. That sounds about right. Um effectively, the faster bulb group, so 1.5% of body weight per month, I believe gained about 1.8 kilograms of muscle. Whereas the slower bulk group gained about 1.2 kilograms of muscle. So there's two ways you could spin that. You could say, well, faster bulk group gained 50% more hypertrophy. Get the meme ready. Get the meme ready. Um, which is a valid way of looking at it, right? Because then if you were to extrapolate that in long term, and there's no reason why this wouldn't hold up in the long term, right? Like you'd be like, oh, short-term bulking is better, long-term it doesn't matter. I don't think we have a resource to say that's the case. If you extrapolate that in the long term, 50% more growth is a pretty substantial amount. If you were to gain 10 pounds of muscle in a year, you're getting 15 pounds instead. And yeah, sure you need to cut a bit more aggressively as a result, or frequently, but you did gain five extra pounds of muscle, which is a big buffer that you can offset during your cut. At the same time, you could say, well, that's an extra 600 grams of muscle. What does that mean? You know, it's well within measurement. It was accompanied by a higher fat gain, which we'll get to in a moment. So is it really worth it? When it comes to fat gain, it was much of the same. The faster bulk group gained 1.1 kilograms of fat pre-to-post. The slower bulk group only gained 200 grams. So less than five times less the amount of fat gained. So really lean gains. You know, they gained 1.2 kilos of muscle or lean body mass, and they gained only 200 grams of fat. So it's like a P ratio of 6 to 1 or something.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Blast.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

So you could look at that one of two ways. You could say, wow, those are some really lean gains. Clearly, you know, roughly the same growth, like minus 600 grams, and five times less fat gained. Slower rates awaken all the way. Or you could say, well, okay, yeah, sure you gained an extra kilo of fat, but you also gained 50% more size. And in the long run, you can just cut that fat off easily. Muscle growth is a much slower process. Fat gain, fat loss, sorry, occurs pretty quickly, whereas muscle growth is the really slow process. It's like watching paint dry on the wall. Both are reasonably valid, in my view. And we really need to interpret these findings alongside other ones to make sense of it. The next study we got was by Smith and colleagues in 2021. This one was a strange one, in the sense that they didn't really assign participants to different groups. All they had them do was eat more. And eat more they did. So most of them go into a surplus, and what the authors did essentially was plot on a graph their weight gain versus their hypertrophy. And try to see, alright, what does this line look like? Is there a relationship between how much body fat a participant gained and how much muscle they gained? So they didn't randomize and perform a randomized control trial, they just performed, you know, put participants, told them to bulk, and then do a regression on asked. They had about 40 or 50 participants, I believe. This was in untrained lifters, so there were variable rates of weight gain. Some participants gained 3% of body weight in 10 weeks, some participants gained less than that. Importantly, they took a variety of measurements. They took lean body mass measurements, direct measurements, their quads, biceps, and triceps, I believe. But the long story short, there was the indirect measurements, which we'll get back to a bit later, showed a bit more to benefit. So specifically, they found that participants could gain up to 2% of their body weight per month and gain only muscle. Beyond that, they started to gain some fat on average. Which is huge. Like if you gain 2% of body weight per month and you weigh 200 pounds, that's 4 pounds gained per month, that's 48 pounds per year. This study would suggest that in beginners, 40 pounds of weight gain in a year would not result in any fat gain. Say no more. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

The prep is over, the bulk is on.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Obviously, this study was in beginners, and this is an indirect measurement, which has limitations we'll get back to in a moment. The direct measurements, ultrasound biceps, thickness, tricep thickness, quad stickness. Those were a lot more mixed, which leads me to believe it's a mixed bag. Usually the direct measurements, especially when it comes to studies that manipulate nutrition, are more reliable and more interesting to look at. So, that study also kind of a mixed bag. Finally, we have the latest study on blocking by Hans and colleagues. Shout out Eric Helms and colleagues. There were kind of two analyses they performed. I'll touch on one, you can touch on the other type of analysis. So they compared again, this is now the third example of a study that had a certain design and then uh has to be interpreted a different way to make sense of it, according to Bokeh. Because initially, I believe their aim was to have three groups: a maintenance group, a moderate surplus group, and a high surplus group. However, what ended up happening is that the maintenance group roughly maintained, but the two surplus groups ended up gaining weight at roughly the exact same pace. So for the purposes of analyses, or for purposes of discussion here, I'll group them into maintenance and gaining weight at 2% of their body weight per month, because that's what the two groups ended up being. Their results, when just looking at it that way, were broadly similar hypertrophy. They measured, I believe, triceps, biceps, quads, and also whole lean body mass. And all of those showed similar hypertrophy, with a potential slight exception for the biceps. So these were trained lifters. They performed a pretty, I would say, comprehensive routine, with around like, I believe, 8 to 15 sets per week per muscle for most muscles, with the exception of the biceps, which received close to 17 or 20 sets per week per muscle. And specifically, interestingly, the biceps were a muscle where there was a potential benefit of bulking at 2% of body weight per month for just methane. The caveat being, so you have one site that showed greater hypertrophy, then you have several sites that didn't show greater hypertrophy, and you have whole body lean mass change, which again didn't show a difference. And the caveat to all that, you could say, oh well, one win is still a win, maybe. Uh well, they also gained a lot more fat than the group that was just maintaining. And I personally think that although this study had a relatively limited sample size because they had issues with data collection during COVID, this is kind of the most applicable study in some ways. Um, because they were doing a pretty cooperative training routine and they were comparing like maintenance to like a solid surplus in the end, which is a solid proof of concept in trade lifters. Yeah. Now, there was a second type of analysis that Peck will discuss briefly.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Indeed. And that's something that uh Eric Helms highlights quite a bit because uh a lot of people focused on the first type of analysis when the study came out. But because of COVID, uh they had to cut the study short. Sample was relatively small, and essentially they were unable to do what they intended to do. So what they then did is they looked at the entire sample altogether and essentially did a regression analysis to see okay, did more body weight gain result in greater um hypertrophy? And essentially, what they found out was uh along the lines of what we've discussed already, more weight gain or faster weight gain in this case resulted to more fat mass, but not additional growth. So, yeah, that is bad news for us. Bad news for us, and that's also the extent of the research we have. Indeed, and I hope some of you are shocked. Please comment below if you're shocked. I am shocked. If you comment I am shocked, we'll uh give you a two-week free trial from my end of using code MUSTELAB, which only works if you comment, I am shocked, like the video, and subscribe.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

We're gonna see that. So, what you'll notice in all these studies is that many of the measurements were indirect measurements. I'll clarify what that means. When it comes to measuring muscle growth, there's two types of measurement, direct and indirect. When it comes to direct measurements, you can think of ultrasounding. That's the one most people are familiar with, in the sense that it's something that pregnant women have to do to check whether or not they have a baby. And it's ultra. It's ultra, it's not just sound. So ultrasound is one of those methods, where essentially you're directly looking at a single muscle's thickness, cross-section, volume, whatever it is, as opposed to a composite like the whole upper body or the whole lower body or the whole body. So in that category, you have things like MRI, ultrasound. In the second category, indirect measurements, you have measurements that group the body in some regard. So for example, upper body lean body mass or lower body lean body mass. They these methods like underwater weighing or like uh botpod, which is a brand name for air displacement plethismography. Yeah, I remember the acronym. I'm looking at the camera for those that are listening. Um or DEXA, which stands for dual X-ray absorption or something. Hey, close enough. Close enough for sure. Not the absorption. Yeah, yeah. The metries are the one that you absorptionometry, of course, classic word that you need to know, dear listener. Um those methods essentially make certain assumptions about what your body contains. So you have two compartment models, three compartment models, four compartment models, etc., which all just split your body into being two things or three things. So for example, in a two-compartant model, it'd be like fat-free mass and fat mass. And it just assumes those are the two things making up your body. And because we know the density, aka how many grams per cubic centimeter fat mass on average weighs or is made of, whatever, has a density of, and the same fat free mass. If we know your volume and we know these densities, we can determine what percentage of your body is fat mass and what percentage of it is fat free mass. So it's a pretty simple process in a way. All we need to know is your volume, how much space you physically take up, the density of your components, and we can tell you, hey, this is how much of each you have. So it sounds sweet. And it's pretty cool. It's uh that's how air displacement plethismography works. That's how underwater weighing works by measuring displacement that you do with water right. But it has its limitations. Specifically, not all fat-free mass, for example, is created equal. Yeah. Not all fat mass is created equal. So you're essentially lumping all of the differences in organs, in your muscle tissue, in muscle tissue in different areas, in your bone weights and everything, into one bucket. And you're assuming that this density applies to all people, of all races, genders, etc., etc. Which isn't accurate. It also assumes that you're coming into a lab having done the same things recently in similar conditions. So you if you had a meal in the pre-measurement, you also had a meal in the post-measurement. If you didn't drink anything before, you also drank nothing afterwards. In the context of bulking, that last point is an issue. Because when you're bulking, you're consuming more calories. You oftentimes have more food in your gastrointestinal tract, which is then measured in your body weight, for example. And that can artificially increase how much of an increase in lean body mass or fattery mass we observe. Simply because you weigh more, and that weight isn't explainable by fat mass, it gets attributed to fattery mass. And so we see, oh, you grew more muscle, even though you may not have. You just had more food in your stomach. The same goes for muscle glycogen. So when you were in a surplus for 12 weeks, it's very possible you carry a bit more muscle glycogen. It might not be much, but it might be enough to add half a kilo to your body weight. And that half a kilo, when it comes to measuring a hypertrophy, can be the difference between, oh, both groups saw the same growth. Yep. And oh, the bulk group saw half a kilo more growth, like for example in Garth's study. So indirect measurements pose an issue when it comes to bulking specifically. That means that many of these studies' results should be interpreted accordingly, and more focus should be put on direct measurements. When you look at the direct measurements specifically in these studies, Rosnick, no direct measurements. Garth, no direct measurements. Smith, some direct measurements, all of them pretty mixed. Hells, some direct measurements, all of them are showing a little difference, except for one. The picture really isn't that convincing.

SPEAKER_02 42:29

Yep, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

At least for the time being. At least for time being. And we'll discuss this more later. That's not to say there is no benefit. Yeah. But it might be a really small benefit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:40

People may be thinking though, okay guys, you're the big scientists, the doctors, you have all the prestige. Money is falling off the ceiling. Why aren't you doing the one damn bulk study? Well, in order to do a proper bulk study, you'd have to control for people's nutrition. Um, obviously there are ways around that, but in practice, it is extremely difficult, uh, especially with the constraints that we have, financial, uh, sample sizes, etc., to get people and control their nutrition accurately. Obviously, you can rely on self-reported um measures of uh food intake, but those are notorious for not being the best. Um and in general, designing a proper bulk study would require quite a bit of time and quite a bit of control, which until we become millionaires, and that's where you come in and subscribe to my adult so that we can pour our money back into research, it is likely not going to happen at any point soon.

unknown 43:41

No.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

If you look at these studies and you're like, wait a minute, all these studies set out to do one thing and then ended up doing something else. Like, why is that? Well, it's because of this, basically. People don't like having their nutrition controlled, it's expensive, it's difficult to actually have participants eat the way they're supposed to. And so, like the health studies. For instance. Yeah, they were supposed to compare maintenance to a slight surplus to higher surplus. But it's difficult to hold participants to that standard. Yeah. So another nuance that comes in with this research. Half of these studies, the Rosnick study and the Smith study, were in untrained people. The other half, the Garth study and Helm study, were in trained people. And there is a slight trend between these two subgroups. Now again, only for studies, but there is a slight trend. Specifically, the studies by Rosnick and Smith seem to show a bit more of a benefit to bulking compared to the studies by Garth and Helms and more trained lifters. That suggests that untrained people may see a bit more of a benefit. Probably because they can simply build more muscle. Likewise, there is another trend if you kind of look between the lines a little bit. And again, this isn't us making the most of what we have, which is not a whole ability. The higher volume studies, for example, and the Helm study, the biceps were being trained with a higher volume than the rest of the muscle groups. The higher volume studies seem to indicate a bit more of benefit to bulking compared to lower volume studies, which again would comport with our understanding that if you're in a position to gain more muscle, bulking might benefit you more. Same as with the training status. But really, uh this is like us slightly grasping for straws and saying, what do we actually do with just four studies? Another takeaway is maintenance can be surprisingly decent too. Most comparisons we have in trained lifters fail to show a benefit to a surplus, just straight up. So in the health study, we had like I believe four or five hypertrophy measurements, at least, and only one of them showed a benefit to a surplus. In the Garth study, again, a bit more of a Ruchha fest and confounded by it being an indirect measurement, maybe a slight benefit to a bulk. But the benefit seems to range from non-existent to potentially bare but minor. Now, that's not all the research we have on the topic of energy status and hypertrophy. So we focus now on mechanisms of bulking and applied research comparing maintenance to a surplus. But we do also have a general understanding of how how many calories you consume per day affects how much muscle you can build. Specifically, we have a meta-regression by Murphy and Kurlow from 2021, I believe, where they effectively took a bunch of studies, they extracted how much weight participants, or sorry, how many calories participants consumed, and how much muscle mass or lean body mass specifically was gained throughout the course of the intervention. They found a linear association between how many calories you consumed and how much of a lean body mass change there was, such that consuming more calories and being in a surplus led to more hypertrophy. Specifically, in a surplus, participants on average gained, I think like a solid amount of size. I don't remember the exact numbers. At maintenance, they were still able to, on balance, on average, put on lean body mass from pre-to-post intervention. As they got into more of a deficit, obviously that amount of lean body mass they gained started decreasing, up until it roughly got to zero, around a 500-calorie deficit. And then beyond that, participants on average started losing lean body mass pre-topost. Again, there are the same nuance of indirect measurements and lean body mass being conflated by your food intake and your muscle glycogen and how much food you're carrying in your gastrointestinal tract apply to the cutting research too, though. So that relationship might be slightly overstated in that that effect or that confounding effect might accentuate protein body mass gain in a surplus and might accentuate a lean body mass loss in a deficit. So it might not be quite as extreme as these results might make it seem. But at the very least, there does seem to be a relationship. And at maintenance you can absolutely gain muscle, and in a bulk, you can absolutely gain muscle, and even in a small deficit, you still seemingly are able to gain lead body mass pre-deposed. So that's the state of the evidence. That's pretty much the state of the evidence.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Um any thoughts on that before you go on? I think you've covered everything pretty well. And we've also mentioned in previous episodes that in many of the studies that we do, where people essentially maintain their body weight and we use direct measures, uh measurements of hypertrophy, people gain muscle just fine, including trained lifters. Yeah. Um these are not balking studies, but hey, a big tap on the back for maintenance, you know, big thumbs up.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Absolutely. It also plays to the idea that we mentioned earlier one of the mechanisms purported behind bulking being effective is you need calories to build muscle. Building muscle is a calorically expensive process. All of this research kind of dispels that. For one, the studies we have on bulking directly, the maintenance groups consistently build muscle. For two, this Murphy Middle regression in several dozens of studies show that, hey, at maintenance, on average, people do gain lead body mass. And for three, the vast majority of exercise science studies have participants roughly maintained and do observe positive changes in hypertrophy. So that really dispels the idea that the energy required to build muscle cannot be endogenously sourced. You cannot recompetence all a beginner. All of that is wrong. So let's um move on to something else. Let's briefly talk a bit more about p-ratio. So we define it was earlier. We mentioned you probably don't need to be lean before you start a bulk, but let's talk a bit more about how it came to be in the first place. So let me just correct, actually, I I just realized I made a mistake earlier in defining p- ratio. It's not a change in lean body mass or muscle mass divided by a change in fat mass. It's actually a change in muscle mass divided by change in body weight. Nevertheless, higher ratio means uh leaner gains, but the ratio varies from zero to one. Zero being all the weight gained is fat or non-lean body mass, and one being all that is lean body mass. Now that idea initially came from papers by Forbes in 1987, and another paper by Hall in 2007. In these papers, they essentially performed a cross-sectional study, where they just took some lifter, oh sorry, non-lifters, including some anorexia recovery patients, and they tried to draw a line between their initial body fat percentage and how much of a change in lean body mass versus fat mass there would be. Importantly, anorexia recovery patients are not your average lifter, um, which again already presents an issue of generalizability. That model predicts that you gain more muscle if you're fat, but also that you lose more muscle getting lean. So that's already opposite to what most people would kind of anticipate. They would think, oh, if I'm lean, I'm gonna gain more muscle, and if I'm fat, I'm gonna gain less muscle. And reality is not what the model actually showed even back then. The mechanisms that were kind of hypothesized at the time, or that even metal henselines went off of, that were included in these papers oftentimes, were that insulin sensitivity gets worse when you're high in body fat. And insulin is involved in the anabolic processing or anabolic signaling process when it comes to muscle hypertrophy. That's part of the reason why insulin is actually used by osocetes. So the idea is that reduced sensitivity means more nutrients are shuttled to fat cells versus muscle, or another mechanism is that inflammation is generally higher, which is a worse thing because you wanna the the thinking goes that you want to maximize the acute to chronic inflammation ratio to maximize the anabolic response responsive lifting. So a higher chronic inflammation level is suboptimal from a hormonal malia or anabolic malia perspective. Importantly, the studies by Forbes and Hall and even subsequent studies were showing these links between initial body fat percentage and hypertrophy are typically in untrained, elderly, and or sedentary populations, oftentimes a culmination of all three, not necessarily lifters. And oftentimes they're not actually looking at hypertrophy. What they're oftentimes looking at more so is insulin sensitivity or inflammation. And then those mechanisms are used by proponents of the P ratio in this context, to say, hey, if you're higher in body fat, insulin sensitivity gets worse, and you have higher chronic inflammation. Both of these things we think will make hypertrophy worse. That is a mechanistic assumption that is believed to hold true between these mechanisms and hypertrophy. Part of the reason we don't put that much emphasis on mechanisms. We still explain them in this podcast, but we don't make them the centerpiece. We follow them with applied studies to see whether it actually works in practice. Is because you can make out dozens of mechanistic rationales. You can say, well, this muscle has leverage at this joint angle. So I think it will grow better if I train it there. But if that doesn't hold true in actual training studies where you measure hypertrophy, one of two things has to be true. One, the measurements you took were unsufficiently reliable when it came to hypertrophy, or you had too small of a sample size, and so random noise crept in. And what you observed wasn't actually what would truly happen if you had an adequate sample size. Or two, more likely oftentimes, your mechanistic rationale was incorrect. You hypothesized something and it just didn't pan out. So these are mechanisms: insulin sensitivity, chronic inflammation. Their link to hypertrophy has to be substantiated in the population of interest when it comes to the PH, which is lifters who are oftentimes not sedentary, who've been lifting for years, whose insulin sensitivity is massively bolstered by the fact they actually lift in the first place, whose chronic inflammation is massively reduced by the fact they often lift consistently and their diets tend to be on point. So whether or not these mechanisms are even relevant, even if they can play a role, in the context of lifters, is very unclear. So we do have studies comparing higher body fat versus lower body fat bulking. For example, three studies in American football players, linemen versus skill players, which in these studies were around 20% body fat versus 7% body fat, and the linemen gain similar or more muscle across the intervention while losing fat at the same time typically, which again goes back to our point of recomposition is very much possible, even if you're a higher body fat, which apparently is by some people's uh it's what, 15%? Yeah, 15% or above you're cooked. You need to cut a meal. So, if anything, the higher body fat players, so blindmen, seem to have a better P ratio in this telegraph. And we all we'll link to the strong by science articles in the description for anyone who wants to read more deeply into it. But the long story short really is there doesn't seem to be a consistent strong relationship between initial body fat percentage and how much muscle you get.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Yeah. Likewise, you could take the anecdote of sumo wrestlers. Yep, sumo wrestlers, uh heavyweight powerlifters, strongmen. Plenty of athletes who are at very high body fat percentages. But even in the literature, when we, you know, even if people got case studies on even some of the best powerlifters in the world, like the highest levels of uh fat-free mass uh ever recorded or lean mass was in a case study on Ray Williams, if I'm not mistaken, or or Lebdia, maybe that was the second one, and there was another one. But yeah, in general and in practice, if you know, you know, like the biggest and most muscular people in most cases will also be the fattest is. That's correct.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

There is, like I mentioned earlier, at very low body cap percentages, potentially a slight um a kernel of truth. Yes, I hear it. To the notion of PR ratio. One, like I mentioned earlier, when they drew that regression analysis, they did find that maybe below about like 8-10% as a man, things start to get a bit worse. And that is also backed up by data in post-competition bodybuilders. Bodybuilders, when they're dieting out for a show, they get oftentimes down to just about essential body fat levels. Um after the show, there have been studies that have tried to quantify what their recovery process looks like, what their weight regain process looks like. And these studies generally show that bodybuilders after a show preferentially regain fat and not muscle. It's possible that because they recently cut, and it might be that a recent weight loss phase predisposes you a bit more to regaining fat mass first and then muscle mass, because your body's like, hey, we're uh we're really trying to uh not die in the long term, hey, so please regain some fat so that in the long term we're okay. Or it could be simply that by being at a low body fat percentage, your body first prioritizes fat regain, no matter if you recently cut out. Um It's worth noting as well that a 2022 meta analysis by Lopez and colleagues showed that across 2,500 individuals with overweight or obesity status, they were still able to gain 0.8 kilograms of lean mass on average from a lifting intervention. And BMI wasn't really predictive of lean mass gains as a moderator. So if you kind of draw a line between if you account for BMI on the x-axis, let's say, for our listeners, and on the y-axis, you plot hypertrophy across this data set. You didn't see that, oh, hypertrophy was really solid when BMIs were low, and then it got worse as BMIs increased. If anything, it was pretty flat. Meaning that BMI wasn't really a moderator of the relationship between lifting and hypertrophy. Now, I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart. Indeed. And it's a common rebuttal to, okay, yeah, sure, you don't need to be lean to gain muscle, but what about health? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

And that's been um a topic near to my heart for years when I was a chonker. So when I was actively around 20-25% body fat, um, but also because many of the listeners, I think, and most people out there, are not going to have the issue of being, you know, 7 to 8% body fat and wondering whether they can gain muscle effectively. Obviously, there may be a few out there, um, but they're likely somewhere around the 15 to 20% body fat if we assume, you know, average body fat. And if you're a lifter, 15 to 20 percent looks much better than the fitness industry may have you believe you will not be uh looking like an obese individual. It's also worth noting that most people's uh 15% body fat is more like uh 25% body fat. Exactly. So so being a proud chonker and having spent um a solid, I think, four to five years in a slide surplus, but my starting point being roughly around 20% body fat. Obviously, I was um fine uh because I had read all the articles that we referenced. I was fine mentally from um a whether I will gain muscle or not standpoint, but I'm also conscious about my health and wanted to make sure that hey, we are not going to die. And we are not clipping as well. That's a reference for the camera because you can see the bright sun in my eyes. If you're not watching, please watch on YouTube, it looks great. But I wanted to also make sure that I'm healthy, and there's been a lot of talk about cutoff points and that 15 to 20 percent is like the absolute maximum for you to save yourself from any deleterious effects on health. But when we look at the latest meta-analytic evidence on health, on body fat and health specifically, and more specifically, a study and a meta-analysis by Jayeti et al. from I think 2022, 2021, but something there, uh, with nearly a million people, the body fat percentage for men that was associated with the lowest risk of all cause mortality, meaning the lowest risk to die from all causes, was at roughly 22% for men and 35% for women. Um, and if anything, the risk actually increased uh slightly when men went below 12% and um women went below 20%. A lot of co-founders there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Yeah, well even below, but just down to 12%. Oh, it's down to, yes. Like uh the lowest point was 22% for men, 35% for women. Going higher or lower than that obviously increased risk. That's kind of the definition there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

That said, though, there's a lot of co-founders with uh lower body fat percentages and people not people being malnourished, other um conditions being present, etc. etc. So don't take 22% as the absolute number and do not think that if you're 12 or 10%, that you are less healthy than somebody who's 22%. However, there are a few things that are more important than just your body fat percentage when it comes to your health. So obviously, body fat percentage doesn't account for body fat distribution, and there are different types of body fat that can impact your health. Visceral fat, specifically, the fat around your organs that you cannot pinch or visually see, is very important for your health and it can predict how long you live and uh can also contribute to many diseases. So, one, just being at a specific body fat percentage won't necessarily tell you that much about your health. Measuring your waist circumference may be a better way to know if you are at a healthy body composition and keeping your waist circumference half of your height. So measuring your waist circumference and seeing if that's half of your height. Um 178 centimeters was half of that. Maybe 80 80, 178, is it? 178 centimeters, 88. 8.5, 8. 89. At the moment, I am much lower than that because I'm pretty lean. But even if I was fatter than now, as long as my waist is roughly there, I am pretty much solid. However, another thing that we've seen in the literature be much better at predicting health than just body fat or BMI is being physically active. So if you're physically active, even if you were to be above this cutoff point, and keep in mind things don't go absolutely south once you're above that cutoff point, they slowly get worse. Much like BMI, you have to be level three obese in order to see big increases in risk. And muscle loss. And muscle loss. That's true. Um, being physically active can protect against uh a lot of the potential negative effects. So, in people that are physically active and overweight or at a higher body fat percentage, those people have a lower risk of dying than those who are physically inactive and healthy from a body fat percentage, uh BMI percentage.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

In other words, to keep it simple, being physically active but fat is healthier than being an active and an old weight. Yeah. Exercise seems more important unless you're really high in BMI compared to a slightly elbowed BMI. Yeah. That's really cool because it means that you know uh there's plenty of things that we won't agree with, like the health at every size movement, for example, with at least when a very absolutist interpretation of it. Exactly. But we can very much get on board with the idea that hey, exercise is insanely powerful.

unknown 1:03:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

And it's insanely powerful almost no matter your circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

Yeah, and it's worth highlighting all this, not just as a cope or like as a oh yeah, here's us trying to be positive, but because physique inflation is real, and the idea that everyone is walking around shredded and you should be shredded year-round is also a thing. So if you're a listener and you are at a comfortable body fat, maybe you don't have visible abs or you can barely see a four-pack under good lighting, but you're okay with your body composition. Assuming your waist circumference is in check and you're physically active, you can go and do a lean bulk and slowly gain a bit of weight or just maintain and gain uh muscle while being on maintenance calories.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:19

Absolutely. Yeah. So when it comes to body fat, much wider range than people realize. Certainly, some of this relationship will be reverse reverse causation. So things like, okay, the people who had a lower body fat percentage and who were at a higher risk of dying, it might have just been a confounder like they were ill or what have you. Um But yeah, in general, the range is much larger than people realize. And you don't need to be that lean to optimize your health. If there were a strong association or relationship between body fat percentage and health to that level, we would have seen in this metalysis. Indeed. And if anything, it's just that a more moderate modified percentage and higher than most people anticipate was superior.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:01

A hot take that my not hot take, but a nice take that Milo has um made in the past, which I found myself agreeing more and more as the years pass, is that the one case to be made against gaining a bunch of weight is that obesity is relatively uh complex, plus um long-term success with diets is not really a thing based on the literature. So, like most people will lose weight and then regain it over a course of time. So there's a point to be made there.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

I'll let you fat loss is a bitch. Maintaining a fat loss is even more of a bitch. And I think the estimate of how many people lose fat or like substantial amount of weight and keep it off is somewhere like 10 to maybe 20% at the most, uh, if not even lower. So as a coach, one thing I often think about is whether or not a client whether or not it is truly in their best interests to gain weight when trying to build muscle. Because the odds of the average person being able to gain weight for a bulk and then be able to lose it in a healthy manner are actually pretty low. Now we're not dealing with truly the average person when you and I are seeing lifters in the gym or we're coaching someone. We're dealing with a smaller subset of like people who on average eat healthier or like by healthier I mean like less calorie dense, more micronutrients, fiber, etc., etc., who are more physically active, etc., and who generally become more conscientious. So a variety of things that will probably skew weight loss success and weight loss maintenance success in their favor, but we're still dealing with pretty bad odds. Yep. Especially if you're dealing with someone from a general population or who's like newer to lifting and maybe it doesn't have the same habits in place. There is a serious conversation to be had about is bulking right for this person? Yep. And oftentimes the answer to that conversation is a no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

Versus viewing it simply as, okay, we'll gain 25 pounds of body weight, then we'll strip off uh, you know, 20 binding, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Yeah. It's also a question of how much of a benefit to your muscle getting process are you seeing by walking, versus how big of a risk is there that you'll struggle to re-lose this amount of weight you've gained. And like that is not uh those are all good odds.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:16

Yeah, especially when you're dealing with people with body dysmorphia or who may not feel comfortable. This has been the perfect transition to the coaching corner segment of this podcast, I feel. But okay, uh, these are some potential negatives of forcing the bulk on as a positive here. Let's uh get thick, solid touch, looking great. Let's say you do want to bulk, but you are struggling to bulk. I don't understand you as a person, I honestly don't. Uh, but let's say I do understand you, and you are struggling to keep the surplus reasonable.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

Well, we still understand you.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:53

But we'll give you some answers anyways. I understand that person, I'm not sure about you, but yes, okay. Eat big to get big, unfortunately. Even though we don't have a lot of data on bulking, I very much doubt that yeah, be on a 40 cal 40% surplus and gain as much weight as possible in short periods of time will be beneficial versus you know very slow lean gains or maintenance.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Yeah. So when it comes to managing your surplus, managing your hunger during a surplus, not overshooting it, not undershooting it, getting more calories in, getting fewer calories in. All of that can kind of come down to a few things that we know govern how satiating or how full you get from a meal. There's kind of four things or three things I would say that are the main ones. And we'll kind of discuss how they play into um food selection during a book. We discussed these in some detail in the cutting episode, so I'm not gonna belabor the point too much.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

Indeed.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:54

But the three main ones I would say are fiber, number one. Fiber seems to be uniquely satiating. It also, because of certain properties, certain types of fiber are not fully absorbed, meaning they have fewer effective calories. So they can be a nice little extra amount of food per calorie. The second one is calorie density, which is essentially how many calories per volume of food, so per cubic centimeter, if you will. And certain foods, like for example, salads, have very low calorie density. Oftentimes, you know, for a whole bag of salad you might get 20 or 50 calories or whatever it is. The third one is texture. There's been research performed on foods with different texture, where they equate for everything else. Same calories, same carbs, same fiber, same everything. The only thing they change is texture of the food. So for example, one study we I've discussed in the context of lifting by the Harudin colleagues is where they actually modified the texture and viscosity of a pre-workout meal, where one group was given like orange liquid, essentially, orange squash for British listeners, which had some carbs in it, some uh carb powder, versus being given the exact same thing with some xanthem gum added to make it viscous and solid. And the group, or the condition rather, in which they ate that thicker xanthem gummed substance thing, they end up being fuller and performing better, but that's besides the point. But essentially there is a lot of research looking at the effect of viscosity or texture on satiation, finding that thicker or more viscous meals, in the case of liquids, or more toothsome, like crunchier, whatever it might be, seem to promote greater satiation. Importantly, all three of these factors, which I would say are the main ones when it comes to determining satiation, probably calorie density is the most important. Uh like fiber is important, don't get me wrong, texture is kind of important, but I would say those are more secondary. But all three of those work together in most foods you know of as being quote unquote healthy. Fruits and vegetables, pretty low calorie density typically. Pretty high in fiber typically, pretty toothsome texture typically. Uh cookies from the grocery store, pretty high calorie density, no fiber typically. And texture is pretty easy to get through. Like you can eat a lot of it in not much time. Indeed. So looking for foods that have more fiber, a lower calorie density, a more toothsome texture, when you're trying to keep your appetite down and manage your surplus from being too high to being a little bit more moderate, or vice versa, picking for food picking foods that maybe have less fiber are a bit more calorie dense and a bit maybe more liquid on average will help you get into more of a surplus. So if you're a hard gainer, which is a minority of people, but it's a real minority, making part of your diet more processed, you know, picking foods with characteristics that make him less filling, is actually advisable. And as long as most of your diet comes from mostly whole foods, which have plenty of micronutrients, plenty of fiber, um, plenty of water as well, those things are going to be sufficient typically. It is still worth aiming for as high a proportion of whole foods in your diet as possible. But if it's like, hey, I'm tragic in the surplus, and 95% of my diet is whole foods, can I take it down to 85% for a few months? That's probably reasonable. Does that make sense? Yeah. Cool. Well, next up we're talking about tips on switching from a cut to a surplus. Because that's where I think a lot of people struggle.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

Yeah, I know uh without even looking at our outline, that's uh what I wanted to touch on in terms of making things more manageable, and it's something that I'm actively um preparing for in my head. So for those of you that don't know, I'm currently preparing for a body bodybuilding uh competition. It's quite far away, and I I won't bother you with the details, but I am essentially um cutting and have been doing so for a while. However, what I am doing right now is I am setting up myself for success in the future by essentially getting used to the fact that my diet, when I switch away from the uh deficit to the surplus, will pretty much be the same, just with more of what I'm eating right now or with some slightly different, uh, some slightly different choices. So instead of maybe consuming, you know, no olive oil with started foods, I'll be adding a bit of olive oil. Uh instead of going for the 0% uh fat on Greek yogurt, I'll go for the 2%. But essentially, this is something that um also Eric Helms has touched on quite a bit, keeping your diet pretty much the same and essentially making some small changes to increase your calories, but not going from one extreme to the other as you often see.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:45

Um I think we can call that like the substitution or swap approach almost. Yeah. Where I think there's something to be said about the way a lot of people approach that, like, okay, now I'm in a cut, let me figure out macro-friendly recipes, as I very complicated things. That can somewhat backfire in creating additional complexity. Like if you're craving cookies and now, okay, instead of being able to have cookies, you're gonna spend an hour making cookies, which is not realistic for most people. That can backfire. But if it's a simple swap, a realistic swap that people can incorporate like lower fat milk to slightly higher fat milk, that's fine. I think that makes sense. But in general, I think that the health-promoting habits that you build in general, but especially during a cut, because that's where most people tend to during a fat loss phase, increase physical activity, increase consumption of fruits and vegetables, increase fiber intake. As much as possible, try to retain those habits. Those are the habits that will build a foundation for the rest of your life. Activities are great for your health. So is consumption of fruits and vegetables. Up to 10 plus series of fruits and vegetables a day is great. So we don't want to put you in a position where you're so focused on bulking that you completely neglect the health promoting habits that underlie you actually being able to train in the first place. Exactly. So moving on to our next point. When it comes to a successful bulk, don't get it twisted. Training is still the stimulus and king when it comes to actually promoting hypertrophy. 100%. We discussed in depth across this episode with the research how uh relatively unconvincing the research on bulking is and how small the potential effect is likely to be. Much more important than that is likely how effective your training is. Yep. Nutrition should be seen, and again, Eric Hans has spoken about this specifically of a catchphrase, as permissive to the hypertrophy process. So training and the stimulus you get from training initiates the muscle growth cascade and provided sufficient protein is around, sufficient building blocks, and sufficient energy is around, you know, in a crazy deficit, you'll build muscle. Might it be modifiable to some extent in magnitude by nutrition, for example, yes. But it's more so permissive and maybe modulatory rather than make or break. And like I mentioned earlier, the size of the surplus, and even whether you're in a surplus or not, makes a pretty small impact on your hypertrophy. And that's why I generally think that recomping is a pretty valid approach, even as you become more trained. 100%. This next tip is huge, and it's kind of one of the most egregious and common ones, which is a failure to weigh yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

Let me pull it up for the viewers, for the listeners. I will also describe it while pulling it up and not out, as you may have thought. So I am now going to my Dropbox folder and while also opening 300 other apps because I'm trying to do it quickly. And I'm opening an Excel sheet that I have since 2017. I will quickly scroll, anyways, here for the camera. I've been logging my weight, calories, and sleep daily since 2017 when I weighed a whopping, a whopping 135 kilos, nearly 300 pounds. That's why thick. And all that to say, weigh yourself consistently, regardless of whether you're bulking, maintaining, or cutting.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:18

Enough with uh virtue similarly. Hey. Many people struggle with this. It's one of the biggest mistakes that makes people fat, in my experience. Yes, I agree. Um it can go both ways. One, it can make people fat because they don't realize how much weight they've put on in a lunch time if they don't weigh themselves for a few weeks. Because oftentimes it also comes at a time where they're not weighing themselves because they're creating an avoidance spiral. Fair enough. Of I'm eating more than I should. Okay, I ate a lot yesterday, let me not weigh myself today. And then they do the same thing again and again, and eventually they build the habit of not weighing themselves and eating more than they should. So obviously, this advice is different for people who have a reason not to weigh themselves, let's say issues of body image or what have you. Yeah, this is no medical advice. For the average lifter, weighing yourself consistently is probably one of the biggest habits that will serve you especially well during a cut, but that will also serve you well during a surplus to make sure you're not overdoing it. On the flip side, it can be easy for some people, again, those horror gainers which are small but real minority, to accidentally not balk by doing this. So they'll be like, yep, I'm gonna balk, I'm gonna put on some weight finally, I've been around 80 kilograms for my whole life, and I'm not satisfied with my results, and then I'm not gonna weigh myself. I'm gonna try and need a surplus, but also not really attract it that precisely. And then they end up not really gaining weight. Maybe they gain two kilos while they weigh themselves for the first month. And then they don't weigh themselves for two months and they're back to 80. So please just weigh yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:48

Yeah. And weighing yourself will also help you. What I tell most clients, again, obviously, like if you have actual issues, seek professional help. But it will debunk the scale. You will be able after a while to notice trends. Notice that, okay, whenever I do this, then two or three high days um follow. Or um, okay, I usually get stuck for a couple of weeks, then notice that I have a big drop in weight, and then my weight keeps going down, or vice versa. The more you track, the more you get familiar with those things, and the more you start disconnecting from the number because you understand how much it will vary. I can see my weight fluctuate by I don't know, two to four pounds in a given week. If I'm eating more, maybe even higher than that. So it's it helps you uh take control over the scale, but you also uh there's other things that you can do, which uh we think are useful, and more specifically, circumference measurements, as we mentioned on the cutting episode, which you you should check out, measuring your waste and paying attention to that to have another data point besides just the scale, because that may be, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:56

Importantly, we you know sang the praise of weighing yourself. Two things. One is worth noting the same applies to tracking your calories if you're able to, yeah, if you want to. Self-monitoring in general, when it comes to success in fat loss and maintaining fat loss, or in dietary success in general, self-monitoring and even behavior change is very well, one of the best predictors we have of people who actually successfully lose weight and keep it off. So maintaining that habit is very helpful. It's probably helpful for a variety of reasons, such as like a positive feedback loop of you weigh yourself, you see you've gained a bit of weight, you're like, oh nice, awesome. And it creates a bit of a feeling of ownership, autonomy, and competence over the process. And you're like, wow, I can do this, I'm good at this. Which is like the referred to as self-efficacy in the research. But you could think of it as a boss bitch syndrome. You heard it here first. So self-monitoring can be very good in that sense, and I think again, unless you have a reason not to, self-monitor consistently, weighing yourself, tracking calories, great idea. With that being said, you don't need to track. If you're like, look, I am not a super hungry person. I am willing to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and like manage my things and still track occasionally, track my intake occasionally, like every few weeks, just to get an idea of where I'm at. I'm pretty consistent day to day, like I don't have a huge swing in what I eat, and I'm willing to weigh myself occasionally, you don't need to track every single day. And this can be positive for many people because they can realize that, oh, if I eat intuitively, and this is somewhat true from the research, for most people, if they eat intuitively and relatively quote unquote healthily, they end up being a small surplus. So if you're bulking and you don't want to try everything precisely, and you think you can approach it with that perspective of I'm still gonna be highly physically active, I'm still gonna consume plenty of fruits and vegetables, keep my hunger levels reasonable, and I'm willing to weigh myself occasionally, just kind of like have a rough litmus test of where I'm at, that can actually work pretty well. That's typically what I do during a bulk. Again, if you're someone whose habits are pretty, pretty well formed already, I think it can work for a lot of people. Not everyone, but it can be worth a try if you're finding the tracking monotone and annoying to the point of putting you off, unessentially. Um next tip is to give it time and commit to the surplus.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:27

Yes. We've talked about this quite a bit in the past, and I think that's one of the main mistakes that a lot of uh natural lifters make out there, and it falls. I think it comes as a result of a lot of the three-month or four-month transformations you often see online, um, plus the idea that you need to eat big to get big. So that results in those Yonlos cycles where people gain too much weight, they're unhappy with their physique, they cut, they repeat. Muscle growth takes time. Give yourself at least, in my opinion, six months of consistently either lean gaining, slash maintaining whatever, or you know, being actively in a very conservative surplus. Um, but ideally, even close to a year. You could do even more than that. There's no reason why you should cut unless you are unhappy with your physique or you're tired of eating. You could go for a few years continuously.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:19

Absolutely. And more than say, oh, you need at least six months or whatever. I think the thing people need to realize is the reason you're bulking in most cases, and specifically talk to the people who are you know hard gainers, because oftentimes it's the people who are uh struggling with this, like committing to bulk. The reason you're bulking is because you're light, you're weak, you need to get up to your genetic potential, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you don't commit to the surplus, how are you gonna get there? Yeah, yeah, indeed. Like, unless you're like, okay, I'm not gonna commit now and commit later for sure, in which case you're coping probably. At some point you need to bulk. If you're like 140 pounds in, you need to be 200 pounds ultra. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:00

Never had that issue, but I wish I did. I wish I could be transferred in your heads and do it for you. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:05

That would be live the life in a few years. In a few years. So this mistake can just lead to a lot of wheel spinning where you get into surplus, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna commit for X time, and then a month in you're looking a bit fat, you're like, I'm gonna kill myself and stop. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't stop. Don't kill yourself. Don't do bulk, actually. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Sorry. Um so yeah, I would say stay consistent with the surplus, especially if you're doing it for the reason of long term, you want to reach a higher body weight, get close to a genet potential. Yeah. Because otherwise you're not gonna get there. And the other reasons of bulking are like I would say valid, like accentuating hypertrophy, right? Or you're trying to put on muscle in general. But I would say specifically, if it's for the reason of getting to a higher body weight long term, committing to a surplus becomes even more important. Yeah. Because you could argue, okay, now if you're feeling a bit fat after a few months and you want to look leaner, it's reasonable enough. Sure. But if your long-term goal is not aligned with your short-term behavior, there's a bigger problem potentially. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:12

And if you're a natural lifter who is not a genetic freak, don't be fooled. When you are bulking and when you're above a certain body fat percentage, especially again, if you're not the most blessed with your genetics, you're not gonna look like uh a body an off-season enhanced bodybuilder, though. You may look a bit softer under certain legs, you may look even smaller because you're not gonna be as defined. But trust me, and this is the bulk free stalking, when you do eventually cut, it will be worth it, and you always look bigger when you're much smaller. And as an enhanced lifter as well, I guess. But what about the dreamer bulk?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:52

Well, I think uh we need to ask you.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:54

It's the yolo bulk. So don't chat to me. Don't talk uh to me, guys, uh, about uh dreamer bulks and um yolo bulks and whatever. When I came to Southampton, I came here 220 pounds, no, sorry, 200 pounds when I was uh 18, 19. Pretty lean, not not super lean. And in the span of four months, I gained about 80 pounds. Some might say you uh you came, you saw you eat. Yeah, exactly. We would what we would do is we would go to the commercial gym on the high street, so on the main street of uh Southampton, shadow Southampton, then leave with my friends, go to a bargain, which was right below, and have about five or six cheeseburgers or double cheeseburgers each, um, because they were like a pound each by the uh at that at that time, good times. Uh unnecessary surplus, drinking weight gainer, doing all sorts of stuff that we didn't even need to do because we were already able to eat a lot. What that led to was a lot of fun for the first two months, but then I was like, oh, okay, lots of fat. Had to lose all of it, did so, then did like a few years of YOLO bulking consciously, so that was the difference there. I knew that okay, I'm mostly getting fat here. I enjoyed myself, but then it took me about a couple of years to get rid of all that fat. The dreamer bulk is just AD pure ADHD. Don't fall for the TikToks or the reels that you know people will say, Yeah, let's do you know, YOLO it's just take your bro and YOLO bulk for a few months. And here's a picture of Lee Priest and Phil Heath and uh Jakeler. Jake Hutler, sorry, yeah. Don't fall in the trap of giving yourself the excuse to do it just because somebody else who also wanted the excuse tried to give you the excuse to then give them give themselves more reassurance that no, it's fine, other people are doing this as well. There's no good scenario.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:46

I think the the real takeaway is unless you want to be in a higher body five percentage long term, yes, don't be a book.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:55

Yes. And unless the only exception there would be hey, you're massively. Underweight and you're also like a rugby player.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:02

But then you want to be a higher body five percent. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for the only exception. That's true. So my own two cents on Jaroboking, not to the same levels as uh the doctor, Dr. Pacquiao. However, there was a time I was having over a thousand grams of carbs a day, per day every day. Yes. Uh, where I was having rice with soy sauce and olive oil.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:24

Have you ever had to go and shop at a plus-sized uh clothes shop? That's the end of the conversation, my friend. Some of us went to King and Mighty on uh Queensway in Southampton.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:35

Yeah, okay. I love chafing.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:37

Yes, okay. King and uh high and mighty, sorry. High in my store, that was that was when I ended it. That was when I was like, okay, never again. That was it. That was a low point in my life when I was uh 20 years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:48

A high point. Or a high point, depending on how you interpret it. Awesome. It's all a perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:52

All right. So, with all that said, the verdict. I'm storing the timer. You get two minutes. All right, the verdict. Our recommendations and thoughts. So, maintenance can work great if your starting body fat is somewhere between 10 to 30 percent as a man and you're close to your genetic potential. Milo and I are good examples of that. So we're both relatively lean, close to our genetic potentials. We ain't gonna be doing any crazy bulking or crazy weight gain anytime soon. For bulking, if you do decide to bulk and you want to gain weight and reach your genetic potential, 0.5 to 1% of body weight gain per month. Solid guideline, take it with a pinch of salt. More if uh you're in a better position to gain muscle, less if not, so train experience. Um now, you have to focus on effective training. Don't fall for the bodybuilding propaganda of like you must not miss a meal, everything is nutrition. Nutrition is permissive. You have to consistently train hard, even if you end up being on maintenance or a slight deficit here and there, as long as you're training hard, you're good. Um now, very quick macro breakdown. Protein. If you want to maximize things as close to 2.3 grams per kilo body weight as you can tolerate, as long as you're close to two grams per kilo body weight, you're doing great. Again, focus on effective training, number one. Carbs, at least a gram per kilo of body weight to make sure that you have enough energy for your workouts. I wish that this recommendation was different, but hey, this is the research. Fats and roughly a gram per kilo of body weight should cover you coming mostly from healthy sources.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:27

Just to follow up on that, as I'll discuss in an upcoming video, higher carbs and fats might slightly boost testosterone, but that difference probably isn't worth worrying about too much. One gram of carbs per kilo of body weight just allows you to have plenty of fruits and vegetables in your diet at least. Fats, likewise, you probably want at least half a gram per kilo of body weight, just for health reasons. But if you're bulking, you can probably push that up to one gram per kilo minimum. The rest of your calories you can allocate however you wish.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:55

But because we spoke of effective training and how important that is, I understand that some of you may not want to think of training and have a smart coach in your pocket, and that's what MyOdapt will do.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:05

Taking it away, MyADapt is the smart coach in your pocket. Training during a bulk is arguably the most important part. And myadapt makes sure that your training is as effective as possible based on the research. So it'll make sure you're doing the appropriate amount of volume for your body. It tracks your recovery, allocates volume accordingly. If you don't have much time, it'll prioritize other variables like training closer to failure. In general, it makes sure your training is as effective as possible during the bulk, so you put on muscle, not fat. So if you want to try my adapt our training app, truly, I believe, the best app on the market when it comes to building muscle, you can check that out at mydupt.com and use code muscle lab for two weeks for free. The final thing I'd like to give before we head into the lab report is just a quick description of how to actually determine your calorie intake in a bulk. Yeah. Because we mentioned gain half a percent to one percent of your body in months, sure. Um but just to give an idea of how many calories of a surplus that is. One pound of adipose tissue has roughly 3,750 calories. The previous figure was like 3,500. Some more up-to-date research suggests closer to 3750, whatever. So if you want to gain a pound a week, and we're kind of making the assumption here that some of his fat gain, some of it is muscle, but it's just kind of a good heuristic. You would need to eat 3,750 calories divided by 7, aka 535 calories above maintenance per day, to get up to a 3750 calorie surplus per week. Those numbers might be slightly different from muscle, but again, using 3750 calories per pound is a reasonable shorthand. So example, you weigh 200 pounds, you want to gain say half a percent to 1% of body per month, you can give yourself a range. You don't need to be aiming for a target, which is a lot more reasonable in most cases. That'd be one to two pounds per month. So you'd want to be in a 3,750 calories per month surplus, or 6,500 calorie or sorry, 7,500 calorie per month surplus, which would equate to, you know, like roughly a 100-200 calorie surplus per day, to give people a rough estimate of what it might look like in practice. But that was all we had to talk about today when it came to blocking. Before we go though, there is the lab report, a segment of the show where for a few minutes, typically two to five minutes, we discuss a new study that either we've been involved in or that caller attention. A study just dropped at caller attention, which I believe was performed by Alan Erigal and colleagues. In this study, they compared maintenance to a slight deficit while lifting, correct?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:34

Yeah, it wasn't by Aragon and colleagues. He was involved, the lead author of Shadow. I'll start talking about his eyes.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:41

Just so they get their flowers. Yeah. So this was 30 people assigned either to a maintenance group or to a slight deficit group, I believe a 250 calorie deficit. Um they tracked lean body mass changes across the study and effectively saw the same hypertrophy, broadly speaking, between the slight deficit and the maintenance group. Interestingly, if you look at the numbers, the factory mass changes were really, really similar. But the very least suggests that a slight deficit of just 250 calories doesn't seem to meaningfully change things compared to just being in maintenance. The important caveat is we're dealing with only 15 people per group. So at that small of a sample size, you know, I'm not expecting any differences between being in a deficit of 250 calories versus being in maintenance. Yeah. It was uh Vargas Molina. Vargas Molina. Shout out, shout out. Um nevertheless, it does add to our understanding of look, small differences in calorie intake, whether you're at maintenance or in a couple hundred calories deficit or a couple hundred calories surplus, doesn't seem to make or break how much muscle you build. Bulking helps, a deficit hurts, but it's really not a big difference. And you can definitely build muscle at maintenance.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:53

Yeah, and that goes back to train hard, focus on training consistently, and follow the tips that we gave you.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:00

Yeah, and that's in line with the research by Murphy and colleagues, for example, as well. Like the vast majority and the consensus of the research shows the exact same thing. This is just a latest study which showed that as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:11

And before we go, disclaimer we will be ecstatic if this all changes in the next few years. And the dreamer bulk is indeed the way to go, and that's where I can credit all my muscle gains. But yeah, until that happens, keep it conservative, stay healthy.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:27

Review the show, give us five stars, like, subscribe, comment.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:30

Wolfcoaching.com coaching for Milo.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:33

Oh, that's true. We forgot about this plug. Yeah, it's okay. We plugged the just get five. Just want the golf ball to coach you. I don't know if golf ball with all that light here. I've absorbed more light than ever have in my life. Listen, if you're wolf six, don't allow you to tap. And you are a ball. Yeah, indeed. So you are a bit of a golf ball. And that's okay because you're a great coach. Dr. Pack will come for all your coaching needs.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:58

Code Golfball for a two week free coaching. That's not supposed to be. You're paying. You're paying. Or two months free if you buy a yearly package. Anyways, thank you so much for listening. We love you. We appreciate you. Shout out, free the guys, muscle lab, myadab.com totally lab. Peace.