Starting out my lifting/bodybuilding career at 135 pounds soaking wet (and I’m not 5 feet tall either), I felt like I needed to gain weight constantly. A lot of weight. With the help of various bodybuilding message boards, I found the ‘answer’ to my problems: massive, unbridled, unrestricted bulking. Various online gurus prescribed a see-food diet – if it had protein in it, eat it. Stuff yourself to the point of feeling sick, and do this 6 to 8 times a day.
How I tried to approach my offseason in the past
So, I embarked on my gluttonous journey to permanently leave my skinny genetics in the dust. An example of my my daily diet during one of these bulking phases would be:
Meal 1: 80g of whey isolate, 80g of powdered carbohydrates, 1 double protein bagel, 1 insulin induced coma that no amount of coffee could revive me from
Meal 2: 1 pound of chicken breast, 1 cup of apple juice, the biggest bowl of rice I could choke down
Meal 3: 80g of whey isolate, 4 tablespoons of olive oil (can’t go catabolic during class, right?)
Meal 4: 1 pound of ground beef
Meal 5: 80g of whey isolate, 100g powdered carbohydrates
Meal 6: Footlong ham, turkey, and cheese sub with plenty of southwest mayo (don’t worry, it was whole wheat bread)
Meal 7: 1 pound of ground beef, 1 legendary case of indigestion
Then, once or twice a week I would eat 4 or 5 double cheeseburgers from Wendy’s – I threw out half of the buns though!
Now, did I gain a lot weight like I wanted to? You bet I did. Did I gain an unnecessarily large amount of body fat that was then miserable to diet away a few months later? Of course. Along with the body fat, I got some great high blood pressure and a fantastic moon-face:
All of those Wendy’s cheeseburgers did wonders for my blood pressure
Luckily I grew out of this phase (not literally), and learned through trial and error that all of the old timers preaching ‘clean’ offseasons were in fact right. Does this mean you should be starving and barely eating more during your quest to gain muscle than you would eat to prepare for a contest? Of course not. I think the following set of guidelines is a good general philosophy for making sure you are maximizing the hypertrophy you are seeking while keeping health in check and avoiding being mistaken as a D1 lineman in training:
- Don’t lose sight of all of your separation. You should be able to see the outline of your abs at all times (for the guys), and you shouldn’t be going up 4 or 6 pants sizes in the waist (for guys and girls).
- Don’t overeat protein. Obviously don’t overeat carbohydrates and fats either, but I see a lot of people eating as much protein as they want like it doesn’t count. It does, and it can make you gain body fat just like carbs and fats. This will help your digestion tremendously too.
- Stick to a plan. You have a meal plan for your contest diet, do the same for your offseason. Weigh and measure your foods, that way if things get out of hand you can make calculated changes.
- You can’t gain 10 pounds of muscle in a month so don’t try to gain 10 pounds in a month. If you’re gaining more than 2 or 3 pounds a month, you’re most likely overdoing things.
- If you start to have trouble with your appetite and it’s tough to get food down, STOP. Take a few weeks and do a mini-diet. This will fix the appetite issues, and improve your insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is a topic for another post, but know that the more body fat you gain, the less efficient your body will be at handling the nutrients you are shoveling in.
Hopefully these guidelines will help in your quest to gain muscle while keeping you from falling prey to the bloated puffer fish look!
#nofilter Fitness 