Bulking Diet - Opinions?

Nutrition
1

Stats

Sex…M
Age…37
Ht…6’
Wt…185
BF%…10
Training…Max OT style sets/reps, for 8-16 weeks alternated with Powerlifting for 8-16 weeks.

Gain fat easily, but with the right nutrition can lose it pretty easily too.

Don’t like losing my abs when bulking … it’s a mental thing I used to weigh 300lbs at 60+% body fat.

I have a hard time eating a lot of carbs because they cause me to have heartburn, ulcers, bleeding, gas, and diarrhea.

Does this look like it would work for gaining lean mass?

M1…shake - milk, whey, banana(P-57g, C-57g, F-14g)
Workout
M2…same shake
M3…similar shake, just with oatmeal in it instead of a banana
M4…Fish, salad (lettuce, tomato, EFA dressing)
M5…Chicken breast, salad (lettuce, tomato, EFA dressing)
M6…ground chuck, salad (lettuce, tomato, EFA dressing)
Bedtime - maybe a milk and whey shake.
Calories 2874, P-312g (44%), C-183g (25%), F-100g(32%)

With extra bedtime shake it changes to:
Calories 3215, P-360g (45%), C-201g (24%), F-109g (31%)

Note: I hate to eat, especially in the summer time when it’s hot. It would be hard for me to fit more food into the day.

I know whole foods are probably better for building solid muscle, but another option, especially during this hot weather would be to do this:

My pre/post workout shakes are still milk/whey/banana. My 1.5 hour postworkout shake would still be milk/whey/oatmeal.

I could manage more shakes - and just have 7 of them a day all but the first two around my workouts would contain oatmeal for complex carbs.

If I did this, my nutrition for the day would be:

Calories 3997, P-399g (39%), C-399g (39%), F-98g (22%)

Do either of these sound like muscle builders, or just get fat and keep the same puny muscles?

After writing this, I stumbled across the Berandi eating articles and it appears that option 1 fits it pretty well. If I go with lots of shakes during the hot weather I guess the last 3 or 4 will have to be whey/water/olive oil shakes.

Opinions?

2

Sounds like you’re not eating nearly enough calories to gain weight. I’m a scrawny 5’5" 120 and I’m eating 3500 calories a day to try to gain weight!

3

Bro, you need way more calories and if you don’t like to eat that could be a problem. I didn’t really start to pack on the weight until I loosened up on the diet a bit and stopped worrying about every little thing that I ate. I would plan on putting on a little fat if you really want to bulk, truly go through a bulking cycle, that has been my experience. If you want to gain you’ll have to get those carbs up too. Good luck.

4

Make sure you are really busting ass on the Max-OT work outs. The program outlines only 4 to 6 sets in a workout sometime, do make sure they are balls to the walls.

The AST website, which I assume you got the program from, also has nutrient calcs and sample diets (that Jeff and Skip use, but they are big) you may want to check out. They are a tad too supplement based in my opinion, but they are still interesting.

5

Thanks guys. The “bulking diet” I got fat on for 6 months was from the AST site. Too many carbs for me. I spent 6 months with abdominal pain, cramping, GI bleeding and gained about 15 pounds - all of it fat. I used their nutrition calculator. When I used the same calories, added more fat and cut the carbs, I burned the fat off easily.

I’ll just keep at it until I find the balance of carbs vs fat I can eat without too much distress and still make some gains on…while trying to gradually increase my calories for each day.

Yeah, I did get the workout from the AST site, then modified it slightly so I can hit the whole body by doing a 1 day on 1 day off routine. After 45 minutes, I have to have help changing out of my gym clothes so the intensity is definitely there.

6

Berardi has a calculator that estimates how many calories you’d need to gain weight after you plug in about ten pieces of info. Does anyone have the link to it for him?

7

I did the calculations from the articles with pencil and paper. I may have miscalculted though. I came up with almost 5000 calories a day. There is no way I can physically put that much food down. I try hard and can get a little over 3K.

8

i say bullshit to that hoss. its SIMPLE to make a 1000 calorie “super” shake with all kinds of good stuff in it. you can easily fit 2-3 of these between meals. Eat red meat whenever possible. Snack on nuts/peanutbutter in the later part of the day. you wanna put on some good muscle??? then EAT buddy boy

DezZ

9

[quote]Dezz wrote:
i say bullshit to that hoss. its SIMPLE to make a 1000 calorie “super” shake with all kinds of good stuff in it. DezZ[/quote]

I thought getting my shakes up from 220 to 570 was a good start. Guess not huh?

More red meat - that’s doable, especially when winter gets here. My problem with red meat is that for me, it’s a cutting food - I get too full on it. I guess I just need to work on stretching my stomach a bit so I can hold more.

10

Too many carbs on the AST diet? They recommend like 30% of your diet come from carbs, fairly low by most standards.

What was your diet like when you gained all that fat? Was the food quality good?