epic bulk stories are always fun to read, this one is from elitefts:
The rite of passage?eat until you hurt?and then eat some more.
It was the summer when I was 17 years old and 175 lbs. I decided that I was going to get as big as possible over those months and would do whatever it took to accomplish that. It was that summer when I learned how much I had to eat to gain mass. That summer was my ?rite of passage.? Almost every heavily-muscled guy I?ve ever known has a story like this.
This was my daily diet, give or take a few things:
Breakfast
10 scrambled eggs
2 cups of oatmeal or 4 cups of corn flakes
2 bananas
milk and orange juice
Train for two hours. Drink two carb drinks immediately after training (this alone was 200 grams of carbs from simple sugars). Come home and throw four chicken breasts in the oven and start a giant pot of rice if none was left over from the day before. Put on two packs of ramen noodles to eat while the chicken breast and rice was cooking. Eat ramen noodles and have a protein shake while waiting on food to finish. Watch cartoons. When the chicken and rice were done, eat two chicken breasts and as much rice as I could put down.
Two hours later, make blender drink consisting of:
2 cups of whole milk
2 cups of ice milk
1?2 tbsp of peanut butter
3 whole eggs (don?t believe that crap about how raw eggs are bad for you)
Malted milk
Hershey?s chocolate syrup
banana (obviously to add flavor)
I drank this giant concoction in one sitting. I don?t remember where I found the information for this shake and I didn?t know it was supposed to be sipped throughout the day. To say drinking this in one sitting made me uncomfortable would be like saying Michael Phelps would make an ?OK? lifeguard. But I was willing to pay the price to get as massive as I could.
I remember sitting on the couch one day downing one of these monster shakes watching Animal Planet. They had a show on about lions. The narrator informed me that lions gorged themselves to the point of discomfort because they didn?t know when they would eat again. I thought, ?I know when I?ll eat again. However, I understand that discomfort phrase very well.?
The narrator then informed me that after a gorging, lions often found a watering hole to lie in because it helped with the discomfort. Minutes later, I was running bath water. But the day wasn?t over yet ? and neither was my eating.
Two to three hours after that shake, I had a large rib eye steak with a baked potato loaded down and a salad (because vegetables matter). If I didn?t have that, I went to Subway and grabbed two footlongs. I usually got meatballs with cheese loaded down with lettuce and tomatoes (because veggies matter). That evening I ate the remaining chicken breasts and rice.
By the end of summer, I had even worked up to drinking another shake a few hours after dinner. I also was in bed every night by 9:30 p.m. and up early to train to get my ?eat on? for the day. I also remember times when I was eating that I gagged because eating had become such a chore and so difficult. By the end of the summer, I was 210 lbs.
I love to tell this story to skinny guys because the look of horror on their face is priceless. Their comeback is usually something to the effect of, ??No, I don?t eat that much.? Now if I had a ?do over,? would I do it that way again? Hell no. I gained a lot of fat and was miserable the entire time. But I did learn some valuable lessons, namely that bathing to ease fullness discomfort really works! The other thing was that you do have to eat a lot in order to grow.
But how much? Actually around 300?500 calories a day over maintenance levels seems to be just about right in order to gain mass and not gain too much fat with it (some fat gain is inevitable when you?re talking about gaining mass). I was probably several thousand calories over my maintenance level and that isn?t needed or ideal. I got bigger for sure, and I don?t think there?s any doubt that I gained some lean mass over that summer. I trained as hard as I ever had for the entire summer, generally five or six days a week for two hours at a time. However, I also gained a lot of fat weight, too.
You can?t force feed muscle into growth. I?ve read all sorts of anecdotal ?evidence? about how a ridiculous calorie surplus creates an anabolic environment and those kinds of things. But every time I ever ?bulked? up and then dieted back down, I ended up near the same weight from when I started bulking up. I don?t buy it. I was told this was the only way to do it though.
This is a lie. You can be smart about mass gain and slowly increase your calories through calorie dense foods until you start to see the scale move every 7?10 days. Or you can stuff your face and become a fat ass, feel miserable and eventually have to diet to get that fat off and lose whatever hard-earned muscle you did build underneath. Or you can stay fat. But I can?t see how anyone would justify that even for a bigger total. Eventually it comes off or you die young. And it?s hard to kick ass in a grave.
