Great excuse for holding yourself back… What are the odds of seeing the OP in ten years, saying to everyone in the gym that he didn’t want to get too big but had great potential.
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
I was thinking about asking a similar question a few days ago.
Lately, I’ve been eating so much that I am very uncomfortable, as in my body fights the amount of food. My weight gain is slow, my progress in the gym is quite good, my bodyfat rise is slow, but I think at this point I think it could be even slower.
Here’s what I’m thinking. My recent years of training and not ‘bulk’ eating, I’ve made a net gain of 10lbs a year; not too great, but nothing negative either! This past year, I’ve been tuning into my physiological responses to everything much more. I tried the Anabolic Diet and saw what it was all about. Excess calories from fat gave me fat and little strength in the gym. When I dialed back and added carbs, my feeling in the gym was amazingly better.
I was having this discussion with my friend who also frequents this forum. He’s following a program I wrote and is telling me how he’s constantly hungry whereas I’m constantly full and have a bit of a sick feeling. I know the feeling of ravenous pwo hunger after REALLY expending your efforts on the iron. I feel like THAT’S what we’re after. Your body knows when it needs food and will cue you accordingly.
I’ve been eating high calories on my off days and it feels off, wrong, etc. I feel like we shouldn’t be talking about calories for their energy but rather the macronutrients for their individual functions and hormonal applications. This is even what Christian Thibaudeau has said within the last year, so I feel like I’m getting closer to ‘figuring it all out’.
Said friend mentioned that the athlete squatting 500lbs at 2000cal/day will not be growing. I agreed and qualified that those athletes are exerting themselves in single all-out efforts. If you’re squatting 500lb for a ‘hypertrophy range’ around 10 reps, then I can’t imagine a little guy being able to accomplish such a feat. If you’re making your way to actually DOING that, you have to first do 300, then 400, then 500, right? Eventually 2000cal won’t be enough, and you will be STARVING. Your body will tell you to eat more!
It’s this force-feeding thing that I initially disagreed with, am currently trying, and still am not agreeing.
Thoughts on any of this? I think it’s a very worthy discussion you’ve begun, and people like Thibaudeau seem to have very strong thoughts that not only go against the grain but are backed with a very good physique and others (clients) experimented upon.[/quote]
I won’t dissect your post, but from your profile picture you need to eat more. Eat until you puke, then put it back down.
Second, you have never seen a little guy squat 300-400-500 lbs, ever heard of an Olympic lifters? Ever heard of Brian Schwab @ 163 he just squatted 505x5
Watch and weep. Yeah, he eats more than 2000 calories, but eating 8000 calories may not pack on weight for some people.
I dimly recall the OP posting rather questionable stuff before, if you know what I mean…
Just ignore him.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
SSC wrote:
The OP is 5’8", 165 lbs.
Why are all the guys asking this so tiny?
Better question…why are they arguing with guys 3 times as big as they are as if we got big by accident?
[/quote]
An even better question… Why are they “Level 4” customers of Biotest?
And, oops;
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
Based on successes versus failures I’ve seen in making themselves grow, I generally agree with you, but where do you draw the line? Eating 8000cals a day isn’t going to be more productive than 6000, which is probably excessive to begin with, assuming you’re under 180-200lbs right? How are you to know when enough is enough?
[/quote]
No offense, but people like you lack common sense. No one had to tell me that I might not want to jump to some insane amount of calories and completely ignore whether most of what I was gaining was actually muscle. I was able ti figure that out on my own. Why aren’t you? Enough is when you see yourself gaining more fat than muscle without increasing strength to match it. Stop looking at the fucking calculator and look at the mirror and your progress in the gym.
Don’t bulk, stay small please.
[quote]Jereth127 wrote:
All this thread has done is made me want a big red juicy steak dripping with blood[/quote]
Eating a huge ass plate of pot roast as I’m surfn T-Nation at work and having a very uncomfortable feeling in my stomach…
i believe the term bulk has become synonomous with getting really fat and possibly putting on some muscle in the process. what everyone should be after should be to put on quality muscle with as little fat gain as possible. in the end, the person who gains a 100 lbs will probably put on more muscle than the person who tries to eat as clean as possible and accomulate as little fat gain in the process, but there are other factors to consider such as overall health.
the person who gains a 100lbs may have caused some health problems for him/herself in the process that the person who does not gain as much weight may not experience simply because he/she is gaining the weight/muscle in a slower, more gradual way. this also does not mention how much muscle may be lost as the person diets down to strip themselves of the fat that they accumulated during the bulk
[quote]SSC wrote:
The OP is 5’8", 165 lbs.
Why are all the guys asking this so tiny?[/quote]
probably because no big guy would ever ask this question, theyd know the answer
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
Based on successes versus failures I’ve seen in making themselves grow, I generally agree with you, but where do you draw the line? Eating 8000cals a day isn’t going to be more productive than 6000, which is probably excessive to begin with, assuming you’re under 180-200lbs right? How are you to know when enough is enough?
[/quote]
Easy, if you’re gaining too much fat while bulking. The basics are simple for training and eating, but it takes a few years to know how your body responds on how much calories. Gaining too much fat? Clean up the diet, do some cardio, etc. Still gaining too much? Lower the calories a little bit. It’s an iterative process where perceiving your own feedback is important.
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
Based on successes versus failures I’ve seen in making themselves grow, I generally agree with you, but where do you draw the line? Eating 8000cals a day isn’t going to be more productive than 6000, which is probably excessive to begin with, assuming you’re under 180-200lbs right? How are you to know when enough is enough?
[/quote]
I doubt that you’re eating anywhere near 8000 cals (or whatever you should be eating) per day based on your avi pic.
Give us some more detail… Exact food intake for 3+ days (and don’t bother lying or trying to eat better/more than you usually do, that’s not going to help if you want to know what the problem is), routine/system, progress made in weight-gain and poundages on exercises, etc. Don’t bother with 1RM’s. 5-20 rep zone is what we’re after here and on more than just the big three, too.
Getting some nice deep sleep every night?
Drinking/partying?
Age?
Profession/Job?
Etc…
Why lift weights?
The whole bulk term is stupid anyways. You are either gaining or losing weight; call it bulking or cutting, if you please. Food choices, intensity in the gym, cardio, and certain supplements will largely dictate the ratio and overall output of muscle/fat gain or muscle/fat loss. It’s really that simple.
[quote]Kanada wrote:
im not talkin chicken, but real meaty meat. like kangaroo.
[/quote]
meaty meat, like kangaroo.
EDIT: To Prof. X’s post
I think based on my questioning, you don’t give me enough credit, not that I’m asking for it. What you say is pretty much how I go about it. As time goes on, more and more of my habits are matching what guys like you and MODOK talk about. In posing these questions, I’m merely putting aside what I ‘think I know’ to make the lesson better received.
I think the reason people who don’t weigh 240lbs are asking questions like this do so in the interest of saving time, making a few less mistakes, and getting closer to achieving their goals. Even the big fellas were newbies at one point. I think we just want to keep from reinventing the wheel and learn from others before 5 years go by and only 15lbs were gained, if that.
CC, I keep a detailed food log. I’ll send you information in a PM.
I wonder how high X’s blood pressure went up to after reading this thread. I’m gonna go with 250 systolic. To answer your question…besides getting into a semantical debate about what bulking means…refer to the law of thermodynamics with respect to bioaccumulation for the answer.
The truth about bulking Strength Training, Bodybuilding & Online Supplement Store - T NATION
Why not just eat, get huge, and the cut down? It… just seems so much easier than all these guessing games. It’s a proven method, and some might not like it. But I also don’t like eating vegetables instead of candy, but, hey, I have to do it in order to reach my goals.
Prof X, I think you said this before, and it impacted me. It was something along the lines of a guy who is 300 lbs. and fat, who cuts down his weight and becomes a lot leaner, will be able to grow faster than the guy who started out lean and small. Why? Because he knows how to carry his weight, and he knows when enough is enough.
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
I think based on my questioning, you don’t give me enough credit, not that I’m asking for it. What you say is pretty much how I go about it. As time goes on, more and more of my habits are matching what guys like you and MODOK talk about. In posing these questions, I’m merely putting aside what I ‘think I know’ to make the lesson better received.
I think the reason people who don’t weigh 240lbs are asking questions like this do so in the interest of saving time, making a few less mistakes, and getting closer to achieving their goals. Even the big fellas were newbies at one point. I think we just want to keep from reinventing the wheel and learn from others before 5 years go by and only 15lbs were gained, if that.[/quote]
Agreed. Most bodybuilding forums may as well exist so that skinny guys or weak goes, or both as it seems to go, can come on here and be bitched at by older/bigger/stronger members. I feel as though that just isn’t the reason this forum exists (other than to peddle Biotest supplements :D)
WHY GOD WHY
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
EDIT: To Prof. X’s post
I think based on my questioning, you don’t give me enough credit, not that I’m asking for it. What you say is pretty much how I go about it. As time goes on, more and more of my habits are matching what guys like you and MODOK talk about. In posing these questions, I’m merely putting aside what I ‘think I know’ to make the lesson better received.
I think the reason people who don’t weigh 240lbs are asking questions like this do so in the interest of saving time, making a few less mistakes, and getting closer to achieving their goals. Even the big fellas were newbies at one point. I think we just want to keep from reinventing the wheel and learn from others before 5 years go by and only 15lbs were gained, if that.
CC, I keep a detailed food log. I’ll send you information in a PM.[/quote]
The thing is, this thread was started by someone who doesn’t listen. they are the type who TELLS bigger guys that they somehow did it wrong.
Yes, we were all beginners. That is why I asked everyone bigger than me what to do…and I listened. That is why I got big myself later.
A lot of smaller guys today simply LOVE making this complicated. “Bulking up” didn’t need any new definitions before and it doesn’t need one now. It simply means working on building muscle as your primary goal with the knowledge that SOME fat may come along with it…something that shouldn’t even matter that much because the entire goal is to gain as much muscle as possible in the shortest time possible.