How to Eat to Build Muscle and Lose Fat (Using Science)

Foreign.

What's going on, everybody? And welcome to the Built With Science podcast. You're here with your hosts, as always, of course, myself, that is Max Coleman, AKA Coleman at All. Wow, messed that up right there at the beginning. Coleman at All. And of course, as always, sitting directly in front of me is the one, the only, D. Pizzy Plotkin, dpp Daniel Boy, AKA Danny Boy. And today we're going to be talking about all things nutrition with respect to how to set up a diet for muscle gain, AKA a bulk, how to set up a diet for weight loss, AKA a cut. And then we'll very briefly touch on if this is even a necessary thing to do for the majority of people. We have an entire episode on body recomposition and setting up a diet for that purpose. Uh, but for before we get into any of that, let's just go ahead and define these terms. Right. So, Danny Boy, why don't you tell us about what is a bulk?

Yeah, so a bulk, at least in the fitness sphere, is just an concerted effort to gain weight with the primary goal of putting on as much muscle as possible while minimizing fat gain. I think that would be the most succinct definition.

And.

And the goal that most people in the industry. Slash, people that are trying to gain muscle are after.

So, just a new. Go ahead.

Did you say define a cut as well, or we just starting with bulk?

No, but just to. Yeah, well, yeah, but just to clarify as to what a bulk. It's just a nutritional strategy to gain weight purposefully with the goal of gaining as much muscle as possible while mitigating any fat gain throughout the process, even though we acknowledge that there will be some fat gain throughout.

Right.

But, yeah, go ahead and tell us what a cut is.

And a cut is essentially the reverse direction. So you're trying to have a concerted effort of weight loss, which you're trying to sometimes even gain, but retain as much muscle as possible while maximizing fat loss. So two opposite sides of the coin.

Cool.

And you said potentially even gain while on a cut. But, Danny Boy, it seems like no one's told you it is impossible to build muscle whilst you're also losing weight. It's crazy. You've been in the field for so long and no one's ever told you that.

Funny enough, we have a podcast on this topic. Shameless plug. So go. I think it might be the first podcast.

I think it was the first. I don't think it was the first one that was released, but I think it was the first One we recorded.

Okay, cool.

Sweet.

Yeah. But definitely check out that episode. But just to give a brief little recap with respect to main gaining. You want to take us through main gaining, gain, taining, whatever you want to call it. But do you want to kind of just very brief, briefly touch on what that is and who it might actually be a good idea for?

Yeah. So main gaining is a strategy where you eat around maintenance calories. Could be a little bit below, a little bit above, with the primary goal of recomposition, where you'll lose some fat and gain some muscle at the same time. While this isn't going to be optimal in either direction, so you're not going to gain the most amount of muscle that you could or. Or lose the most amount of fat that you could. You could over time make some pretty serious progress by just doing both at the same time, particularly in certain situations, such as people who are beginners for the most part or people coming back from a long layoff. And categories of people that may want to do this that wouldn't necessarily be optimal are people that are generally more prone to eating disorders, more prone to body dysmorphia and other psychological issues that would contraindicate going on an aggressive or more aggressive cut or a more aggressive bulk where they might feel very uncomfortable, either restricting so much or putting on excess body fat which might make them uncomfortable and not want to look in the mirror and other horrible things that people with body dysmorphia have. I can't hear you now.

Interesting. Yeah, Just to clarify, like Danny Boy and I are exercise scientists. We're not necessarily exercise psychologists with respect to. I guess exercise psychologists are also scientists, don't get me wrong. But we are very interested in how can we make people as jacked as possible. So this is kind of outside of our realm when we talk about things like disordered eating and who these diets are best for. But just in general, I don't think that the solution for if you have disordered eating is doing a main gaining diet. Obviously that's kind of like to a certain extent, putting a band aid on a bullet hole.

You're you.

You should seek help to fix the actual root cause of that. Of that body image disorder. But it is a really good point that for a very long time the prevailing thought was if you want to maximize muscle growth and fat loss over the TRA Course of a training career, so I. E. Not simultaneously, it's a good idea to go through these bulking and cutting cycles where we're putting on as much muscle as we can, knowing that we're going to accept some fat gain in that process. And then going into a cut where we try and cut out the excess fat while maintaining and like Danny Boy said, potentially building muscle in that cut process as well. Right now there have been some semi recent studies that have come out that have kind of put this into question, kind of put this notion that we've held for so long into shed some light on doubt on the topic. And we'll talk about those a little bit and when we get into the muscle building section of this podcast. But I think what you said is just a really good point. I just want to highlight that again, that one, we have some skepticism with respect, do we need to do bulking and cutting cycles? And then also for a lot of people, this is just a better option for them in general. So, meaning like main gaining or trying to build muscle while either eating at maintenance or in a very, very slight deficit or surplus. Right. And that can be really good for, like Danny Boy said, individuals who maybe are a little bit uncomfortable with seeing excess body fat accumulating over the course of a bulk, but also in the other direction for individuals who maybe get don't really love the idea of cutting and their shirts start feeling a little bit looser and they don't really enjoy that. That that's a good solution for them as well. However, and we kind of talked about this in the main gaining episode or the body recomposition episode, main gaining and gain taining might not be a good option for individuals who like to see relatively quick results. Meaning I can be certain that when I'm in a bulk, I'm doing everything in my power to put on as much muscle as I can, even. And I'm okay with the fact that I might be putting on a little bit excess fat.

Right.

And then conversely in a cut, it's just nice seeing that number go down. There's just something about our lizard brains that enjoy ensuring progress, essentially. Okay, anything else you want to touch on there before we get into how we go about setting up a bulk diet?

No, I think that's good.

Cool.

Well, take us away.

Yeah. So before we get into that, actually, we don't have this in the outline, but do you have any calorie counting app or program that you use in order to set people up for the first time? Because I'm just going to say people find their maintenance calories through trial and error, but before that trial and error period, they sort of need to choose an amount to Start at. Do you have a specific app or recommendation for when people start out? I know I do, but I'm not, like, super hard on any. I just feel like a decent number. And then trial and error is usually what I go with.

Yeah. So, like, I have people when I'm, When I have. If I have someone interested in tracking, which is not always the route that I take.

Right.

And we'll get into that here in a minute. But when I do, I generally just use my Fitness Pal. It's free, it's super easy, and it's, It's. It's somewhat intuitive to a certain extent. However, the cal. The calories that they give you on my Fitness Pal, it's like, hey, I weigh 180 pounds, I'm 6ft tall, I'm moderately active, and I want to lose a very moderate amount of weight. And they're like, okay, bet we're going to put you on 800 calories, calories a day, and you're gonna lose 1% of body weight a week. Right. So, like, I don't. I, I really don't like their calculations. I also don't like the calculations from a additive exercise model on there either. So, like, if you link it to your steps, it'll be like, hey, you took a thousand steps today. Here's 4,000 extra calories. Well done. So I, I don't know where they're getting their numbers from. I like, you just give kind of a general number. And then, as unfortunate as it is, finding your maintenance calories truly is a game of trial and error. So, yeah, I, I like to use my Fitness Pal from a tracking perspective. Macro factor is also really incredible. We started using that in the, the Applied Muscle Development lab. Shout out Brad Schoenfeld and his lab and, and shout out Greg Knuckles and the, the. The team at Macro Factor for setting us up with an account to use that for research. So that's also a really great one. But there's no calculator out there that's going to give you a very good estimate for what your baseline calories are. In fact, Eric Trexler has an entire episode on the Stronger by Science podcast where they're talking about how there's basically no heuristic. There's no good rule of thumb for finding out what your maintenance calories are. So, like, oftentimes people will say just your body weight times 15, and then somewhere in between your body weight times 10 and 20 on either direction if you're trying to cut or bulk. But even those don't really work super well. Um, so, yeah, as lame and as boring as it is, it's a game of trial and error. But it's, it's not that hard. So, like, the one thing that's kind of nice is that you can just have someone quote unquote, track what they're eating, but just tell them to eat normally. So just say, hey, I want you to just go, please do not change anything over the next two weeks. I just, I just want to know what you're eating. You know, I don't. I'm not going to judge you. I don't care what you're eating. I just want to see what you're eating. And that's going to be way better at giving you some sort of baseline, in my opinion, than forcing someone to track a set amount of calories that comes out of a calculator with very little insights at all. Do you have anything to say about that?

Yeah, I was going to make the last point where some, many times I'll just have people track just to try. I said, I don't want you to change anything. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But regardless, you're going to get a pretty decent baseline. And then after you get that decent baseline of about, you know, two, three weeks, they're also adding the habit of resistance training without the added stress of actually having to hit some sort of target. They're just tracking overall. So, yeah, I think the two kind of go hand in hand where they're picking up the habit of lifting while you get a decent idea of their maintenance calories. And then once they're already within the habit of lifting weights consistently, then you can start, you know, pushing the dial in either direction. And since we're on bulking, the dial will slightly go in the direction of a surplus once you find that maintenance calories, anywhere from about 200 to 350 calorie surplus is probably a good idea. Between 0.25% and 0.5% increase in body weight per or week. Yeah, I was like, what is happening? So I think looking at that number on a weekly basis, which is why I paused, is probably not the best idea because there will be fluctuations. So I like to look at it on at least. So I'll. I'll weigh in once a day usually, and then I'll look at the averages over each week. And this is not something that you need to super, super worry about in terms of actually tracking those calories if you're not planning to track. This just gives you an Idea of where to start. You can use the scale alone, you can add a snack, you can do whatever works within your life in order to get that increase that's needed in order to have that concerted increase. Do you want to touch upon why we don't go above 300 or well above 300?

Yeah, absolutely. But for sure. But first I'll say that another huge benefit of that like one to two week, yo, just eat whatever you want. But I just want to know one, it is very unlikely that people stick to whatever their like ad libitum diet is because they're like, hey, my, my coach, my trainer who he's a, he's into fitness, so he's gonna hate me if I don't eat broccoli at every meal. Every meal. Like that's something that you'll very commonly see. So I in that first talk to be like, look man, like my diet consists mostly of, of McDonald's. Like I'm not gonna judge you for whatever you eat. I can assure you. Like, I drink a lot of whey protein and I eat a lot of McDonald's.

Right.

Um, so don't worry about, about me. But at the same time, what it does do is it gives them the benefit of knowing kind of like where their calories are coming from to a certain extent. So a lot of people, you'll say how many calories are in like a Big Mac, for instance, right? And they'll be like, I don't know, like 2, 200, something like that. Like, or, or, or like they'll be like, I don't know, 1200 I have. So people generally just have kind. The calories are in a given portion of food.

Right?

So that's one benefit to that initial week of tracking is that it gives you an insight into, okay, so what does a 100 to 200 calorie surplus look like? Like what, what does that actually pragmatically look like when I'm eating meal to meal.

Right.

So yeah, I just wanted to say that before getting into why we don't like to go above that generally 1 to 2% increase in body weight per month.

Right.

Which is a, a nice prettier way of saying it than 0.25 to 0.5%. It's the same thing. Obviously. It just rolls off the tongue a little bit better. And it's also important to, to do it on a month scale for the exact reason that you're saying, like if I'm putting on 1 to 2% a month, that that's way that gives me a lot more clarity as to the trend line than If I'm up 0.6% this week.

Right?

Like that, that, because I ate, I had sushi and I really like soy sauce, so I ate a little bit more sodium than usual, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

So yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. But now to actually answer the question you asked me 30 minutes ago, why don't we like, why do we like to go with such a conservative bulk?

Right.

For a while we didn't know and we had to, we had to go strictly based on logic and theory.

Right.

And some people would say that, you know, we actually probably want a larger surplus because we can be really certain that we're maxing out the amount of muscle that we're building and fat loss is super easy, so we'll just cut that off even if it is excess fat.

Right.

And then other people were saying like, no, it's, you know, seemingly you, you can only build so much muscle at a time. It's probably better to go slow. However, now we actually have some empirical data on this, which is very nice. We have, we had one study by Garth et al, where they had individuals, a bunch of very high level athletes across a bunch of different sports, had them either place them into either an ad libitum group, so basically just said, you know what, go eat, go eat whatever you would normally eat, that's fine. And then they had a, a nutritional intervention group where they basically put them on a surplus. I'm not sure what the actual surplus was in reference to their maintenance calories, but ultimately all you need to know is it led to a lot more fat gain. Eating a tremendous amount eat. The, the individuals that ate ad libitum, they also gained weight, but at a much slower pace than those that were eating in a surplus, a large surplus. And they both built, I think, the same amount of muscle. In fact, I think the, the interventional group, so the one that was eating more built, I believe it came out to like 1% more lean tissue. So not even muscle itself, but le tissue.

Right.

Which is within the margin of error of the measurements that they were taking. But they ultimately built or gained over five and a half times more fat than those that were eating ad libitum right now. Yes, fat is really easy to lose in a cut, Right. We can be pretty confident that we can lose a good bit of fat without worrying too much about muscle loss, especially when we're operating within normal ranges and not trying to get like shredded for a bodybuilding show.

Right.

So that's just something to keep in mind. Fortunately, another study very recently came out by Helms et al. Shout out Dr. Eric Helms in his lab out there in sprins. They, this one was a little bit more well controlled than this, this Garth study, which is not a dig on the Garth study by any means, where they had individuals in either eating, either at maintenance, eating in a slight surplus or eating in a slightly larger than that surplus.

Right.

I think, Denny, you might know those numbers a little bit better off the top of your head than I do. I can't rem exactly what those surpluses looked like.

Yeah, I think it was by a percentage and it was somewhere around 10% or so for the moderate and closer to like 20% for the high. Don't quote me on that, but I.

Think it's around there and that that's 10% increase in calories, not an expected weight gain of 10%.

Yeah.

So they, they, they. This one was pretty cool because they were actually, it was a training study. So unlike the Garth study where these individuals were resistance training, but on their own with their sport, their respective sports teams, these individuals were doing supervised resistance training.

Right.

And they noted that very similar findings to, to that of the Garth study, which is that eating in a larger surplus didn't really add much more muscle. So there was, there's some reason to believe that maybe for the biceps, which they were training a little bit with a little bit higher volumes and a little bit more intensity, maybe that saw slightly better growth in the larger surplus. But they ba. They found much larger fat accumulation in the groups that were eating a large amount of food and very interestingly didn't find substantial differences, and don't quote me, maybe you know this better than I do, but between maintenance and the surplus groups. So basically all groups built a very similar amount of muscle and the surpluses that they were consuming kind of only resulted in excess fat gain on top of that. So that's just long winded as can be. But the reason why we think that it's probably better to err on the side of a very conservative weight gain during a bulk as opposed to a very fast one. Now some individuals might be able to get away with a little bit faster. Some individuals might need to go even slower.

Right.

So if you are kind of new to the whole lifting game, especially you're new to the whole nutritional intervention game, meaning like you've been lifting for a while, but now you're trying to get a little bit more serious about your diet and and, and, and tracking your intake, it's probably fine to air a little bit closer to that 2% a month, so that.05% of body weight. But if you, if you, if you've been in the game a little bit longer, it's probably a good idea to stick closer to 1%. And for instance, I know Milo Wolf, Dr. Milo Wolf, he, he airs even more conservative than that. So I think he goes for about 0.5% body weight increase a month. So, so very slow, but probably a good idea, no less. Especially given that there's no, there's even questions as to do we need a surplus to build muscle in the first place.

Right.

So I kind of just talked for quite a bit of time. Do you wanna say anything about setting up a diet for muscle building or anything that I said?

Yeah, so I think just to summarize, cause I think you did a great job. We have two or three studies on the topic. I would say they're generally overall pretty weak evidence in that it's hard to control these studies. In the Dr. Helm study there were a lot of dropouts due to Covid, small sample sizes, a lot of variants. So I don't think that the evidence we have is something that we need to overemphasize, but it does strongly point in the direction of dramatic surpluses are definitely hurting and not helping when it comes to gaining excess. Excess fat for no increase in muscle size when it comes to maintenance versus a slight surplus. I'm much less confident about the findings on that front. So I think that your recommendations were perfect in that most people probably want a pretty moderate to low surplus. If you have more muscle to gain, slash you're a beginner, then you can err on the side of a greater surplus and closer to that 2% mark per month. But even then you can pretty quickly see over the course of a couple of months whether you're that person. Just because you're a beginner doesn't necessarily mean that you are extremely sensitive to growth. So you could unfortunately be a beginner that that surplus is going to be wasted on you because of the fact that you're just going to grow slowly, period. So if you see that you're gaining excess body fat and not gaining a whole lot of muscle mass to go with it, then just go slower. Don't kid yourself into a perma bulk for a year. And then, and this is the, I think the biggest point, what's the downside of gaining too much body fat beyond just having to carry that body fat around and not looking as good. Now you have to spend a significant amount of time cutting before you bulk again. You could have a lot more Runway of bulk time and a lot more Runway for muscle gain if you go slower and don't accumulate too much body fat. So yep, that's all I got. You're muted again.

I think that, I think that's the strongest argument for going slowly is that yeah, like it's who care? Like man, like whatever man, I'll be 20 body fat. Like who really cares? Like I, you know, I don't have my shirt off in, in the months September and, and March.

Right.

Like who cares if I'm a little bit fluffier.

Right.

But it's probably not a good idea from a cost benefit analysis perspective. Meaning like you gain, let's say two people run the same diet, right. And one person g, they gain one's in a very slight surplus and the other one's in a, a very moderate surplus even or a fast surplus, a large surplus. Uh, they both build very similar amount amounts of muscle in months one through six. Except this other individual, the second individual running a large surplus has accumulated a lot more fat almost to potentially to a point where it could have negative effects on their health. Right now this is, that's, that one's a little bit more speculative cuz we're generally operating in ranges that are pretty healthy but still no less probably a good idea to stick around 20% of body fat on the higher end for men, 30 for women generally. And that's just time where the first individual gets to continue bulking and ensuring that they're building as much muscle as possible, while the other individual for either health or aesthetic reasons has to spend anywhere from three to four, two to four months now losing that weight where it's possible that they're building muscle during this cut. But if I was a betting man, which I'm not, but if I was a betting man, I would say that it's unlikely that they're going to be maximizing the amount of growth they could accrue in that time.

Right.

So I couldn't agree more. It's certainly a more time efficient process to bulk slowly and even cut relatively quickly. But bulking slowly is almost a non negotiable at this point given the current state of the literature. And I can say personally like more anecdotally, this is probably what's held back my process or my progress a lot in the last man, even like five years. I would cut down, get really lean. That was no problem for me at all. Uh, but then I would just balloon up back to whatever baseline weight was, which is the problem that like almost every American faces with respect to weight loss.

Right?

Except I was just under the guise of me doing it for the purposes of getting jacked, right? When in reality I was just making myself fat. Uh, but that's probably held back a lot of my progress because that's over the course of the last five years, a year of wasted time that I was spent cutting when I should have been still bulking or something like that.

Right?

So rough numbers and, and not perfect, but, but biggest takeaway from the bulk section here, even if you're a newbie, no matter what, it's probably a good idea to go as on the on air, on the much slower side of things. So aim for around 1 to 2% of body weight increase a month. Probably closer to that one, if anything @ all.

Right.

And the last thing I kind of want to say here before we get into the more pragmatic side of, of like, how do we actually go about doing this?

Right?

Is oftentimes people will ask me like, hey man, how long should I bulk for? Like, should I bulk for a year, two years, eight months, six months? Like, what's a good idea? And I think that it's kind of the wrong question to a certain extent. Meaning if we are trying to put on. I think it's much better to go on a how fast should I be gaining weight question, which kind of then self answers itself for how long you should do it for. Right? Meaning if I aim for 1% increase a month.

Right.

I. I should just basically go as long as I feel comfortable going for. Meaning I don't think you're going to run into any anabolic, what do they call it?

Anabolic, like the P ratio stuff?

Yeah, P ratio stuff, but like blunting of anabolism as an anabolic blunting or whatever. Basically, like, a lot of. Some people will argue that you don't want to bulk for too long because you're desensitizing your muscles to growth. I think this is a silly argument, especially given the whole like sumo wrestler thing. For those of you who don't know sumo wrestlers or the population with the largest amount of lean tissue in the world. Right? So clearly there's not a huge anabolic blunting effect from gaining weight for a long period of time. Right? So generally I think it's a good idea to, with the rate of gain in mind of about 1% a month, bulk for as long as you feel comfortable bulking for. So bulk until you get to a body fat percentage where either you're not comfortable aesthetically or you want to just take it down for both health or performance reasons, whatever it may be. So I just wanted to touch on that. But do you want to go ahead and talk about some more of, like, the practical stuff?

Right.

We're saying, like, eat, you know, in a. In a surplus of around 200 to 350, but how do you generally go about creating that surplus for your clients?

Yeah. So just to touch on how long for a second, I think just to piggyback off that for a second. I think having a percentage per month and then stopping when you feel comfortable or when you reach whatever the goal weight is is perfect. But just realize that muscle building takes time. So just make sure that it's not something where you're just like, all right, I'm not going to tolerate any amount of fat gain, so I'm cutting every three months. That's probably not the best idea. Just to give a general idea, I think most bulk should probably be around, like, seven months to a year. So would you agree with that?

Yeah, definitely. I. I wish I had. Alberto Nunez had, like, a really amazing heuristic on this. I really wish I knew it, but I think it was like, you should spend four times the amount of time bulking as cutting. So if you bulk for eight months, you've bought yourself two months of cutting or so. And I could be misquoting you, Alberto Nunez, because I know you listen to this podcast. I'm deeply sorry, but somewhere around there, basically, it's not so much a matter of time as so much it is like, we just want to. It's a lame, kind of a lame quote here, but it's bodybuilding to a certain extent, which is really all we're talking about here is muscle growth.

Right.

And so we want to spend the majority of our time building our body, not necessarily cutting it down through cutting, for instance.

Right.

Yep. So in terms of setting up the bulk, I think for the vast majority of people who've found their maintenance, it's really just as easy as adding in a small meal or a snack, where if you eat fairly consistently, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, protein shake, just add on, you know, a Greek yogurt with some nuts. That's really. I mean, we're talking about really small amount of calories per day where it doesn't need to be a drastic change from what you're typically doing. So as you go along, it may get Harder. So you meet. You may need to add more calories as you get higher into higher and higher body weights. But for the most part, it's a pretty easy process for the majority of the bulk. So that's what I do with most people. Typically, if the person is really gung ho about tracking, then they can have a lot more wiggle room there in terms of how they go about doing things. They don't need to be as consistent with their meals. They can just hit their targets. But in terms of setting things up for a bulk, it's usually just as simple as that. I think one tip for people who tend to overeat on their bulk and just go crazy is that track for a little bit and then just notice that your day is pretty similar on a bulk and cut when you're adding a very small amount. So, yeah, I don't have too many more tips there.

Yeah, I think, I think that's beautiful. I think that given that we recommend such a small surplus, the difference between a maintenance diet and a bulking diet, to like your, your layperson, your average individual who's not weirdly obsessed with this stuff like Danny Boy and I, it just. They literally wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It would look like the exact same. So that this is kind of the benefit of that one to two week tracking period. Potentially longer, obviously, but just that one to two track week tracking period. It gives people an idea of what calories are literally like. We're talking about like two Reese's cup at the end of the day, man. Like, like that level of surplus. Right? Which is why it wouldn't look that different to a lot of individuals.

Right.

Reese's cup's like 56 calories. Like a normal Reese's cup is like 56 calories. So a little bit more than that. But you get my point, right? And if you know where these calories are coming from, you have a lot more autonomy of how your bulking diet's gonna look.

Right.

Are you someone who wants to keep your same three meals and you just add maybe like an extra, like little, a little bit extra rice to each serving that you would normally have throughout the day? Maybe you eat an extra serving of oatmeal at breakfast or something? Or are you someone that wants to keep everything exactly the same? But I get to have like a little. I get to have like a milkshake at the end of the day or something like something small like that.

Right.

I think that's one of the benefits of that initial tracking Period. Is it, is it just tells you, it gives you the autonomy to create that surplus in whichever way you find the most appropriate for you and your goals. Right.

But anything else.

Go ahead, Go ahead.

Yeah. So one thing I do for myself that I think people might find some enjoyment out of is during bulking phases. Because if you really stuck to that rule, it would look very, very, very similar to maintenance. And most of us probably don't want that to be the case. So what I do for myself is I just give myself a little bit more room during the bulking phase where I don't go out of my way. But if something comes up where I'm meeting a friend or going to an event and so on, I don't worry about getting that moderate surplus in. I'll just eat, have fun and then not prepare for that or have a lower day the next day or anything like that. I'll just simply go to the event, have fun and then continue on a moderate surplus moving forward. However, during a cut, I typically not eat so much earlier in the day to get ready for that event. Or if I have a higher day one day I'll eat lower calories the next day to make up for it. Basically, I want to make sure that I stay on track during a cut much more meticulously. It's not that big of a deal, but I'll do it much less often during a cut than I will during a bulk. So I think just from a psychological logical perspective, having such a long period of gaining where you're trying to hit that very small target could definitely be daunting. So giving yourself that wiggle room on days where it's a fun event or something like that I think is kind of a no brainer. And it's really not going to touch the. I mean, if this happens relatively infrequently, even, even as much as once a week. I doubt that's exactly what I was going to say. Any. Yeah, I doubt it's going to have any ramifications on you bulking too quickly or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that it's important to note that not everyone has the kind of like in like intuitive willpower that you have. And when I say willpower, I just mean that like when you're going to these parties, you're not slamming 12 beers and then having a large pizza and being like, yeah, it's once a week, who cares? Because like you're just having like a beer or two or eating the meatballs that they bring around on the platter at this like tailgate party you're going to, whatever it may be.

Right.

But that is important to note that while we do think you should have a lot more looseness with structure because I mean, that's what's ultimately going to allow for sustainability in this sport.

Right.

There's still that degree of mindfulness when it comes to being on a bulk. Right. So Danny boy is saying that he's not going to worry about it, but he's still not going to go balls to the wall trying to eat as much all you can eat sushi as he possibly can once a week or anything like that.

Right. Okay.

We've talked about bulking for a while and I think we can move on to cutting. But I do one last thing is that for individuals that do struggle to gain weight, so individuals with that more spend, thrift, metabolism, right. Those that they bring calories in, I think spendthrift is the right term here. But they bring calories in and they just start immediately spending them.

Right.

You give them enough calories and they start just vibrating in their chair to get rid of all that excess energy.

Right.

For those individuals, don't be afraid to eat some more fun stuff to kind of make that process a little bit easier for you. Chick Fil A has an incredible peppermint milkshake out for wintertime. So, so yeah, and, and, and, and come spring season they'll switch back to the peach. So yeah, there's. Don't be afraid of assuming that the majority of your calories are coming from whole foods. You know, with lots of fiber, lots of micronutrient density, lean meats, nuts, seeds, leafy greens, all that, you know, whole grains. Don't be afraid of kind of filling in the gaps there with, with more, we'll call it quote unquote, junk food.

Right.

With more highly processed foods to make that surplus easier for you to achieve. I don't recommend that for the majority of people because the majority of people aren't people who really struggle to put on weight. But for those of you that do, all I'm saying is don't be afraid of kind of enjoying a little bit more of those what we call fun calories or something like that.

Right.

You want to say something there?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny, every time we make a post on like tips for hard gainers or people who have a hard time eating more, it's always like one person or two people saying thank you. And then the majority of people like, wish I had that issue.

Yeah, exactly. And Let me tell you, you don't wish you had that issue. As someone who doesn't have that issue, who has in the past tried to gain weight, I'm someone who I put on weight super easily. Losing weight is kind of the more challenging battle for me.

Right.

You don't want that problem. Staring at a bowl of food that while full, that you have a lot more left to eat is, in my opinion, worse than looking at an empty bowl of food while you're still hungry. It's there. It's a daunting thing. So the grass is always greener, but I've been on both sides of the grass and I can promise you that one side actually is greener than the other. Okay, last thing. Yeah, Those posts always get like 300 likes or something. Like nothing. Nothing compared to the like diet hacks and stuff like that. Okay.

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Now, let's talk about the thing that actually that, that people actually care about, which is exactly what we were just saying. Cutting. What's the best way of going about setting up a diet so that we ensure that we're losing fat while hopefully, you know, fingers crossed, gaining a little bit of muscle, but more likely just maintaining our muscle throughout the duration of a cut. What you got?

Yep. So I think you can be a bit more aggressive during cuts because of the fact that you're not relying on a tissue that takes time to build and has rate limiters and stuff like that. So fat is a storage depot. It has a whole lot of other hormonal, like, I know fat researchers might, you know, come at me for saying that, but generally speaking, it stores energy. So when you're in a surplus or when you're in a deficit, fat is the thing that's mobilizing energy for the most part. So I think a good rule of thumb is 0.5 to 1% per week rate of loss. But what that calorie number looks like will be different for different individuals. I think 500 calories is an okay. A 500 calorie deficit is an okay starting point, but I've seen it vary fairly considerably between individuals. So just like for the bulking section, some trial and error is going to be due here, and you will have to make adjustments as you go along. Obviously, when you're a lower body weight, you were expending less energy, so there will be an obvious reduction there. But even beyond that, there's some adaptive mechanisms that will force you to go even lower than that as the cut continues forward and as you get leaner and leaner. So anything you want to add there before we get into some practicality?

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, for a long time we did think that that was literally just a storage depot. And then Sometime in the 1960s, I believe, these two studies came out. Big year for fat researchers, where it basically talked about the way that ghrelin interacts with other tissues in the body. Fat's really cool. There's a really great YouTube video called what Is Fat and why Do We Hate It? Essentially, it's the dopest video on YouTube besides this one when it gets uploaded. Um, and then, yeah, just to your. To your point about that 500 calorie deficit, generally, we do want it to be like, no. So Danny boy said that there's a lot of variation there, right? And he's right. In terms of that 500 number might actually go up to like 700, 800, 900 away from what we. Your maintenance calories are.

Right.

But what that means is that it's always going to be a 500 calorie deficit generally. It's just that because of those adaptive responses that you sometimes see to dieting, your maintenance calories themselves come down. So we're still always trying to maintain like a 500 calorie difference between whatever your maintenance calories are and what you're eating. But it's just a matter of the fact that your maintenance calories are a dynamic value based on what. What your intake looks like. So. So absolutely. Like, for instance, my. My calories are right around 2, 700, anywhere from 25 to 2700. And I'll start a diet right around 2200, and then I'll have to end around 2001 because your body weight is literally decreasing.

Right.

So the amount of energy it requires to keep you alive goes down.

Right.

And then also there's some metabolic adaptations that you see in response to, To. To dieting.

Right.

But that stuff's way too complex. For, for me to understand and, and, and for me to pontificate upon in this podcast. Right. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about how we can go about pragmatically setting this diet up and what we can do both with respect to diet and training to make sure that we're not losing any muscle while we're dieting.

Yeah. So in terms of setting up, I guess we didn't talk about macros during the bulking section.

So for a very important reason, and I think that we didn't talk about macros during that because really all there is to say is that generally you want your fat to be pretty stagnant around. There's a bunch of different heuristics here, but just don't let your fat get too low. Some people say, you know, about 0.3, three times body weight in kilograms or, or something along that line.

Right.

Protein. We always write one right around 1.6 to 2.2. There's some arguments to be made about doing higher protein when you're in a, in a, both a bulk and a diet, but more so people will argue about dieting. You kind of want to, you might want to make that protein a little bit closer to that 2.2. If anything, maybe even more. But then carbs are generally the biggest fluctuation that you see there with respect to a difference between a bulking and a cutting diet.

Right.

But really all we care about, and I think assuming that you've met the threshold of fat, you're not eating like 4 grams of fat a day. Assuming you've met that threshold, really all Danny boy and I care about, and I hope it's okay for me to speak for you here, is we wanna make sure that you're eating enough protein and we wanna make sure that your calories are generally in line with whatever goal you're trying to achieve. But, yeah, go, go ahead, man. Sorry, I kind of took the rain there.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much exactly what you said, other than I make sure that people are just consuming enough carbs to just feel good during their workouts. I don't necessarily care about getting a specific number. I don't like for it to get under, you know, 250 or so. For most people, that's grams. But usually if they're feeling good in the gym, the numbers are going well, they're getting good pumps, all that kind of stuff. I don't worry about their carb number. Usually when people start feeling, like, lethargic and stuff like that, then I'll ask, you know, are you making sure that you're eating before going to the gym? This is generally not an issue for bulking, but sometimes during cutting, if your day looked weird and now you're working out when you haven't eaten in the past four hours, you know, some issues might occur there. But yeah, for the most part, get your calories, get your protein targets and then don't worry too much about fat and carbohydrate after that. Just use those and modulate them based on the day.

Yeah. I think generally speaking people like, just going by the like hedonic eating, like the nature of hedonic eating.

Right.

Like your macros will boil down to being like a moderate amount of fat and a moderate amount of carbs. Generally. Like for some people who like peanut butter a little bit more, like you'll see a higher fat intake, but even their carbs are not still dropping anything drastically low. It's just if someone comes to you combination.

Yeah.

What would you say?

Our brain loves the combination of carbs, fats, protein, salt and so on. So you just put a person out in the wild, they're, they'll generally get a decent mix unless they've been indoctrinated by, you know, any of the low fat, low carbs.

I was literally gonna say, yeah, unless you're carnivore or keto. Like you're just gonna eat like a very normal diet, which is like you're probably going to be getting enough carbs into fuel workouts and you're probably going to be getting enough fat in to aid in fat soluble vitamin digestion, hormonal production, yada, yada, yada.

Right.

Okay, practical stuff with respect to dieting. What should training look like? Like how can we increase like satiety how in a diet?

Right.

Because that is an issue that a lot of people will run into similar to bulking. Like, how can we make that a little bit easier? How can we make cutting a little bit easier as well?

Yeah. So I think sometimes the focus is a little bit too much on macronutrients when it comes to satiety. So feeling full. So while protein is probably good for satiety, I think meal composition is something that people don't consider. So making sure that your meal has some fiber in it is usually a very good idea for staying full until the next meal. I notice for myself when I'm being, you know, an, where I just hit my calories in a particular meal, but it's just like pasta and chicken and not pasta Chicken veggies. I'll be hungry well before the next meal.

Add even when the calories are. Are matched.

Yeah, exactly. Same amount. I mean, the calories almost like it's almost negligible calories from the. From the extra veggies anyway. So like, the assumption is they're pretty close to match, depending on the vegetable, obviously. But I'm talking specifically about like leafy greens and whatnot. But yeah, I think just getting vegetables in most meals is a very good idea. Making sure there's some protein in each meal in order to both hit the target and also from a satiety standpoint is a good idea. When trying to lose. Obviously you're gonna have to make some cuts somewhere. So you can either take out a meal entirely. When I take out meals entirely, I like to be very consistent about that. I've noticed that your body adjusts in whichever direction pretty dang well. Or at least mine does. I know some people have stronger preference toward one one or the other. I have a slight preference toward not skipping dinner. I like to have a larger, large ish meal further in the day.

But I've semi closer to bed semi, just so you can feel a little bit fuller while you sleep.

Yeah, but I've done both and honestly gotten used to both and didn't really have an issue. So I've skipped dinner for the most part, had a large lunch and then like a protein shake slash snack toward dinner and been fine as I kept that up for three weeks or so. And I've done the reverse, mostly where I'll have pretty much no breakfast and then push into sort of like before lunchtime protein shake, then have lunch and then larger dinner. That's what I do typically because I enjoy that a bit more because typically the social stuff and eating dinner with, you know, girlfriend slash, whatever going out, it happens toward dinner time. So I think that's more of a life thing than it is a strong internal metabolism SL type preference. So the point is you have to make cuts somewhere. So you can either split meals, so cut a meal in half and then leave everything the same. You can skip a meal and then leave meal sizes. Obviously because you've skipped a whole meal, you can change things up to eating more frequently and smaller meals. I generally don't recommend that. I've seen it fail time and time again. But the point is you. You have to find what works for you. For me, sometimes it depends on the day. I like to keep things fairly consistent in that usually it looks like what I said with pretty much no breakfast, protein shake, lunch, bigger meal toward dinner time. But let's say there's some sort of breakfast event and I don't want to be that one guy that's drinking your, your protein shake. Exactly.

So not that there's anything wrong with that.

Just, just to be clear. Yeah, exactly. I'll turn that into more of a snacking day once that happens. So. All right, I had that. Now maybe I'll actually pull out the tracker and make sure that things are going well, calorie and protein wise, but I'll be more lax with how I set things up in the off chance that something occurred. So I think having that flexibility is obviously cool where, all right, something happened. I'll just adjust with the day, but try to be consistent for the most part. So. Yeah, any, Anything.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the kind of like the overarching message here is that the value of tracking is to teach you about what diets should look like when you move away from tracking.

Right.

So what tracking has taught Danny Boy and I is, okay, we have this budget throughout the day and we can spend it basically however we want.

Right.

And we can make it work with any social situation and any, any phase of dieting that we want because of our like, kind of fundamental understanding of how, of how we eat and how we respond to, to different calorie amounts.

Right.

And I think that kind of the goal in general with the majority of clients is teach them the tools about why we're in a deficit, why we're in a surplus, how to create that, and teach them through kind of like what 150 calories looks like, what does 60 grams of protein look like in an actual meal?

Right.

Because what you were saying earlier is that often people talk too much about macronutrients. And I think that Eric Helms has a really beautiful quote on this. It's like, look, man, macros aren't foods, foods aren't meals, and meals aren't diets that go like over the course of like an actual diet, like diet phase.

Right.

So it's, it's very important to think of not only the macronutrient composition of each meal, but the, the food composition, like the literal composition of that meal itself from a food perspective.

Right.

So like you were saying with like leafy greens and have a good bit of fiber in there to kind of make you feel more full meal to meal. And the. My athlete plate is a really incredible tool for this that I think can be very beneficial for a lot of individuals because it is like the My plate, Michelle Obama's MyPlate, which I think is great. It took the food pyramid and made it something that like someone could actually understand. And it was better than the food pyramid from an even like from a health perspective in the first place.

Right.

Um, but I think that having the My athlete plate act takes that exact same idea and puts it in the context of someone who's lifting weights.

Right.

If anything, it's a little bit lower on protein than probably should be because it's a. An athlete plate and the protein requirements for people trying to perform the best athletically is a little bit lower than those trying to build muscle maximum. But that's. Aside from that, that's really the only gripe anyway kind of long winded there. So I apologize. All to say that generally tracking is valuable for the purpose of teaching, but it's not necessarily what you want to do in perpetuity on any phase of a diet.

Right.

It's something that you can use to course correct. Like Danny boy was just saying. He was like, if. If I have a big breakfast because of a social event, I can pull out the ol. My fitness pal or macro factor or whatever I'm using just to make sure that I'm kind of in line with what my goal is for that day.

Day. Right.

But it's, it's a course corrector. It's not. It's not your map that you're using for the entirety of a diet phase, which I think is really important, especially.

If there's some weird food or something like that. You're like, oh, I have no idea how many calories this weird thing has. So you can look that up. Like certain fruits that are just like random that I wouldn't have eaten. I'm just like, all right, let's. Like an apple that it's not. Yeah, for you it's an apple for sure. For me it'll be like a dragon fruit or something like that.

Those things. Okay.

By the way, I recently. Golden dragon fruits or whatever.

Those things. Yeah, they're. They're really. They have like a really interesting meaty texture too, which I think is really cool. Um, media. I don't. That's not the best way to describe it, but yeah, I agree. Dragon fruit, the sponsor of this, of this podcast. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So anything. I think that we, I think we covered a lot here with respect to kind of all things diet phases. Do you have anything you want to say with respect to fat loss, calories or anything like bat.

I think the only thing we didn't touch upon.

What were you gonna say?

I was gonna say protein frequency.

I was gonna say training. We haven't talked about training during phase either. So hit the protein frequency. We'll talk about training in both phases. I'll hit a summary, we'll call it a day.

Okay, cool. So, yeah, protein frequency, super easy. I think if you're veering on the safe side, go with three to four. If you're not veering on the safe side, but you're probably pretty safe, go with two protein feedings. So that means if you're getting whatever, 150 calories, that's 75 per.

100 grams.

150 grams?

Yeah.

Oh, I said calories. My bad.

Yeah, I was just making sure.

Yeah, 150 grams, 75 per. Probably not the best idea, but you'll probably be okay. If it's a mixed meal, if you're getting three meals in each, splitting up protein fairly evenly, you're probably well in the safe zone. If you want to be super meticulous and you're a bodybuilder, probably go for the four, maybe five. So, yeah, fairly simple. I think people over complicate this based on the MPS data, but that's, I think, a pretty good rule of thumb based on the direct evidence that we have.

Cool.

Yeah. Now, with respect to training, there's a reason that we saved it for last, because there's just like Danny boy was saying, people like to complicate things, but there ain't too much to say with respect to how you should go about training on different phases. Right. Kind of. From more of an anecdotal side of things, I think that it's probably better to be a little bit more conservative on a, on a, on a cut when, when for the purposes of maintaining muscle, you know, you might be able to build a little bit of muscle if you trained with slightly higher volumes. The likelihood is pretty low anyway. And you're already miserable because you're hungry. So sticking to more moderate at, you know, anywhere from 10 to 15 sets per muscle per week is probably a safe bet. But to ensure that we are growing as much as we possibly can on a bulk, probably a good idea to push those maybe a little bit higher. Anywhere from 15, maybe on that. Closer to that 15 to 20 side.

Right.

But I know that Danny boy, you like to oscillate as your word of the day, but you like to oscillate kind of between. You like to push volumes a little bit harder when you're bulking.

Right.

So you Want to touch on training during different phases briefly?

Yeah, so I like to keep things fairly moderate to even slightly on the lower side. So yeah, like you said, between 8 to 14 or so sets per muscle group per week during a cut and then during a bulk, I'll keep some muscle groups lower, some moderate, and then really push a few muscle groups. I don't think that it makes sense to do that during a cut because you just don't have that much growth potential and you might be putting yourself in a situation where it's just you're not motivated to train, you're not feeling good during training because of such high volumes. So I definitely leave those toward bulk. But during the bulk, I'm a lot more motivated to train and I'm a lot more motivated to do those high volumes. So I'll oscillate different muscle groups usually in about three months or so cycles, where some will be high, some will be moderate, and some will be low. This is muscle groups. And then after that three months, I'll put the ones that were high, either down to moderate or low, and then bring the other ones up to high and oscillate in that fashion. So I think that that's useful for one staying motivated. I think having a specific few muscle groups in mind that you're really trying to bring up, just even from a psychological standpoint, is useful. But also just theoretically speaking, I don't think you could keep those high volumes for those muscle groups in perpetuity, even from like a joint standpoint and other other physiological things. So I like it for both the physiological and the psychological standpoint.

Yeah, I think. And so Danny Boy is basically just talking about specialization phases during bulks, which we don't recommend running during cuts, generally speaking. And I do, I agree that it's certainly more motivational, but I think it's, I think that applies more so to individuals who are a little bit more in that later, intermediate, advanced stage for the purposes of like, psychological benefits. Now there are rank beginners who are like, look, I don't really care about my legs. I just want giant shoulders and arms.

Right?

And a lot of people will dog on people for doing that, but I think that's silly. Who cares what muscles this person cares about? Let's give them the, the results that they want to see. Right. So generally I agree, but I, I, I tend not to run specialization phrases for people who would be listening to this podcast, quite frankly. More, more, more beginner, intermediate individuals.

Right.

But yeah, actually the same is actually true for and I know you don't care about this stuff stuff, but, you know, humor me for a second. Strength. I think when focusing on one lift, or usually one lift at a time, you get better gains than worrying about getting all three up at the same time. I've noticed more progress specializing in one lift. I haven't done that a really long time. But back when I was caring about the numbers.

Before you were brought into the life fight.

Exactly. That was a dark time. And here I am now a better man for it. Exactly.

So question to the. To the audience. Would you rather be moderately strong but look really big or be moderately big and be extremely strong? And there is one right answer to that question, let me tell you. Okay. Beautiful. Do you have. Do you have anything else you want to say, specifics before? I just run through a little breakdown of what we talked about today.

I think that's a perfect way to end. Awesome. On that question. And then summarize.

Sweet. Okay. So for a really long time, we thought that in order to maximize adaptations throughout the course of a training career, you should run bulks and cutting phases. And that still probably is true to a certain extent. However, there has been more data recently lending itself credence to the idea of main gain gaining.

Right.

Which is probably a really good idea for individuals with some body image issues who don't enjoy putting on weight very quickly, as well as people who have trouble moderating in either direction. They either find themselves cutting very quickly or gaining way too quickly, whatever it may be, as well as just individuals living normal lives who aren't interested in maximizing benefits in general.

Right.

Gain taining and maintaining both really good options for them with respect to muscle building. Regardless of if you're a rank beginner or you've been in the game for a while, it's probably safer to err on the side of slow and conservative with respect to weight gain, aiming anywhere from about 1 to 2% increase in body weight per month. Right. And you can create that surplus through a litany of different ways, but at the end of the day, it's really as simple as either adding a little bit more rice to each meal that you're eating. Doesn't have to be rice, obviously. Just increasing the size of your meals just slightly or, you know, having a little bit of a sweet treat there. At the end of the day, however you want to create that small, slight surplus is a really good way as a. Is. Is. Is totally fine.

Right.

With respect to fat loss, we get to go a little bit quicker, which is kind of nice. You generally see results faster on a diet there. We generally want to lose anywhere from half a percent to 1% of body weight per week. So much faster there. And generally we want to start around a 500 calorie deficit.

Right.

With as opposed to the bulk, where we want to be anywhere from 200 to 350 calories above what our maintenance is.

Right.

With respect to protein, doesn't really change much if you're in a bulk or a. A cut. Probably around 1. 6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram. That's 17 to anywhere. So it's anywhere from.07 to 1 gram per pound of body weight. The leaner you get. There's some who argue that you should probably err on the higher side. Not a whole lot of evidence to support that, but probably not a bad idea, especially from a satiety standpoint as well.

Right.

And yeah, like we said earlier, training looks very similar throughout both phases. Some will argue that they they need to look different, but there's not a lot of evidence to support that by any means. You probably can push it a little bit harder on a bulk with respect to volumes and intensity, but probably not absolutely necessary to do so either.

There. Right.

And last thing I'll say here, just to summarize, remember that tracking is a very valuable tool, but it's just that it's a tool that helps us educate ourselves with respect to what are calories? Where are these calories coming from? How do different calorie amounts and combinations of foods and macronutrients make me feel from a hunger and satiety standpoint? And we generally want to move to a more organic way of aid eating.

Right.

Not having to rely on tracking tools to make sure that we're within our targets.

Right.

Make maintaining and tracking body weight and progress through photos and stuff like that is a really good idea. All right. Anything that I left off there, I think that's good. Awesome. Well, as always, thank you all so much for listening to the Built With Science podcast. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or confessions, please feel free to reach out to us at Built With Science on Instagram. And if you want to hear us cover something different that we haven't talked about thus far, again, feel free to reach out to us at Built With Science on Instagram.

Peace.