How to Lean Bulk PROPERLY in 5 Steps (Lean Bulking 101)
Jeremy Ethier breaks down lean bulking in five steps: start lean, eat a modest surplus of 5-10% above maintenance to gain 0.25-0.5 lb per week, hit 0.8-1g protein per pound, track weekly weight averages and adjust calories by 100 kcal as needed, and cycle mini-cuts when men hit 15% body fat or women hit 25%.
What's going on, guys? Today we're going to be covering a very important topic and it is how to lean bulk in order to gain muscle while staying relatively lean. I'm sure most of you already know that the purpose of bulking is to gain muscle and put on more size. And we can achieve this by eating at a caloric surplus. But how many times have you heard that you need to eat big to get big, and if you're not gaining weight, then you're probably not eating enough? Well, although this does have some truth to it. You, you don't necessarily need to eat big to get big. You just need to eat enough for your body. And this is where lean bulking comes in. In my opinion, lean bulking is the most effective way to put on size for several reasons. It's much more effective than traditional methods of bulking where you get fat as hell. And trust me, guys, I have tried both methods and I can definitely say that I made a lot more progress using the lean bulking method as opposed to traditional methods of bulking like dirty bulking. And the reason it's more effective is mainly due to the hormonal changes and the changes, your insulin sensitivity that occur once you reach a high enough percentage body fat, which you likely will reach when you're dirty bulking. And I'm not going to go into too much detail as to the negative effects that traditional methods of bulking causes, as I'll be covering this in next week's video and I'll leave a link in the description box once it's done, so you guys can check that out. But just know that lean bulking for most people, with exception to true hard gainers, is the most effective way to gain muscle and put on size. So in this video, I'm going to go through how to lean bulk in five easy steps. And before we get started with the video, as always, please make sure that you hit that like button and hit that subscribe button and also turn my notifications on for my channel as this will really help me out, especially with the recent changes in YouTube's algorithm. Anyways, let's get started with the video. So if you're a guy and you're currently over 15% body fat, then I highly suggest that you get your body fat down to around 10 to 11% before you start bulking. And for girls, if your body fat is currently over 25%, then I suggest you get down to around 20% before you start lean bulking. And the reason you want to do this is because it helps preserve your insulin sensitivity when you're bulking. And it also allows you to bulk for a longer period of time before you have to reduce your body fat levels again, which also saves you from long and grueling cuts to lower your body fat, which does a lot of damage on your body, both physiologically and psychologically. And if you are currently struggling to lower your body fat enough to get to this level, then I highly suggest you watch some of my videos that I made on the topic and I'll leave a few links to them in the description box below. Caloric intake is the single most important factor when it comes to building muscle. And when lean bulking, you want to maintain a very moderate surplus of around 5 to 10%, which will allow you to maximize muscle growth while minimizing the amount of fat that you gain in the process. So to calculate this, what you first need to do is you need to find out what your total daily energy expenditure is, or tdee. And this is basically how many calories your body needs every day to maintain its current weight. And to find that out, you can use the equation that I've linked down below in the description box. And then once you get that number, you simply want to add 5 to 10% to that. So, for example, if my TDEE was 2500 calories, I would add 5 to 10% to that, which would equate to 2625 calories, to 2750 calories. So this calorie range would be what I would try to eat at every day in order to gain a little bit of muscle every week. And the surplus will equate to gaining around 0.5 pounds per week. But this number is going to vary a lot depending on how advanced of a lifter you are. If you're a beginner and you've just started lifting weights, and you can expect to gain even up to around one to two pounds per week. Whereas more advanced lifters like myself, who have been lifting for several years, anything around 0.25 to half a pound a week is more realistic and more ideal. And although this number may not seem like a lot, guys, over a year you're going to see huge changes in your physique. And the fact that you're lean bulking, which means you're not going to put on as much fat as traditional bulking methods, means that you're not going to waste a lot of time with, with cutting and trying to lose fat, which also loses muscle in the process. So Trust me on this guy, slow and steady is definitely the way to go, especially for natural lifters like ourselves. So once you figure out your lean bulking calories, you want to then figure out how many of these calories should come from protein, fat or carbs. There are so many different recommendations out there, but what I like to do is stick to the research and stick to what scientific literature has shown to be most effective for protein intake. You want to stick between 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of your bulk body weight. I personally like to stick to the higher end and just go with 1 gram per pound of body weight because it's simple to use and it keeps me on the safe side of the protein intake. So, for example, if you weigh 170 pounds, then you would want to intake 170 grams of protein daily, which equates to 680 calories from protein, since protein has 4 calories per gram. And as for fats, around 25% of your total calories coming from fat is a good figure to start off with in order to optimize your testosterone levels and your overall health. Fat contains 9 calories per gram. So all you have to do is multiply your lean bulking calories by 0.25, which will get you the number of fat calories you need to eat at every day. And then you want to divide this number by nine, which will get you how many grams of fat you need to eat every day. Now, finally, your carbs will make up the rest of the calories that you have left over. So all you want to do is add up the number of calories you already have from protein and fat, and and then subtract this number from the total bulk in calories that you calculated earlier. This will give you the total number of calories that need to be derived from carbohydrates, and then you can divide this number by four in order to get how many grams of carbs you need to ingest every day. That's basically all there is to it. But don't be afraid to tweak your macros based on how your body performs. I personally find that a higher carb and lower fat diet is best for my body. But everyone's different. So use what I suggested as a starting point and then you can always adjust it in the future as you learn more about your body. Now, I urge you to pay a lot of attention to the weight scale when you're lean bulking, because although you may have calculated your calories and you may be tracking your food perfectly every day. You never really know if your caloric surplus is right for your body unless you're consistently monitoring your weight and seeing how your body responds. What I recommend you do first is get yourself a really good weight scale that is accurate to at least 0.2 pounds. I got mine from Amazon for like 20 bucks and it works perfectly. If you guys need one, I highly suggest you get this one. It's cheap and it works really well. I'll leave a link in the description box below if you guys are interested. So you want to wear yourself every single day when you wake up first thing in the morning, and then every single week you want to take a seven day average of your weight and then you compare this number to the following weeks and see how your weight changes. If you aren't gaining enough, then you want to increase your calories by 100. And if you're gaining too much, then you want to decrease your calories by 100. And as your weight increases, so should your strength in the gym, especially with compound lifts. So you want to track the weights that you lift every single week to ensure that you're progressively overloading and getting stronger, Whether it be by adding £5 to the bar or performing an extra rep, or anything that shows that you've gotten stronger from the previous week will allow you to continuously progress and gain more muscle during your lean bulk. So once you reach around 15% body fat for men and around 25% body fat for women, you want to start reducing your body fat down to the levels that they were at before you started lean bulking. And you want to reduce your body fat fairly quickly by using an aggressive mini cut. Ideally, it should take you around two to three months of lean bulking to reach this high level of body fat. And then around two to four weeks of pretty aggressive cutting to get rid of the body fat that you gained in the process. So basically what you do is you juggle your bulks and cuts like this until you've reached the size that you want. Which, keep in mind, will take you years of repeating this process and overloading your lifts. And that's basically it. Guys, guys. It's not a complicated process. A lot of it is just monitoring your progress and consistently trying to improve in the gym. Focus on hitting your caloric intake, your macros, and progressively overloading in the gym every week. And trust me, in a year, you're going to see a huge difference in your physique. If you have any questions about the video, then please feel free to leave a comment down below. And also, don't forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel. It'll really help me out. Anyways, I'll see you guys in next week's video, where I'm going to be talking about dirty bulking and why exactly. It's in a waste of time, so I'll see you next time.
