Tips For Lean Bulking (Bulking Without Fat Gain)

When some people bulk, they go pretty full on with it and don’t much concern themselves with gaining fat. They take it on the chin (literally!) and leave the worry about losing fat for their cutting phase. Other people want to minimize fat gains so take a more careful approach to bulking. If minimizing fat gains during your bulk is your goal, here are some tips which will help you formulate an effective fat-minimizing bulking plan.

• Calculate your BMR so you know how many calories you need daily to gain mass.
• Have bodyweight scales, body fat calipers and a tape measure to take weekly progress measurements – and log everything.
• Have a fixed meal plan (it doesn’t need to be the same food every day, but the same nutrients and calories) so you don’t find yourself getting too little or too much. Also, a fixed meal plan allows easy tweaking.
• Put your daily diet plan into a computer spreadsheet with your intended meals and their calorie and macronutrient counts, and have the spreadsheet automatically calculate your daily intake of calorie and macronutrients. (This allows you to see how small adjustments affect your daily calorie and macronutrient counts.)
• Make sure most of your calories come from protein and fats; carbohydrates have the greatest effect on blood sugars and insulin release, and promote fat gains.
• Have most of your daily carbohydrates before training and after training, when they are used for muscular energy for training and muscular energy replenishment afterwards.
• Try to avoid mixing large amounts of carbohydrates and fats at the same time, which promotes fat gains.
• Eat small meals every few hours to keep the flow of nutrients steady and to keep your digestive system working optimally.
• Try to get no less than 0.75g of protein per lb of bodyweight, and go anywhere up to 1.5g per lb of bodyweight.
• Complete proteins are the best for muscle building because they have all essential amino acids; but incomplete protein sources can be combined with other incomplete protein sources to make complete protein sources – you just need to know which essential amino acids are in each food to know which proteins you need to put together.
• Don’t expect to see huge gains quickly if you are seeking to minimize fat gains when bulking. Many bulkers claim to have gained enormous weight/size in no time at all, but the truth is most people who gain a ton of size quickly will do so partially because of a substantial fat gains (whether they choose to admit this to other people or themselves is another issue).
• Don’t automatically blame your diet if you fail to make gains. True, it’s often to blame, but many people refuse to accept just how quickly the body stops responding to training stimuli and refuse to make regular changes as needed. First examine your training before changing your diet, you may well find your training is the reason why you aren’t gaining.
• Be honest with yourself. Is what you’re doing really working as intended? If not, did you have unrealistic expectations or are you possibly doing something wrong?

I hope some of these tips have given you some ideas about how to formulate your own fat minimizing lean bulk plan. I wish you the best of luck.