in this video I'll be sharing some of the worst nutrition mistakes pretty much every lifter makes at some point myself included in fact I really wish I knew about these things when I started lifting over 10 years ago because if I had just known them from the start I would have made better gains without so many unnecessary challenges all right the first mistake most people make is thinking that you can force feed muscle growth you can't I think a lot of people see Pro bodybuilders eating 5 000 plus calorie diets and assume that if they also want to get big they need to also eat big there may be a kernel of truth to this for some lifters but the reality is that bodybuilding anecdotes are often unreliable that's because Pro bodybuilders have world-class genetics have already been training for a decade or more and are almost always taking large doses of anabolic steroids so it's hard to know if their results are coming from the fact that they're eating big to get big or some combination of those other factors now the reason I say that you can't force feed muscle growth is that studies consistently show that when you over feed someone with a large caloric Surplus they gain disproportionately more fat than they do muscle and this is true even if they're weight training this 2013 study from Garth and colleagues perfectly illustrates the issue with really aggressive bulking these researchers split 47 Elite athletes into two groups one group ate in a relatively large caloric Surplus and one group ate in a relatively small caloric Surplus the large Surplus group ended up eating 621 more calories on average both groups follow the same weight training program for 10 weeks and after 10 weeks this is what they found the group eating in the large caloric Surplus did predictably gain more weight they also gained a tiny bit more lean mass although it didn't reach statistical significance but the big difference was in the amount of fat they gained the large Surplus group gained much more fat than the small Surplus group so eating the extra calories didn't lead to substantially more muscle gain but it did lead to substantially more fat gain these same basic findings were corroborated by a later 2019 study which has led experts in the field to describe nutrition as having a permissive role in muscle building in other words your diet permits muscle growth to occur it doesn't cause muscle growth to occur you can't force feed muscle growth training is what tells the muscle to grow nutrition simply supplies the building blocks if you think of your body like a big building you can think of your training program as the blueprint and the construction crew and you can think of your nutrition as the building blocks if you have way more building blocks than you need they just pile up at the job site this is the muscle you've built and this is what's left over as fat so when looking to build muscle most lifters should be eating somewhere in this range but this line here in the middle being your maintenance calories the number of calories you need to maintain your weight you want to gain muscle faster and are more comfortable with some fat gain you can put yourself in a 10 to 20 Surplus if you'd like to do a leaner bulk a smaller five to ten percent Surplus would be better and if you're trying to prioritize fat loss while still building muscle a slight caloric deficit in this Zone would be better now to be clear I'm not saying that aggressive bulks are necessarily A Bad Thing so-called dreamer bulks have become something of a rite of passage in the lifting world ah and despite what the short-term Garth study found in my coaching experience I have found that more aggressive bulks do tend to lead to more strength gain over the long term aggressive bulking will also help you take up more Total Space aloe bear mode but they can also make your life more difficult the next time you want to cut down and in my coaching experience just end up not being worth it for most people now I'm planning on doing a full video about sustainable bulking similar to the one that I recently did on sustainable fat loss so I'll save the rest of my bulking suggestions for that video okay the second mistake most people make is not realizing that most supplements are overrated now there are a few supplements that actually do work creatine caffeine and protein powder are at the top of my shortlist when it comes to building muscle however even with these three most science-based supplements I think a lot of people including people in the science-based lifting Community still overestimate how much muscle people will actually gain from taking them for example creatine is one of the most highly researched and most efficacious supplements on the market this is true and we hear it so much that I think it leads a lot of new lifters to think they're going to notice a massive steroid like Boost from it in reality most studies show that taking creatine should result in a roughly two to three pound increase in lean mass for example this eight-week training study found that a group taking creatine gained 1. 1 kilograms or 2. 2 pounds more lean mass than a group taking Placebo similarly the systematic review which pulled together 22 studies on older subjects found that creatine increased lean mass by 1.
4 kilos or just about three pounds more than Placebo and those studies ranged from seven weeks to a full year in length again it isn't that creatine doesn't work it clearly does in two to three pounds of lean mass is still significant it's a solid increase and given the relatively cheap price point of simple creatine monohydrate it's definitely worth taking in my opinion however compared to a bodybuilding steroid cycle which can add upwards of 10 to 20 pounds of lean mass in just a month or two it's also worth tempering your expectations caffeine is another supplement that I personally use and it has a lot of scientific research supporting its efficacy for strength power and muscular endurance caffeine can definitely give you a man Dental boost before training and anecdotally I do find it leads to better workouts however the research as a whole isn't particularly exciting when it comes to muscle growth specifically again it isn't that caffeine doesn't work it does it's just important to temper your expectations if pre-workout caffeine is the only thing that's able to get you up off the couch and through the gym doors then it could be having a huge behavioral impact on your gains but if you're going to be training anyway the muscle gains you'll see specifically as a result of caffeine supplementation is nothing astronomical lastly protein powder is a supplement I often recommend that has a large amount of scientific literature supporting its use for muscle growth protein powders are very convenient and can make hitting your daily protein targets easier however if you're able to hit your daily protein Target with high protein foods alone adding extra protein powder won't provide any extra gains so as I see it protein powder simply provides a very convenient option for getting in some high quality protein but it's not magic it's just another food option and again I personally take all three of these supplements and I'd recommend them to any serious lifter who can budget them but as you go further and further are down the list the supplements get less and less promising the third mistake most people make is thinking you need a super high protein diet to build muscle you don't this is actually something I've updated my stance on over the last few years I used to recommend protein intakes a bit higher than I do now but I've updated that based on new research a lot of people seem to think that if you just load up on protein your body will have to build more muscle after all muscle is made up of protein so the more protein you eat the more muscle you'll build it makes intuitive sense but in reality research shows that the effect of protein on muscle growth is magnitude smaller than the effect of training eating protein gives these short-lived blips and muscle protein synthesis while training causes this long and prolonged elevation the elevation that's ultimately driving New Growth now according to the latest research the optimal protein Target for building muscle in a caloric Surplus is 0. 7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight or 1. 6 to 2.
2 grams per kilo practically speaking I put most people in the middle and going above that range won't cause more gains if you're in a caloric deficit for fat loss shifting proteins slightly higher to 0. 8 to 1. 2 grams per pound is smart to prevent muscle loss or even allow muscle gain in some instances personally I'm still cutting at the moment and I eat 150 grams of protein per day at 165 pounds body weight so that's about 0.
9 grams of protein per pound of body weight for me I just say this to show that even sitting toward the lower end of these ranges is still perfectly fine and I usually only suggest going to the upper end if someone is really shredded and at a particularly high risk of muscle loss of course it's also important to realize that even if you eat below these ideal ranges you can still build muscle it just may not happen as quickly a recent systematic review from Morton and colleagues found that people tend to build more and more muscle as they increase protein but only up to 0. 7 grams per pound that's where the trend hits a break point going up from there doesn't seem to do much of anything extra but that doesn't mean no gains occur if you go below 0. 7 grams per pound they do if you were to eat just 0.
