What really is ‘Bulking’? What you should do and what you shouldn't do to build the maximum muscle while keeping body fat low, all according to the new evidence. And what I'm going to share with you here is what I've learned from great coaches and what the guys are doing at this moment.
Some people confuse the idea of 'Bulking' with 'Off'. And 'Off' comes from 'Off-season', it's an idea of being out of season, out of preparation. Let's take an athlete as an example here, and he is very famous too, Ramon Dino.
He has his Off-season periods, but Ramon cannot do a Bulking because the guy generally has trouble making weight. He is already so big that anything he does outside of that time when he is preparing to compete, he already increases the muscle to the point of it being difficult for him to lift the weight later. Already 'Off-season' is basically a phase that a person is out of preparation.
She is not following that Cutting diet to compete. I want you to already have in your mind that 'Off' is one thing and 'Bulking' is completely another. Both can happen together and normally an athlete who wants to gain weight, who wants to build muscle, does it together.
But I'm only telling you this so you can understand the whole context. You don't necessarily need to be an athlete to benefit from this video. On the contrary.
I am making this video here thinking basically of a person who is not an athlete and thinking a lot about naturals. But there will come a moment in the video when I will talk about the difference between a 'Bulking' for natural and a 'Bulking' for someone using hormones. To effectively do a 'Bulking', you need to have what we call a caloric surplus.
Let's imagine that all your activities result in a calorie expenditure of 2,000 calories throughout your day. In order to build tissue, in this case, to build muscle, it's important that you consume more than those 2,000, because you expend 2,000. If you consume 2,000, what will happen is you stay at a break-even point.
Now, if you expend 2,000 and consume 2,500, I will tell you what surplus we will use. I'm just giving you an example. If you consume two thousand five hundred, you agree with me that if you spent two thousand.
These 500 calories, our body will store in some way. And if you follow the right strategies, both in diet and training, it will store this energy in the form of muscle. If you do it wrong, you'll accumulate fat.
So, it's very important to follow the right strategy. So, this surplus is the foundation of the foundation, man. If there is no surplus, there is no Bulking process, because there is no energy left.
'Laércio, how much should I have as surplus? ' That is a big question and it's a major mistake that many people make. Some people do it like this: I'm going to bulk, and then they start eating like crazy.
They manage to create a very large surplus, a surplus of a thousand calories, a thousand five hundred calories. . .
If this surplus is too large, your body will not produce muscle at the same rate as the calories you consume. You may build some muscle, but you will accumulate a lot of fat. And this is a big problem for people who are Bulking.
It's meant for you to build muscle, but it's not supposed to make you look like a pig, with a high body fat percentage. That time has passed. Today we can see an athlete doing this very nicely, which is Caique.
He is Bulking and he has a super low body fat percentage, maintaining a very nice, very good physical condition. This will help him later even when he enters the preparation phase. Just because you are Bulking doesn't mean you should eat like a runaway cow.
It's a weight gain process, more than a controlled weight gain, so you can provide your body with the raw material to build the muscle you want, but it will build that muscle up to a certain limit. It's no use giving excess energy, because it will turn into fat. What is the surplus that I consider interesting for you to start?
I did all the calculations to know how many calories you are burning per day. In fact, I will even leave a link to a Growth app below in the description that does this for you for free. You will enter your data and it calculates.
You will set a surplus of at most, at most. . .
five hundred calories. A surplus of three hundred calories for a person who is not at a very low body fat percentage is great. ‘Wow, Lala, I’m too skinny.
’ ‘My body fat percentage is very low. ’ You can put in 500 calories. Above that, you will gain a lot of fat, man.
It doesn't make sense. And you will divide all these calories into macronutrients that I will also tell you how much of each you need to include. And I will start by talking about protein.
When we talk about protein, many people associate it with muscle gain. So, eating protein increases muscle. And if you stop to think a little, the muscle in our body is called contractile protein.
It makes some sense. Now there's a point here. If you eat a lot of protein, will you build a lot of muscle?
I've seen athletes consuming 3 grams per kilogram of body weight, 4 grams per kilogram of body weight of protein. Thinking they will hypertrophy more. Here comes some super new information and you will be surprised by it.
If you are in a Bulking process, 1. 6 grams of protein is what you will consume. 'Laércio, but don't people talk so much about 2 grams per kilo of body weight?
' Yes, you can even reach that amount, but what happens is, if you are in a caloric surplus, 1. 6 is enough for you to build muscle, because when you are in a surplus, you are consuming a lot of carbohydrates. When you consume a lot of carbohydrates, all that carbohydrate has a protective effect on protein.
Therefore, what you consume in protein, your body will use to build muscle. And the most interesting part is, you can allow yourself to eat more carbohydrates. And not to mention, folks, that it is a Bulking process, it's a process of optimizing protein intake, carbohydrate intake, calories in general.
Protein uses a lot of energy to be digested. So, the thermic effect of food related to protein is high. What does that mean?
Your body will spend more energy to break it down. And what we are doing here is exactly optimizing weight gain. So, it's not interesting for us to spend a lot of energy digesting food.
On the other hand, carbohydrates are easier to digest. They consume less energy in this whole process. And it’s exactly on this that we will focus more attention.
But hold on, before talking about carbohydrates, I need to talk to you about fat. And here there is a very delicate point. And when we talk about good fat, it has great functions in our body.
And for you who are natural, one of the functions is to serve as raw material for you to produce testosterone. And other hormones that come from cholesterol. If you consume little fat, your testosterone production may be impaired.
So, the recommendation is 1 gram per kilogram of body weight of fat. But we are talking about fats that come from olive oil, nuts, and avocado. Not those trans fats that will harm you.
And it is important for you to pay attention to that. Because you will already be consuming a lot of calories, you will already be. .
. gaining weight. If you associate all this with excessive consumption of trans fats, you may be creating problems for your heart in the future.
And for your entire vascular system, which is something people do a lot. But in a little while, I'm going to talk to you about the idea of 'dirty Bulking' and 'clean Bulking. ' And then you'll understand more about this issue of fat.
Let's talk now about carbohydrates. Carbohydrates provide energy easily for your body. If we want to increase muscle, providing a large amount of energy is interesting.
However, if you deliver a lot of energy all at once, your body will take all that energy, use part for functions, another part to build muscle, and what’s left. . .
will turn into fat. So the idea here is to gradually increase the amount of carbohydrates. 'Lala, how long do I stay in this surplus?
' Hold on, we're going to talk about that. At what point do you readjust your entire diet? If you put 1.
6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and 1 gram of fat per kilogram of body weight, what is missing to fit within the calories you need will be exactly the amount of carbohydrates you will include. It's all kind of mathematical. And this is a more delicate, more complicated way to do the whole process.
I will demonstrate to you how this happens, but some people like to use a certain amount of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight as well. So you would start, for example, with 4 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight, then increase to 5, 6, and keep scaling up. Let's see how this looks if we calculate point by point to know the amount you need to ingest of each macronutrient.
You will understand how all of this works. Come over here. To make it very practical, I'll use Rani as an example.
How many kilos are you now, man? seventy-three. seventy-three.
That's a girl's weight, huh? seventy-two. So let's go.
Ranizito, seventy-two kilos. How tall are you, man? one hundred seventy-two.
People, all of this here you'll enter in the app and it will do all the calculations, okay? one hundred seventy-two centimeters. Age?
32. 32 years old. And Rani, today, is sedentary.
This will also go into the calculation. All of this here, to get to a point where the app tells you that you need, in Rani's case, to stay alive and do all his activities, he needs 2,000. .
. and 100 kilocalories. This is to keep him alive and do things.
But we're talking about a caloric surplus, remember? A Bulking process. So, we're going to add.
. . Shall we set 500 calories?
We're going to add 500 calories. Ranizito, you're good at math. two thousand six hundred.
We need 2,600 kilocalories per day to support his booking process, right? Why is it important for us to raise all these points? Because now we're going to start using this number as a base for everything.
I'm going to leave this number here because we're going to use it for a lot of things. seventy-three kilos. How many grams of fat did I say it's important for us to consume?
One gram per kilo of body weight. So, if it’s 1 gram per kilo of body weight, we go here 1 times his 73. It became easy; we know it's 73 grams.
However, guys, each gram of fat has 9 calories. So, we multiply by 9. So, for fat, we need six hundred and fifty seven.
. We need to find out the kilocalories. Laércio, but why am I lifting all these things?
To find out the amount of carbohydrate we will use. Now, we need to find the amount of protein. So, we are going to multiply 73, which is his weight, by 1.
6. This will give us the amount of protein he needs to ingest per day. one hundred sixteen point eight.
But we will round this Off, right? Ranizito, multiply this by 4 for me. And what's the idea of multiplying by 4, guys?
Remember when we were talking about fat, we multiplied by 9, which is the amount of calories per gram of macronutrient? Protein has 4 calories per gram. So, we have 467 kcal.
The magic is going to happen now. We found the amount of fat, we found the amount of protein, that's in calories. Now, Ranizito, if you add these two here for me, it will give one thousand one hundred.
. . and 24.
Wow, man, I'm really killing it, huh? Ranezito, subtract this from that. Put two thousand six hundred minus one thousand one hundred and twenty-four.
One thousand four hundred and thirty-six. So we have his carbohydrate, one thousand four hundred and thirty-six. Guys, this here is also kilocalories.
How are we going to find the amount of carbohydrate, in terms of grams of carbohydrate? Ranizito, multiply this here for me by 4. 'Why 4, Lala?
' Because each gram of carbohydrate has exactly 4 calories as well. What does that give? Five thousand nine hundred and four.
No, dude, sorry. Divide by 4. Three hundred and sixty-nine.
So it ended up being three hundred and sixty-nine. ‘Three hundred and sixty-nine, what? ’ Grams of carbohydrate.
Just so we know. Ranizito, divide this by your weight. Then we'll have the amount of carbohydrate per kilogram of their weight.
5. 0. Lala, I could have avoided all this trouble and just said, man, put 5 grams per kilogram of weight?
Could have. So you could have done the following. .
. Instead of doing all these calculations, I'm going to set 1. 6 grams of protein per kilogram of weight, 5 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of weight, 1 gram of fat per kilogram of weight.
Would that work? It would work. Would it be the same?
Exactly the same. But here you know how many calories you are consuming. You are starting from more solid data.
And what's interesting about that, folks? Some coaches and great coaches, huh? The guys don't do any calculations.
The guys go a lot by 'Feeling'. Do you have this 'Feeling'? Do you deal with other people's preparations for over 10, 20 years?
My advice is that I prefer you to do this here, because then you'll have an idea of what you're doing and how to adjust all of this. And when we get to these numbers, we can also bring another point of the video, which is as follows. Ranizito, so today you're going to start your diet with these numbers here.
Carbohydrates, 369 grams. Protein, Rani, how much? One hundred and sixteen point eight.
And the fat, we know it's 1 gram. So, we know there, 73 grams. Guys, all of this here, we're talking about total grams, right?
Come with me. We did all these calculations. Rani will consume all of this here per day.
But he has this weight. If Bulking works, this weight will, for example, go to 80 kilos. Then, the question I ask you is, do these numbers hold?
No. It doesn't make sense, right? Because if I did all the calculations based on this weight, realizing that I need 2,600 calories to gain weight, but I already reached 80 kilos, most likely with 80 kilos, this amount of calories will maintain my weight and then there will come a moment when you will recalculate your Bulking.
And there are two ways to do this. One way is to recalculate all of this after a period. You stick to this diet, for example, for a month and then you recalculate.
Or you can stick to it for two months and then recalculate. Here there will be a big difference between someone who uses hormones or doesn't use hormones. Soon I will talk about this.
But the way I prefer you to do it is the following, you will notice that your weight will go up and there will come a time when it will stabilize. Your weight will stop increasing. And then when your weight stops increasing, let's imagine it stopped when you reached 80 kilos.
Then it's time for you to redo all the calculations. Because yes, all of this will change. I will increase the amount as my weight goes up.
So there will come a time when I will be at 80 kilos, then I will recalculate everything. So I will eat more carbohydrates, more protein, more fat. After all, all of this is based on my weight.
And then let's imagine that there comes a time when I am weighing now. . .
85 kilos. Will recalculate again. 90 kilos.
95, 100, 110, 120. . .
Is it supposed to be linear? So, folks, no. And this is where something comes in that few people do today.
And it’s very important that you do it. Your weight, if you keep increasing the amount of food, it will continue to rise. But will it be rising in a way that's good for you?
Look, there will come a time when you will notice that your body fat percentage is increasing more than it was before. You will keep doing the calculations to increase calories, right? But your body will have a limit on muscle building.
To the point that a good part of what you are eating extra will start to be transformed into fat. So let's imagine the following, that you were there, Ranizito, at 73 and you reached. .
. 77 and you felt that your body was gaining muscle and the body fat percentage was low. Then it stagnated, you recalculated everything.
So let's imagine that Rani went there and he reached 80 kilos and the body fat percentage was good. But from that point on, he started to notice that he was gaining a lot of weight and the muscle didn't seem to be increasing. The weight kept going up, but the body fat percentage that skyrocketed wasn't muscle being built.
When this happens to you, it's exactly the moment to fit a 'Cutting' into your diet. Because when it reaches this point, your body is telling you the following, I have already given everything I had. From now on, I can't build more muscle.
From now on, we will only accumulate more fat. When you start a Cutting phase, lowering your body fat percentage, your weight will drop a bit. And there are, of course, strategies to successfully do a Cutting, which is the Cutting where you reduce fat but manage to maintain muscle.
We've already made a video here on the channel about that. And then, after a period of four weeks, six weeks, you go back to the Bulking process. Guys, this strategy of alternating between Bulking and Cutting is what works best.
And then you'll notice that when you return to Bulking, your body responds much better. It's bizarre the difference. Imagine that you started your journey, you were here, 73 kilos.
And then you started to gain. Then you kept gaining, gaining. There came a point when you started to accumulate a lot of fat.
A lot of fat, a lot of fat. You're doing a Cutting. And then you start to gain back.
And then you do a Cutting. And gain back again. This is a successful Bulking process.
Because if you keep gaining all at once, there will come a time when you'll have a really high body fat percentage. And this will bring you, besides having an unattractive physique, some complications that I will explain to you. And you might be thinking right now that it takes a lot of work to do all this.
And it really does. And for you to have a better result, this entire process is necessary. You can do it in a simpler way, just by eating more, but, man, the result you will have, I can't guarantee it.
What I can tell you that will make your life much easier is that my team of nutritionists is prepared to support all our students in this process. So they will calculate your diet, plan your meals, regardless of how your day is, and they will make all these adjustments. There will come a time when the team will turn to you, according to, of course, the feedback you will bring to us, it's time for us to fit this point of the strategy.
And you will have my entire team at your disposal there on WhatsApp to clear all your doubts and request any diet adjustments you want. I'm only talking about the team of nutritionists, but there are also other professionals to assist you, such as personal trainers and physiotherapists. If you want to become my student and experience all of this, feel all of this on your skin, there's a link down below.
Click there. Remember I told you that there's another big problem with increasing your body fat percentage too much? Inside fat cells, there is an enzyme called aromatase.
It takes your testosterone and transforms it into estrogen. We're talking about a female hormone. 'Female', right?
That has a high concentration in women. This will bring you harm in general. So, a very high body fat percentage, besides making your physique unattractive, will also cause that, one, you'll have more of this female hormone circulating in your body, but it is, in fact, the transformation of testosterone into it, right?
So, what will happen to your testosterone? She will decrease. In other words, it's the bad with the worse.
It doesn't make sense for you to have a very high body fat percentage. And there is another issue here. If you stay in Bulking for too long, there will come a time when your insulin sensitivity will decrease.
To build muscle, it’s important that your insulin sensitivity is high. These Cutting periods, alternating with Bulking, will help you a lot with that as well. Now you will understand what people call 'dirty Bulking'.
And of course, if there is dirty, there is clean as well. Basically, when you do a 'dirty Bulking', you eat things like pizzas, hamburgers, lasagna, chocotone, stroganoff, and so on. What is the positive point of this.
One is that you will be able to consume all these extra calories, let's say, with a certain ease, because these foods contain a higher calorie load. We call this high caloric density. And the other point is that they are tasty things.
So you won't have difficulty eating all of this. But there is a point here. How many grams of fat can you consume per kilogram of body weight?
This type of food ends up having a very high amount of fat. And this can lead to a large intake of fat. And then you will end up increasing more fat than muscle in your body.
You will be worsening your health and increasing the amount of fat in your body. I just talked about aromatase, right? You have already seen where this is going.
So what's the idea, what's the best strategy? It's that you do a clean Bulking, which instead of eating carbohydrates, for example, from pizza, you will eat carbohydrates from rice, potatoes, or pasta, you will eat carbohydrates that have a low percentage or load of fat, a clean carbohydrate. The protein, instead of eating from hamburgers or other things, you will eat lean proteins.
Chicken, fish, lean red meats. You will be providing your body with macronutrients without a large load of fat. But here you will find some benefits, but some drawbacks.
The benefit is that you will gain muscle and your body fat percentage will remain low. Your health. .
. it will be great. , but there is a downside here and I have already felt it firsthand and I will share it with you.
To consume all these calories with these healthier foods, there comes a time when you have to eat so much food that, man, it starts to become impossible to eat. It's impressive, man. I remember a time when I was doing a very intense Bulking and I was already weighing more than 115 kilos, and when it was time for me to have a meal, I was still full from the previous meal.
And I had in front of me a meal prep of one kilo of food. And I started to eat and had to push the food down. It even got to the point of feeling nauseous because of all that.
And then there came a moment when I went back to the nutritionist, who at the time was Felipe Donatto, to make adjustments to the diet, to see what had happened with the physique. And I went to his office with the following thought in my head. Man, I'm going to get there and tell him that I can't handle eating all of this anymore.
That I want to reduce the amount of food. He measured everything. ‘Laércio, very good.
’ ‘You are having good results, your weight is increasing nicely and your body fat percentage is staying controlled. ’ ‘We can increase your food intake. ’ Doc, no, man.
I came here to ask you to reduce it. I can't eat everything, man. It's hard, it's bad.
‘Laércio, can we at least maintain it the way it is? ’ Doc, it's hard, but it's okay. I can maintain it.
‘So, you will do the following. ’ ‘We will add liquid calories to your diet. ’ So he added grape juice.
And just so you have an idea, 100% pure grape juice provides 15 grams of carbohydrate. Dude, that's equivalent to almost 100 grams of rice. I didn't need to chew and swallow.
I just drink, easy. And you can also add more servings of WheyProtein during the process. Things that are easier to ingest.
So, if you reach a point in your Bulking where you can't eat anymore, add this. Grape juice is a great strategy, orange juice also works very well. And if you do your Bulking and maintain at least a minimum amount of cardio, like 20 minutes a day, you will have the following benefits.
Your cardiovascular health will improve. Remember that the whole Bulking process can harm all of this? Remember that I talked about insulin sensitivity?
As you eat more carbohydrates, you will spend more time in Bulking, this sensitivity will decrease and harm muscle mass increase, the building of muscle mass. Aerobic exercise improves insulin sensitivity. So, today, regardless of whether it's an athlete or a regular person going through a muscle gain process, I strongly recommend keeping the aerobic exercise.
‘Laércio, but won't I lose calories doing aerobic exercise? ’ ‘Isn't that going to harm my weight gain, my muscle gain? ’ So, it will harm if you don't eat those calories.
So, if you need. . .
For example, here from Rani, 2,500 calories. To fit this surplus and start doing cardio that burns 200 calories a day, wow, guys, it's super simple. Instead of consuming 2,500, he adds those 200 calories and starts consuming 2,700.
He will have the entire process optimized. Never stop doing your cardio. It's super important.
And now, who uses the hormone? Does it do exactly the same as someone who doesn't use the hormone? So, guys, no.
A person who uses the hormone has the entire muscle-building process optimized. So, instead of using a surplus of 300, 500 calories, they can use a higher surplus. Remember those adjustments I mentioned?
Well, there will come a time when your weight will stabilize? So, that process will happen more quickly. Instead of taking, for example, 4 weeks to stabilize weight and needing to make adjustments, it can take 2 or 3 weeks.
Those who use the hormone, in the end, end up accelerating the whole process. Here's a tip for you who don't use the hormone. If you're Bulking, you have to be much more careful not to stay stagnant for too long and also not to accumulate too much fat.
Because if the hormone user optimizes the whole muscle gain process, they also have more difficulty increasing fat. So, it means that if a person uses the hormone, they increase muscle more, accelerate the process more, and find it more difficult to gain fat, meaning they gain less fat. That's why the hormone is praised for those who use it.
You who don't use it, you will have more work, your process will happen more slowly and with less intensity. But you won't deteriorate your health like someone using hormones does. It's about knowing how to make choices in your life.
Someone using hormones will always be worried about the side effects that may arise. But you, who are natural, won't. You will only be concerned with adjusting your diet.
What do you choose? We separated this video here for you, look. These are foods to increase muscle mass.
Exactly so you can eat more comfortably and have this whole process happening. Man, very good video. Click there.
