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BRIEF BULKING PROGRAM
How Do I Put This into Practice?
1. First off determine your basic calorie needs, our nutrition calculator will
give you a good idea of your maintenance calorie level, and you can then work
out the calorie level for each phase of the diet from the instructions below.
2. Follow the standard athletes diet for food choices, eating frequency and
number of meals. Exceptions will be highlighted below.
3. Start the program by following the over eating phase, then switch to the
under eating phase for 7-10 days.
Phase 1 Over-eating
1. The over eating phase of this program should be continued whilst you are
gaining lean mass at a faster rate than fat mass, ideally don't let the ratio
of lean mass to fat mass gain fall bellow 3:2. Don't exceed 6 weeks on this
stage of the program.
To measure this you either need to use fat calipers or body fat scales. Don't
guess.
2. You need to eat around 1,000 calories over maintenance level in the first
week, for an average person this will be about 12 x bodyweight in pounds + 1,000.
Your rate of weight gain needs to be at, or over, 2lb's per week.
3. Each week you need to add between 250 and 500 calories per day to your diet
to continue to gain weight at or above 2lb's. If you didn't gain 2lb's the previous
week, then use the higher figure.
In the first week you will gain over 2lb's, partly due to the water content
in your intestine increasing to process the extra food. This can sometimes shock
people who mistakenly think they have put masses of fat on in only a few days.
4. Over eating, a little like dieting, becomes more difficult over time as your
body releases enzymes and hormones which will kill your appetite. You need to
ignore these feelings. The easiest way to ensure you are not starting to lower
your calorie level is to eat 'similar' foods each day so that you can judge
portion sizes.
5. When over eating for prolonged periods of time, its important to keep fat
intake low (less than 1g per kilo of body weight). Fat is stored very easily
as body fat when you are eating a diet high in carbohydrates.
Protein levels should be no lower than 1g per pound of body weight.
6. Weight training should be based around heavy, intense training, with progressive
weight increases (try a periodised training program or a high intensity training
program). To encourage significant muscle growth during this bulking program,
training must be progressive, if not fat gain will be excessive.
7. Avoid aerobic exercise as far as possible.
8. Try and get an extra hour of sleep every night.
9. Creatine supplementation will support strength gains and support cell volumisation.
This will help support maximum muscle gains during this phase of the diet.
Phase 2 Under-eating
1. Take your calorie level down to slightly below maintenance levels for 7
to 10 days. Try a calorie level somewhere between 8 and 12 times body weight
in pounds.
2. Fat intake should be around 1g/kilo of body weight and protein levels should
be upwards of 1g per pound of bodyweight. The calorie reduction should come
from carbohydrates. This allows insulin sensitivity to be restored, it also
allows a lowering of insulin levels which will maximise fat loss.
3. In the first 3 days the amount of fluids in the intestine will decrease,
this will cause a few pounds of weight loss, as well as a shrinking in the waistline.
This is not fat loss, although there will be a small amount of fat loss running
alongside this water weight loss. At around the 5th day, insulin sensitivity
is restored. By the 10th day your metabolism will have dropped back to its normal
level.
During the 10 days an average weight loss will be about 5lb's. This weight loss
will be almost all from fat weight loss and water weight loss.
Click
here to learn a greater depth of information about this program.
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