Here are the daily macros for a 185-pound person who trains for 90 minutes a day:
Protein: 185 grams (1.0 gram per pound of bodyweight)
Carbohydrates: 278 grams (1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight )
Fat: 111 grams (0.6 grams per pound of bodyweight )
You can also get macro numbers by using a macronutrient calculator. Do it both ways and compare!
Getting adequate calories and protein to grow is the ultimate challenge! A quality gainer can be the game-changer that finally makes the scale go up.
Keep Track Of Your Weight And Adjust Accordingly
As you begin your bulking plan, weigh yourself on days 1, 4, and 7 to see if there is a trend. If your weight stayed within 0.5-1 percent of your body weight or if you lost weight, add 10 percent more calories to each of your macros.
Stepping on the scale
If you gained more than 1 percent of your body weight during the week, keep your macronutrient goals as they are, then reassess your weight change after another week of consistent eating.
How And When To Consume Your Daily Protein
Now that you know how much protein to eat every day, you need to understand how much protein to consume at each meal to maximize the muscle-building response.
Most people will benefit from consuming 25-35 grams of protein every 3-5 hours. Smaller individuals should target the lower end, while larger individuals should target the higher end. Once you determine your daily protein goal, distribute this equally across four to six meals each day. In the example above, the 185-pound person should consume about 31 calories per meal.
That can mean a lot of meal prep. One way to get around it is to make protein shakes.
Make sure the protein you're consuming comes from high-quality sources, rather than trace grams from non-protein foods. Get your complete proteins from lean poultry, beef, pork, seafood, eggs, whey, and dairy. Don't count every single gram of the incomplete protein you might get from your oats, rice, or nut butters. These incomplete proteins lack the nutrients you need to maximize the muscle-building response.
How To Progress Through A Bulking Phase
Now you know how to consume your daily calorie needs. To start bulking, add 10 percent more calories. In the example above, 10 percent of 2,852 calories is 285 calories. They would add 285 calories to their previous allowance, now consuming 3,137 calories per day.
This first adjustment should come in the form of additional carbohydrate. To determine the amount of carbohydrate to add to your day, divide the new additional calories by four to get grams of carbohydrate. Try to distribute it evenly across your pre-workout, intra-workout, and post-workout meals.
Meat, potatoes, and broccoli
After you make this first adjustment, continue tracking your weight three times per week, comparing your weekly average gain or loss to the previous weeks. You may be tempted to constantly adjust your caloric intake. For best results over the long term, stay on your adjusted plan for 2-4 weeks before you make any more adjustments.
Your overall bulking goal should be to gain 0.25-0.50 percent of your body weight each week. If you gain weight too quickly, you may end up gaining more fat mass than you want. If you don't gain weight, you probably won't be building much muscle.
If you're not meeting this goal, add an additional 10 percent to your current daily calorie allowance. If your goal was to consume 2,000 calories a day, add 10 percent to that to get a daily total of 2,200 calories per day.
You first added extra calories by adding extra carbs. As you keep adjusting your daily calories, extra carbs should come from both carbohydrates and fats. Shoot for getting 50-75 percent of these new calories from carbs and the rest from fats.
Bulking phases usually last 10-14 weeks due to a kind of built-in limiter. As you continue to increase the number of calories you eat per day, your body will start adding less muscle and more fat. Just as being lean increases insulin sensitivity, gaining weight through a bulking phase decreases your insulin sensitivity, causing more glucose to get converted into fat.
Transition Carefully From Bulking To Maintenance
Once you finish your bulking phase, you need to transition to a post-bulking maintenance phase. This phase is characterized by a slight reduction in calories, mostly from carbs. This reduction serves as a "reset" to help your body start improving its insulin sensitivity and grow accustomed to carrying more muscle than before.
If you try to transition from a bulking phase immediately into a dieting phase, you significantly increase the likelihood that you'll lose the muscle mass you just worked so hard to put on. The post-bulking maintenance phase should last 4-6 weeks. Afterward, you're ready to transition into another bulking phase or a dieting phase
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