# bodyfat % when bulking



## lukey (Dec 22, 2005)

have been upping my calorie intake over the last few months with a view to adding more size and I wondered what was an acceptable increase in body fat when bulking.

Do you think the maximum bodyfat should vary from person to person or should you never go beyond a certain level...i.e. 20%


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## Carnivore (Apr 7, 2004)

15% max for me, should really be lower if you follow guys like gironda


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## RAIKEY (Jun 30, 2005)

well , from my experience last/this year i,d get to a point where you can build and hold it ,...

dont go too high...

i got to 18 stone summat just after xmas, thort i looked the dogs doo dahs...thats THORT! ...

dare say i,m single figures this week , so my outlook has changed , i know.....

but looking back at the pics of my peak bulk ,.....it wasnt good....at all...

that, and having to deal with it (well....most of it )coming off during a cut, is a real difficult one mentally......

this time i,m gonna stay lean,....and build on it , easier to moniter the true gains, and your always only a week or two away from a "acceptable beach" body

so as carni says....15 % is low enuff to look ok, but your takin in enuff cals to build.....


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## Carnivore (Apr 7, 2004)

so yea, i kinda summed it up in 4 words, and raikey managed to fill half a page to the same conclusion...


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## RAIKEY (Jun 30, 2005)

yes but i had to talk about myself a bit too, in time honoured Raikey fashion......

ME ME ME ME ME !!!!!


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## big (Sep 14, 2004)

The fatter you are when you bulk, the fatter you get. Trust me on this


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## BIG-UNC (Feb 27, 2006)

any pics of you at 18 clem uncle raikey?...unc


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## BIG-UNC (Feb 27, 2006)

i too was 18 stone last year but i looked like fred flinstone !!!!!!!!!!!! honest looked fat as fcuk but that was just off the drink and parmo's evry night


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## Stu (Jan 22, 2005)

i have gone up to 19 - 20% but the higher you go the harder it is to cut. i try not to go above 16% now.


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## hackskii (Jul 27, 2003)

Well you can look at it like this.

Off cycle you can gain 1/2 lb a week (ChefX suggested this), but I have not seen this and if it was this guy is a genetic freak.

So even if you can gain a half lb a week then if you gained over a lb a week you would be putting on half fat and water.

Now when we are talking gear this is a whole nother animal alltogether.

Overfeeding is anabolic and underfeeding can be catabolic.


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## tkd (Feb 27, 2006)

around 15-16% is good, if your body fat is too high it can come to a disadvantage to muscle building this is because fat cells, especially in the abdominal region, produce the aromatase enzyme, which converts testosterone into estrogen. now you know what elevated levels of estrogen can do? water retention, fat gain and lets not forget gynocomastia (the growth of breast tissue in men).

however, you dont want to eliminate estrogen, as often times during a cycle most will want to allow for some estrogen, since it heavily promotes strength and gains as well (increases GH, upgrades the androgen receptor, improves glucose utilization)


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## hackskii (Jul 27, 2003)

Actually they really dont know why it is and Aromatase could be it but I dont think so because when dieting a heavier person loses more bodyfat than a leaner person in perportion of muscle to fat.

So if it was Aromatase then dieting would be the same as weight gain.

Its not.

John below suggests that it is a mystery so I am happy with that.

Written by John M. Berardi.

It was really interesting and this is what I have felt from my own personal experiances in dieting and bulking.

Sorry for the long post:

Q: One big debate in bodybuilding is whether one should bulk up first and

then cut down, or whether one should cut down first and then bulk up?

Which do you think is better?

A: Most popular opinions on this topic suggest that the best way to get

the ideal physique (big AND ripped) is to bulk up first and then try to

diet down. The proponents of this strategy suggest that in bulking up, you

will be adding muscle mass. They further state that this muscle mass will

be helpful, metabolically speaking, when you go to diet down. Since muscle

is the engine that burns fat, doesn't it make sense that with a bigger

engine you will burn more fuel and will get leaner much easier?

Well, although it makes sense intuitively, I'd like to present some data

and an argument that may lead you to rethink this strategy. I pretty much

want to propose that the simplistic idea of bulking up before cutting down

is a relatively useless one. It doesn't take into account how much muscle

and fat you have already. I mean, what if you're 15-20% body fat but only

weigh 160 at a height of 6 ft.? This is a relatively low ratio of lean

body mass to fat mass. So should you still "bulk up" to gain some muscle

and metabolic power before you try to get lean? The answer to this

question and a few more will be addressed below.

Before I talk about this issue though, I want to clearly state that I

doubt there ever will be a legitimate research study examining this

question in healthy male and female weightlifters. I just can't picture

the National Institutes of Health (NIH) throwing big research dollars at a

project designed to figure out how to make already muscular men and women

bigger and more ripped. They tend to fund studies that aim at curing

cancer and heart disease and stuff like that. So this question will

probably never be answered scientifically. But using some other

literature, we can come to some pretty cool conclusions.

The data I'm about to present isn't really new. However, for some reason

this information hasn't trickled down into the bodybuilding community as

of yet. And I'm not sure as to why. I guess it's probably due to the

dogmatic approach of most weight lifters who are guided by tradition

rather than objective science. Geez, I'm starting to sound like the late

Mike Mentzer, aren't I?

Anyway, while ignored in weight lifting, researchers have known for years

that one of the biggest determinants of your muscle loss to fat loss ratio

(when dieting) and your muscle gain to fat gain ratio (when bulking up) is

your initial level of body fatness. Basically the amount of body fat that

you have (percentage and total pounds of fat) will be a major determinant

of how your body responds to over eating or under eating.

Several studies have been done to explore this phenomenon and G.B. Forbes

has compiled the results of these investigations into one review article

(Ann N Y Acad Sci 2000 May;904:359-65). For organizational purposes, I've

split the results up into a weight loss experiment section and a weight

gain experiment section.

Weight Loss Experiments

In several experiments, subjects were underfed to varying degrees in

order to produce weight loss. Here are the results of these experiments

Subjects were given the following three hypocaloric diets to produce

weight loss:

Diet #1 - 0-450 kcal/day

Diet #2 - 500-1000 kcal/day

Diet #3 - 1000+ kcal/day

The interesting results of this study show that:

1. At the same calorie levels, the fatter subjects kept more muscle

and lost more fat.

Let's look at the numbers:

Initial Body FatCaloric IntakeLean Mass Lost

(% of Weight Lost) Fat Lost

(% of Weight Lost)

20 kg (44 lbs)Lowest60%40%

20 kg (44 lbs)Higher20%80%

60 kg (132 lbs)Lowest35%75%

60 kg (132 lbs)Higher10% 90%

I hope it's clear from this table that eating a diet too few in calories

causes a substantial LBM (lean body mass) loss, while eating a higher

calorie (but still hypocaloric diet) preserves more lean mass. In

addition, it's especially interesting to note that the fatter subjects on

both the higher calorie and the lower calorie diets have a remarkable

shift in the muscle loss to fat loss ratio toward more fat loss and less

muscle loss. This shift is especially striking in comparison to what

happens when their leaner counterparts diet.

Several other studies show that this phenomenon is not exclusive to

humans. It is also present in fasting and hibernating mammals:

Initial Body Fat Caloric IntakeLean Mass

(% of Weight Lost) Lost Fat Lost

(% of Weight Lost)

10% fatNone80%20%

30% fatNone40%60%

50% fatNone18%82%

Since all of the above studies were done in non-exercise trained humans

and mammals, further studies were done to determine the effects exercise

on weight loss. If exercise is used in place of, or in addition to calorie

restriction or fasting, more lean body mass is preserved than if there was

no exercise. However the same trends are evident in that the fatter

individuals preserve more lean mass while the leaner individuals lose more

lean mass.

Now that you've seen these data, I think that the take-home message for

dieting should be as follows.

1. Always use exercise in conjunction with diet to promote loss of fat

and preservation of lean mass.

2. Always consider your initial body fat before deciding how severe your

diet should be.

3. When starting a diet with a high level of body fat, your diet can be

more restrictive and/or severe since you will lose the fat

preferentially.

4. As you diet and get leaner, you should adjust your calorie deficit so

that it is actually smaller. So if you start a diet eating 1000 calories

below maintenance, as you get leaner, your daily deficit should decrease

to 500 calories per day.

5. If you don't decrease your calorie deficit as you lose fat, you will

begin to lose an unacceptable amount of lean mass.

Weight Gain Experiments

In several experiments, subjects were overfed to varying degrees in

order to produce weight gain. Here are the results of these experiments

These studies have shown that when overfed, initial body fat level is

also important:

Initial Body FatCaloric IntakeLean Mass Gained

(% of Weight Gained) Fat Gained

(% of Weight Gained)

10 kg (22 lbs)Overfeeding70%30%

20 kg (44 lbs)Overfeeding30%70%

40 kg (88 lbs)Overfeeding20%80%

These striking differences in the ratio of LBM gained to fat gained

illustrate the need to start an overeating phase while lean. In the

leanest subjects, there was a 2 1/3 pound muscle gain for every 1 pound of

fat gained. However, for the fatter subjects, 4 pounds of fat were gained

for every 1 pound of muscle gained.

From these overfeeding studies, it's clear that lean individuals gain less

fat and more muscle when overfeeding when compared to their fatter

counterparts. Since these subjects were not exercise trained, adding

exercise would have probably lead to a shift toward more muscle gain with

less fat gain. Exercise has a nutrient partitioning effect, shuttling

nutrients preferentially toward the lean tissues. As such, you'd expect

more lean gain during exercise training and overfeeding. However, either

way, the trends would probably remain and fatter subjects would gain more

fat during overfeeding than lean individuals.

One of the coolest things about this article is that a predicative

equation was generated that allows us to calculate the amount of muscle

and the amount of fat that we can expect to gain, based on our initial fat

weight. Check it out.

__Lean Mass Gain__

Weight Gain =_______10.4_______

10.4 + initial fat weight (kg)

In addition, this very same equation is valid when dieting for the

prediction of muscle loss and fat loss.

__Lean Mass Loss__

Weight Loss=_______10.4_______

10.4 + initial fat weight (kg)

While not flawless, these equations are handy tools for estimating how

much LBM and fat you may gain or lose when underfeeding or overfeeding. In

addition, they allow us to decide whether it's a good time to try to bulk

up or not.

Therefore, for someone who is 92 kg (200 lbs) and 5% body fat (4.6kg fat),

about 70% of the weight gained during an overfeeding phase can be expected

to be lean body mass (10.4 divided by 10.4 plus 4.6 is equal to 0.70),

while the remaining 30% is expected to be fat weight. However in someone

who is 92kg and 10% body fat (9.2kg of fat), 53% of weight gained will be

lean body mass.

Keep in mind that the opposite is also true. If you're 92 kg (200 lbs) and

5% body fat (4.6% fat), about 70% of the weight lost during a dieting

phase can be expected to be lean body mass.

So perhaps a good idea is to only overfeed when relatively lean and to

diet hard only when over fat. If you're 200 lbs and around 10-15% body

fat, these equations predict that about half the weight you gain will be

fat and half will be muscle. If you try to gain when fatter than 15%, much

of the weight you gain will be fat mass.

I must offer a word of caution, though. Remember that these equations were

mostly generated using diet alone. The addition of weight training and

cardio would have changed things up a bit. In addition, these numbers may

be different if supplements are used. Some supplements change nutrient

partitioning parameters (alpha-lipoic acid, fish oils, presumably

Methoxy-7, etc); others preserve lean body mass when dieting (ephedrine,

caffeine, etc); and others increase protein synthesis (anabolic steroids

and androgens). Any of these factors can change the exact ratios.

However, as I said before, the basic principles remain. When dieting, the

leaner you get, the less your calorie deficit should be or else you'll

lose more LBM than necessary. And, when bulking up, your best bet is to

start lean, as most of the weight you gain will be LBM. If you start fat,

much of your weight gain will be fat gain.

Although this was a roundabout way of answering your question, the bottom

line is that it looks like it is better to diet down first then bulk up

rather than the other way around.


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## lukey (Dec 22, 2005)

nice post hacksii and has gone a long way to answering my concern, My body fat has gone up to around 15% so I just need to keep a lid on that really and not overfeed too much


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## hackskii (Jul 27, 2003)

Now, I wish I was good at calculations as I for the life of me could not figure out the percent of muscle loss in his formula


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## Ironman (Jul 12, 2005)

I dont like to stay to lean when im bulking up. You neeed the extra calories to grow. But then I dont see the point in getting fat (lee priest) either. Just a happy medium is best imo - im not sure what that would translate to in bodyfat % - best to look in the mirror - if you think your to fat then you probably are.


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## RAIKEY (Jun 30, 2005)

^^^ yep yep.....the BF measurements we all take and love to shout out the figure,...are so inacurate anyway,.....

you can take a measurement a one day and get a 4-5% diference if you do it again the next day,.....

the best is to use the mirror and compare it to a condition you have been in before, from piccies etc,....

cant remember what its called but isnt there only one true way to test BFP , i think it involves bieng immersed in a soution of summat and a resistance reading taken, or is it a small elec charge put thru yer????

electrostatically summat or other rings a bell,.....

or am i confused with the shock treatment i used to be on?...lol


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## hackskii (Jul 27, 2003)

Immersion but if you dont let all your breath out you will appear to have more bodyfat.

Theory is that fat floats and muscle sinks, they weight you in water immersed.


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