# Bulking - do you struggle to get your calories in?



## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

*Bulking*​
*Do you struggle to get the calories in every day?*

Yes627.27%I do it without much trouble1045.45%I wish I could eat more!627.27%


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Thought this might make an interesting poll. Some of us struggle to meet their caloric needs every day, some do it fairly comfortably, others are sometimes left wishing their TDEE was higher so they could eat more. Which one are you?

I've changed over the past few years. Even after a couple of years of lifting, I would sometimes struggle to eat enough and would often have to force in the calories by making a mega-calorie shake. These days though, I just wanna eat all the time. I bulk on 3500 and I find myself showing restraint, a lot of the time. Good for me in a way as it makes me go for stuff that's gonna fill me up more for the calories I've eaten rather than eating crap all the time.


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## Ross S (Jan 31, 2014)

I'mNotAPervert! said:


> Thought this might make an interesting poll. Some of us struggle to meet their caloric needs every day, some do it fairly comfortably, others are sometimes left wishing their TDEE was higher so they could eat more. Which one are you?
> 
> I've changed over the past few years. Even after a couple of years of lifting, I would sometimes struggle to eat enough and would often have to force in the calories by making a mega-calorie shake. These days though, I just wanna eat all the time. I bulk on 3500 and I find myself showing restraint, a lot of the time. Good for me in a way as it makes me go for stuff that's gonna fill me up more for the calories I've eaten rather than eating crap all the time.


 I love eating, so I don't find it a problem. What I do find problematic is finding the right calorie number to bulk while remaining lean. I've been slowly ramping up calories since I last cut and I'm now sitting at 2900 cals, but I've only been adding around 0.5 lbs per week.

What would you say is possible to gain per week without adding fat?


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Ross S said:


> I love eating, so I don't find it a problem. What I do find problematic is finding the right calorie number to bulk while remaining lean. I've been slowly ramping up calories since I last cut and I'm now sitting at 2900 cals, but I've only been adding around 0.5 lbs per week.
> 
> What would you say is possible to gain per week without adding fat?


 Depends entirely on your experience level as well as what drugs you're taking mate. A total newbie can gain .5lbs of solid muscle mass per week, whilst someone with a few years experience would do well to gain that much per month if they're natty. As we know, a 500 calorie surplus = about 1lb of weight gain per week, so it's just taking that into consideration and measuring that up to your circumstances.


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## TREACLE (Jun 6, 2016)

I have a huge appetite. Bulking is the easy part. It's cutting I find challenging. I love food and hate cardio.


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

I'mNotAPervert! said:


> As we know, a 500 calorie surplus = about 1lb of weight gain per week


 Think you might be thinking of the (approximate) calorie deficit needed to lose 1lb of fat there? I don't think I've ever seen a figure for the calorie surplus to gain 1lb of muscle.


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## lewdylewd (May 18, 2015)

Ultrasonic said:


> Think you might be thinking of the (approximate) calorie deficit needed to lose 1lb of fat there? I don't think I've ever seen a figure for the calorie surplus to gain 1lb of muscle.


 The same deficit that will produce 1lb weight loss (roughly 3500cal or equivalent to 500cal ED for a week) will be the same surplus required to gain 1lb.

How much of this 1lb is muscle and how much of it is fat is down to training, diet, AAS etc.


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

lewdylewd said:


> The same deficit that will produce 1lb weight loss (roughly 3500cal or equivalent to 500cal ED for a week) will be the same surplus required to gain 1lb.


 Only if you're talking about gaining 1lb of fat. You can do an approximate calculation for fat as you're simply adding or removing fat from storage, but the process of forming muscle and the weight gain associated with it is much more complicated.


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## lewdylewd (May 18, 2015)

Ultrasonic said:


> Only if you're talking about gaining 1lb of fat. You can do an approximate calculation for fat as you're simply adding or removing fat from storage, but the process of forming muscle and the weight gain associated with it is much more complicated.


 I suppose that would make more sense. I'd always been under the impression that 500cal a day surplus would gain roughly 1lb a week, but seems I've been wrong.

I've never been a calorie counter anyway, too me it's easy if I want to gain weight I'll eat more if I want to loose weight I'll eat less. I can gauge this pretty well (well enough for my goals anyway) without counting.


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

lewdylewd said:


> I suppose that would make more sense. I'd always been under the impression that 500cal a day surplus would gain roughly 1lb a week, but seems I've been wrong.
> 
> I've never been a calorie counter anyway, too me it's easy if I want to gain weight I'll eat more if I want to loose weight I'll eat less. I can gauge this pretty well (well enough for my goals anyway) without counting.


 I count calories but make adjustments based on fat gain. I don't know what my maintenance or surplus is, and actually right now I'm varying my calorie intake day-to-day a fair bit.


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## lewdylewd (May 18, 2015)

Ultrasonic said:


> I count calories but make adjustments based on fat gain. I don't know what my maintenance or surplus is, and actually right now I'm varying my calorie intake day-to-day a fair bit.


 Yeah I think alot of people over think the actaul numbers surplus=weight gain deficit=weight loss.

PS is your name a reference to the 90s dance act? If so :thumb prefer a bit of TTF myself though.


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## AK-26 (May 29, 2011)

Always had a s**t appetite so its a struggle most times.

It feels like I'm constantly force feeding and It's not like I'm on crazy kcals either, only 3500-4000kcals.


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## GeordieOak70 (Sep 16, 2013)

Most people eat to live I live to eat  so bulking is easy infact I eat too much I cant handle a cut it kills me going under 4k cals lol.


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Ultrasonic said:


> Think you might be thinking of the (approximate) calorie deficit needed to lose 1lb of fat there? I don't think I've ever seen a figure for the calorie surplus to gain 1lb of muscle.


 I said *weight *gain, mate - not all muscle, just overall weight. Read my post again for context


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

I'mNotAPervert! said:


> I said *weight *gain, mate - not all muscle, just overall weight. Read my post again for context


 I realised you'd said weight, but unless you're talking about someone trying to gain nothing but fat I don't really think that 500 kcal figure is meaningful I'm afraid. I think we'd both agree that anyone gaining even mostly fat is doing something wrong...


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Ultrasonic said:


> I realised you'd said weight, but unless you're talking about someone trying to gain nothing but fat I don't really think that 500 kcal figure is meaningful I'm afraid. I think we'd both agree that anyone gaining even mostly fat is doing something wrong...


 Absolutely, but you've taken what I said a little bit out of context there mate. If you were to be gaining 1lb of actual bodyweight weight per week due to a 500 surplus, that'd be a combination of muscle and fat. How much of that is muscle depends entirely on your experience level and what you're taking. Since the guy was asking what's the most I reckon can be gained per week, I told him that the 500kcal /day = 1lb of weight can be taken into account to help decide that based on your current circumstances. Similar to how a 1000kcal deficit will see you losing 2lb a week, but how much of that will be fat and how much will be muscle is determined by various factors.


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

I'mNotAPervert! said:


> If you were to be gaining 1lb of actual bodyweight weight per week due to a 500 surplus, that'd be a combination of muscle and fat.


 But why would you gain 1lb of weight from a 500 kcal surplus if it were a mix of fat and muscle? My point is that you wouldn't. Or at least I've never seen anything to suggest this might be the case.

Let me see if I can explain what I'm saying better.

The idea of needing approximately a 500 kcal per day deficit to lose a pound of fat is based on the following calculation. Fat tissue is on average about 87% fat (the rest being water and other cellular stuff), so that 1lb (454g) of fat tissue contains 0.87*454 = 395g of actual fat. Then using the standard 9 kcal per gram figure this gives us 395*9 = 3,555 kcal for 1lb of fat.

Note that the fat calculation is simply a estimate of the energy content. If you do the same calculation for muscle tissue it would be bit a like doing this for a piece of meat in the supermarket which we know has a lot less than 3,500 kcal per lb (that would be 770 kcal per 100g). Muscle in the body is a little different in that it has more blood etc in it, and the actual figure is about 700 kcal per lb (154 kcal per 100g)*.

If you purely went on the energy content of the tissue this would mean gaining 1lb of muscle would take a total of 700 kcal; equivalent to a surplus of only 100 kcal per day. BUT there will also be energy needed to repair muscle after training, and for the actual growth. I have no idea how much though (anyone?) which means I don't know how much energy it would take to form 1lb of extra muscle tissue.

Unless the true energy requirement to gain 1lb of muscle is actually very close to the 3500 kcal figure for fat, then a 500 kcal per day surplus won't give us even approximately a 1lb per week weight gain if any appreciable amount of muscle is made. It would of course be right for someone gaining nothing but fat though.

*I'm taking the data here from the following article of Lyle McDonalds, which is covering similar but slightly different ground (although he does essentially make the point I am in passing):

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/3500-calorie-rule.html/


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## nWo (Mar 25, 2014)

Ultrasonic said:


> But why would you gain 1lb of weight from a 500 kcal surplus if it were a mix of fat and muscle? My point is that you wouldn't. Or at least I've never seen anything to suggest this might be the case.
> 
> Let me see if I can explain what I'm saying better.
> 
> ...


 I've had this article bookmarked for about a year :lol: But this is what I was saying about the context. He asked about muscle gain/fat gain/calories etc. I could only give him a very rough guideline. Going into detail about this and confusing him further would have been doing him a disservice IMO. I did though in a round-about way say that experience level and drug use influence the estimated figure, so all you can do is estimate as a starting point and go from there, so 1lb per week on a 500kcal surplus may not be an exact science for weight/muscle gain, but it's a decent ballpark figure.


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## mrwright (Oct 22, 2013)

I've always found it easy to eat but recently I've had to switch to a cut because I can't get the calories in without just eating s**t


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## Ultrasonic (Jul 13, 2004)

I'mNotAPervert! said:


> ...so all you can do is estimate as a starting point and go from there, so 1lb per week on a 500kcal surplus may not be an exact science for weight/muscle gain, but it's a decent ballpark figure.


 I agree that ultimately all anyone can do is pick a vaguely sensible starting calorie intake and then adjust from there depending on results. For someone who wasn't previously weight training adding 500 kcal to their previous maintenance level isn't a crazy starting point.

(I don't agree that 1lb per week from a 500 kcal surplus can be justified as a decent ballpark figure, since there is no link whatsoever between it and the muscle growth that should be the focus of a bulk. But it's a fairly moot point in practice  .)


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## 19072 (Aug 11, 2010)

I find it difficult to eat when bulking. I read guys on here taking 7000+ kcals a day in whilst bulking. I struggle to get 4000kcal in me..

Unless i just eat shitty food then ill pile on the weight but it would be unwanted fat gains..


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## Smitch (Dec 29, 2008)

most people could eat crap food all day long but i struggle to eat a lot of things like rice and pasta which would make up a large proportion of my food if looking to gain weight.

I struggle to eat enough as it is, i forget to eat a lot of the time as i don't like eating when i'm not hungry and cannot see how people can force in 5, 6, 7000 cals a day unless they are super dedicated.

I do tend to eat very large portions though, normally 3 big meals a day with a shake or two and snacks.


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## Eddias (Dec 21, 2015)

I struggle to bulk and add Muscle versus fat. if its just fat easy, easy easy.


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## erny23 (Aug 31, 2016)

mrwright said:


> I've always found it easy to eat but recently I've had to switch to a cut because I can't get the calories in without just eating s**t


 Nothing wrong with that, IIFYM


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## dentylad (Nov 19, 2011)

I've restarted training properly after a few year off. After a week I can say getting in my protein requirements is quite easy but I'm trying to get my carbs in too and after calorie counting what I've ate, my carbs are only about 100g-200g more than my protein intake per day which is about 170g @1g per lb bodyweight.

Can't complain, I feel really great and i'm covered in stretch marks. No juice or creatine or even shakes.

Peanut butter, pasta, sardines, eggs, milk and chicken.


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