Submit your tips: Bulking cycles w/ minimal fat gain

[Mdguy]

I am hopefully going to start a bulking phase after Labor Day and always use the situation as an opportunity to experiment with myself to see what works best of me.
I thought it might be good to start a thread where people can submit what has worked for them as far as diet is concerned so others can incorporate these ideas into their regimens. As we all know, each person's body reacts differently to certain stimuli, so what works for one might not work for another, but having the info at hand is very valuable.

As far as myself, I find that a chaos-type diet works well with bulking. Eating about maintenance calories on the heavy workout days and randomly putting low calories and/or lower carb days (less than 100g) on the lighter days has worked well.

Of course, drinking water constantly during the day and nibbling on something is good also to keep the metabolism going

Anybody else have any successful tips I could incorporate?

 

[Welsh power house]

bulking....


chicken, potatoes, red meats, milk(before bed), water, bread, weight gain or protein shake mixed with milk, cereals(oats rule!) and a good multi vitamin sup....

 

[Cackerot69]

Well, eat cleaner foods such as low GI carbs, EFA's, etc.

Also, try alternating carb and fat meals. By this I mean in one meal have your 30-50g of protein (depending on bodyweight and meals/day) and some carbs with little-no fat. Then, your next meal have your protein with some fat with little-no carbs. This prevents the synergistic fat storing effect high fat + insulin spike causes...I can go more in depth if you didn't quite understand.

 

[blood_drinker]

I personally don`t like cacks idea of separating the carbs. I always mix my carbs with protein to minimize the insulin response - something Im not after except post workout. Also, I like protein meals as I need to meet my daily protein requirements and because in itself it is slightly thermogenic. I include protein in all my meals.

Definetely - the key to minimal fat gain - is to eat just slightly over maintenance levels with clean foods. But while this will put on minimal fat gain, it will rob of you potential muscle gains as well.

Eating about maintenance calories on the heavy workout days

Did I read that right? YOu need to go OVER your maintenance even on non workout days - every day you want to be building muscle should be above maintenance - period.

 

[blood_drinker]

Cack - so i misread that. I thought you had carbs separately.

What I am currently attempting to do though is reach my cal # (4000) with clean foods. Realize though, this is very hard to do especially if you are a busy person. This is why sometimes I am forced to rely on junk such as wendys or MCD. But, I try to minimize the crap that is nothing but empty cals (Sugar pop, apple pies etc).
If youre gonna eat junk, eat QUALITY junk. Like 3 BK chicken broilers rather than chicken nuggets.

Peace

 

[Hoffmeister]

MdGuy:

I'm experimenting with something along the same lines, although I think you meant "above maintenance" and not "about maintenance".

I'm trying to basically zig-zag my diet. I'm doing a 4-day split, Mon-Tues Thurs-Fri. Very light cardio/abs on Wed and Sat. On Mon-Tues Thurs-Fri, I'm eating very clean, at or a little above maintenance (between 2700 and 3000 cals). Wed, Sat and Sunday I eat about the same, plus about 1000-1500 cals of extra carbs per day.

I've been maintaining weight with 2700 cals Mon-Fri and the same overfeed on the weekends for the past month. Adding another overfeed on Wed and bumping the cals a little some on the other days will hopefully get some gains going.