2907: How to Clean Bulk Without Getting Fat (The Exact Formula)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history, approaching half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is on clean bulking.

What is it and how to do it properly? By the way, we have trainers and coaches here at Mind Pump that can help you with your diet and your nutrition. They'll coach you through it. And these are mind pump coaches, so they're good. And we have a code for 50% off. Go to mindpumpnutrition.com. Use the code MP50

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The topic for today's episode, clean bulking. What is it and how can you do it? Let's get to it. Justin's a big dirty bulker.

I love bulking, you guys. He's a big dirty bulker. Let's break it down first for people who aren't familiar. So bulking is a term that relates to trying to gain size or muscle, right?

Strength usually accompanies this. Now, we've changed the term to mean other things, or should I say we've used different terminology that's also describing clean bulking

in a way to make it more appealing to certain people. For example, a reverse diet. A reverse diet is actually a clean bulk. And the reason why we call it a reverse diet

is because when you tell, in particular women, we're going to bulk you, even though you're trying to lose body fat, they will run in the opposite direction.

Well, I think another thing that it implies is that it's controlled, right? Because it's a diet. reverse diet, you're still following a plan where bulk doesn't necessarily signal.

It sounds like there's no plan. It doesn't signal plan, really. Yeah, bulk sounds like you're off your diet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're trying to get big. Yeah, but this has been around for a long time. Strength athletes, athletes and general fighters have done this for a long time. Really, it's the attempt at trying to build strength and muscle.

And what comes along with that is like a faster metabolism. This is why bulking or reverse dieting is attractive to people who want to lose weight because through this process, you speed up your metabolism. Through this process, in many cases, especially if you're somebody that chronically diets

or has always tried to get leaner and you've never tried to do something like this, this can be very healthy. It can balance out hormones. It can make you feel a lot better.

It can get rid of pain. I've had many clients who were so afraid of gaining weight. They always ate in this really controlled way. And then we put them in a clean bulk strategy, and they feel so good.

They have tons of energy, tons of strength, the result of which being more muscle and eventually later on less body fat. So a clean bulk is trying to build muscle with minimal fat gain. Dirty bulk is no strategy. Dirty bulk is I'm just going to eat a bunch of food.

Just a lot of calories all at once. I'm just going to eat a ton of food and just trying to gain weight on the scale. Let's be honest. It's what it looks like for most of us.

This is how I bulked as a kid. I thought that's how you had to do it, to be honest. Well, I think if I had done it, I'll be honest. That's a good question, Justin, or good statement.

Because had I tracked and done things properly, a quote-unquote clean bulk would have resulted in more muscle mass for me as a kid. Oh, yeah. I just – I knew I needed to eat more. And so what I did as a kid – and I was a skinny kid.

Uh, so what I did is just ate as much as possible and ate as much garbage as possible because I could eat more of it. Um, but had I done this the right way, I would have ended up with more lean body mass. I'll never forget that this, this, the first time this really, really hit me was I was,

uh, I want to say 21. So I was still young and I knew better at this time, but still I was kind of stuck in that trap of just trying to get big. And I had a competition or I entered into a competition with my fitness manager and

my assistant manager. And so the three of us said, let's see who can gain the most like muscle and strength, uh, over 60 days. I think it was. And I went hard. I didn't want to lose. I went hard. I ate as much as I could. It was a lot of garbage. And I don't remember how much weight I gained, but I got pretty heavy. I almost got to 240 pounds, tested my body fat, uh, which I had

tested before I started the bulk. And the vast majority of the weight that I gained was body fat. And when I went on the cut, I went back to where I was before. So a good, clean bulk builds lean body mass that you can hold on to later when you want to cut. A good, clean bulk looks like you're building muscle, not just gaining a bunch of sloppy weight. I think this is actually really

common even in the competitive world. I saw a lot of this. And I had similar experiences as you did.