THE NUTRITION POST: WEIGHT GAIN, LOSS, TRAINING, AND AN ARGUMENT AGAINST LEAN BULKING

I’ve once again accomplished what the internet deems impossible: getting lean without counting calories or macros. 

More specifically, I got lean and added 4lbs of bodyweight, with a good amount going to the shoulders, trap and lats based off that photo.  And I’m under no delusion that I’m bodybuilder lean, and, in fact, I’m most likely bodybuilder fat, but given how many times my photos end up on nattyorjuice whenever I get down to this level of leanness, it’s enough for this discussion.

EDIT: I've since dropped 19lbs since those photos, using the methods outlined further down and have gotten to what I imagine anyone would call lean.

Nutrition, as it relates to the pursuit of getting bigger and stronger, remains a topic that blows my mind when I see it discussed online.  I am willing to cop to the idea that it can get complicated in terms of health and human longevity, but as far as getting big and strong goes, it’s just so stupidly simple to me, yet dudes screw it up ALL the time.  I’m hoping to just write a definitive “THE” nutrition post here as it relates to how I specifically employ it, and with that those who want to emulate my approach have the tools to use it.  I’m going to break down the sections and give headers and stuff to make it easier to navigate, as I anticipate this will be a long post.

BACKGROUND/ABOUT ME

If you ever want inspiration to get bigger, hang out with pro-strongman

When I started training 20 years ago, the only people that counted calories were either bodybuilders in competition prep or people suffering from obsessive compulsive/eating disorders.  The notion of counting calories and macronutrients was laughable, and employed as a joke when you wanted to razz your training buddies.  Atkins became popular around that time (no, not keto [even though it is a ketogenic diet]: actual Atkins diet) and we all became aware that carbs were a thing, and at that point there were some folks that experienced some paradigm shifts away from high carb/low fat forward high fat/low carb, but protein was always understood to be important.  I was definitely among those that gravitated toward high fat/low carb, because it made sense back then, and still makes sense to me to this day.  Keep in mind: I still have never counted macros, hence I’ve never (to my knowledge) been in Ketosis: I’ve just aimed to keep carbs low day to day.  The only time I eat carbs are around training, which seems to coincide with the majority opinion on the matter.

The other thing to know about me is that I don’t care about variety and I like saving time with decisions.  I’ve had the same haircut since 2004, and it’s one that requires no comb.  I’ve driven the same car since 2008.  If I find a piece of clothing I like, I tend to buy a few copies of it so that deciding on what to wear in the morning is simple.  And the same relates to food.  I can eat the same thing at the same time every day and have no issue with that.  I ate the exact same lunch everyday of high school: 2 PBJs, a tin of fruit, a protein bar and a bottle of water.  I don’t care how most food tastes, and will often throw a bunch of food together to save space.

Ground beef mixed with riced cauliflower and a can of tomatoes

2 chicken breasts, cauliflower, an avocado and some greek yogurt

9 whole eggs, bacon, an avocado, cheese, sour cream and a can of tomatoes.  And to clarify, this is ONE meal

This “high speed/low drag” approach suits me.  If it doesn’t suit you, my methods probably won’t work.

BASELINE DIET

Not a bad approach honestly

With the “about me” above established, the basis of my diet is meat and vegetables.  There are other ways to get proteins and fats, but that works for me.  Most nuts tend to upset my digestion, so I keep away from them, and I’ve never cared to experiment with non-meat protein sources, aside from protein supplements.

I keep to the traditional 3 meals a day, with a post dinner snack that is typically protein rich (these days it’s a quest bar or similar low carb protein bar, but cottage cheese can work).  On lifting days, I will eat a small pre-training snack with some simple carbs in it (1 cup of breakfast cereal with some milk for example) and post lifting I’ll have a protein shake of 2 scoops of protein, a protein scooper full of PB fit, 1 cup-ish of Fairlife skim milk and some whipped cream.  I don’t eat anything extra for conditioning/cardio days.

Since I don’t weigh my food, I simply have an eyeball idea of what “enough” meat is at a meal, and I don’t limit myself on vegetables.  I don’t try to kid myself on vegetables either.  Corn isn’t a vegetable, neither are potatoes (sweet or regular), carrots, peas, etc.  If in doubt, stick with non-iceberg lettuce, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.  In fact, download the Jon Andersen “Deep Water” ebook and look at the Deep Water approved foodlist.   Jon’s approach to nutrition is almost exactly what I do.  If you can’t eyeball a serving of meat, I genuinely don’t understand you, but you could also use a trick Jim Wendler talks about in “5/3/1 Forever” where you can use your hand to measure foot.  Palm sized servings, fist sized servings, finger sized servings, etc. 

I never drink alcohol.  It’s not good for you.

GAINING WEIGHT


Learn from the greats

 I always endeavor to phase in small changes to get results, whether it’s training or nutrition, gaining or losing weight.  So when it comes to gaining, since I’m not counting calories or macros, rather than try to eat more at eat meal, I simply try to eat more MEALS.  You can call them snacks if that makes it easier, but either way, the point is to eat food more often than when you’re maintaining weight.  Typically the first place I add a meal is between breakfast and lunch.  From there, just keep finding places between meals to add food.  Since you’re keeping your 3 meals the same, this makes measuring effectiveness super simple.  If you’re not gaining weight, add another meal.

Eventually, this DOES get unsustainable, as you can only add so many meals until you’re just eating all the time, so when that happens, it’s again not a question of eating more OF the food you have at meals (increasing portion sizes), but, instead, adding MORE food TO the meals.  The most immediate place to do this is the pre and post training meals.  I’ll give an example with my post training meal.

My day to day post workout shake is already somewhat elaborate, but that’s because it gives me things to TAKE AWAY when fat loss comes (will discuss later).  But let’s take it for what it is: 1 cup of milk, 2 scoops of protein, 1 scoop of PB fit and some whipped cream.  Now that I want to add weight, instead of putting that in a shaker, I put it in a bowl and I mix it with 1 cup of breakfast cereal.  I’ll eat that until I stop gaining weight with it, at which point I’ll now throw in 1 cup of oatmeal.  Eat that until I don’t gain weight with it, and now I add honey.  Etc etc.  For the pre-workout meal, you can do the exact same thing.  Add some honey toast on top of your cereal and milk, or go super dirty and go for Pop-tarts.

For your meals that you’re already eating, you can start adding to them too as the need arises.  And again: you don’t have to mess with portion sizes at all: just add different foods.  I am a big fan of different meat protein sources in a meal, having a meal of steak and ribs, beef and chicken, pork and turkey, etc etc.  Additionally, this could be a time to introduce some less strict protein/fat sources.  Add cheese or sour cream, add half an avocado, mix some PB fit onto the food, etc etc.  Once again, stupidly simple: we’re not changing portion sizes, we’re adding more food period.

TRAINING FOR WEIGHT GAIN


A library of classics

The big thing to keep in mind with how I eat is that eating is ALWAYS there to support training: not the other way around.  This means, I don’t chase scale weight and I don’t aim to always gain weight each week: I train VERY hard when I want to gain weight, and then I eat the way I described above in order to recover from that training.  This allows for muscular growth, rather than the infamous “dreamer bulk”, where all that was gained is fat.  If you’re not training hard enough to grow and you’re eating like you are, you simply get fat.

So how do we ensure we’re training hard enough?  When you gain weight, you have to make your body fit the program, whereas when you lose weight you make the program fit your body.  That means that, when we lose weight, we use autoregulation (will discuss specifically in that section), but for weight gain I like programs with fixed percentages, sets and reps.  Specifically programs that have all of that and are TOUGH.  The one I always advocate is Jon Andersen’s Deep Water program, which I have written of extensively in the past, and that I still maintain to this day as the most effective program I’ve ever run.  I’ve also seen it transform other lifters, so I know it’s not a fluke.  The percentage, sets and reps are all fixed on the program, and it’s a total ball buster.  The ONLY way you will get through it is if you eat big enough to recover from the workouts, and when you do that, you gain muscle.  Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 Building the Monolith is another fantastic example.  There are very few AMRAP sets in the program, everything else is fixed, and if you work at the top end of all the assistance work, it’s a brutal program where, once again, you must eat to recover.  Super Squats is yet another fine example of a program where YOU have to change yourself in order to survive the program.  I’ve never run Smolov, but from the people I’ve heard that actually made it all the way through, eating like it was a job was critical to the success of that.

The point here is: don’t wing it, and don’t run a program that allows you to slack off.  PHUL, PHAT, PPL, etc, are all super popular and yet I see a bunch of kids failing to gain muscle on them, and it’s most likely because there’s too much room to slack off on them if you’re so inclined.  Those will be effective choices to come down from weight gain and maintain, but when you want to gain muscle, you need something where there’s a definite number that MUST be reached and the only way to do it is by eating big enough to recover and get there.  It’s also worth appreciating that the 4 programs I mentioned (DW, BtM, SS and Smolov) all BUILD to something at the end and have fixed lengths, vs something to be run indefinitely.  Having that sort of vector will guide weight gain well.

IF, for some reason, you’re simply not going to do that, then the approach with diet ALSO works with training: add stuff.  Take your root/base program and add in another day of activity (ideally conditioning, but lifting can also work).  Once you can recover from that, start adding in the “snacks” by getting some exercises BETWEEN your exercises.  This is a great time to bring in super/giant sets if you’re not already doing them, as it allows you to add in more work without adding in a whole bunch of time.  Going with the whole “snacks” thing, I tend to keep these movements on the smaller side, going for assistance work rather than adding in heavy compound work.  And you can keep adding on and on to giant sets.  I was running a 4 movement giant set on my press days of some sort of press, bodyweight dips, DB lateral raises and face pulls.  A lotta small movements will add up.

If you do this right, it’s never going to be a question of “am I gaining too much fat”, but “am I not eating enough to recover from my training.”  That’s a GOOD position to be in.

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST LEAN BULKING

Fat loss remains the easiest goal to achieve.  For proof of concept, think about how many people brag about losing absurd amounts of weight and contrast that with the amount of people that can brag about building large amounts of muscle. The fact remains that fat is far easier to lose than muscle is to gain.  I’ll discuss the easy way to lose fat when I discuss fat loss in general, but once we embrace this idea, it demonstrates why the goal of lean bulking is pretty goofy.  Endeavoring to remain lean at ALL times is purely some Instagram famous silliness with trainees thinking they need to be photoshoot ready at all times.  The truth is, so long as you don’t let yourself get wildly out of control with fat growth (which, if you use the above, you will not be able to do), getting to “lean enough for the summer” shape takes weeks rather than months.

But beyond that, lean bulking fails because it INHIBITS the trainee from being able to pursue training related goals and, in turn, substantial physical improvement.  As I wrote above: nutrition supports training, not the other way around.  So when trainees try to take on the approach of lean bulking by only having a small caloric surplus, they grant themselves the ability to only train slightly above their normal ability, if at all.  Substantial physical growth comes about as a result of substantial training phases, and without the recovery fuel necessary to pursue these phases, the growth simply isn’t going to happen.  It means that attempts to lean bulk are attempts at mediocrity, POSSIBLY adding some insignificant amount of muscle by training exactly as hard as one had before and adding a handful of calories on top of it.  But you’re also going to most likely add a small amount of fat too with that surplus, especially with such lack of training intensity: you’re just experiencing such small growth on BOTH ends that you’re not observing any real change in either direction.

Instead, when one trains hard enough to require a significant surplus to recover, one gets significant results in muscular growth, and can quickly trim away any excess fat before pursuing more growth.  Because, in truth, fat loss phases are like a vacation from weight gain phases, for fat loss is FAR easier.  I’ll explain in that section.

LOSING WEIGHT


Let's talk portion sizes

I have upset a LOT of people with the sentiment I’m about to share, but it’s the honest truth: fat loss is easy.  The reason being is that fat loss is about INactivity.  To GAIN weight, we had to keep doing.  We had to cook all the meals, EAT all the meals, typically clean up after the meals, do a LOT of training, etc etc.  It’s a very busy time.  For fat loss, what we do is…nothing.  It’s true: when you do nothing, you lose fat.  The real word for that is “starve”, but the point remains.  To lose fat, all we have to do is NOT eat.

What if you get hungry?  That’s fine: be hungry. 

Much like with weight gain, it’s about phasing things.  You don’t want to just suddenly cut out EVERYTHING you were doing when you were gaining weight, because what the hell are you going to do when weight loss stalls?  Instead, start bringing out the things that you brought in.  I do tend to cut the carbs out of the pre/post training meals first, just because they’re a quick kill and now I’ve greatly reduced carbs.  After that, you can either eliminate extra meals or the extra food at your meals, but either way it remains the same: phase things out AS NEEDED.  If you’re losing weight, keep doing what you’re doing until it doesn’t work, and then try to take away something else.  I keep protein high through the process, and will cut fats before I cut protein.  Look at leaner protein sources as needed and cut out the stuff that has extra junk associated with it.

It's simply a game of patience at this point.  The weight comes off as long as you’re consistent.  It IS worth noting that, for the first couple of weeks, you’re actually going to look worse than you were when you started.  When you’re at the peak of your weight gain, your muscles are full of glycogen and water and look very full.  When you start cutting that stuff away, your muscles are going to fall flat yet you won’t have lost enough actual weight to see any impact on your midsection of muscular definition, so you’re now just a smaller chubby dude, which is a bad look.  HOWEVER, if you stay the course, that sorts itself out.  Just quit looking at yourself in the mirror so much.

TRAINING WHILE LOSING WEIGHT


You are bound to find SOMETHING useful in this book

As I wrote in the section on weight gain, with fat loss, we have to make the training match US.  It’s no secret that food is anabolic and a source of energy, and that when we have a lot of it we can accomplish great things.  HOWEVER, we can STILL do great things in a caloric deficit: we just have to be ready to adapt to the days when our energy is low.  That means that programs that employ some manner of auto-regulation are key here, while those that employ fixed sets and reps based off percentages aren’t going to be idea.  5/3/1 does a fantastic job of accounting for this, either by using anchor programs that allow for AMRAP sets (so it’s up to you on that particular day to determine how hard you push) OR programs wherein you can select your training max at the start based off how you are performing.  Brian Alsruhe’s “Darkhorse Program” has the trainee work up to a max for THAT DAY and then uses that max to determine percentage work.  Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards, despite the name, is about working up to maxes for the day on both the max effort and repetition effort day.  The advanced program in Deep Water is perfectly suited for this. There are other programs out there like that as well: seek them out and use them intelligently.  The point is, whereas with weight gain we were training to build ourselves up, here we train to express all that strength we build. 

And as before with weight gain training, things get taken out during weight loss training.  We have less calories, so we have less recovery, so we can’t do as much.  Conditioning workouts can get reduced in terms of intensity, volume, or frequency.  Assistance exercises can be trimmed away.  Extra training days can vanish, etc.  Wait until you need to reduce training before you do: ride it out for as long as you can, but don’t hold on longer than you should, as  that’s going to cause you to burnout.  Thankfully, fat loss is a quick process, and once you are where you want to be you can either ride that out or immediately transition back to gaining weight again.