As a much younger man, admiring the muscular physiques of the pharmacologically enhanced men on the covers of FLEX and Muscle & Fitness, I embarked upon a “mass gain” phase. I ate a lot of food, lifted a lot of weights, and grew like the proverbial weed. The growth was fat of course, but I looked pretty big in my clothes. I then dieted off the fat and ended up pretty much back where I started. Thus ended my bulk and cut experiments.
At a Fat Free Mass Index of just under 22, I am well shy of the maximum amount of muscle I should be able to carry upon my skeletal frame. I’ve written before about my skepticism in adding any appreciable muscle at my age, seeing how I haven’t actually been able to accomplish it in years. However, to be fair, I’ve basically been on a long, steady diet of maintenance to just below maintenance calories. I’ve not done a proper muscle-building caloric surplus in many turns of the calendar pages.
I am currently at somewhere around 10.3% body fat according to my newly purchased Skulpt Chisel, a fancy device using fancy technology to comfortably measure one’s body composition. If I was ever going to engage in a bulk, now is the time. When one is lean, as I am now, extra calories tend to partition more toward skeletal muscle tissue than adipose tissue. To a point of course. Too many Krispie Kremes still end up on your ass.
With just about a week under my belt of a high carb, high protein, low fat diet, I will try to exercise extreme patience and give it one more week before I make any caloric changes. This should allow everything to stabilize, my body to soak up all the water it’s going to soak up with the newfound glycogen stores, and my average weight will ultimately level out. So 1 week from tomorrow, I will plug in my two weeks worth of data and commence on a bulking strategy.
The plan is to increase calories slightly and continue to train as per usual. I will make adjustments based on weekly results (which I had great success with in my 33-lb fat loss journey a few years ago) and stay on the gain train until my Skulpt tells me I’ve hit 15% body fat (obese). At that point, I will reverse gears and begin a diet to cut back again to 10% body fat.
If all goes according to plan (which is unlikely), I will be a slightly more muscled man at 10% body fat than I am today, at which point I will engage on another bulking cycle. Repeating this process will theoretically allow me to gain whatever muscle my body will allow me to gain, while at least never getting sloppily fat.
I’ve been fat, and I’ve been lean. I like lean a helluva lot better, but to be fair, a legitimate 15% body fat is not all that grotesque. Most men who think they’re 15% body fat are actually much higher. For example, if I gained no muscle at all in my bulk but added only fat, I’d hit 15% somewhere around 176-177 lbs. Hardly a tub o’ lard.
25 FFMI or bust here I come.
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