Supranormal Paul

25th February 2012

Post with 2 notes

Bulking Nutrition - The Basics

The first thing you must do before developing any kind of nutrition plan is to figure out your starting point. This is what we call keeping it simple and find out how many calories maintain your bodyweight and exercise level. That is, the amount of calories, on average, that it takes your body to maintain weight. It’s different for everybody. The best way to do this is to take an entire week (without changing eating habits like going on a weekend binge), and track every single calorie you put into your body. Then, add up each day and track your bodyweight each day. Weigh yourself, just be consistent. Then see what your weight does. If your weight has marginally stayed the same, then take the average of the 7 days, and use that as your as your maintenance – the calories that keep you at your body weight.

Don’t like tracking calories? Well, I’m sorry, but if you want the best results, then you will do it, if you make excuses then you won`t achieve what you want - No exceptions. Make the change and let it become part of your lifestyle. You will be amazed at how huge of a difference taking the extra 10 seconds to measure things out and tracking calories will have on your physique. Science starts with measurements!  It’s those little things that separate the average from the above average – You become the exceptional. You’ve probably got a decent mobile phone right? They all now have some sort of memo pad feature on them. Find out how to use it and put it to good use. When you are on the go, enter your numbers into your phone whenever you eat. It is so simple and takes no extra time really. Do it and thank me later. I write down everything I eat, in the morning I weigh everything to the exact macronutrient – where I get a very accurate and precise measurement and prepare my foods to take around with me. – I even one time took out a portable food scale at a restaurant and put my steak on it and measured it!

What if you don’t want to do all of that? Well, I don’t recommend this, but you can use a very generic, basic equation to give you a starting point, and then adjust your numbers depending on what your bodyweight does. It’s quicker, but may take you longer to figure out what target calorie level you need.

Take your total bodyweight in LBS. and multiply it by anywhere from 14-16 (which has seemed to be the average by conventional science of today…). That will at least give you a range to start plugging away. 14 are generally used for people who have an easy time gaining weight, and 16 for the hard gainers. So, let’s say you are a mere 150lbs (68kg) and have a hard time gaining weight. Just take the 150X16 and you get 2400 calories as a starting point. Again, not the way I recommend, but you get the idea. – There are no shortcuts to paths worth going!

Now from there is where we start to calculate everything. I’ll start anywhere from a 200-500 calorie surplus, again depending on if you have an easy or hard time gaining weight (200 for easy gainers and 500 for hard gainers obviously). The goal here is to gain anywhere from 1-2lbs. a WEEK. So, after a week of eating roughly 2900cals (example) a day, weigh yourself again. If you haven’t gained weight, add another couple hundred calories. If you’ve gained 1-2 lbs., stay there. If you’ve gained more than 2lbs., drop the calories about a couple hundred. Weighing yourself once a week will be your guide on how to adjust your daily calories. When the adjustment is made, don’t forget to recalculate you macronutrient ratios (carbs, Fats, Protein) along with it using the same format that you end up using.

Now we calculate our ratios. This is where you have freedom to do what you wish. The one thing you want to keep in mind, is that *for the most part* protein will be a constant 1g/lb of bodyweight. After that, you can adjust the rest of your calories for whether or not you want to do a high carb/low fat approach, or a low carb/higher fat approach. But make sure you get your protein in. I also see no need to go above 1g/lb while in a caloric surplus, and in fact, could probably go as low as .8g/lb and be just fine since protein requirements for growth will go down as calories go up. But we’ll stick with 1g/lb. for now and make it easier for the calculations.

It goes without saying that ANY mix of Carbs/Fat will work just fine as long as you get your protein in and hit your calorie level. This is the individual part of the diet and will depend on what types of foods you like to eat, how carbs affect you and your mood, etc. Again, hit your protein and daily calorie level, and just remember that fat/carbs are inversely related. If you go high on one, keep the other one low.

Carb sources are variable as well. Your body is not a textbook. If you do better with higher GI and handle it well (I recommend for the hardgainers), then by all means. If you are more ir, typically gain weight easily (as well as BF), then low GI sources and controlling insulin may be the better approach. The point is to know your body and do what you can stick to! After all, the BEST diet is the one you can stick to!

Tagged: NutritionFitnessDietBulkingHypertrophyGymMMAMuscleFitnessExercise

Source: paradoxnutrition.com