Question about bulking up then losing weight

dublinication

Hi everyone,

I've got a question about bulking up. Basically all my life i've been a runner and i've always been big into cardio - in college I used to run 6 miles a day. Right now though i'm trying to bulk up and build strength, particulatrly upper body strength.

For the last month now i've been doing nothing but free weights and weigh machines (limiting my cardio to a light 10 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down run for each session). I'm also eating a lot more food than I ever have before, A lot of protein and complex carbohydrates and eating 6 meals a day. I'm already noticing results but i've also increased my body fat and i'm really noticing some extra fat along my midriff/abdominal area.

Once I've reached my desired strength level will I be able to lose the fat while maintaining the muscle? Is it possible to maintain muscle mass while going through a hard-out cardio programme?

Thanks for your help!

Dragan

Yeah, it's pretty easy to lose fat and keep your muscle mass, you generally lose a small amount but it's normally minor and people can just freak out when they go on a low carb diet to cut because your muscle lose glycogen and can appear to be somewhat smaller and flatter.

My advice to you would be to tone down on the carbs in your diet at the moment. If you are bulking, then no doubt it is easier to do so and not really worry about adding fat, however, i maintain you can pretty easily add muscle and keep the additonal bodyfat to a minimum.

I would suggest you just drop your calories by about 200 a day, maybe 100 of them from fats and a 100 of them from carbs. This way, you should stay adding muscle mass while keeping the extra fat to a minmum.

If you think you are still gaining too much fat you can chop of another 100 or 200, if you feel your gains have slowed then add on another 100. Careful and gentle manipulation of your foods and keeping track of when you made a change and the results for a few weeks after will tell you an awful lot about how your body responds to what foods.

t-ha

dublinication wrote:

Hi everyone,

I've got a question about bulking up. Basically all my life i've been a runner and i've always been big into cardio - in college I used to run 6 miles a day. Right now though i'm trying to bulk up and build strength, particulatrly upper body strength.

For the last month now i've been doing nothing but free weights and weigh machines (limiting my cardio to a light 10 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down run for each session). I'm also eating a lot more food than I ever have before, A lot of protein and complex carbohydrates and eating 6 meals a day. I'm already noticing results but i've also increased my body fat and i'm really noticing some extra fat along my midriff/abdominal area.

Once I've reached my desired strength level will I be able to lose the fat while maintaining the muscle? Is it possible to maintain muscle mass while going through a hard-out cardio programme?

Thanks for your help!

Hey dublinifaction,

Just so you know, it's ok to do cardio even when bulking as long as you eat enough to cover the extra activity. If your getting fatter then cardio is certaintly not a problem. If you have the time, low intensity cardio can be useful for burning blubber without taking to much of your hard eaten calories. The trick when bulking is to be gaining fat but very slowly. This means that you're eating more than you're burning which is the best way to pack on muscle fast, but you should be in no danger of getting obese at the same time. Basically - what Dragan said, careful manipulation of calorie intake/usage.

If you have calipers for measuring bodyfat then try to take measurements to work out your bodyfat, then compare that increase with your total weight increase to work out how much muscle you're gaining and how much fat. I aim for about 2lbs muscle for every 1lb fat, and tend to waver between 12 - 15% BF.

In my experience, if you then want to lose the fat and keep most of the muscle/strength;
1] Go beyond what you want in terms of strength, in anticipation of some losses.
2] Don't dive straight into a cutting phase from a bulking phase, allow that amount of muscle to become your 'norm' for a while - change your own muscle setpoint basically. 4 weeks maintenance minimum.
3] Reduce total workout volume when cutting but aim to maintain/increase intensity (weight).

A hard-out cardio programme is not the best thing for keeping strength when cutting, is there a particular reason why you need to do that (fitness for a sport, etc.)?

Good to hear some-one else out there is bulking too by the way .

Degsy

I've put on quite a bit of fat with my bulking program,i'm probably just eating too much,i'll need to fine tune my diet to see what works.Having said that,when does one decide to stop bulking?I've put on nearly two stone in a year and i really dont want to lose any of it(apart from the fat)!!

dublinication

Thanks for the replies. I'll try reducing my carbs and doing a little more cardio and hope it all evens out!

I guess my plan had been to bulk up constantly for 4 - 5 months while not paying too much attention to extra fat gain and then go on a hard out 6 week cardio phase (at the same time as maintaining the weights) and end up losing all of the excess fat. Does this sound like a good plan or would it take a longer time frame? Is it a good idea from a health point of view?

Thanks again.

t-ha

Degsy wrote:

Having said that,when does one decide to stop bulking?

Once it's immediately obvious to anyone who looks at you that you lift weights. Or generally, once you're happy with your size. Some people trim down for holidays etc. I'll be trimming up in May for summer. That said I'm only planning to go to about 8/9% BF, nothing extreme, so I shouldn't lose too much LBM.

dublinication wrote:

I guess my plan had been to bulk up constantly for 4 - 5 months while not paying too much attention to extra fat gain and then go on a hard out 6 week cardio phase (at the same time as maintaining the weights) and end up losing all of the excess fat. Does this sound like a good plan or would it take a longer time frame? Is it a good idea from a health point of view?

Well, cycling to extremes is probably not that good for you. To lose fat quickly I use diet as my primary tool. It's easy to keep protein high and calories low to preferentially burn fat over muscle. At higher levels of bodyfat (10 - 15%+), i use HIIT training to burn the fat because I've found it to be the fasted way to do it. To get from 10 to 8%, high intensity weights and careful dietary manipulation are most important. At lower levels of bodyfat, the bodies hormones make it difficult to use fat for fuel instead of muscle so direct fat burning techniques like low intensity cardio are the most sure way to get down to the rock bottom figures.

Just to note a thing or two about your plan specifically - bulking is not about disregarding fat gain completely. Every lb of fat you stick on has to be taken off again later so try and keep fat gain slow. Adding on a tonne of cardio to your programme while taking away all your food is harsh and probably not an effective way of cutting. Cardio is for developing cardiovascular health, that's why it's called cardio. Cutting fat is different, that's my basic protocol in the above paragraph.