Eli5 How does bulking make it easier to gain muscle?
In: 18
Building muscle costs a lot of energy. Putting on a single kilo of muscle mass costs about 2 days worth of food. So the body is reluctanct to build up extra muscle except in times of plenty.
By bulking (a diet that’s rich in calories in general and protein in particular) and exercising (using those muscles!) you’re signalling to the body that it’s the right time to get that extra musclemass.
If you’re relatively fit, gaining muscle mass means putting on weight. It’s really _really_ hard to convince your body to put on weight by building only muscle mass without also building fat reserves, or to reduce weight by losing fat and not losing muscle.
Instead of fighting against this and trying to simply gain weight through muscle alone, bulking and cutting overcomes the problem by just letting your weight see-saw in a controlled manner. You put on weight knowing a part of it will be fat, then lose weight knowing some of it will be muscle, but you do all that with an exercise regime that means your body will want to produce more muscle than fat, and then burn more fat than muscle. It’s the two halves of the cycle put together that get you to where you want to be.
Biologically, your body can only produces muscle when it has a calorie surplus. Bulking doesn’t just make gaining muscle easier, it’s for all intents and purposes scientifically not possible to gain muscle without some fat/bulk. Depending on how lazy you are though, you can keep the bulk minimal, but not 0.
“Bulking” is one of the hundreds of fitness myths that have been floating around forever.
Eat enough protein and perform resistance exercise correctly and you will gain muscle just fine without having to eat like a pig.
Source: myself and my clients, back when I was a personal trainer.
FWIW, I actually tried a “bulking” phase once, just to see what would happen. All it did was make me super-fat.
It’s just because your body has more fuel. Building muscles takes up a lot of energy. So, your body can easily create muscles when there is an abundance of energy.
Your body only gains muscles by two ways, abundance of energy or necessity of strength.
How do you build a house if you don’t have any bricks? How do you build an addition to your house without materials to build it?
Muscle mass requires surplus calories so you can build the tissue.
You can’t convert fat into muscle as fat doesn’t have the right parts in it that muscle needs, though it is possible early on if you have excess fat to lose some fat and build some muscle mass without gaining overall weight as your body can take the energy it needs from fat stores and the materials it needs from the food you eat.
Latest Answers