Hey guys, Sean Nalewanyj here, BodyTransformationTruth.com, and in this video I’m going to discuss the
concept of clean bulking vs. dirty bulking, and which one is the superior approach for
your mass gaining program.
Now you’ll hear various definitions of these two terms depending on who you speak to, but
for the sake of simplicity, here is how we will define them.
So first off, as you probably already know, in order for you to gain muscle you must create
a “calorie surplus” by consistently consuming more calories than you burn each day.
And this provides your body with the extra energy that is needed in order to synthesize
new muscle tissue.
You can accomplish this by first finding your calorie maintenance level, and your calorie
maintenance level is the number of calories that you require each day in order to maintain
your current body weight, and then increasing that number by a set figure to ensure that
you’re maintaining a calorie surplus over time to support new muscle growth.
Now “clean bulking” refers to creating a smaller, more tightly controlled calorie
surplus in order to build muscle at a more gradual pace, while also minimizing gains
in body fat.
On the other hand, “dirty bulking” refers to creating a larger, more “flexible”
calorie surplus in order to build muscle at a faster pace, but with the understanding
that greater gains in body fat will also result.
And although it’s not true in every single case, those on a “clean bulk” will also
tend to be more deliberate when it comes to tracking their overall calories and macronutrients,
while those on a “dirty bulk” will tend to follow a simpler approach of basically
just eating a lot of food in general, without being as strict about their precise calorie
totals.
So, which is the superior bulking approach, and why?
Well, when it all comes down to it, there is no one absolute definitive answer that
is going to apply in every situation to every person, and a case could be made for either
approach depending on the individual’s goals and their preferences.
However, in the vast majority of cases, I would definitely recommend that you aim to
stick more to the side of “clean bulking” and focus on increasing your overall body
weight at a slower, and a more gradual pace.
And here are 4 key reasons for this.
First off, your body can only build a limited amount of lean muscle tissue in any given
day no matter what you do.
The primary mistake that most people who follow a full blown “dirty bulking” approach
make is the idea that if a smaller calorie surplus builds a certain amount of muscle,
then a larger calorie surplus will automatically build a greater amount, and it just doesn’t
work that way.
There are set limits on how much lean tissue your body can ultimately build over a set
period of time, and just aimlessly stuffing your face with more and more food is not going
to magically speed up the process.
Any excess calories that you consume above and beyond what your body can use to maximize
its muscle building potential in any given day, those calories will simply be stored
as body fat.
Secondly, a dirty bulk can potentially throw your entire program off course if you aren’t
careful with it.
Many guys who start out on the skinnier side and who simply just want to pack on overall
size will often say that they “don’t really care about gaining excess fat as long as they
just get bigger”, and I remember saying the exact same thing myself back when I first
got started.
However, I’ve seen this countless times before where a naturally thin guy begins training
hard in the gym and then just goes ahead and eats a ton of food every day without really
tracking anything, and a few short months into the program he’s shocked and ultimately
pretty unhappy with the total amount of body fat that he’s gained.
Not only that, but he now has a problem, because he hasn’t come anywhere close to the level
of muscular development that he desires, but he’s also carrying around an amount of excess
body fat that he really isn’t comfortable with.
So he can continue bulking and continue gaining more muscle, but knows that that is going
to mean an even further increase in body fat, or he can put the brakes on his entire muscle
building program altogether, and go through the tedious and annoying process of having
to shift into a cutting phase in order to burn off the excess fat that he’s gained.
Trust me, this is not a situation that you want to be in.
Regardless of what you might think right now, nobody wants to get fat, and the only way
to steer clear of this is to bulk up at a gradual pace so that body fat gains are kept
at a minimum and so that you can place 100 percent of your focus on making continued
muscle gains.
Third, dieting for fat loss is ultimately a tedious process, and it almost always ends
up taking longer than you might think in order to reach your desired level of leanness.
It requires you to track your calories and your macronutrients with more precision, you're
going to feel hungry and have less energy than you’re typically used to, it will usually
involve additional cardio sessions that have to be performed throughout the week, and just
like gaining muscle, fat loss is also a slow and gradual process as well.
So always keep this in mind any time you're in a bulking phase: for every 1-2 pounds of
additional body fat that you gain, that’s roughly one full week of dieting and cardio
that you’re going to have to endure later on if you want to burn off that excess fat.
And if your goal is to retain as much lean muscle as possible during your cut (and I
would imagine that that pretty much describes everybody who's watching this video), then
it's going to be closer to the lower end at probably around 1 pound of body fat per week.
So, go full on “dirty bulk” mode and gain, say, an additional 15 pounds of fat, and that
could mean around 4 full months or so of dieting and cardio later on in order to get yourself
back to a reasonable body fat percentage.
And the fourth point is that you’ll generally just feel better overall when following a
clean bulking approach.
Stuffing your face with huge amounts of calories every day and eating when you aren’t even
really hungry, that's a great way to keep yourself feeling bloated and sluggish throughout
the day, not to mention that if you have decided that dirty bulking is the best approach for
you, then you’re probably not doing much in the way of weekly cardio either.
A clean bulking diet that involves a smaller calorie surplus and a couple of cardio sessions
throughout the week, that's generally just going to leave you feeling both physically
and psychologically better overall, and this is obviously a good thing in and of itself,
and not only that, but it will also have positive implications for your overall muscle building
program as a whole.
So for those 4 reasons, I definitely believe that most people will be best off to approach
their bulking phase using a slower and more gradual approach, and to focus on building
muscle size and strength while keeping body fat gains to a minimum.
Now, how should you structure your clean bulking diet?
Well, you’ll find various figures thrown around on this, but I think that a safe and
reliable calorie surplus range to shoot for is about 15% above your calorie maintenance
level.
This amount is large enough to allow you to build new muscle at or near your maximum potential,
but it's also small enough that fat gains will be kept under control.
If you want to be particularly cautious and do absolutely everything possible to prevent
excess fat gain, then you can start off even lower than this at maybe 10% or even as low
as 5%, and then gradually taper up until you’re gaining around half a pound of body weight
per week, which is a good pace for most average beginners.
And if you want to learn how to calculate your daily calorie intake as well as your
individual macronutrient breakdown based on these numbers, then I’ll go ahead and provide
a couple of links down in the description box to help you out with that.
Now, to close this video out I should mention that, as I said earlier on, there are always
exceptions and there isn’t one single and definitive guideline that will apply to every
single person.
So with that in mind, let me quickly make a case for when a “dirty bulk” would make
sense.
So when it all comes down to it, the main advantage of a dirty bulk is that it doesn’t
really require you to track your diet with a significant level of precision.
You can simply eat a lot of food, and eat often, and know that you’re receiving all
of the protein and the carbohydrates and the fats that you need in order to max out your
body’s muscle building potential.
So, if the risk of putting on a relatively high amount of extra body fat is something
that you truly aren't concerned about, and if the benefit of being able to eat more food
and not have to track your diet very closely, if that outweighs the hassle of having to
diet for a longer period of time later on, then a dirty bulk could make sense for you.
And this is going to be especially true for those individuals with above average muscle
building and fat burning genetics, because it is true that there are some people out
there who can basically eat whatever they want, gain muscle at a significant rate, and
not even put on much if any body fat in the process.
However, this only represents a very small minority of the population, and most people
who take this sort of approach are probably not going to get the results that they're
after.
So, in the end it ultimately comes down to your individual preferences, and you’ll
just have to weigh out the benefits and the drawbacks of either approach and then just
go ahead and make the decision for yourself.
However, that said, for most people in most situations, I definitely believe that a clean
bulking diet is going to be the superior approach.
A clean bulk will still take you very close to your maximum muscle building potential
while at the same time preventing you from getting excessively fat, reducing the need
for strict fat loss dieting later on, and leaving you feeling physically and mentally
better overall throughout the process.
So thanks for watching this video lesson, I hope you found the information useful here
today.
If you want to get complete step by step instructions for laying out a highly effective muscle building
diet based on your exact needs along with concrete daily meal plans that you can simply
print off and follow along with, make sure to head over to BodyTransformationTruth.com
and grab my complete “Body Transformation Blueprint” System and you can do that by
clicking the icon at the top of the video or using the link in the description box below.
If you did enjoy the video, as always, please make sure to hit the LIKE button, leave a
comment and subscribe to stay up-to-date on future videos.
And make sure to check out my official blog over at SeanNal.com for all of my latest articles,
tips and other updates.
Talk to you again soon.