The Anabolic Diet Blog

(Before reading this, I highly recommend reading my article on bulking, cutting, and maintaining on a high fat, high protein diet first.  It explains how to get the biggest benefits out of a muscle gaining cycle.)

I advocate spending only a maximum of 8 weeks at a time in a heavy muscle building phase.  The reason for this is that your body becomes accustomed to the amount and type of food you put in it and eventually your gains will taper off, and worse yet, will become fat gain.  Just ask anyone who has gone on an indefinite “bulking” phase — the first few weeks bring amazing results while the rest of the time is a wasted effort resulting in only extra bodyfat.  Also, if you really work out hard as hell during this phase, you won’t be able to do much more than 8 weeks.

For these reasons, it’s best to do no more than 8 weeks at a time in a heavy mass building phase.  You’ll avoid unnecessary fat gain and still get the biggest muscle-building results.  Think of it as the Pareto, or 80/20. Principle in action — you’re spending 20% of the time to get 80% of the results.

Of course, while eating like this, you’d better be working yourself to the bone in the gym.  You should struggle to move properly after your workouts, and make sure to get some cardio in.  I’m a big fan of uphill walks, either outside or on a treadmill, after weight training sessions and in free time if possible.  If your body has a propensity to putting on bodyfat, cardio is a necessity all year round, even if it is just 15 minutes a day maximum on an uphill walk.

How I Calculate How Much Food To Eat

I’ll be honest, I don’t really count calories anymore.  I go for a baseline amount of protein and fat (in grams) and add more items of food weekly from there.

Of course, I have a rough idea of how many calories I want to eat at first.  I find this amount by multiplying my body weight by 20.  I aim for roughly this many calories at first, maybe a tiny bit less in the first week.  I try to split it between 50% protein and 50% fat, although the percentages get skewed (higher percentage protein, lesser percentage fat) as I add more calories simply because I feel like my body reacts poorly with more than 215 grams of fat in a day.  Always listen to your body — if you feel lethargic, bloated, and just generally gross after eating a particular food or amount of food, then that’s your body’s way of telling you it’s not completely happy.

I calculate an initial amount of food based on the calorie equation and splitting it between proteins and fats.  When gaining muscle, my diet is really revolved around nothing but eggs, red meat (grass fed if possible), cream (raw, unpasteurized cream if possible), and as many green vegetables as I can eat.  As the weeks progress, I just add a couple more eggs or a little more meat into my daily diet.  I don’t calculate precise numbers at all — I just aim to up the calories by anywhere from 250 to 500 calories a day, and I do it by adding three more eggs daily, or another quarter or half pound of meat.  This continues until the end of the muscle gaining phase.

On To The Sample Diet

Here’s an example of how I ate on my last muscle gain phase.

Meal 1

6 eggs

3 tbsp heavy raw cream

Half a banana (not enough carbs to cause any trouble)

Two slices bacon

1 cup raw milk (I don’t drink milk unless it’s raw)

Meal 2

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

Meal 3

4 eggs

2 tbsp heavy raw cream

5 grams fish oil

Meal 4

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

5 grams fish oil

Meal 5

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

5 grams fish oil

Meal 6

2 eggs

1 tbsp heavy raw cream

5 grams fish oil

As the weeks went on, I simply added 250 to 500 calories more of meat or eggs daily so that, by week 8, I was eating almost 5000 calories a day, with more than 3 pounds of meat and two dozen eggs.  (For example: week 1 I was eating the above diet, then weeks 2 and 3 I was eating 3 more eggs a day, weeks 4 and 5 I was eating three more eggs and another half pound of meat, weeks 6 and 7 I was eating another half pound of meat a day, and week 8 I was eating another 6 eggs every day.  I slowly worked up to these amounts, so it wasn’t like a calendar date hit and I was suddenly eating an extra 500 calories.)

Yes, it seems extreme, and most people would scream bloody murder about how they couldn’t handle that.  Whatever — it’s only a couple weeks, and you’ll get ridiculous results from it.  I’m completely healthy with incredibly healthy cholesterol levels and didn’t die from eating this way.  If you don’t want to pile on a lot of muscle really quickly, then don’t do this.  And regardless, as long as you are absolutely working out like a fiend, then your body will put all this food to work.

(WIth that said: I’m not a doctor.  If there are any possibly complications with you eating this way, consult a doctor first.)

That’s The Muscle Gain Diet

Note that I don’t ever call this a “bulking” diet (except for the title of this post).  Again, you wouldn’t be doing it for any more than 8 weeks because, after that long, your body will adjust to it, will stop allocating the food to building muscle, and instead you’ll just get nice and fat.  This is a muscle gain diet, where the goal is only to build muscle — not to “bulk up”, which is really just bodybuilder code for “eat like a pig and get way too fat.”