Clean bulking for the majority of people is without doubt the right way to go. If you’re looking to put on quality muscle mass with as little fat as possible clean bulking is the ideal choice. Who wants to put on muscle while at the same time putting on twice as much fat? No-one, and that’s where clean bulking comes in. When athletes or bodybuilders are looking to gain weight and build muscle they have two choices.
Clean Bulking – How To Clean Bulk
When bulking you have two options. You can either clean bulk or dirty bulk. Both can be effective but for this article however we will focus on clean bulking.
What is Clean Bulking?
Clean bulking is pretty self explanatory. Clean bulking is where an individual will eat slightly above their body’s maintenance level of calories in healthy clean foods in order to put on weight and muscle. Now, the key word here is ’clean’. This means that your diet will largely consist of good clean healthy foods such as chicken breasts, any other kinds of lean meats, brown rice, wholemeal pasta, tuna, fish, low fat cottage cheese and whey/casein protein.
Obviously there are also other types of food you may eat when on a clean bulking diet but these are some of the most popular. Low fat yogurts, milk, sweet potatoes and wholemeal/brown bread etc should also play a role in your clean bulking diet presuming they fit within your required daily amount of calories.
Clean bulking foods are generally foods which do not contain large amounts of fat or sugar and have some nutritional value to them. The main culprits you will need to avoid are snacks such as doughnuts, chocolate, biscuits and crisps, also known as junk food. Junk food should be avoided when on a clean bulking diet and eaten as little as possible. Since we all know how hard restricting our favourite foods can be, having a cheat meal/day once a week can be permitted as long as you don’t go too extreme.
Ensure you get straight back to your clean bulking diet the following day and get your mind back focused towards achieving your goals. Cheat days help to keep us all sane so enjoy them while they last and immediately get back on track.
Is Clean Bulking Better Than Dirty Bulking?
In my opinion clean bulking is much better than dirty bulking and let me explain why. When a person clean bulks or follows a clean bulking diet, it is a lot healthier. Since only a limited amount of junk food will be consumed during a clean bulk, this means that less sugar and saturated fat is being put into your body increasing your chances of staying fit and healthy in the future.
Since high amounts of saturated fat and sugar have been said to contribute to health problems later on in life, you will be pleased to know that you are helping to minimize any potential health risks or concerns that could potentially arise in the future.
Now onto what others will consider a far more important point. Clean bulking will add muscle mass to your frame while at the same time keeping fat gains to an absolute minimum. This is vital to any athlete or bodybuilder as no-one will want unwanted pounds of fat hanging around their waist when they are trying to build muscle and get into shape. Let me go into a bit more detail about this point. A common phrase that bodybuilders, athletes and personal trainers come out with nowadays is that “to get big you need to eat big”.
Now I don’t disagree with this phrase for one second but many people interpret this the wrong way. If you want to get big you will need to eat a lot of food so this statement does hold true. Now that’s look at it another way. If you want to put on muscle with the minimum amount of fat you need to eat a sufficient amount of calories that will not impair your muscle growth potential but at the same time will not pile on pounds of fat. Your body has a limit as to how many calories are optimum for putting on muscle and will store any extra calories as fat that exceed this amount.
You do not need to stuff your face with thousands of calories to put on muscle as this will only make you fat, it will not make you lean and muscular. Of course, to put muscle on you will need to be eating more calories but this does not mean you can eat as many calories as you like. Anywhere between 200 – 500 over your maintenance level is perfect for clean bulking. Eating a ridiculous amount of calories over your maintenance is pointless and will not help you recover any faster from your workouts or add any more lean muscle mass to your frame.
Once you surpass the optimum amount of calories your body needs to build muscle you can be sure that the rest will be stored as body fat covering up that hard earned muscle. The optimum amount of calories is the point where you have given your body all the required nutrients available to build sufficient muscle mass. Some peoples potential to build muscle can be a lot higher than others so you will need to find the sweet spot so to speak where you know you have given your body all that it needs to grow and become bigger and stronger.
Clean bulking is a far more sensible approach to gaining weight gradually and putting on muscle. Unfortunately the reality of bulking up is that it’s pretty much impossible to put on muscle without gaining any fat. It just doesn’t happen. However, as I have said before it is possible to minimize the fat you gain, helping you to keep as lean as possible throughout your bulking cycle. Don’t be put off by gaining a little fat as the chances are if your clean bulking correctly your not even going to notice the small amounts of fat you gain and probably won’t care if you are making noticeable muscle gains.
As a lot of you will know, a typical athlete or bodybuilder will continually go through two different types of cycles throughout their lifting careers. One will be a bulking up cycle where an individual tries to gain as much muscle as is humanly possible while the other one is a cutting up cycle. This is also referred to as cutting. Cutting is where the athlete will try and shed the fat he/she has gained during their bulking up phase in order to lower body fat and show off muscle definition.
If a clean bulking diet was followed by the individual it will mean that there is going to be a lot less fat to lose and this in turn should mean less time cutting. Less time cutting results in more time bulking and more importantly more time spent building muscle.
Another important point to make about following a clean bulking diet is that when you decide to cut and lose the unwanted fat you gained from your bulk, you are going to maintain a lot more muscle than you would of if you were on a dirty bulk. The longer you are cutting the more chance you have of losing muscle due to your body constantly being in a calorie deficit. This is definitely not what we want!
Now, since a clean bulk will minimize fat gains and allow you to cut for a shorter period of time there is a great chance that you will maintain the majority of your muscle while burning off the unwanted pounds of fat. This is exactly what you want and another great reason why sticking to a clean bulking diet is far superior than following a dirty bulk.
