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Is Bulking Really Necessary?

The +500 was taken from the 1lb of fat = 3500lb wasn't it? It definitely doesn't equate the same for "bulking". Realistically it is minor over maintenance to the point of 100-250 cals extra. Or essentially just watch the scale and make sure it is slowly going up, same as your strength. Done both ways, definitely prefer the smaller cal increase and not getting as tub
 
Not sure for size. I never feel like energy or recovery holds me back in getting stronger, while living life happily in a cal surplus
*am fat now
 
Luke McNally had a really good post on his facebook page about this a few months ago:

https://www.facebook.com/nicky.foord/posts/10152799752152386

RESEARCH REVIEW: While bulking do NOT stay in a caloric surplus 100% of the time!!"
I have often said based on anecdotal evidence mostly that I have observed that myself and clients grew more muscle, stayed leaner, and where able to do so without ultimately shovelling down 6000 calories+.
During seminars and podcasts people have heard me speak to this. From a physiological point of view using critical thinking I knew it had something to do with leptin, appetite signalling and possibly nutrient transport enzymatic systems becoming "sluggish" in response to a constant state of nutrient abundance and the body being constantly fighting for homeostasis (or wanting to stay in the same state/weight in laymens terms). Kind of like constant exposure of cells to a flood of amino acids reduces protein synthesis instead of increasing it.
This phenomenon has been observed as far back in the 1920's when a scientist observed that no matter what people ate (and for the most part bodybuilders excluded people eat sporadically and not isocalorically day in day out) they stayed the same bodyweight for years on end.
It is well observed that our resting metabolic rate will increase or decrease over time to meet our caloric intake and this certainly plays a role as well.
It is for this reason that during BULKING phases I have clients still do days (usually days of rest except cardio or active recovery) in a caloric deficit or even a modified fast. I have found that this prevents these adaptations from happening and muscle accrual to continue far more easily. Without doing this ultimately what happens is the athlete needs to consume more and more calories to continue building tissue and eventually it gets to a point that junk foods and other shit need to be thrown in to be able to meet that intake. Doing so will cause inflammation which leads to whole host of problems and ultimately the athlete begins to accrue far more bodyfat. Not to mention that the more food = more metabolic waste + far more GI distress.
Think of what I said above as the reverse of dieting. When dieting we do the same thing. Instead of being in a caloric deficit 100% of the time we do days of energy excess in the form of cheat meals or planned refeeds. Again this slows these adaptations in the other direction.
A new paper has just been released that confirms my beliefs and goes somewhat further into it discussing the notion of a transient CATABOLIC response to constant overfeeding.
Thanks to my young Padewan Josh Hamilton for sending this over to me. It's always nice to be able to confirm what you feel to be true with research. A good read for anyone interested!
Reference: http://www.cell.com/cell-met…/abstract/S1550-4131(14)00399-4
 
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