So one of the more common questions that I get for beginners who are trying to get in shape or just starting in the gym is how do I know when I should be bulking versus when I should be cutting and what differences are there in nutrition for each of those. so what I'm going to do today is just spend some unscripted time talking over my opinions on this and how it applies to not bodybuilders, but just the general, average man who's looking to build muscle, get in shape and just be healthy overall. And so the very first thing that I'm going to say is based upon my personal experience and opinion, it's much easier to lose body fat than it is to put on muscle. And with the way that your body is, as well as how we measure progress towards the goal of building muscle, it's much harder to measure success when bulking as it is to measure success with shredding. Let me explain. So, when I'm losing body fat, This is something that I can very visibly see, my weight on the scale goes down and as long as I know that I'm maintaining the proper amount of protein intake, staying active in the gym and lifting weights, and just working hard in general to stay on track with that nutrition, I know that I'm going to make progress towards that fat loss goal. so it's much easier to see and measure that progress as far as cutting is concerned, but it's much harder to do. And the reason for that is because guys have a harder time with the self control, the monotony, and the discipline that comes with staying on track with a strict diet. as well as doing the extra cardio that's required to burn that fat. So mentally shredding is much more difficult, but visibly it's much easier to see now on the other side of the coin, bulking is the opposite. So when I'm bulking. It's much harder for me to see my progress because it's difficult to tell how much muscle I'm actually putting on in addition to the extra fat that I'm storing. And so I don't really know how successful this bulk is. the best that you can do is make sure that you're eating enough food, which you obviously are because you're getting fat. But the second piece is make sure that you're training with the intensity that you need to be training with in order to put on the muscle mass that you want. However, putting on muscles is, much more difficult and takes more time. you know, within your first couple years, you may put on 10, 15, 20 pounds of muscle, but after you pass through that newbie gains phase, you're lucky to put on a few pounds of muscle onto your frame per year. And for a lot of the bodybuilders that you see in the professional side, obviously their muscle gain is more attributed towards steroid use than anything else but if you were to take the same look at the natural bodybuilding stage, which honestly, if you didn't know this isn't truly natural, those guys are much smaller and they have to spend much more time building muscle and working to just get pounds worth of gains year to year. And so with that said, it's much more difficult to not only see the progress that you're making when you're bulking, but to put the muscle on in the first place. now, like I said earlier, despite the fact that it's much easier to see and get progress when bulking. It's much easier to do. and the reason for that is because you can be less strict with your nutrition. there's such a thing as a dirty bulk where you're not really tracking your food or focused on eating clean. so there's a lot of nuance to bulking that makes it much easier to do mentally. In addition to that, when you're bulking, you're typically stronger, you perform better, you feel better. and so as long as you can aesthetics, it's much easier to bulk than it is to shred. And so that's why I think it's better to shred first. I'm going to do the easy thing first. I'm going to get the fat off. I'm going to get myself healthy. Get rid of the problems that I have with my body related to A1C and and insulin resistance and get my testosterone levels where they should be. And that's really important to consider, right? Is because if you're obese and you carrying 20 to 30 percent body fat or more, that extra fat is actually negatively impacting your body's ability to produce testosterone, build muscle, your energy, your performance et cetera. And so we want to get rid of all of those things because we know that putting on muscle is hard. The last thing we want to do is be trying to do something and make it even harder for ourselves. get your body down to a body fat within the 10 to 15 percent range or somewhere where you're comfortable that way your hormone production, your performance, how you feel, how you look are where they want to be, then focus on bulking and don't worry so much about the body fat. And then once your body fat kind of goes outside of that tolerance, which I say 15 percent would be a good upper limit. Phase back your food, trim things down and just go in shorter cycles to make it easier for you. And so let's spend some time talking about the nutrition piece. if you guys haven't already, I have a YouTube video, a couple of them where I've talked about how you should do your macros. Just yesterday I recorded one where I explained your TDEE and how that's calculated and what we can do to basically build a nutrition protocol that fits your goals and how that works for you. and then I also have another one that talks about how to calculate your macros and build a meal plan. so make sure you go to my YouTube channel and check those out. But what I'm going to do is talk specifically bulking and shredding And the nuance that comes with the nutrition for those two things. So one of the biggest challenges with working out, building muscle, losing body fat is from a day to day standpoint, I truly have no idea how many calories my body is going to burn. There are so many variables and there's no way to really nail that down. That's the challenge. If you don't remember from the last video, our total daily calorie expenditures is a combination of three things. Number one is our BMR, which is how many calories our body burns at rest. Number two is our NEAT, which is the calories that we burn when we're not exercising. So moving around throughout the day, brushing our teeth, going for a walk, playing sports, walking the dog, whatever the case may be. And then the last number is our exercise activity thermogenesis or our eat, which is basically the calories that we burn while we're actually exercising. So if you take those three numbers, add them up, that's your total daily energy expenditure or your TDEE. TDEE. When we are shredding or cutting, our goal is to consume less calories than whatever our TDEE is. and so for reference, just so you know, one pound of body fat is 3, 500 calories. And so if we were to look at it from a week to week time frame, if I want to lose one pound of body fat per week, then I'm going to be in a 500 calorie deficit per day. Now, one of the things that I've found for a lot of my clients is they do really, really good with staying on track with their nutrition, but then on the weekends they kind of fall off because they're not in the same routine, they're kind of hanging out with family or doing whatever. And so what we typically do is we'll give them calories from throughout the week to Saturday, Sunday. Right. So instead of being in a 500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday, I'll be in a 700 calorie deficit Monday through Friday. So that gives me 200 extra calories per day that I can give over to Saturday and Sunday to help me maintain that deficit. And so it's completely reasonable for me to be at a 700 deficit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, But then put myself into a slight surplus on Saturday and Sunday, I'm still going to be in a net deficit throughout the week. so basically the concept of shredding is, okay, this is my calculation based upon our calculator of how many calories I should be consuming. And I'm going to Take 500 away from that and then eat that many calories over a period of week. Then after a week, I check my progress on the scale or I check my waist measurement and I say, Hey, am I making the progress that I feel like I should be making if the answer is yes, great. Keep going until you stop seeing progress. If the answer is no, okay, we should probably trim our calories a little bit more because we're not burning as many calories per day as we thought we were. And so this is kind of a moving target where we're adjusting our food on a week to week basis based upon the results that we see. And so that's why these calorie calculators that you guys see online or the MyFitnessPal apps or any of that stuff, understand that's just a guideline and it's intended to be a moving target that you adjust over time So that you can see the result that you want to see. This is not like written in stone. It's not law. You're not supposed to just, this is my calories. No, that's not how it works. that calculation is just your starting point. Okay, so that's how you shred and typically the way that your diet will work when you shred is you take whatever your goal body weight is, like, let's say, my goal is to weigh 200 pounds, and don't go 50 pounds variance. So, like, if I'm 260, the lowest I can go is 210, if that makes sense. So, whatever your goal weight is within a 50 pound variance, then take that number and multiply it by 1. That's how many grams of protein you should be eating. So if my goal is 200 pounds, I should be eating 200 grams of protein. You can go as low as 0. 8 grams per pound. So if we go 0. 8 to 1 for shredding, that's probably fine. So if my goal is 200 pounds, I can go as low as about 160 grams per day. Okay, so that's how we do our protein. It's very simple. The way we do our fats, it's pretty much a static number. It's a half a gram per pound. So in that case, you're going to eat 100 grams of fat, which is actually kind of high. most people you hang out around 90 grams of fat or so. If you're a man, if you're a woman, you'll be at like 60 to 70. Okay. then your carbs are the major, we'll say variable. Because not only does it have a great effect on the results that you see, but it's also going to have a significant effect on how you perform. so if you're cutting and you cut more carbs, the faster the result you're going to see, but the more you're going struggle with performance. typically a good rule of thumb is match your carbs with your protein intake, then adjust those based upon the result and your tolerance for performance. So, if I'm eating 200 grams of protein, I'll start with 200 grams of carbs, then based upon the result that I see in the mirror on the scale and with my tape measure, I could probably go as low as 80 carbs a day. What I typically tell people is a half a gram of carbs to one gram of carbs per pound of whatever your goal weight is a good starting point and then just adjust that based upon your self control, your tolerance, and obviously your performance. So that's how we do cutting. And again, like I said earlier, we get that nutrition, those macros down. Then all we do is we just adjust as we see results on a week to week basis. For me, I like to measure weekly. With some clients, I think it's better to measure every two weeks, because sometimes they get themselves attached to the number on the scale, which can be unhealthy for a lot of people. All right, so switching over to bulking, bulking, like I said, is much more challenging in my opinion. And the reason is because it's harder to actually know whether or not you're getting the result that you want. Yes, it's easy to put on fat and gain weight. but as you're gaining weight, how do you actually know if you're putting on muscle? And so that paired with the fact that we don't actually know how many calories we burn on a day to day basis, it can be extremely challenging to do a bulk in a way that's responsible, meaning we're not going to put on an excess of body fat and not accomplish what we're trying to accomplish, while also seeing the result. So for cutting, the biggest challenge is managing your carbs and manipulating them in a way that puts you within the threshold of your tolerance for performance, where with bulking, the big challenge is managing your food in a way that doesn't cause you to put on so much body fat without putting on muscle. If that makes sense. So there's a couple of things that really have to be right with bulking. Number one is your training needs to be on point. you need to be lifting with a high degree of intensity. You need to be lifting to failure. That's a must. The other piece is your recovery needs to be on point. you need to be sleeping. You need to be drinking plenty of water. And then obviously as far as the nutrition piece is concerned, you need to be getting enough protein. So typically the guideline for bulking is if I'm trying to build muscle, I'm going to go about as high as one to 1.5 grams of whatever my goal weight is, again, with a 50 pound variance. So for me, if I'm, you know, two 30 and I want to be two 60, I'll start with 260 grams of protein, one for one. Then that will be my starting point. If I need to adjust later because I'm not seeing results, I can go as high as 1. 5, but honestly, you don't need more than one. That extra half a gram is going to account for the extra calories that you need and also serve as like an insurance policy to make sure your body's getting enough. Okay, your fats are going to stay the same. Again, half a gram per pound, of whatever your body weight is. So typically for most people, it's going to be around a hundred grams. Then, carbs are the big variable. the way that I do it is I'll start my carbs at about 1. 5 and then based upon the result that I'll see, I increase or decrease that on a week to week basis. I think when you're bulking you have to be okay with accepting the fact that you're just going to be a little bit fluffier. And so,, instead of performance being the concern with cutting, when it comes to bulking, the concern is going to be your tolerance for getting body fat, if that makes sense. And so what I like to do is I'll do bulking and shorter sprints so that I can do my best to maintain a lean physique. So the most that I'll go on a bulking cycle would maybe be 12 weeks at a time, really focus on lifting heavy, getting big, putting on mass. And then after that 12 week bulk, I'll go back into a shredding cycle to lean out and get back within my threshold for body fat. So again, If we were to just oversimplify this whole process is you have your weight, whatever it is, let's just say as an example, it's 200 pounds. And all we do is we eat that many grams of protein. We eat half that many grams of fat. Then our carbs will start at that many grams. And then depending upon whatever our goal is, we can go this way for bulking, meaning eating more. And what that's going to do is it's going to increase the muscle that we put on, increase our performance and the weight that we gain. Or if we slide it this way, it's going to decrease our body fat, but also decrease our performance and increase the weight that we gain. And so all you have to do is just make sure that you're consuming the proper amount of protein and fats, and just adjust your carbs based upon whatever your goal is. But again, just to recap, if you do plan to do this strategy, understand that I do believe it's important to first get to whatever your goal is as far as body fat is concerned. One of the things that I don't think a lot of people realize is that their goal isn't to bulk, their goal is to look more muscular. Their goal is to have that V taper with the broad shoulders and the tight waist and the lean abdomen. believe it or not, bulking is not going to accomplish that physique for you. Getting down to low body fat percentage is what helps to make you get that look. And so, I know for me, I actually look bigger, more muscular, and more imposing at a lean 220 than I do at a really bulked up 250. And the reason for that is because when I'm bulking, I have a tendency to put on fat first in my stomach. And so what that does is it affects the ratio between my waist and my shoulders and makes me look blockier and less aesthetic and lean. So if your goal is to look bigger, more muscular, more aesthetic and more attractive, you should be focused on trying to trim your waist and broaden your shoulders, not just bulk for the sake of bulking. And so get down to that lean body fat, 10, 12, 15%, then use that as the baseline to measure from. Anyway, it's been a while since I've talked bulking versus shredding. and I feel like this is probably a good addition to the nutrition videos that I've been posting lately. so I thought I would spend some time talking about this. I hope it helps. And if you have any questions or any follow ups that you'd like me to speak on about this subject, do me a favor, drop them in the comments below. I'd love to do more video content to help you on your journey. We'll talk soon.