Bulk Turned Dirty. Abort or Continue?

I started this bulk in single digit bf, and have made some fabulous gains, unfortunately I’ve made some (not so) fabulous BF% gains as well(up to a 15%ish!). I’m not even half-way done this bulk yet, would you suggest aborting and cutting down to a more acceptable BF% before continuing, or just continue and fix my screw-ups(I know why I screwed up)?

Stop asking questions you know the answers to, you said yourself you are screwing up. Stop screwing up and continue.

Stop bulking. Cut up a bit. Resume bulk with a modified approach so you don’t get so fat.

how long have you been bulking? what did you weigh? how much do you weigh now? what could you lift before? what can you lift now? pics?

I’d hate it if you aborted your bulk and threw away gains when it was possible to make adjustments and continue. Maybe you should consider cutting back your calories a little bit and continuing the bulk with a lower caloric intake. Just some thoughts.

continue to bulk but with less calories

You could maybe try a carb cycling approach to really tailor your diet to your needs so as to avoid adding excess fat

[quote]bradden wrote:
how long have you been bulking? what did you weigh? how much do you weigh now? what could you lift before? what can you lift now? pics?

I’d hate it if you aborted your bulk and threw away gains when it was possible to make adjustments and continue. Maybe you should consider cutting back your calories a little bit and continuing the bulk with a lower caloric intake. Just some thoughts.[/quote]

Started in may at about 159lbs, I am now 178. Lift wise I don’t have my logs in front of me, but my deadlift went from around 200(pitiful I know) to 315. I need to drop the calories a little bit, and manage my carbs better, maybe its the FFB in me, but seeing the chub coming back on is like SHIT. I’ll post then and now photos a little later(when I can dig one up, and take a new one!).

A good way to bulk may be to drop in some “control weeks”. You could do 2 weeks or so of low-carb dieting. Both of these weeks, make one day a low protein day with slightly more carbs.
After 2 weeks you will have lost a few pounds of fat, only a bit of muscle and you can go back to bulking with your body primed for new gains.
And stop srewing up, by the way…

Bulk with clean foods dude, that way you dont have to worry about too much BF.

[quote]matthew_gray wrote:
Started in may at about 159lbs, I am now 178. Lift wise I don’t have my logs in front of me, but my deadlift went from around 200(pitiful I know) to 315. I need to drop the calories a little bit, and manage my carbs better, maybe its the FFB in me, but seeing the chub coming back on is like SHIT. I’ll post then and now photos a little later(when I can dig one up, and take a new one!).
[/quote]

Wait you said you started at single digit BF% and that now you are at 15%.
You went from 159 to 178. That is a gain of 21 lbs.

Lets say you were 159 @ 9% = 14.31 lbs fat
Then you were 178 @ 15% = 26.7 lbs fat
The difference is 12.39 lbs of fat gained.

So out of your 21 lbs bulk you had about 12 lbs fat and about 9 lbs lean body mass increase.
Thats assuming all the figures are right.

That sounds like something was going very wrong. You must have been either eating too much or not training hard enough or both of these.

Looking at your numbers wushu, he was gaining about 3 pounds of muscle a month and 4 pounds of fat. Assuming his start in May was the beginning and not the end. If he started late may then the numbers go up even higher. Granted he should get the fat gains in control some, but 3 pounds a month of lean mass is 3 pounds a month.

[quote]Aggro wrote:
Looking at your numbers wushu, he was gaining about 3 pounds of muscle a month and 4 pounds of fat. Assuming his start in May was the beginning and not the end. If he started late may then the numbers go up even higher. Granted he should get the fat gains in control some, but 3 pounds a month of lean mass is 3 pounds a month.[/quote]

Fair enough I didn’t read the time scale.

3 lbs a month is good but those 4 lbs of fat a month are gonna hurt him in the long run. You shouldn’t have to gain that much fat to make does gains.

OP like the others here have said clean up your bulk maybe reduce the calories a bit to curb the fat gains. Be thankful that you started at single digits instead of any higher BF%.

I totally agree with him getting his fat gains under control, but the way these “bulks” go for a lot of people on this site they get up around the 15% mark, get spooked and diet back down. Then wonder why they never see good gains. Hopefully the OP has learned from all of it, and if he makes better food choices then the fat gains should take care of itself.

Then again looking at his strength gains in his DL, it seems that it might all be noobie gains.

[quote]Aggro wrote:
I totally agree with him getting his fat gains under control, but the way these “bulks” go for a lot of people on this site they get up around the 15% mark, get spooked and diet back down. Then wonder why they never see good gains. Hopefully the OP has learned from all of it, and if he makes better food choices then the fat gains should take care of itself.

Then again looking at his strength gains in his DL, it seems that it might all be noobie gains. [/quote]

Yeah I agree. OP Don’t get spooked by the 15% mark. OP Don’t go on a cut yet just try to curb the fat gains, clean up the bulk thats all.

Also I’ll reiterate what I said earlier it is likely that OP wasn’t training as hard as he could have.

So OP what kind of split are you doing? You training balls to the wall?

Keep bulking, start doing 15-20 minutes of sprints on your off days, and throw in 15-30min of steady state cardio after lifting, keep eating, clean it up a bit, and keep pushing the weights up.

Good progress so far, but it’s almost August, being a little larger than you want to should be fine, start cutting slowly to preserve mass starting in mid-late Feb/March then you’ll be pretty lean by June and ripped by August for sure.

Just keep at it their are plenty of time for “hawt abz” when your a decent size.