Hi guys, I was losing weight for a while lost around 90lbs in total, but the weight stalled at around 196lbs, I couldn’t for the life of me get it off even if I reduced calories to 1400 a day at 6ft 2. So I decided to start bulking, maybe put on some muscle and then try again to get to 190lbs, I’m currently 215, but I’m not sure when bulking really stops? Do I set a weight I want to get to or just go 'I’ve had enough ’ and start to cut?
It’s taken me about 3 months of bulking to gain this much and people have started saying I’m looking bigger, but I’m not sure when I should stop, I look like a lift but I honestly don’t have that much muscle, I’m not sure what’s going on there. I’m at around 18% body fat, I feel like I have fat guy skin and could never see myself shredded.
Would you say I did the right thing by just starting a bulk at that weight or is it too much to go from?
Instead of focusing on increasing scale weight, I have had better success by upping my training volume and eating according to that stimulus. I have found just focusing on eating more to make the scale move made me fat, while eating to support performance made me more muscular.
In general, unless a trainee has a goal to add weight period (vs muscle) I advocate against bulking.
Yeah no need to let your fat level get any higher/stay under 15%…
https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/bulking-diet-delusion
Congrats on the weight loss!
Almost all of the people I’ve known who have gotten good results from lifting have done at least one stupidly over-the-top bulk before dialing things in more carefully in the future. A sort of learning opportunity and rite of passage, I suppose. Conversely, most of the guys I know who tried and failed to build a lot of muscle didn’t.
That being said, getting really crazy with it isn’t helping. You’re gaining over 1.5lbs per week, which is kind of a fast rate of weight gain for a guy who used to be fat and is still carrying around a little more than he would like. If you want to keep “bulking”, I’d recommend slowing the pace down drastically, to something like 0.5lbs per week.